Quiet your mind.
Do you or someone you know meditate? Meditation can do many things according to an article in Forbes Magazine (6 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Mindfulness and Meditation, By Jenna Cho, Pharma & Health, 2016) It can increase your focus and concentration, reduce anxiety, lessens race and age bias – of this I am a bit dubious.
In 2008 Alan Pritz, author of Meditation As A Way Of Life, founded Awake-in-Life. (2015, back cover) Pritz’s Awake-in-Life focuses on meditation teaching and training, spiritual counseling, and work-life balance programs. Alan Pritz is an interfaith minister who has taught a variety of things for nearly fourty years. You can learn more about him at www.awake-in-life.com.
In Chapter 1 Pritz talks about his calling to meditation and all it entails, but also his reluctance to fully embrace it as it was a life style change. His fears at this change were waylaid via a fortune cookie fortune. From that moment forward he began learning new things that could expand his knowledge base and enhance his spiritual self, it was meditation.
In Chapter 2 Pritz squares meditation with religious dogma. He says that “A dedicated relationship with God subsequently forms the basis for a happy, insightful, and successful life…”. (2015, p.15) To which he adds a statement from Ramana Maharshi “Happiness is inherent in man and is not due to external causes.” (p.17) The premises of meditation move from what is within to what is without. Therefore, if we can find happiness from within we can exude happiness outside too. In order to do this successfully Pritz thinks you need a guide which is the topic of Chapter 3.
Chapter 5 provides the reader and meditation student with “The Twelve Principles of Spiritual Understanding.” (2015, p.45) These are “…universal realities rooted in cosmic law.” Pritz speaks a lot about spirit and the laws of spirit in most of his chapters. “Love is the secret power of devotion…”. (p.51)
The following Chapters deal with the application of meditation and the exercises associated with meditation. There are lengthy pictures and descriptions associated with each exercise and each step of the meditation process. All of which are key to achieving this oneness with spirit that is the purpose of engaging in meditation and learning it from a meditation master. Pritz provides the mediation student with definitions of the various chakras and what giving tribute to those can do for our human body and mental spirit. Pritz suggests fasting with orange juice on time per week and longer if possible as a means for cleansing body and spirit, as well as, enhancing our ability to commune with a higher being that can, and will, literally change your life.
I admit that I do not always take time to meditate, but I do some other things that help me to wake up with a positive twist on life regardless of life circumstances and you can to.