Hannah Anderson All Thatã¢ââ¢s Good Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment

Paradigm by bobosh_t via Create Commons

I tend to alive in my head, to overanalyze. This often prevents me from engaging fully in the present moment.

Fortunately, I go to the gym daily, which offers me respite from living in my head. Whether I'1000 doing a cardio, strength training, or yoga, my mind can but think about breathing and moving in the present moment.

My fitness instructors will even call me out on my overthinking tendencies, "Hey, Karen! Yous're thinking too much. Be nowadays!"  Sometimes I'm living in the by with shame and regret or by picking at scabs from injuries inflicted by others. Sometimes I'm living in the present, worrying about the worst-case scenarios or overplanning in a vain endeavour to control.

If I can focus only on breathing and moving, after an hour of exercise, I experience at-home in mind, body, and spirit. During my drive dwelling house, I often receive inspiration near how to address conflict in my life considering exercising helps me to feel paradoxically relaxed and invigorated. I conceptualize my daily hour at the gym as a form of meditation.

But I accept other tools for helping me live in the present moment.  Yes, it'due south the Sun School Answers, only prayer, scripture reading, temple worship, and meditation helps me when I'm stuck in the by or worried about the time to come.

In addition to gym time and church resources, I do better when I prefer one of the mottos from the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

Essentially, I live peaceably and authentically when I live as a One Day at a Time Saint.

About once a decade since the 1970s, I've had a challenging life experience myself or a loved one that has put me in contact with Alcoholics Anonymous or one of its off-shoots (Narcotics Anonymous, Overeating Bearding, Gamblers Bearding). The 13^thursday Article of Faith reminds me that "if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good or praiseworthy, we seek later these things." The motto–and all the richness from these recovery programs—is, indeed, praiseworthy.

I besides find guidance on how to live fully in the present when I read Zen Buddhist meditations. "Exist Here Now" puts a slightly different spin on the parallel concept of One Twenty-four hour period at a Time.

When I have the persistent invitations to live in the present moment, I experience peace, condolement, and sanity.

While I practice not believe that the Church building of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints aims to promote shame or worry, sometimes I take used items from Church building culture, programs, and ideologies to build cages of shame and worry.

I have used Church language about the various sins of commissions and omissions to behave an inventory of all my by sins or the sins of others—damning myself and damning others by living in the past. And have too used Church linguistic communication about goals, principles, and virtues in an endeavor to be my own savior.  When I try to overplan for the time to come, I am trying to overcome past "the arm of the flesh" all the challenges of being mortal.  This is incommunicable when I am mortal, living among mortals, in a earth filled with the challenges of bloodshed (sin, temptation, persecution, sickness, toil, and death—just to name a few).

While I'll use AA mottos and Zen Buddhist mantras, I also learn how to live in the moment from passages of scripture. In that location are dozens, and I promise that readers share some in the comments.  I'll share just two: i about leaving the past behind, and one almost abandoning worries about the future.

In Chapter 1 of Paul's alphabetic character to the Ephesians, he invites people to exist inverse by the atonement of Jesus Christ. He lists sins they need to forsake, and virtues they need to adopt. He employs an epitome that puts this call into sharp focus when he writes,

"And be renewed in the spirit of your heed; And that ye put on the new [wo]man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Ephesians 4:23-24).

The atonement offers me an opportunity to get out the past behind, to live fully and richly in a present that is filled with faith, hope, and charity.  I can live richly in the present if I also lay the burdens of the time to come at the Savior's anxiety.

In the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus contrasts the means of the world with the kingdom of God. Manifestly, reading the unabridged sermon has merit. But in Matthew Chapter 6, Jesus describes how nature lives fully in the presence—"Consider the fowls of the air! Consider the lilies of the field!"–bearing witness of the Creator'due south beneficence: God volition provide for our needs if nosotros recognize our dependence on Him and follow in religion.  At the end of that chapter, Jesus issues this invitation:

"Take therefore no idea for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself" (from Matthew 6:34).

Living ane day at a time doesn't mean abandoning an Eternal Perspective. It's an acknowledgement that as mortals we can merely use our limited time as a means for communicating with the Divine and adopting divine virtues—past escaping the prisons of the past and the time to come and engaging in the opportunities of the present moment as One Twenty-four hours at a Fourth dimension Saints.

brzozowskibectionet.blogspot.com

Source: https://segullah.org/daily-special/odaat-saint-finding-the-eternal-in-the-now/

Share this post