Guardian angel spiritual protection from the day of birth

Category: Personal Growth

  • Educating in intuition also means educating in creativity

    Educating in intuition is the function through which the possibilities are perceived, that is, in how many different ways a thing can be done. It is also the presentiment, that is, the ability to anticipate what is not yet visible, the future potential of a situation.

    Sensation perceives reality through the physical senses, intuition perceives through the unconscious. Intuition is in direct contact with the unconscious and receives flashes of genius, suggestions, artistic ideas from the unconscious.

    Intuition is an image that comes from the unconscious and is reflected on the conscience as in a mirror. Since it comes from the unconscious where there is no time and space, it is able to grasp aspects and seeds of the future, it is able to perceive completely new ways of approaching a problem, it is able to grasp original solutions.

    It is the creative ability of the artist who is in contact with the seeds of the future and with universal seeds that know how to speak to every man. Because they are images that correspond to very deep collective unconscious levels.

    Educating in intuition, therefore, means fostering the ability to grasp the possibilities. That is, in how many possible ways an object can be used, how many different possibilities there are to tell an event, in how many different ways a feeling can be expressed.

    It is also getting used to not becoming mentally rigid, not becoming fossilized, not becoming one-sided. Learn that things have multiple facets and can be viewed in multiple ways and from multiple angles. And that there are so many different possibilities to deal with problems, it will help to avoid getting stuck in difficult situations and always find a way out.

    Educating in intuition also means teaching to trust oneself, one’s unconscious, one’s nature, one’s self. Be open to what can come from the richest and most precious part of us, where the most important treasures are and the center of our life.

    It means being centered on the things that matter, being yourself, being more complete. This allows you to recognize the signs, symbols, lightning, premonitions, strange scents that indicate the way. Who gives the solution, who discover profound and unknown aspects.

    It is one of the most precious teachings that a parent can give children because it is what allows them to learn to find solutions, to get in touch with the germs of the future, to create something new that never existed.

    Educating to creativity

    Creativity is not thinking about something different, new than what has already been done. It is not a rational invention or a social and political message expressed through an image.

    True creativity is opening up and getting in touch with something unknown to oneself and to others. Something unknown from the past and present, something that is not owned by anyone.

    It is letting oneself be crossed by something autonomous, vital, immediate, fulminating, and imperious that imposes itself and must absolutely be expressed. Image, idea, connection, feeling it may be, is a manifestation of the unconscious that has decided to reveal itself to that person and at that moment. It is a universal message that the artist can and must pass on to the world.

    When the artist has a flash of genius, a fulminating representation is as if possessed by the autonomous and powerful energy that forces him to immediately produce the work. It is a vital center that takes and emanates collective archetypal energy and is characterized by an intense affective tonality. In fact, the artist does not know what he is doing on a rational level, he is totally taken by the affective tonality. Only at the end can he grasp the meaning of the work.

  • The instinct of children is naturally uncontrolled and wild

    The instinct of children is naturally uncontrolled and wild. It must therefore be contained, be delimited. It must not be trampled on, repressed, or humiliated, but neither should it be left to itself. It needs a limit, a boundary to respect, it needs to be protected even by itself and thus becomes truly free.

    In the beginning, it is the parents who set limits because children do not yet have the ability to decide independently. However, they can begin to explain to him the reason for that limit.

    Explaining, however, implies that the parent is firm and stable and does not let the child cross the line. In fact, children do not support borders by their nature and do everything to challenge or blackmail those who impose them on them. Parents, however, must ensure that this does not happen because overcoming the limit means for the child to remain instinctive in the wild. And losing trust and credibility in the paternal and guiding role of parents.

    The instinct of children must be contained

    If this does not happen, it will also express itself in the following years with aggressive, impetuous, uncontrolled attitudes, increasingly difficult to control. Over time, the child must be taught to choose how to set limits and boundaries for himself. He can choose his times and her ways, but the behavior must be ordered according to a purpose.

    The child must also know the why and the purpose of that habit he is acquiring, she must know what he leads to and what does not follow him entail. Washing, dressing alone, going to school, and doing homework must make sense to him. Things with meaning take on the soul and become vital for oneself and for others.

