Majoring on Bliss

Peace and bliss; are they rendered the same? They certainly come from the same class at the School of Choice Living. Bliss is more positive, but peace—founded out of a wistfully resilient joy—is safety in any situation. Both are superb condiments for life.

These two play dynamic roles generating an alluring thing:

Majoring on bliss is a choice made to think a certain enjoyable way. Then all it requires is the skills of focus and self-discipline.

A Salient Illustration

Bicycling to and from work has been a pastime of mine for years, yet it’s something I don’t so much enjoy as see the benefit in efficiency of finding opportunity to exercise for health. Although it’s physical work involving pain, I’ve often decided to enjoy these rides... before, during and after.

Particularly those things we don’t enjoy we can major on bliss.

In this situation, it’s done beforehand by recognising the value of exercise. It’s conducted during the activity by flushing the mind with bliss-filled thoughts, whilst keeping a tidy bearing on the hazards about (cars, trucks etc). By the time the shower is reached the endorphins create their own bliss—home is intrinsic joy.

Mind Control

It will go against the grain for some, but the steady fact is we can control what we think. Bliss can be achieved just as easy as banality.

Controlling what we think is an adult concept; the mature mind is able to fix on a thought and continue to come back to it when the focus is lost. This principle of grown thought is made possible with effort on virtue.

Mind control is one remitting factor in the blessedness of the virtuous life.

Two Forms of Bliss

Bliss is active via focus on thoughts creating a heady joy as well as passive by way of the deep peace felt when the mind is at ease.

Majoring on bliss is about starting our way there and then simply allowing the mind continuity to exist—flowing in and out of bliss and peace—in our thinking.

Using the bike riding example previously, majoring on bliss is simply part active focus on deliberate blissful thinking and part passive allowance for the dreamy peace to have its way between thoughts. Less physical pain is felt as a result, and this pain is rendered meaningless as the mind anesthetises the mind.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Surviving Valentine’s Day

Many people cannot stand events like Valentine’s Day and it’s not just singles, though people without partners—those wanting one—may find all the modern hype of days vaunting romance as verging on sickening. That’s fair enough.

Recalling single life as a person who was not called to celibacy brings back many rich memories—pain-filled but full of growth.

For singles destined for non-celibacy, surviving Valentine’s Day is about either denying its reality—shutting it out—or coming to terms with it, in acceptance, patiently waiting for life to return to normal. Both methods, among others, are fine.

Painting a False Reality

Factors of influence tend their way over our psyches commensurate with what we give our minds attention to. In other words, if we live in a retail world, constantly watching television and absorbing other marketing-saturated media, we can expect to be bombarded by the hype of events like Valentine’s Day.

The lead up to days like this is frenetic; a promotional circus around sales.

It is maddening for a single person harping for the couple-life to swim amongst the treacherous rips out in the surf of retailed coupledom.

Dealing with Truth Closer to Home

How do we effectively empathise with the single person around Valentine’s Day? Some say it’s simple: “Fall in love with Jesus.” Well, that’s simpler for some than for others because we’re all wired differently. It’s insensitive to think that everyone can choose for themselves—and immediately so—Christ as their ‘husband’. That is a process for all, though some are blessed miraculously.

The issues behind the desire for a relationship are complex and only known to God.

It’s a mystery for some just how powerful the struggle is. They don’t actually enjoy living like this and notions like Valentine’s Day just thrust romance in their faces like a putrid smell.

Surviving Valentine’s Day is a method that can only be invented at an individual level, besides the suggestions to accept or deny.

Some truths don’t change no matter how much we pray, and it’s another insensitive thing to moot that “God gives us all our desires.” God does not accede to all our desires; besides the fact that some are not good for us, many of those that are or would be, for some reason unknown to us, do not materialise.

If God is calling us to coupledom, it’s best to arrange life in such a way that the in-between time as a single is handled as tolerably as possible.

