M catherine thomas biography examples

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M catherine thomas biography examples: Author and scholar M. Catherine

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But like the proverbial dentist in C. Somewhere along the way, the writings of the distinctive, brilliant spiritual seeker M. Catherine Thomas became a key component of this odyssey. Doctrinally based, drawing on LDS scripture and salient authoritative quotes, Thomas also includes insights from spiritual seekers in Christian, Buddhist, and other traditions to get to the heart of the gospel: spiritual growth and redemption through the Divine.

Her oeuvre could be considered our own Mere Mormonism, dispelling cultural narratives that creep in and keep us living an imitative gospel full of self-critical, anxious, and ego-based spirituality and pointing instead in the direction of the true gospel of transformative spirituality.

M catherine thomas biography examples: Read a brief biography of

Wherever we are on the spectrum, she reassuringly asserts, we are deeply loved and nurtured by a Divine Therapist who not only finds us worth saving, but is intent on our metamorphosis. Only experiencing and changingaccording to Thomas, bring liberation, not only from outward sins, but also from warped motives and manipulative behavior that often taint the religiously observant.

But the pain feels emancipating, as if a correct spiritual diagnosis has finally been reached and a hopeful recovery is in sight. All abstract and heady stuff, indeed.

M catherine thomas biography examples: New Book by Catherine

Without familiarity with the following authors and concepts, and with reading proclivities inclined toward 19th Century British novels, I may have found her latest tome, The God Seed —filled as it is with an emphasis on stillness, meditation, and developmental psychology—unapproachable. Here are a few that tutored me. A friend recommended Martin Seligman when we joked about our tendency toward pessimism as a driving force in our lives.

Even more important, you can learn to recognize thought patterns that habitually drive you down unrealistically pessimistic highways and, with practice, learn to take better mental roads. I liked an Ensign article which compared negative thought patterns to well-worn jungle paths our minds frequent even though they lead to danger. Getting to mental and emotional springs of well being requires taking out a sickle and forging new routes.

M catherine thomas biography examples: This book offers a

Pretty soon, you start recognizing which thoughts lead to tranquility and which to anxiety. But those reactions primarily take place through the heart and mind, through decisions to think and respond differently. When Frankl finds himself perpetually despairing over numberless reasons for misery, he recognizes how his mental state only compounds his physical anguish and begins a habit of meditating on his beloved wife instead.

The Father offers a fatted calf, robes of honor, rings of inheritance, and a call not only to regain sonship, but also to claim his Fatherhood—but still, we recoil. Dallin H. Dieter F. Uchtdorf makes the call to spiritual sanity a recurring theme in his talks, describing members who battle joy by basing self-worth on lengthy to-do lists and who overcomplicate their lives by staying up all night making pot-holder handouts or lesson displays.

In an illustrative anecdote, Thomas listens to a friend talk of troubled feelings and relationships on a golden fall day. Here I can only hope to convey some impressions of a conceptually rich book that describes deep personal experience. You have to enter humble spaces, according to Elder F. We are now at that sacred place that seemingly only a few have courage to enter.

Those who enter find, like LDS clinical psychologist Allen Bergin, that spiritual perception sometimes tells us more than the intellect or the senses. In a vision-like experience quoted by Thomas, Dr. Those at lower levels tend to lack empathy and the ability to relate to those outside their circles. Going through higher stages of development involves becoming aware of the unreliable nature of our thoughts and their effects on our minds, gaining greater empathy that involves a reverence for life and interconnectedness, and being able to receive knowledge through more avenues than the rational mind.

We quit doing things out of guilt or obligation, and instead act out of internal desires that lead to deep concern with the entire spectrum of humanity. Ultimately, those in the highest stages find their will increasingly aligned with the greater will of God. The challenges of life, and pain and suffering, remain, but are accompanied by a greater dedication to truth, a lack of selfishness, greater joy and awareness, and abiding humility and peace.

We get so discouraged at our continual failures and play old tapes in our heads full of self-recrimination that drive out inner peace and motivation to keep trying. And sometimes an overly prescriptive approach, as 19th Century Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond observes, in her book, feeds into that anxiety, with its demands for more earnestness, more prayer, more work, more self-denial.