    Educating to choices, habits, and customs thus become personal and at the same time social. They help the child to feel good about himself and others. And particularly to feel integrated and appropriate to the social context in which he will live.

    To teach your children to give themselves boundaries, it is important that boundaries are also present in parents because children do not only look at what is said or done but mainly at what one is.

    So a parent who still suffers from a lack of understanding of the instinctive needs of his childhood and is still angry at overly strict parents tends to react automatically in the face of imposed limits. Reacting to the limit is like defending oneself from unjust and authoritarian repression.

    This is why he tends to defend himself and also his son from the rules and unconsciously colludes, that is, he takes sides and allies himself with the instinct of the son and with his refusal to be limited.

    In this way, the child feels authorized in his impulses without limit, without order without purpose. He feels protected by those who matter most to him and risks maintaining behaviors that lead to more and more social maladjustment, up to rejection and isolation

  • Negative people, how to defend yourself from negativity

    Negative people recognize and appease the negativity around us. It happens to everyone to have a bad day and see everything black, or to spend their time with people who live this experience on that day. This type of negativity is something that tends to run out within a few hours or days and the greatest possible damage is having worsened the day of the people around, having wasted energy, and being inefficient and productive in the workplace.

    In short, something annoying for oneself and for others, but easily remedied. The problem arises when negativity is pervasive and constant and becomes a real lifestyle for some people. Unfortunately, it often hides behind behaviors that are not easily recognizable, which at first glance may not create particular problems.

    How to recognize negative people

    Negative people usually can’t find the positive in the things that happen in their life. They are the classic people who, even in the face of success or the normality of everyday life, do not enjoy the goals and continue to have a pessimistic outlook on life. Pessimism is pervasive and therefore reigns in every sphere and moment.

    In the same way, they are people who try to remove the responsibility for things and do not set well-defined goals. This happens because they often feel unable to complete them, they consider them too wasteful of time and energy, or dangerous and possible sources of negative judgments by others.

    Their constant insecurity often leads them to implement control and defensive strategies, not always pleasant and functional: they speak ill of others, underlining their defects, so as to belittle their own, they become nervous and arrogant, they attribute blame to external factors and far from their control and so on.

    They are people who cannot rejoice in the midst of family or friends but live with a constant perception of being under accusation. Inadequate and incapable, attributing these feelings to the devaluing attitude of others, often struggling to observe the reality of things.

    Negativity can be contagious

    Being often with negative people could generate a negative experience as a result. This happens especially in people who do not in themselves have a strongly positivist imprint of life, but live in a balanced way, attributing different values ​​to events and experiencing different experiences. Instead, it has less force on optimistic perennials.

    Constantly hearing negative thoughts, pessimistic and devaluing visions, can lead to reducing hope, the value of dreams and goals, and reading things around differently.

    How to appease the negativity of negative people

    To appease the negativity around there is no better weapon than the counterattack – to be positive. Like negativity, positivity can also be contagious and over time pessimism can subside. Or at least waver and open a window to a different vision of life. This has to be done in small doses, day after day, but it can work.

    It is therefore important not to be overwhelmed by the cosmic pessimism of negative people but to help them understand the existence of another perspective, without trying to convince them or seek reason, but only by opening a confrontation.

    It is not always possible and often the reaction is one of further closure and strengthening of one’s convictions, but it is important not to fall into the trap and to affirm one’s vision.

    Another possibility is to be welcoming towards their fatigue and difficulty in dealing with things. This at least at first can be useful to create a bond and only later to support the person in seeing things differently.

    Negativity can sometimes be a plea for help and support and tie in with low self-esteem and a need for affection. Finally, however, it is important, especially in one’s moments of difficulty and fragility, to distance oneself from or protect oneself from these people, so as to maintain one’s own stability and not get infected.

  • Gossip is an almost timeless human activity

    Gossip is an almost timeless human activity, many like to feed it, few want to be the object of it. At first glance, it may seem like an outdated activity, yet we find it in other forms even in the coolest fringes of postmodern society where it sneaks into the meshes of cyberspace and quickly takes possession of social networks with sometimes devastating existences.