This may mean skirting past and around things like Valentine’s Day. It’s as simple as diverting the attention to something more positive.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Our Life IS Our Career

Scrambling for a career-defining hope, the bespectacled punter—short on sight—stabs for the attainable, within-reach vocational step, giving their entire life to this one task. They see that this career is going to ‘make them’ and that this promotion will meet the expectations of their dreams. For this thing, it seems, they were born.

How many are mistaken?

Life short-sightedness in this way is the calm exterior to the reality of a person scrambling for identity. Career is the logical choice to pour their effort and hopes into.

The trouble is, for all too few of us, career is a long step from true purpose and realisation of those dreams. Only to the genuinely called does the privilege of career make its blessing a home within.

A Better ‘Career’ – Focus on Whole-of-Life

It’s acceptable, for ninety-nine-point-nine percent of us, that we’re cut out for a normal life. Of the 0.1 percent of people who are called to a special life, a good portion of these live quite hellish lives—lives we’d be thankful not to lead.

Yet, so many of us want more from life—maybe kudos, recognition, a little more fluidity to our bank accounts—than we presently have, or look to be able to get from here.

There are many clichés that describe this short-sighted viewpoint of life.

Our biggest challenge is to learn how to be happy with what we’ve got; a sure way there is to keep in sight how big our lives already are—how long, wide and deep.

Most of us live many thousands of days and we pack several ‘careers’ into that time. Our breadth of life is enormous—just think of the diversity of people and situations we meet over every waking second; we’re placed into millions of situations. The depth of our feelings, particularly at loss, grief and triumph, cannot be plumbed.

Appreciating the whole of our lives is on the one hand recognising the complexity already there, and on the other it’s not putting undue pressure to ‘be’ someone or something else. Incongruence with our identities will not make us happier, only more disconnected, polarised, exposed... disenchanted.

Looking Within

The secret to inner peace and contentment rests deep within us; to the knowledge of ourselves and our identity in God.

Only through this search—to our inner selves—can we dredge up the spoil of happiness that means anything good at all.

A career is not going to do it. Only a whole-of-life focus is going to assist because it won’t allow one area of life to become more important than other areas.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

When ‘Procrastination’ is Wisdom

Yes, you read it right... there is wisdom in procrastination, or should I say, in delaying things until their right time.

Many times actions are undertaken prematurely out of fear that we’ll forget or fail if we don’t start fretfully now. This action takes place in fear. A good reputation for promptness is afforded, but what’s missed out because the ‘important’ came before the ‘urgent’? Sometimes the ‘urgent’ then doesn’t get done.

There is, of course, an opposite and equally vibrant truth—doing the important things and not just the urgent things... because unorganised people tend to get sucked into focusing their time on urgent things (both unimportant and important). Most of us want more peace than to live in urgency all the time. It’s why people drive headlong into burnout.

There’s a tantalising balance to the management of wise living.

Benefiting from Timely Procrastination

How many times have we committed to something weeks out and done our work only to find the goalposts shift? So we did that thing again. And before it was due things changed, again!

Rework is the spiritual death of many in their millions. It is the rationality of despair in a world so already full of it.

Enters, instead, planning to break open the nexus...

Planning is an art of wisdom that speaks to the science of timing. It cannot sanction things late or early—it loves things just in time. Planning meets its schedule and not beforehand.

This is no excuse for actual procrastination; that age-rejected art of leaving people (not least ourselves) high and dry for want of the result that’s counted on but has not been delivered.

Empowering Confidence for Skilled Timing of Action

The person most in control of themselves knows when to do what.

Sure, there are the matters of ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘with whom’—not to mention ‘why’—but when is a critical thing.

Faith resounds in our trust of the timing of events and our actions—and how these two coincide. Luck has nothing to do with astute timing as we learn to adopt systems that ensure our feats gain maximum impact. Sounds more like self-discipline.

Wisdom has nothing to do with failing to achieve important objectives, unless it’s to learn from our errors—a sure but painful task toward burgeoning wisdom.

There is hardly a better causation for confidence than hitting the bullseyes of life with adroit timing.

