11 Sultan 162 B.E. - January 28 - 29, 2006 A.D.
I haven’t posted in about a week or so and ideas for today’s entry are flitting in and out of my mind butterflies in a field of clover. One idea to write about is my personal library. I have several book cases full of books, some I’ve read, some I’ve partially read and some I haven’t started yet. I started to read one book this week, it is a book by Iyanla Vanzant called One Day My Soul Just Opened Up. While I was reading the first part of the book, the author mentioned the Baha’i Faith and independent investigation of truth. Anyway this book has questions at the end of about forty of its chapters (they are short chapters) that I can answer either in the book or in my journal. You can carry the book with you and read it any where, but I am not going to do that. Instead I’m reading it a little each morning and evening. The questions and exercises in the book encourage the reader to go into his or her own spiritual cultural background and discover spirituality for herself.
Another idea for this blog entry has to do with the fact that I have absolutely no sense of direction. I’m directionally challenged, in other words I get lost easily. In fact I got lost this last week and not in my car. Usually I get lost when I am driving someplace after dark or even in the day time. This time however I got lost walking. I walked several blocks out of my way and had to turn around and go back. Still haven’t figured that one out, but I wasn’t really watching where I was going. In addition I thought I knew where I was going. OK, maybe that’s how I get lost the most, I think I know where I am going when I really don’t. Getting lost in a car is one thing, in a car you can roll the windows up and lock the doors, but you do have to watch the gas tank. When you get lost in a car there is always the possibility of running out of gas. Getting lost when you are walking is an entirely other matter.
I will say this much for the past week I learned a great deal about myself. One thing that I learned is that I have a tendency to worry about the oddest or weirdest things. What I have worried about this last week was important, but nothing to worry about. I have found that when I need money I usually get enough to tide me over until a job or incoming earning opportunity comes around. There is a prayer in the Baha’i Prayer book about protection from vain imaginings. I am going to say that every day this coming week. That should take care of the worries because, at least from the experience of this last week, my worries appear to be vain imaginings.
The prayers revealed by the Bab, Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha cover every contingency in a person’s life. Regular prayer does a great deal for me, it helps me focus on what I need to do when it comes to answers to prayers. I especially like reading and reciting the prayers revealed by Baha’u’llah, ‘Abdu’l-Baha and the Bab because there is a spiritual feeling about the prayers themselves that my own prayers don’t have. In addition they calm worrying and scatter negative thoughts (for me a form of vain imaginings). I have favorite prayers by each that I say regularly, but my favorite prayers, with certain exceptions, change according to the events in my life. I think this is all I have for today, so I will post this and get on to other matters.
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