Spiritual beliefs/practice

[thetxbelle]

Does anyone practice prayer, meditation, etc to help you come out of your daydream world sometimes? If so how's it working for you?

[Truthful Alibi]

sometimes I feel like I'm going against my beliefs - I say 'Oh my God' without meaning to - I try to say 'gosh' but I normally can't stop myself.

I do sometimes feel like my DDs are going against my beliefs and I have actually thought to myself that I should DD about God more since I'm Catholic. Also my character in my DDs doesn't normally pray. 

[Julie]

I'm a Catholic, in Poland you don't have much choice :) That's a very religious country, actually, so much religious that you can start hating all the formalities, rituals and so on. This I don't like, I guess, I'm pretty rebellious. But there should be someone watching us from heaven or, whatever, from outside. I guess, the God is a friend, so I'd like to talk to him as to a friend or a consultant or an older brother. Maybe, this friendly image was created in my head because I met some very nice people working for church (and, yes, John Paul II). These few people were enough to create an image of God as friend (and not someone watching you to punish you) and overcome the dislke for nasty rituals. I really wish, we had something like in US, where people sing gospels.

thetxbelle said:

Are you Catholic? Im Baptist and we dont pray the same prayers, for us you talk to God though I suppose some people probably add Bible verses. However we dont have any set prayers,

[Tina]

I'm Catholic as well, and I tend to daydream during the homily usually, I think I'm going to try sitting closer up to the priest so that I can actually hear what he's saying because when I can hear the homily I tend to daydream less.  I do admit though during mass my mind weaves in and out of daydreams since when I'm at home sometimes my daydreams involve me being at church, that's where the scenario takes place, so just being in the church triggers it to happen.  Prayer does definitely help me though, I don't daydream when I'm praying because I'm focusing on what I want to say in my prayers.  I do daydream much less than when I'm at home though just by being in the church even if my mind at times weaves in and out of daydreams during mass.

[Nomad]

I had a very powerful experience with prayer last year when I first started visiting this site. I prayed to surrender my MD--just once because I was really, really surrendering. And after that I felt like I had the power to avoid triggers, increase my contact with real people, tell those people what I was going through (which really helped when temptation hit), and generally make better choices. But before that I had been praying about MD for years without much progress. I think this site helped me to come up with a game plan, so I had a clearer idea of what I was praying for. But I also think I can't control the timing of my profound spiritual moments. Sometimes, for me, faith is keeping up my spiritual practices even if I doubt they'll do any good. My natural state is to be anxious and hang on; I won't let go until I'm ready, and I can't make myself let go no matter how high the stakes and no matter how badly I want control. I can only take baby steps.

I like breathing meditations, but I've found external input more helpful with my md. When I was first refocusing, I put on earbuds at night and listened to spiritual stuff. But I guess that wouldn't work if spiritual stuff is your trigger :( My MDs aren't spiritual at all. In my world, I'm the all-powerful being!