There is wisdom in procrastinating over some issues as the time for delivery sits off at comfortable distance. This wisdom, however, only reaches truth-in-perpetuity in its effect-upon just-in-time.

Delay only works for us if we deliver when it’s required.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Procrastination.

The Blessedness of a Legacy of Longsuffering

“The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow-men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.”

~Winston Churchill,

Final Speech to the House of Commons, 1955.

Most people don’t reckon it to be a good thing to suffer; nobody enjoys it and most fear it. Yet isn’t it peculiar how it softens people, preparing them for the burdens of increased responsibility?

There’s another realm those with a legacy of longsuffering grow into—they become even more authentic when the pressure comes on. There’s no hint of a fake put-on or the frustrated guise of someone coming apart at the edges. They have a way of meeting maddening challenges and deadlines whilst retaining, even enhancing, the esteem of others. They inspire effortlessly it seems.

People love to work for these; those who’ve been taken to stark, unjust, hellish life—for a time that seemed to have ‘no purpose’... how life turns for the favour of these!

Good News for the Downhearted

This is hopeful news for the person treading neck deep in the muck of their hellhole.

There’s no telling where it ends for some people. No end in sight becomes the pattern for the many in their due time—and some for years—as they learn to cling to some invisible hope.

God is that invisible hope—a true hope that works in and through the trials of longsuffering. We know it to be a true hope via the fact that despairing is not the place or destiny for these; faith becomes the ‘good air’ beneath their wings.

“Never Despair”

In Winston Churchill, hardly a better leader of people in wartime ever existed. Casting a glance at world affairs in 1940 shows us just how tenuous it was politically. Hitler’s tyranny—if not with the help of international allies to evil—threatened the freedom of the entire world and it was Churchill that stood for the time and razed the despicable path.

Anyone observing the character of such leadership cannot help but notice the above phenomenon—a leader fashioned by his own longsuffering to bridge a nation’s. As the people of Britain rose to the gargantuan challenge of their time, urged, cajoled and dragged along by their leader, they grew past the challenges, surmounting them.

It didn’t so much spiritually fatigue them than it conformed them into a supremely capable people. Their belief swelled.

As we keep this issue front of mind—one of never despairing in turmoil—fatigue for the suffering becomes unnecessary. God flushes the heart full of hope for the daily battles that are overcome and the victories are not achieved in one’s own strength. It’s an ideal that bends our nose to the wheel, somehow with energy for the prevailing minute, and focus is saved for that minute.

The God-vision is beyond us—but it’s oh so believable.

It leaves the incumbent with sufficient legacy to last the entire age.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: via Schumacher College.

The Spirituality of Primary and Secondary Emotions

“When you are disturbed [angry], do not sin;

ponder it on your beds, and be silent.”

Selah

~Psalm 4:4 (NRSV).

Ever lost complete control of the moment and not known why? If you answered yes you’re just admitting to being human. These events are describing the impact of secondary emotions. In this case, anger was experienced because the truer emotion was denied somehow.

Spirituality and Emotion

Spirituality is the matter of integrity with ourselves and God.

We can consider that without spirituality there is nothing pertinent to life, for it gives all of life its meaning. The spirituality of the emotions, then, is about facing the fact that at times we’re honest about how we feel and other times we’re dishonest—perhaps out of fear, embarrassment or discomfort.

Emotions, and how they’re dealt with, say a lot about how vibrant our spirituality is. Therefore, there’s a salient connection between emotional intelligence and spirituality. Both surround honesty—with ourselves, others and God.

Then Comes Life

Situations in life have their way of mussing our emotions. Even the most emotionally intelligent of people grapple.

Life presents stimuli which we see as threats. These are realities that bear unwanted consequences. No matter how much we rationalise these things in our higher minds, our heart feels a certain way about them—it’s innate. Nothing can be done to change how we feel.

But, we are not defenceless; this is the point.

Responding to the Challenging Situation

So, we have a time in mind when a challenge to our emotions was experienced; one we desperately wanted to respond well about. Mind quelled the heart, but the heart still felt anxious.