    In human groups, gossip fulfills the function of expressing and channeling aggression and exercising some form of social control. From this point of view, it can quickly put some people in a bad light, be used as a tool to identify an – enemy – against which to attack by sharing this activity with one’s own social group.

    All people belong to groups – families, friends, co-workers, etc. In every context, there is a tendency to identify the people with whom you feel you have the greatest affinity, with whom to group. And often such aggregations find their group identity also by differentiating themselves from those who are outside.

    These attitudes can be exacerbated in particularly rigid and circumscribed cultural contexts. Or in moments of particular danger and uncertainty when human beings need to circumscribe the threat by identifying an enemy outside the social circle to which they feel they belong.

    Many forms of discrimination are culturally fueled by gossip. In this way, there is a tendency to exercise a form of indirect aggression and social control. Gossip helps to define what criteria define who is – inside – and who is – outside – a particular group.

    Are women more inclined to gossip?

    Gossip would therefore also have the function of supporting the identity of individuals and groups – people are largely defined on the basis of the social roles they cover. If we think about it for a moment, much of the content of the gossip is about the private or love life of others.

    Talking about the lives of others would therefore also be away, for some, to indirectly access the intimacy of others and personal information that would ordinarily be shared only with a few close friends. One of the reasons why gossip can be so rewarding is the nature of intimacy and (fake) secrecy that characterizes the relationship between the two or more people who share it.

    A sort of complicity tends to develop between them, based on the sharing of confidential information and granted only to a few (or so we like to think). This generates a kind of intimacy and alliance between people who share gossip, an alliance created behind the backs of others.

    The ethical, moral, and legal damages of gossip

    Nobody likes to call themselves gossip and to admit to indulging in the practice nicely. In some circumstances, gossip is almost obligatory and is considered harmless and almost endemic to some situations.

    Those who perceive to be in a social role with less power feel in some way almost entitled to steal any information or weakness of those at the top. Rumors and often legendary rumors are a way to convey aggression, consolidate within the group and exorcise potential fear.

    Rarely in these contexts do we question the ethical or moral implications of gossip, it is difficult to consider the possible consequences for the person who is the object of it. Indeed, it stops being considered as such to be brought back, momentarily, to the goliardic target of the group.

    These forms of objectification are also the basis of very harmful gossip that can have devastating consequences. Especially when they mix with bullying, on and off social media. In these cases, of course, we are faced with real crimes.

    So what is the limit between benevolent gossip and a harmful manipulation of the reality and identity of others? Objectification could be said when we realize that talking about someone is so gratifying. To make us lose sight of the fact that it is a person just like us if we lose sight of all this, we have already gone too far.

  • Mindfulness is the importance of being aware

    Mindfulness refers to the ability to stop and focus on one’s feelings. There are many points in common with Buddhist practices and emotional education. Meditation is one of the most used practices to achieve this state of awareness. Mindfulness means conscious attention, it is, therefore, a way of being, a way of intentionally paying attention to the present moment without judging.

    Mindfulness and rational education

    The Buddhist teachings that are the basis of mindfulness have some points in common with rational education such as the link between harmful thoughts and destructive emotions. According to emotional rational education, there are unconscious thoughts called absolute claims that are completely illogical and capable of causing suffering or depression.

    These dysfunctional emotions must be overcome by turning them into preferences, that is, something attractive, but not essential. The way to overcome these problems is the questioning of these feelings, the fundamental preliminary step is the acquisition of awareness of one’s own irrational beliefs. Mindfulness accompanies this emotional awareness also the awareness of one’s own body.

    Mindfulness and meditation

    Practicing meditation is the way to mindfulness. This is not a passive practice, but it takes time and energy. Kabat-Zinn advises beginning observing one’s own breath which becomes the hinge from which to observe the sensations and changes around the body. The aim is to train the mind to be more stable and less likely to be distracted by the slightest changes, enriching and strengthening one’s concentration. There are several types of meditation.

