CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY....

I was directed to Psalm 37:4 this morning, which says, "He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." I immediately knew that I'd best upgrade the desires of my heart. Then I got out my Bible to be sure that is what it says...the only time I read my Bible is to verify what is quoted somewhere else. Indeed, that's what it says...and I realized that there, right there, is the word, the reason why and how that (1) everything happens by invitation only; and (2) invariably we have made decisions based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt.

I read Psalm 37:1-9 then, and got the rest of the story.

"Fret not thyself because of evildoers..." (verse1).

"For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth (verse 9).

The action part here is my toughie. My ego delights in seeing Samuel, my ego's evildoer, cut off, and me, the waiter on the Lord, inheriting the earth.

It is my very delight, however, at seeing Samuel as the evildoer and cut down that puts me in the same category and cut down.

To truly be the waiter on the Lord is to be blessing all, being a blessing to all, with no note nor recognition of evildoers evildoing.

I wonder if this isn't why we invite the ugly into our life to begin with...the Father within knows our needs, up to and including what we need to get free of ourselves. He uses what we give Him, cleaning  up the ugly to the extent that we leave our free will in His hands to build of us and do with us as He will.

We now start our journey down that right road...again. We start often, get siren-songed to that wrong road, and start again if we're really willing to be a server of the Lord. We'll be a little bit healthier, a little more at peace each time...not necessarily feeling it which is the ego still singing its song. Which proves the point that there are only two things with us 24/7: God and ego..."choose ye this day whom ye shall serve."

Thank You.

HOW TO ENJOY PEACE, POISE AND SERENITY

If anyone speaks ill of you, praise him always. If anyone injures you, serve him nicely. If anyone persecutes you, help him in all possible ways. You will attain immense strength. You will control anger and pride. You will enjoy peace, poise and serenity. You will become divine. --  “The Way to Peace” by Swami Sivananda

Here's the trick...we have to make a conscious decision to seek still more spiritual growth in all ways  always in order to live -- no, in order to even attempt to live -- by the Swami's directions. Otherwise, we're just people pleasing which is fertile ground for growing resentments.

This is why we must set aside a period of time in the morning (before our mental outside world is up and running and agitating us, unawares) to simply sit and wait on the Lord.

This is when we can make conscious contact with our Lord and talk about our desire to give over to Gertrude, to let go our angry attachment to Henry...not seeking anything, just letting ourselves know that that is our conscious desire.

God can and will step up...going through us to make the crooked places straight.

Thank You.

LIVE THE QUESTIONS

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the  point is to live everything. Live the questions. -- Rainer Maria Rilke 

EGO REDUCTION IN DEPTH...DAILY

Ego reduction in depth begins with the willingness to put another's needs before our wants.

Suffering, Fr. Richard Rohr contends, is whenever we are not in control…which makes sense to me. What we must accept, however, if we are ever to experience ego reduction in depth, is that putting another's needs before our wants is loss of control, resulting in our feeling as if we are suffering.

The kicker is that we just need more concrete practice. Words are just that, words...signifying nothing until we put the words into practice. Daily.

In short, ego reduction in depth begins today with the willingness to put another's needs before our wants...and ends three days after we're dead.

Thank You

TURN AGAIN TO THE SERMON

When (not if) I get off base, these few facts are my reminders to turn again to the Sermon: 

1. Our attempts at control bring us to the same place...loss of control.
2. Our enemies are our angels in disguise.
3. Our enemies are not always people, e.g., anxiety, depression...they are still angels in disguise.
4. Our reactions determine our happiness...or unhappiness.
5. The mud we sling is the mud that lands in our own face.
6. Our treatment of others is the treatment we receive from others.
7. The more we give, the more we get...of anything.
8. Praying for anything is a denial of God's grace which met all our needs before birth; they are within us waiting to be used.
9. Praying for wants is futile but harmless.
10. "If 'Thank You' is the only prayer we ever say, it will suffice." -- Meister Eckhart

Thank You.