The primary emotion is to do what the psalmist said: ponder and be silent. Don’t try and fix something that, for your heart, cannot be fixed. It is what it is. The primary emotion, therefore, has us feeling the full force of the emotion and welcoming it. In courage is truth—there is nothing to be feared, because this is you facing yourself. It’s God placing a mirror before your face. This is Divine revelation—a miraculous gift.

The secondary emotion comes through when we don’t heed the items at their most basic truth—when we deny the mirror. Life is made tricky because our default is to bypass the clean and effective primary emotion for the secondary, fake emotion—the devil’s tool since the fall of humanity.

Anger is the classic secondary response; hardly ever is anger a primary (good/true) emotion.

The spirituality of this issue again rebounds in truth.

God always gives us a way of properly meeting every life situation. Nothing is beyond us if we deal in primary emotions. This is part of the essence of our spirituality, a key to our relationships with others, and central to how we relate with the Spirit of God.

We can face anything.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The Definition of Inner Peace

“The effect of righteousness will be peace,

and the result of righteousness,

quietness and trust forever.”

~Isaiah 32:17 (NRSV).

Inner Peace: the process of reconciling the past, accepting the present and seeing a calm future—living righteously—all harmonised in the mind and heart of the person achieving it.

Many grapple for inner peace without understanding that externalities will always impinge on it. We cannot know peace of the soul without dealing with our cabin baggage of the past, being at peace with our everyday life situations in the present, and being calm for the future. This ushers the concepts of healing, acceptance and hope into captions for planning toward execution.

The passage of ancient Isaiah’s wraps up our understanding of the above, but more on that later.

Healing – We Must Deal With Our Pasts

Inner peace—that “quietness and trust forever”—cannot be reconciled without coming to terms with the baggage we’re carrying. This occurs at two simple levels; a bit like for salvation (first the event, then the subsequent experiences).

There is first the event of healing and, second, the ongoing reconciliation of hurts as the patterns of memory recur. The former is the gift of the Holy Spirit, however it personally comes. The latter is a skill of both awareness and access to God’s grace.

Bridging our pasts with our presents and futures is also critically important. Without burden of past, the present and future are freer and new.

Acceptance of Present Situations

Defying rationality has no point. Yet, instead of trouble-shooting daily situations to make the most of them we’re tempted to refuse the truth and denial takes us worse than nowhere—actually to a place far from inner peace.

Acceptance of present situations is about maturity to realise the status quo; it’s then a platform for transformation—for all matters of mind and heart are transformable. Acceptance is freedom; the mind unencumbered by dissatisfaction.

Past and Present Propel the Future

Concepts of the future relate to hope. Inner peace has been achieved by the person who’s dealt with their past—those who continue to deal with it—and who accept their present. They’ve reached an appropriately utopian mindset for pondering a hopeful future; that achieved, inner peace is the outcome—calmness about the future. Both heart and mind are of one accord.

The Definition of Inner Peace

What good is there in defining something if we can’t describe what it looks like and map our way to get there? This article proposed to define inner peace. It’s hoped that we’ve gone farther than we hoped.

If it’s worthy quoting Isaiah 32:17, it’s worthy describing its role in the present discussion. “Righteousness” is both the cause of, and the effect experienced in, dealing properly with our pasts, presents and futures. That’s what righteousness looks like in practical terms. Then, the effect of such righteousness is peace; the definitive result: quietness and trust forever.

The following formulas show it pragmatically:

TRUTH + APPLIED HEALING = RIGHTEOUSNESS = PEACE

(acknowledging that)

RIGHTEOUSNESS = APPLICATION of TRUTH

Inner Peace: the process of reconciling the past, accepting the present and seeing a calm future—living righteously—all harmonised in the mind and heart of the person achieving it.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: CARF.

Not At My Best, But Getting Better

Why is it so in my distrust,

The moment of mistake,

That I take some self-disgust,

And add it to my heartache?

Somehow it is head and heart,

Nowhere are they connected,

Feared as well spread apart,

As if I hardly expected.