    • Sitting meditation
    • Body exploration – is a method that consists in the systematic rotation of attention on the various parts of the body, focusing on each.
    • Walking meditation – technique suitable for those who cannot stay still, so while walking you try to concentrate between internal observation.
    • Mindful Yoga – a technique that unites mind and body through specific exercises.

    Mindfulness for children

    Mindfulness reduces stress, increases attention and concentration allowing you to get in touch with the deep emotional experience and the self. Even for the little ones, it is important to ensure serenity, efficiency, and awareness.

    Mindfulness is a technique that allows you to achieve full self-awareness by bringing attention to the present moment, in a non-judgmental and intentional way. It is commonly included in the meditation techniques that allow you to live the here and now with awareness and fullness, without being overwhelmed by daily commitments and by the countless stimuli of reality.

    Meditation is hardly considered suitable and possible with children, however, countless researches show the effectiveness of mindfulness even with the little ones.

    From an early age, people are bombarded with information, stimuli, and requests that subject them to high levels of activation and stress. This reduces the ability to live and pay attention to the present moment and personal experience. Everything escapes quickly, there is no time to enjoy the moment. You have to undergo the strict and precise program of mom and dad, the speed of the lesson at school, the rush to get to training, homework, and much more.

    Mindfulness allows children to focus on self, on their emotional experience, on their thoughts, and to live everyday life in a profound and conscious way. It guarantees the detachment from the frenzy and the rediscovery of simplicity, creativity and the essence of things typical of children and they’re due carefree. The benefits are many and affect different emotional, cognitive, and relational areas.

  • The family as a resource in teaching religious values

    In the family, religious values ​​should be proposed from childhood, to be cultivated in childhood, to be rethought in adolescence, so that the subject integrates them into his culture. The family should have the duty to offer young people an understanding of the religious problems arising in their conscience and implicit in their culture.

    While young people should have the right to know the various religious answers to the great questions of existence. To discuss it, to be helped to protect themselves from the stereotypes of the world of young people and from common conceptions in vogue.

    Educating in religious values ​​in the family

    Family education in religious values ​​also passes through affection, the warmth of hospitality, exclusive feelings of the F. This is the main group that is most capable of offering an intimately human and positive environment in which to experience. In the family, religious values ​​are shared and captured effectively in an atmosphere of closeness, trust, and love.

    And it is precisely through this positive experience that religious sensitivity and appropriate behavior are rooted in the members of the family. Communication is therefore fundamental in the f that wants to transmit a certain type of religious values ​​and that aspires to live their reality in accordance with the needs of their faith.

    What is important is sharing in the family, communicating with others, passing from a more individualistic faith to a shared faith. More and more frequent is the fact that in the family someone declares himself a non-believer, and then it can be a stimulus to confront oneself without adopting defeatist or pessimistic attitudes. Educating in religious values ​​in the family means sharing, understanding, experience, awareness.

    Family Prayer

    Lord, You are Love.
    We thank You for the happiness
    and the love of our common life,
    we want to live them as your gift.

    Teach us to progress the one
    through the other under your gaze,
    to do your will every day of our life,

    to submit our projects to you,
    to offer you our joys and our sorrows,
    to abandon ourselves to your divine providence.

    Help us overcome all difficulties
    and misunderstandings:
    so the union and the love between us will grow
    every day more and in them we will find You.

    Our love, our joy,
    our availability bring to our brothers and sisters
    encouragement and stimulus
    and are for the mission accomplished together
    an effective contribution, to your glory as a Father.

    Amen.

  • Faith and young people, do-it-yourself religion

    Faith is affected by historical conditioning, situations, and experiences that are lived. Finding and living one’s faith authentically today is certainly very difficult. To arrive at a conscious faith it is necessary to take a path that convinces. Young people today are very interested in the themes of faith, but this is less and less associated with a specific religious affiliation.

    They seek an open dialogue, but too often they do not find it, they seek concrete answers, but too often they have simplistic ones. Young people are not satisfied, they are skeptical, they want credible explanations, they want to know. Faith very often fails to enter young people, despite the fact that young people are predisposed to accept it.

