Living into Surrendering: Day 20, Daily Awareness
Living Into Surrendering: Day 20, Daily Awareness.
I have decided to live into surrender more consciously for 21 days, and share the journey with others. I invite you to join me, for the benefit of your own peace, and the peace of those around you.
As we reach these last days of 21-days of living into surrendering, my prayer is to allow ourselves to absorb this journey, by reflecting and integrating our experiences.
With surrendering there is no actual arrival, but rather a daily living–a grace and a practice. However, there are times to pause and seek integration, to notice how the fruits of our intentions and prayers are being fulfilled.
These are the times, when we call on the Spirit of surrender to help us live out more consciously what is happening within us. What has this time of 21-days of surrender awakened in you? How are you being called to live it?
Discernment and daily awareness support our spiritual journey. I really like the Daily Examen, which is a daily awareness practice, and this morning I returned to it. (I like to do the Examen in the morning, but many people do it at the end of the day. You might want to try both and see what suits you.)
I use a simple model, in which I write and draw. It goes something like this:
- I make a cup of tea, and sit in my prayer chair, which is a comfortable chair in my bedroom corner.
- I relax, sip my tea, and say: Dear God, this is our special time together.
- I pause with gratitude for some moments in the previous day.
- I review my day: noticing how I felt; how I responded; where I was open and where I was closed off.
- I ask the Spirit to help me discover where God was, where I was, and how I responded.
- I pause and pray for healing.
- I pause and pray to be attentive to how and where God might be calling me at this time.
- I close by asking to live in more awareness in this new day, to be tuned in to God’s action and presence in me and around me.
- If I feel inspired, I draw a picture, which is often just marks and colors, and write in my journal.
I invite you to experiment with a Daily Examen process or Daily Awareness practice as the next stage of living into surrendering.
Let us continue to invite the Spirit of Surrender to move and breath and live more deeply and richly in us and around us. I remind myself that my actions, my consciousness, my intentions have a ripple effect, and they matter to my life, to those around me, and to the world.
An example from my art journal. TRY IT!
Another example of the Daily Examen you may like.