Forgiving ourselves for such times,

Moments of human lapse,

Brings forward the matter of healing crimes,

Acceptance abundant perhaps.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Self-recrimination is a common trait amongst the populace, mainly because we’re scared of others judging us, so we judge ourselves. It’s based in a sort of false humility. Even if it’s not based in a false humility, it’s attributable to the lowly self-esteem. We hate being wrong, and double is the mischief of embarrassment—a hurt ego.

The point is we’ll all battle with it.

Be Gentle – Then Do Better

A worthy habit to get into is being gentle with ourselves for any human lapse. Taken to God are these failures and repentance is known via a commitment to do better next time; to not give up in achieving the hitting-of-the-mark in future.

That’s the Gospel response: to allow God’s Spirit to revive us, not redeeming any semblance of condemnation for the act.

God knows how hard it is being us. He knows we battle with the flesh-felt desire to want to succeed, even more so in failure. So the Gospel has a way for us to treat these things. It’s to have it out with the Lord and then allow the Spirit’s grace to heal us.

In this we’re getting better; not at our best by a long shot—but getting better all the same. This, by simple virtue of our growing spiritual resilience.

Look up, look out, look hopefully.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Can Inner Peace Be Achieved by Just Anyone?

This is a question on many people’s minds. Life presents such a quagmire of challenge to peace that we can find it impossible to start the journey there. But anyone can achieve peace.

Peace is achieved in the principle of congruence.

This is an important fact to know; if we can plan life and respond in ways that reinforces this principle we’re closer to achieving peace. And as many of us prefer to understand ideas as processes, I’ll describe it that way.

1. Start with a Vision

Peace means different things to different people. A vision is not created and then left; it’s an idea in the mind that constantly changes with new information and self-concepts formed. Vision is about the direction of our formation toward congruence and peace. When vision slips so will our drive to achieve.

Start from where you are. Ask, “What would living in peace mean for me?” Be concrete in your mind; develop a picture or a word phrase or feeling that means something to you.

2. Admit and Accept Limitations

We must acknowledge some limitations. No one retains peace indefinitely; it tends to ebb and flow. It’s connected with what’s going on in our lives, including many things beyond our control.

It’s important to admit this and accept it. That alone will reap us peace.

3. Commit to Reflection

If peace is about congruence the only way we’ll establish a more congruent life is by stepping back, reflecting and analysing life more. This is not the anxiety-producing sort of analysis that perhaps we’re used to inflicting on ourselves. It’s the focused process of coming into the knowledge of what makes us tick, and then using that knowledge to design life plans and responses so they better align life itself.

The practice is not about meditation per se. It’s about meditating on what’s occurred as a means of learning what’s worked from what hasn’t. Without such a practice the same mistakes will be made, producing the same dissonance we’ve been experiencing. Meditating on experiences is just reflecting; it can be done anywhere at any time.

Reflection is a commitment to learning. Learning is a vehicle to future peace because it takes us on a journey to congruence.

People find that it’s areas of virtue (honesty, courage, faith) that test their congruence most. The more faithfully we live, the more peace we achieve. Reflect on and learn from failures to live honourably.

4. Now Do It

Many plans stall in the execution of them. Enters now does self-discipline.

Committing to reflect is one thing, now we need to start doing it and that, as a process, can take years to hone. Not that that’s a concern right now, it’s just catering for the inevitable changes we all make to our processes of reflection.

There can be no easier way to encourage someone to do something than just urge them—start and then continue. Make it a habit. Be passionate about it.

Summary

True peace is beyond our circumstances, lack of time, opportunity and freedom. It’s a concept of congruence and all things at inner harmony. The world can be at war and we can still have our peace. And from peace comes life, hope, wisdom in decision-making, and trust and respect in relationships. Peace is a beacon of light.

When this process is achieved, peace also can be achieved—yes, by anyone.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Winning the War for the Soul

“The most important of life’s battles is the one we fight daily in the silent chambers of the soul.”

~David O. McKay.