    The strong responsibility of religious institutions is evident, believers who do not identify with a church are clearly increasing and an individual relationship with the divine dimension is increasingly gaining ground. For young people, family educational contexts are also important, but they seem to be less and less disposed towards religion. The latest surveys show how the importance of faith is weakening in the passage from one generation to the next.

    Young people and faith today

    The crisis of faith in recent years has doubled the percentage of young people who say they do not have faith in ecclesiastical institutions and also the majority of religious figures have little consensus. The difficult relationship with the faith is also manifested through the widespread intolerance of young people in the face of the political role played by the ecclesiastical hierarchies.

    This explains on the one hand the growing process of creating opposing groups whose positions for or against are consolidating. On the other hand, the obvious trend for which occasional participation in events and initiatives promoted by religious bodies is increasing, a sign of the emergence of a more individualistic search for the sacred.

    What is faith for young people?

    Many young people respond to this question by emphasizing the value of the faith’s psychological and relational support, as well as its fundamental function of guiding and offering hope. Religion, on the other hand, seems less and less a point of reference for moral doctrine, and in particular, precisely for those aspects on which it insists most in the public debate.

    This confirms how the lack of effective and credible guides in the perception of young people undermines the desire for faith. As already mentioned, a widespread sense of religiosity emerges among young people, but it does not conform to traditional styles. Religion is perceived as an institutionalized system of beliefs, practices, rites, and traditions and young people tend to shy away from anything that appears to be an institution or discipline.

    Young people need a more open and flexible relationship with faith to access it. The individualistic approach also often takes the form of independent reading of the Bible. Perhaps to better understand something that has not been clearly explained, to seek direct answers to their doubts. The fact is that we cannot speak to today’s young people about love, strength, hope, faith if we do not discuss with them the substance hidden behind these great words. In fact, many do not lack the goal, they lack the tools to achieve it.

  • Popular religiosity between religion and superstition

    Popular religiosity has at times been seen as a pure expression of faith and devotion on the part of the people, and at times as a deviation from the orthodox principles and rites of the Catholic religion. But what are the expressions and manifestations of popular religiosity? And how deeply rooted are they in our culture and our religious tradition?

    Pope Pius VI expressed himself about popular piety – Particular expressions of the search for God and faith are found among the people. For a long time considered less pure, sometimes despised. – Popular piety – popular religiosity – popular religion – are different expressions that often have ended up designating all the same thing. Demonstrations of faith that originate from the lower strata of the population and that often did not find space and recognition on the part of Catholic orthodoxy.

    Popular religiosity has its own rites, symbols, and languages ​​that express purity and spontaneity, but which are far from randomness or improvisation. They are rites deeply rooted in popular culture and also for this reason they allow a less formal and less intellectual approach to religion. They embody the profound spirituality of the humblest people and having popular roots, they are often linked to nature, the earth, and the passing of the seasons.

    Rites and language of popular religiosity

    The rites of popular religiosity have not always been opposed by the official Church. Often certain customs have become part of the actual religious rites. Think of the use of kissing and touching sacred statues, images, relics, or other sacred objects. To the habit of accompanying the saints in procession or to go on pilgrimage to sacred places. Even presenting offerings and votive gifts or kneeling in an act of prayer are symbols and expressions that come from afar and that have been handed down from generation to generation.

  • Religious freedom is a kind of heaven on earth

    Religious freedom is a mirage or a kind of heaven on earth. Man has always tried to create a relationship with the absolute, giving different explanations to existential questions. However, these roads collide with each other. Why can’t we live together? Is the problem religious or social?

    The theme of religious freedom, although it starts from the spiritual sphere, is absolutely not resolved in it. Clashes based (or justified) by religious incompatibility are the order of the day. Some of us were born with these clashes going on and who knows if the end will be seen. The problem is far more serious than one might imagine.

    According to some experts, there are 56 countries with a level of at least medium risk for the violation of religious freedom. The improvements that are occasionally glimpsed are mostly the result of local initiatives which, however, fail to expand their range of action at least at the national level.

