Episode 915: Wake up from a Spiritual Sleep

1. Wake Up!
Before you go to bed make a plan for the next day that will lead to everyday! This is why advent is so very important. It is not only the beginning of the church year but your chance to reboot. So clear your calendar and first of all get rid of all those things in your day you no longer need, the stuff that merely serves as a distraction from your spiritual life. And while decluttering your calendar is important, it's even more important to declutter your mind. You now need to take time every day to sit in silence and solitude and give it to Christ. This is why daily eucharistic adoration and attending daily mass is so very important. You have to get your mind right and call out to Christ for help.

Here is a prayer that you want to work into your morning Prayer – Help Me Jesus!

Allow your thoughts to move towards Christ, and slowly watch your mind clear of all the useless mental clutter. Meditation allows you to relax into what is presently true and what is always present for all of us is that there is only love of Christ, no fear and now you are open to spiritual guidance.

I’ve suggested the following in your day:
 Morning Prayers (before leaving the house)
 Mass (find an early Mass near you)
 Noon (Angelus Prayer)
 After Dinner (Rosary with Family/Friends)
 Evening Prayer (before going to bed)
 Weekly devotion (Novena of your choice)
 Scripture reading three times a week

2. Examine your beliefs.
Be conscious of what you believe. Understand how you will put these beliefs not only into your daily but into the world at large. And be very honest with yourself and ask yourself are your daily actions and beliefs supporting your spiritual growth and getting you out of this spiritual sleep? Very often, a spiritual awakening requires letting go of things that have been in your life for a very long time that became a huge distraction and they must go before you can move forward. But that's the thing about awakening: You have to realize first that you have been sleeping. The more you wake up the more the devil will try to put you to sleep. He needs you lathargic. He will send more distractions at you. He will enter your dreams telling you how worthless you are and why you have no right to change and to go back to sleep. Don’t fall for it. Like a new year allows you to change and reboot, so too every day is a reboot. Don’t let the devil tell you about the past. Nothing you can do about that! Look forward a wake up!

3. Expand your mind.
Explore new ways to increase your Catholic knowledge to increase your beliefs. Side note. When I get together with my friends they will try to throw things at me to challenge my Catholic Faith but its quite useless because they have little knowledge of the faith and usually get it wrong but this requires e to correct them. Believe or not that is extremely important because you maybe the reason someone returns to the faith. When ever someone challenges me and says “do you think you are more spiritual or better than me or us, I respond the way St Francis did. “No Christ needed the worst person to teach and he asked me to step in”. Its quite true, I have no right to be Christs defender Im just holding the spot until Christ finds someone else.

SO Read books and attend lectures and have conversations with people who have a greater knowledge. Just make sure you are doing this all under one condition. It must be information before VII and the people with greater knowledge come with a traditional catholic understanding. Be very careful with those that are VII scholars. You will eventually lose your faith.

An awakening occurs when you have learned something new—when you have, quite literally, "woken" your mind and your spirit from a slumber you perhaps didn't even know you were in. When you expand your mind to allow in new ideas, beliefs, and possibilities, you increase the opportunity to wake up to a life experience you never knew was possible.

4. Go to Confession – Go to Mass
So many people spend time cooped up inside, sitting behind computer screens or in front of a TV and not truly connected to the world (or to ourselves). Take time to reconnect with Christ through his sacraments. Don’t let things distract you (phone, computer or even another person's company.) Give yourself the quiet and the solitude and the presence that comes with being at Church. You may be surprised by what comes alive within you. Your thoughts move from secular to spiritual.

5. Take care of influences.
They say that you are what you eat. Even more importantly you become who you are with. If you are not selective if who you spend your time with you may tend to spend time with those that are not leading you towards a more spiritual life. This does not mean you are better than others it means others may not be making you better. If you hang out with those that have absolutely no spiritual life then all the discussions are secular and may also lead to improper discussions that could be a near occasion of sin. If you want to be with these type of people remember that your primary job is to get them to wake up.

6. Learn to let go.
The reality is you can't force a spiritual awakening. There's no prescription for spiritual enlightenment. It takes work and every time something comes into your life that attempts to distract you under the guise of duty of state, let that thing go. If you're attached to the idea of having a spiritual awakening instead of the commitment to have one, you're far less likely to experience one. Once you make your plan you must follow through. No excuses.

Keep in mind that a spiritual awakening is not a one-time thing. The spiritual path is a lifelong journey of growth. Continue to follow the steps above and you will undoubtedly find yourself "waking up" to new awareness and deeper understanding of your faith and Christ over and over again. So when you connect these over and over again dots VOILA you have a spiritual life.