Continue with spiritual disciplines.
Take time to sit. Be still. Breathe. Do mantras and prayer beads. Pray and bless. Not because this achieves enlightenment, it does not. But it prepares the mind and heart for enlightenment. Enlightenment (the Grace of God; the Grace to be aware of God's continual Presence; Salvation) is given freely. It is received by Faith. Faith increases as ignorance decreases. Love (compassion) increases as ignorance decreases. How do we lessen our ignorance?
Ignorance to the mind is like an unhealthy amount of adipose tissue, and like weak or immobile areas of the body. The shedding (burning, metabolizing, converting the energy) of the unhealthy amount of adipose tissue, and the improvement of weak or immobile areas of the body, are accomplished by physical discipline. Similarly, the shedding of ignorance is accomplished by spiritual discipline.
Just as physical discipline (exercise and disciplined eating) prepares the body for activities, ensuring better performance and experience than if exercise had not been performed, spiritual disciplines (karma yoga, daily prayers, meditations, lectio divina, and others) prepare the mind, ensuring better performance and experience of the mind and soul. The mind is the portal into the spiritual, it must be modified and attuned (aligned) to the realm that one's soul desires to exist within.
[Karma yoga (karma = action) is the meditative and contemplative (introspective) practice of becoming aware of the thoughts, emotions, motives, desires, and intentions behind our actions; of aligning (uniting = yoga) our thoughts, emotions, motives, desires, and intentions with Love (with God; harmlessness, fearlessness, and compassion).]
While an individual is walking the path to enlightenment (aka, Self-Realization, being formed into the image of Christ), they should be aligning their inner intentions with harmlessness (Ahimsa), fearlessness (Abhaya), and compassion - the ethics of Christ and most major religions - And behaving towards all life from this triad of intentions. Thoughts, motives, emotions, and intentions that conflict with these statutes (ethics) should be brought into your awareness and lovingly inspected to determine where there is fallacious perspective or logic.
Purify (strengthen, retrain, free, cleanse, open) the mind. Let your intentions always align with harmlessness, fearlessness, and compassion (Christ). Fear and its relatives derive from inferior knowledge and perspectives; do not let your intentions, words, thoughts or actions be driven by fear. Recognize the fear, love the wounded logic, and wait until it aligns (heals, converts, transmutes) back into its original and beautiful, holy (whole) form. Let all that you do (in action, word, thought, judgment, motive, and intention) be done in love.
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