dinolooki.blogg.se - Spiritual self reflection

#SPIRITUAL SELF REFLECTION DRIVERS#
#SPIRITUAL SELF REFLECTION FULL#

And in the quietest, most secret places of your heart you’ll whisper, “I’ve never really experienced that.” Without ever-deepening habits of self-reflection, you will spend a lot of your life hearing about Jesus’ promises of supernatural peace, healing, and transformation.

Not only that, but many parts of the Christian life will also never quite add up or make sense. If we never learn to see the 90 percent below the surface that often unknowingly grabs the wheel of our experience - our wounds, fears, ignored emotions, protective vows, false selves, defensive instincts - and welcome God’s healing presence and love into it, we’ll remain mostly a mystery to ourselves.

It’s the foundation for your entire spiritual life. That’s why self-reflection, in partnership with the Spirit, is more than just a good and healthy spiritual practice. Ninety percent of us exists well below the surface of our day-to-day awareness. And that subterranean you, as it turns out, isn’t even remotely under your control.Īs Peter Scazzero, author of “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,” puts it, we are like icebergs. Unsettling, isn’t it? There’s so much you under the surface of your conscious awareness.

#SPIRITUAL SELF REFLECTION FULL#

You are so not the boss of you, in fact, that your conscious mind can take a full daydream holiday while you’re driving and some other part of you will manage that unbelievably complex task quite well. When it comes to the daily operation and direction of you, you’re the boss - or it seems that way.īut the phenomenon of highway hypnosis reveals that there are many, many ways in which you are not the boss. If we want to go to class or stroll across campus or listen to 15 hours of lo-fi study beats, we do. If we want to talk to someone, we do if we don’t, we avoid them. In general, we live with the settled assumption that we’re in control of ourselves.

#SPIRITUAL SELF REFLECTION DRIVERS#

One reason is, of course, fear - we intuitively understand that multi-ton, high-speed machines zipping around with half-focused drivers is, you know, unsafe.īut there’s another reason, I think, that’s equally unsettling, albeit in a subtler way: the sudden realization of how much of us functions without our awareness or control. “If you don’t like something, change it if you can’t change it, change your attitude about it.Few experiences are as unsettling as “highway hypnosis”: exiting your car and realizing that you don’t remember anything about how you got to your destination.Įveryone has experienced this phenomenon of “losing time.” We’ve all spaced out in the checkout line, perhaps, or focused on homework or a paper with such intensity that we realize we haven’t blinked in an alarmingly long amount of time.Īnd yet there’s something about this highway hypnosis that’s especially disorienting.

Am I achieving the goals I set for myself?.

Am I letting matters that are out of my control stress me out?.

Am I putting enough effort into my relationships?.

Am I thinking negative thoughts before I fall asleep?.

Am I waking up in the morning ready to take on the day?.

In “ The Power of Self-Reflection,” author Michael Woronko invites us to ask ourselves questions to find out what’s going on within us and to stay focused on our purpose. The wisdom and understanding you gain from experience will enable you to make the adjustments necessary to arrive at your next destination. In looking back, we see all that we have to be grateful for and recognize any need to change direction or to change our attitude going forward. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” SocratesĪs we assess where we are in comparison to where we’ve been, it is important to recognize that every experience-good, bad, or ugly-has brought us to the here and now. Ways to Use Self-Reflection to Build a Life However, there is no need to wait for the calendar to change. We often reserve such opportunities for looking back on the past year to determine what we want to leave behind and what we desire to bring forward. Creating a Self-Reflection HabitĮvery day presents opportunities to examine ourselves and determine where we’ve come from and how far we have to go to fulfill our true purpose. Self-reflection means taking a personal inventory of where you are now and looking back on how far you’ve come in gaining wisdom and understanding. To gain wisdom and insight, one must be willing to turn within. “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight.” Proverbs 4:7 What Is Self-Reflection?