Concentrate and Calm Your Mind: Finding Stillness

UPCOMING
Written By Lane Smith

This Week’s Intention

To quiet the mind, become present, and discover the peace available in stillness.

Our minds are constantly moving—planning, remembering, worrying, imagining, analyzing. What happens when we learn to become still?

This week in Essential Spirituality, we’ll explore the practice of concentrating and calming the mind. We’ll have an opportunity to step out of the constant stream of thought and discover what becomes possible when we give our attention fully to the present moment.

Come slow down, settle in, and discover what you might notice when you allow yourself to simply be.

This Week’s Reading

Read chapters 19-21 in Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind.

Gather with Us

Sunday @ 1 PM

We’d love for you to join us in person!

 

Address

4201 Trail Lake Dr
Fort Worth, TX 76109
(Inside First Congregational Church)

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Check back on the Monday after this gathering to continue your Essential Spirituality journey through the week.

Essential Spirituality

Join us for Essential Spirituality, a seven-week book study and journey exploring practices designed to help us awaken, grow, and live more fully.

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Sunday Services
Express Spirit in Action: The Joy of Generosity and Service
Express Spirit in Action: The Joy of Generosity and Service

What happens when our spiritual practice moves beyond ourselves?

As we reach the final week of Essential Spirituality, we’ll explore generosity and service as expressions of a life connected with something greater than ourselves. We’ll consider the gifts we have to offer and the joy that can come from sharing them.

Come discover how Spirit moves through us when we give from the heart.

Read more →
Cultivate Spiritual Intelligence: Growing in Wisdom
Cultivate Spiritual Intelligence: Growing in Wisdom

Knowledge can tell us many things. Wisdom helps us understand what to do with what we know.

In this week’s exploration of Essential Spirituality, we’ll turn toward the practice of cultivating wisdom—developing a deeper understanding of ourselves, our lives, and the world around us.

What might wisdom look like in everyday life? And how might we become more receptive to the insights that help us live with greater clarity and understanding?

Read more →
Awaken Your Spiritual Vision: What Are You Really Seeing?
Awaken Your Spiritual Vision: What Are You Really Seeing?

What might we notice if we learn to see differently?

This week, we’ll explore Walsh’s practice of awakening spiritual vision—the cultivation of awareness that allows us to see more clearly and recognize the sacred in the ordinary.

Through practice and reflection, we’ll experiment with bringing a deeper quality of attention to our experience and opening ourselves to the possibility that there is more to see when we truly pay attention.

Read more →
Concentrate and Calm Your Mind: Finding Stillness
Concentrate and Calm Your Mind: Finding Stillness

Our minds are constantly moving—planning, remembering, worrying, imagining, analyzing. What happens when we learn to become still?

This week, we’ll explore the practice of concentrating and calming the mind. We’ll have an opportunity to step out of the constant stream of thought and discover what becomes possible when we give our attention fully to the present moment.

Come slow down, settle in, and discover what you might notice when you allow yourself to simply be.

Read more →
Live Ethically: The Practice of Doing Good
Live Ethically: The Practice of Doing Good

Spirituality isn’t only about what happens within us. It also shows up in how we live.

This week, we’ll explore ethical living as a spiritual practice—not as a list of rules, but as an opportunity to bring our choices into greater alignment with the qualities we value. We’ll consider how acting with integrity, kindness, and awareness can change not only the lives around us, but our own experience of living.

What does it look like to let our values become visible in the way we move through the world?

Read more →
Cultivate Emotional Wisdom: Opening the Heart
Cultivate Emotional Wisdom: Opening the Heart

What if our emotions aren't problems to solve, but invitations to understand ourselves more deeply?

This week, we’ll explore how to meet difficult emotions with greater awareness while nurturing love, gratitude, compassion, and other qualities that open the heart. Together, we’ll practice relating to our inner world in a way that creates more room for love to grow.

Come explore what becomes possible when we make room for the whole heart.

Read more →
Transform Your Motivation: What Do You Really Want?
Transform Your Motivation: What Do You Really Want?

We all want things. But how often do we stop to ask what’s underneath those wants?

In our first week of Essential Spirituality, we’ll explore the difference between craving and deeper desire—and what we might discover when we listen beneath the surface of what we think we want. Through reflection and practice, we’ll consider what truly matters to us and how becoming more intentional about our motivations can open the way to greater fulfillment.

Come curious about what your wants might have to teach you.

Read more →

About Gretchel Johnson, LUT

Speaker Library
Gretchel A. Johnson, LUT
Gretchel A. Johnson, LUT

Gretchel A. Johnson is driven by a commitment to serve and support individuals along their spiritual journey of self-discovery. With a professional background spanning over five decades, Gretchel brings a wealth of experience from various industries, notably the beauty and image sectors. Her international travels have afforded her opportunities to share industry insights and techniques, complemented by her ownership and management of two salons and one salon and spa establishment. Gretchel holds a non-secular doctorate in philosophy with a specialization in Holistic Life Counseling. Above all, Gretchel promotes an environment of love and acceptance.

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Lane Smith
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