    To understand what stands in the way of total religious freedom, we can deepen some mechanisms of group psychology. If applied in an absolutist way, they close any opening.

    Religious involvement

    If we leave out all the earthly reasons that lead to a clash between groups, the greatest obstacle to religious freedom is certainly the attitude of believers. What is religious orthodoxy based on? Gerard Lenski identified a fundamental difference between devotionalism and devotional orthodoxy.

    Being devout is based on the feeling of an important private and emotional connection with God, while orthodoxy emphasizes intellectual consent to the theological doctrines of a given religion.

    Starting from this distinction it is possible to reconstruct two ways of participating in the religious group.

    • Associative involvement based on participation in the ritual and institutional activities of a community.
    • The emotional involvement that sees religion more linked to the intimate and personal sphere.

    These two orientations are totally independent and cause opposite behaviors. Those who feel attached to the doctrine will hardly jeopardize it with a different version.

    Affiliation and membership

    Regardless of what the individual seeks in religion and religious groups, there are different methods by which the group seeks the affiliation of believers and grounds their membership in the group. Let’s see 4 perspectives.

    • Charismatic groups, all those who take on religious principles in a total way in daily life and without any adaptation, often make use of extreme persuasive processes. The goal is to bring the whole life of the individual back to participation in the group through control and isolation.
    • The perspective that bases affiliation on granting rewarding answers to the person’s problems.
    • The affiliation that is also formed on the possibility of transforming one’s life. In a particular moment of one’s existence characterized by a need for growth or change, religion becomes an engine of growth. It will be the personal history of the individual that will dictate the direction of this change.
    • The fourth perspective emphasizes the religious practices that a group offers. The simple fact of finding more suitable for our personality pushes us towards one choice rather than another.

  • Religiosity is an important area of ​​individual life

    Religiosity is an important area of ​​individual life and psychology tries to understand its characteristics. Religious experience can receive a push from within or without. Let us try to understand what intrinsic religiosity entails.

    Religious orientation is a fundamental object of investigation for human beings. As it aims to understand how one of the fundamental experiences is lived to answer the existential questions concerning our life. How and why do we respond so differently to these needs? The first difference concerns the source of the spring that pushes us towards religion. Here then is what intrinsic religiosity means.

    Religiosity – a personal and social issue

    A first consideration that must be made when speaking of intrinsic religiosity concerns the sphere that the religious sense occupies in the life of an individual. The term intrinsic can mistakenly lead us to think that it is the personal sphere as opposed to the social one. In reality, intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity are both individual ways of living religion.

    Religion and religiosity in its social being refer to phenomena that include groups, a group identity, and their collective actions. For this, we could ascribe phenomena such as orthodoxy, pacifism, and religious fanaticism. In this sphere at an extreme level and far from true spirituality, we also find religious sects that try to annihilate the individual in a group totally devoted to the holy man.

    The intrinsic orientation

    Inherent religious orientation is a personal way of experiencing spirituality and was described by Gordon Allport. Those who have an intrinsic orientation consider religion as an absolute value on which life rests and which gives value to it. There is no utilitarian intent of religion, only the fulfillment of man.

    These people experience religion as a practice embodied in everyday life and who feel the presence of the Absolute in their existence. Everything then manifests itself as a personal and inner conviction. Allport himself has built a scale to measure the type of religiosity of a person and the intrinsic orientation is traced back to high levels of agreement to such sentences.

    • It is not very important what I believe in, the important thing is to be a good person.
    • It is important for me to spend time in meditation and prayer
    • I often had a strong feeling that God was present.

    Religion and prejudice

    Further consideration of Allport concerns the relationship between religious orientation and the phenomenon of prejudice. Prejudice is a cognitive phenomenon for which a priori beliefs are created about specific groups or people with certain characteristics. According to Allport, intrinsic religiosity becomes the substratum for a more tolerant and open orientation.

    Extrinsic religiosity leads man to use religion for his own purposes (not necessarily evil, only more utilitarian), this leads to a greater propensity to believe that others also have purposes in relating to us regardless of what they really are.