Spiritual Respiration

UV 886/10,000 Spiritual Respiration Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye. Proverbs 7 v 2 Life depends on the liver: on how we choose to live. The liver is a vital organ that helps to digest food. If it fails, the whole body dies. I recently met a man who knew me some thirty five years ago as a youngster. He had spent a large part of his life addicted to alcohol. His liver failed. As a consequence, a few weeks after he renewed our acquaintance, I was shocked to read his obituary in the papers. We can choose to live according to the desires of our eyes, the desires of our hearts and the desires of our flesh. We can also choose to make the law of God the apple of our eye or the very pupil or lens through which we look at anything and everything. The Word will help us zoom in on the distant and see it with the clarity of something very proximate to us. It will help us see all things in perspective. It will magnify that which our natural eye cannot see- even our hidden faults and secret sins. The Old Testament contains the ten commandments in terms of largely prohibitions, the New Testament sums up in the words of Jesus the two commandments that sum up the essence of the ten commandments in two positive injunctions: love the Lord our God and love our neighbour. Passion for the Word will inspire in us a passion for God and compassion for our fellow beings. The first challenge in obeying the Word is keeping it stored in our thoughts and memories such that it influences all our feelings, actions and reactions. In order to “keep” it in our thoughts, we need to have a set of expressions that are simple and easy to remember. If we link our thoughts to our breathing, it will influence all of our lives, all the time. The Lord inspired me to discover the simple thought process –eqthinking or equilibrium thinking. It is based on our breathe in : breathe out patterns. Instead of breathe in oxygen, breathe out carbon dioxide, we can breathe in life-giving and life –enhancing values like humility, contentment, peace, joy, health, compassion, strength, positivity, creativity, mercy, gentleness, love, hope, patience.. Last evening I tried to sum up the essence of the prohibitions of the ten commandments given by God to Moses and the positive injunctions of the two commandments of Jesus in terms of equilibrium thinking thought commands or eqthinking commands: Be humble, beat pride will enable a person not to think too highly of oneself and not to be arrogant. Be contented, beat discontentment –will produce a sense of satisfaction with the material comforts and monetary resources one has. Be creative, beat reactivity – will augment our creative juices and control our reactions to stimuli. Be determined, beat giving up- will increase our sense of persistence and perseverance. Be compassionate, beat selfishness- will transform our priorities. Be bold or courageous, beat fear- will enable us to take greater risks and have bigger breakthroughs in life. Be forgiving, beat resentment- will transform our relationships and remove all bitterness. Be healthy, beat sickness – will transform our lifestyle. Be positive, beat negativity – will transform our thought process. Be successful, beat failure- will increase our success rate. Be joyful, beat sadness – will enable us to be cheerful. Be gentle, beat harshness –will enable us to be sensitive to the feelings of others and help us avoid hurting others. Be strong, beat weakness- will engage with our strengths to reinforce it and deal with our weaknesses to overcome or reduce or turn it into strengths. Be wise, beat folly -will teach us to be wiser and avoid foolishness in words, thoughts, actions and reactions. These commands are easy to remember all the time and to practice along with whatever else we are doing. It will help to renew our minds or to recharge our thoughts, emotions and will. Together, these commands to self are nothing but the essence of the commandments of the Lord. When we practice these commands in this manner, we are practicing spiritual respiration, meditation and prayer. It will help us deal and defeat the personal demons or weaknesses that affect and afflict all of us who belong to the human race. Prateep V Philip