LIVING THE TURNED-OVER LIFE

Learning the daily need to leave my free will to the care of God starts with my accepting me in the moment: I see my self-pitying victim-thinker…confusing pity for love, living in my world of hurt feelings, or, the self-protective victim-thinker…living in my attack mind’s world of anger, of mental lash-back at disagreements, minor or major, when I feel that I’ve been attacked.

It’s all self-centered fear, of course (but, then, what other kind is there?)…an unconscious sense of here’s me, all alone and unprotected, and it’s up to me to right it…sometimes seeking pity, sometimes seeking revenge…both times, being the God of my own understanding.

If I’m really serious about living my turned-over free will, it starts with my accepting that I get to reinterpret this seemingly discordant situation in the understanding that God is the substance of all there is. Simply put, there is another way of looking at that which is appearing…find the gold in it, for that is where God is.

This way leads to forgiveness which, to the reasoning mind, is the good and bad news both together. I’m convinced that forgiveness is the mental roadblock to peace, to getting over our own selves. We find we must let go of feeling the need to “retaliate in kind,” which is the essence of forgiveness.

I cannot get my reinterpretation AND vengeance.  I get to choose…and that is how I know and others see if I am living the turned-over to God life I talk so much about.

Thank You.

THIS IS NOT A THEORY....

I have read that "devotion to a personal God has enabled many of the world's greatest mystics to cross the bridge from fragmented consciousness to unified, total consciousness."

I know it wasn't until I stopped praying for something from some image "out there," that I got my first glimpse, my first blinding flash of the obvious, that My Father lives within me as the great I Am. With which came the realization that It has already solved all my problems for my benefit (and, it must be said, not necessarily to my initial liking).

We would think that with that BFO all my niggles and natters and ughs and wants would be behind me. No...that is not the case. That is the jumping off place. That is where we get to hold our nose and take the leap of faith out into the great unknown. There is no way around that leap. We can resist, obfuscate, argue, delay all we want (and I'm guessing we all do), but leap we must...if not now, when?, if not in this lifetime, how many lifetimes later? For until we take that leap out into the great unknown, we will of necessity have to depend on our reasoning mind...which got us into our present dissatisfied state to begin with.

The rest of the story is that "complete devotion to the Lord as personified in a divine incarnation will enable us to soar." That, to me, means complete devotion to "a personal God," to the God of our own understanding, is the key to freedom from the bondage of self. Now, that's soaring.

As another old saying goes, this is not a theory...we have to live it.

Thank You.

DETACH, ACCEPT, SIT AND WAIT ON THE LORD

Several unwelcome things have come together in my life recently, and I'm proudly relieved that I immediately consciously acknowledged to myself that God has my back. I simply said out loud, "I do believe that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf." Then I let Him by keeping focused on that fact.

Our thoughts will go gamboling whenever they want to...just like an untrained lamb. That's why we keep ourselves in training...why we keep immediately turning our thoughts back to a simple "Thank You" which lets the air out of our resistance.

The most important action we can take with regard to  unwelcome happenings is consciously accepting that we invited them. We may have thought when we did our inviting that we were doing a good and noble thing (with the victim's kicker, "And this is the thanks I get.") But this helps us detach  from our deep desire to find the "real" person to blame...then waste our spiritual capital by taking that person's inventory.

I know from actual experience that I'm the one that starts my own unwelcome wagon rolling. Now, I get to find out what my motives were, what my thoughts were, what my actions were that gave me this unwelcome result. The good news is that it doesn't take very long to find once we accept that it was a decision based on self that started it rolling...it's good news because this is the very place where God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. (My reasoning mind always thought God should intervene in my life in my behalf before any unwelcome things ever came into my life...which, let's face it, is simply wanting the life of a robot.)

The final part is the hardest...simply sitting and waiting on the Lord. How long we get to sit and wait is entirely dependent upon on how long it takes us to reach acceptance that this is not ours to fix, justify or cover up...not by an e-mail nor by word of mouth. Paradoxically, the sitting and waiting is the most active part of the whole process. And, if it's a paradox, it's got to be truth, according to me.