For the grace that is in God we do not easily know how much the Lord fought for, and won, our souls from bankruptcy. It is not natural for us to think in these ways—that God is after us with such intent to heal and restore us.

And this healing restoration is not just via some banal sense for life in eternity—if that could even be considered “banal”—it is healing, flowing and constant, for this life and the days to come, and surely then for the days that have been.

God intends on annihilating the present swath and dregs of the wounded soul for which we all have—certainly via their effects on us.

There are two realms of Battle: one where war is over; the other where battles still ensue.

War is Over

We can thank God that the tremulous events for the saving of our souls have taken place—if we’re saved in and of Jesus.

“It is finished,” bellowed the person of Jesus on the cross. (John 19:30)

Still, with the war over there are still skirmishes that break out; an ubiquitous threat and one we’re blessed to be cautious of. One of the blessings of salvation is truer knowledge of good and evil as they pervade.

The Battle Ensuing

Aware are we now as to the plot of Satan who’s ever-present, and at home, in this world. The evil one is sown into the world and is of it; a fact we cannot escape.

Yet, it’s only through the process of Spiritual salvation—the war over—that we can even be aware of Satan’s wiles. We’re not fearful, just wary.

Satan will not just use satanic attack, but the world and all its temptations and our desires to boot. Cunning in deceit there are ways he’ll ensnare the wisest person.

This battle is one of attrition and hardly ever outright attack. We must be on constant guard for the slightest ambush, but then we must also be prepared to accept God’s prevailing peace. That involves trust.

Quietness of Soul

What all this battling means at a practice-level is the unsettling of our souls. Only we as individual persons know truly how much the battle’s running at or costing us, though others will no doubt see the effects of it.

It’s quietness of soul that every spiritual person seeks. They pursue rest, and from rest they act with humble confidence in their world. Their ideas are right-sized and they love generously.

This is about peace to sow a life that’s worthy of themselves and their God. And peace is a palace of safety for all to come.

May they find it in you. May we find it in the Lord our God.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Still Living!

To understand that we exist at the outer-most cusp of time—whilst that is indeed true, for tomorrow it mightn’t be so—is blessing like nothing else in this world.

As if surfing the wave of physical existence, which is more than can be said for millions of others who’ve already passed, there’s the opportunity we have at history. We’re making it now.

Yet, before we plunge into the celebration that’s the breathing, gasping life we must reflect on those who’ve not got it so good right now—they’re all around us...

First, Thoughts of Those Gone – Paying Homage to Their Memory

This is no blight on those who’ve gone. We can think of them, and of those who mourn for a loss. That fact merely inspires people to live all the more, or it should—that’s the theory, isn’t it? No matter, it is still okay to miss them terribly!

What a confusing mess this place is; love of life that remains, yet a squalid sorrow that hangs in defiant listlessness. Or perhaps we don’t even want to be here right now?

And then to ‘celebrate’ that we’re still living... it’s almost an insult to their memory. Whether it’s ‘what they would’ve wanted’ or not is beside the point. The emotions felt by those left behind are surprising at their source and impact. So unexpected. That’s grief.

Acceptance is a level playing field of the soul—you will get there.

Then, The Fact of ‘Life’ Comprising Purpose and Meaning – NOW

Not a second wasted, not one expired prematurely. And, yet, they’re all evaporating as we breathe them out.

‘Still living’ is a magnificent reality that will waste to nothingness soon enough.

If that is not purpose and meaning enough I don’t know what is. Why do we need an excuse to make the most of our moments? And this is nothing about achievement if not contentment.

As we reflect over our recent days and use these reflections to plan for our immediate futures there’s a strange fact reconciled. Moments of history are being written by our every thought and act.

‘Still living’ is the tape on record—in the studio and on air—and the world watching on with baited breath for our next move.

‘Still living’ can be likened to making differences whilst there is still time; not the least of which in our relationships and on our goals. Those lands lay captive upon the actions of history-making open to each of us.

‘Still living’ as a concept for the future is making life count—even the wasted moments for which we’re all entitled.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.