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When you’re in despair, there’s a place you can turn.
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Hearts Longing
Kelly Boys
Watching Now
Hearts Longing
Hearts Longing
Kelly Boys • 03:53

Spirituality provides a framework for people to understand and make sense of the depths of their emotional experiences. It helps individuals to acknowledge the reality of powerful emotions while actively and openly examining their inner thoughts.

Intense emotions are seen as possibilities for growth rather than as obstacles to be avoided. The realization of one's emotional suffering prompts one to look for guidance and a closer connection to something greater than oneself. Spirituality gives people the possibility to find hope and healing by establishing a connection with the divine.

By engaging in spiritual practices like prayer, meditation, reflection, or contemplation, people might learn to be resilient and optimistic in the face of negative emotions. They are forced to express their true emotions, scream their hearts out, and trust that their needs will be satisfied. People can integrate their emotional experiences and discover a deeper love and hope that can last in their hearts despite the challenges they face. It provides a chance to find meaning and purpose in the midst of intense emotional journeys.


View Transcript
[Kelly Boys, Mindfulness Trainer] Have you ever felt downcast or even despair or depression? We can all feel this way sometimes. Check this psalmist prayer to God. And then I'd love to talk about working mindfully with intense emotions. Psalm 42:1-11, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, My God. My soul thirsts for God. My tears have been my food day and night. Why, my soul, are you so downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise, my Savior and God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life." Sometimes we just need to admit it. We're overwhelmed. We don't feel good. We're in despair even. With mindfulness, it's the capacity to actually be able to meet and welcome intense emotions that can help us build like this upward spiral towards hope. Sometimes we have to go all the way with our feeling and allow ourselves to cry out from deep too deep as we feel this breakers and waves crashing us. We have to allow life in a way to break our hearts, because it does. We have to see that that's part of being alive. And yet, as this verse here describes, "The love of the divine is directed towards us during the day. And at night, there is a song in our hearts." How could that be? How can we have such challenging emotions and also have such love and hope that's possible? It says the spectrum of our emotional life. And when we're able to really meet what's very challenging and intense, we're also able to build a bridge towards hope and towards the opposite of emotion that can arise. So every emotion arises with an opposite. When we're able to actually meet and welcome a really challenging emotion, what happens is, as it's integrated, we begin to see that there is something else that's also here, something perhaps called hope or called peace, and it's in not refusing the challenge that we can actually bridge our way to hope. This verse invites us to be in the whole humanness, and also to feel the possibility that there's access to love from spirit from the divine. And when I read these scriptures and the verse it says, "You can use whatever pronoun you'd like, you can use whatever word for God is most resonant for you." So this is just an exploration into our own spirituality as we consider the depths of our emotion, and consider hope in God. Okay, let's do a reflection. I'll ask a few questions. So feel free to have your eyes open or closed and answer inwardly. Can you connect right now with a part of you that longs for hope? That longs for the love of the divine? And can you also connect with any sense of downcast or even overwhelmed? Feeling it in your body, just allowing it to be here. What if you welcome the depression, the feeling down, and you just picture yourself in this waterfall as it kind of rushes over you? That you're crying out from deep too deep longing for hope. So feeling both the anguish and the cry, the hope for love. What if there's actually a response to your cry? And there's a greater love than you've ever known that inhabits your heart as you make this inquiry for yourself. So just take a moment and allow yourself to make that exploration knowing you can come back to this practice at any time. Thanks for practicing with me.

Watching Now
Hearts Longing
Hearts Longing
Kelly Boys • 03:53

Spirituality provides a framework for people to understand and make sense of the depths of their emotional experiences. It helps individuals to acknowledge the reality of powerful emotions while actively and openly examining their inner thoughts.

Intense emotions are seen as possibilities for growth rather than as obstacles to be avoided. The realization of one's emotional suffering prompts one to look for guidance and a closer connection to something greater than oneself. Spirituality gives people the possibility to find hope and healing by establishing a connection with the divine.

By engaging in spiritual practices like prayer, meditation, reflection, or contemplation, people might learn to be resilient and optimistic in the face of negative emotions. They are forced to express their true emotions, scream their hearts out, and trust that their needs will be satisfied. People can integrate their emotional experiences and discover a deeper love and hope that can last in their hearts despite the challenges they face. It provides a chance to find meaning and purpose in the midst of intense emotional journeys.


View Transcript
[Kelly Boys, Mindfulness Trainer] Have you ever felt downcast or even despair or depression? We can all feel this way sometimes. Check this psalmist prayer to God. And then I'd love to talk about working mindfully with intense emotions. Psalm 42:1-11, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, My God. My soul thirsts for God. My tears have been my food day and night. Why, my soul, are you so downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise, my Savior and God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life." Sometimes we just need to admit it. We're overwhelmed. We don't feel good. We're in despair even. With mindfulness, it's the capacity to actually be able to meet and welcome intense emotions that can help us build like this upward spiral towards hope. Sometimes we have to go all the way with our feeling and allow ourselves to cry out from deep too deep as we feel this breakers and waves crashing us. We have to allow life in a way to break our hearts, because it does. We have to see that that's part of being alive. And yet, as this verse here describes, "The love of the divine is directed towards us during the day. And at night, there is a song in our hearts." How could that be? How can we have such challenging emotions and also have such love and hope that's possible? It says the spectrum of our emotional life. And when we're able to really meet what's very challenging and intense, we're also able to build a bridge towards hope and towards the opposite of emotion that can arise. So every emotion arises with an opposite. When we're able to actually meet and welcome a really challenging emotion, what happens is, as it's integrated, we begin to see that there is something else that's also here, something perhaps called hope or called peace, and it's in not refusing the challenge that we can actually bridge our way to hope. This verse invites us to be in the whole humanness, and also to feel the possibility that there's access to love from spirit from the divine. And when I read these scriptures and the verse it says, "You can use whatever pronoun you'd like, you can use whatever word for God is most resonant for you." So this is just an exploration into our own spirituality as we consider the depths of our emotion, and consider hope in God. Okay, let's do a reflection. I'll ask a few questions. So feel free to have your eyes open or closed and answer inwardly. Can you connect right now with a part of you that longs for hope? That longs for the love of the divine? And can you also connect with any sense of downcast or even overwhelmed? Feeling it in your body, just allowing it to be here. What if you welcome the depression, the feeling down, and you just picture yourself in this waterfall as it kind of rushes over you? That you're crying out from deep too deep longing for hope. So feeling both the anguish and the cry, the hope for love. What if there's actually a response to your cry? And there's a greater love than you've ever known that inhabits your heart as you make this inquiry for yourself. So just take a moment and allow yourself to make that exploration knowing you can come back to this practice at any time. Thanks for practicing with me.


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