Thank You.

GRACE DISGUISED

I'm learning again...still...that our reasoning mind must be dropped as our fail-safe, fall-back, safety net. Which is not to say we must quit using our minds...first, I imagine that's impossible, but also the mind is the channel through which God's truth flows.

What I'm finding is that I need to hone my intuition more...by learning to trust it. One avenue I've used for awhile is with the game show, "Jeopardy."

I watch the show most nights, and I've found this interesting little quirk...I get answers right X percent of the time, some nights more (or less) than other nights. When I get them right, I actually knew the answer, when I get them wrong, I thought I knew the answer. Then there are the ones I do not have a clue...usually the final jeopardy questions. I don't even try to think it through...I just pick an answer out of the air, say it, and wait to hear the answer. It is incredible how often I am right. Recently, there was a question about what king did such and such in like 1015...I had no more idea than who the man's  queen was at the time. So I said, "Charles the First." And that was the answer. This happens a lot.

This clearly is not my surpassing intellect...it's not even an educated guess. I'm taking it as proof of  my intuitive sense...because why not? When something can be neither proved, nor disproved, go with the most positive is my theory. Why accept a not so good when good is an option?

And I do believe that a finely honed intuition is a lot more important than a high I.Q. I know too many people with a high I.Q. and not a lick of common sense, much less intuitive sense.

My I.Q. is high enough, I'm not lacking in common sense, but in a dicey situation, my intuition has saved if not my butt at least my face more than a couple of times. It has also saved another person's feelings…the pearl beyond price.

Just intuiting when to speak and what to say, when asked, is an example. When we're right, it is grace disguised as intuition. When we're wrong, it's grace disguised as humility.

Thank You.

THE PRICELESS GIFT OF AGING

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man. -- Leon Trotsky

According to me, the only change necessary there is turning the word "man" into "human." I went to a dear friend's 70th birthday party last night, and everybody knew not to speak, write or even think the number 70. It was a great party, number, schmumber...good on her.

What's interesting to me about aging is we are all aware with each birthday that we are indeed growing older. Depending on our own character development, we either resist it or it simply is, without thought. After the teens, I've never known anyone who truly welcomed aging...maybe I should say, "anyone who wasn't suffering a fatal illness," but that's another story.

I'm a "without thought" person...I have never resisted my age, have and do always openly admit it...let's face it, without cosmetic surgery our face gives us away. But even being a without thought person, I was still completely floored the day I turned 60...I all but woke up saying, "How did this happen so fast?" Of course I knew how it happened...but so FAST?

It is only through the years that I've been able to get a glimmer of understanding of the spiritual teaching that there is no such thing as time in the fourth dimension...in God's world.

I am reminded of my first actual experience in learning the difference between my time and God's  time...it was 1972 and I was a relatively new member of a spiritually based fellowship. I was sharing with a friend (whining to a friend is more like it) that in 1968, I'd gone to a nearby church every day for 40 days, praying...for what I did not know. I just knew I needed God's help. I did not get it.

My friend responded, "Sure you got it...you're here, aren't you?"

I was all, "What, four years after the fact?!"

He went on to explain that we're not on God's timetable, because God has no timetable. We get to change our minds about time itself...which began the turn in my thinking about time.

There have been many same-such examples in my life over the years. It simply takes time to learn the rest of the story, for the circle to be completed, for understanding...the understanding that our life happened exactly as it needed to happen. Mistakes, missed opportunities and the like, over which we'd lamented in regret, were God's gifts that we did or we could have grown from.

Understanding...the priceless gift of aging.

Thank You.

OUR REASONING MIND CANNOT GET US THERE

QUOTES FROM ELSEWHERE:

When it is obvious that a goal cannot be achieved,  don't adjust the goal, adjust the action steps.

-- Confucius

It is always your next move. - Napoleon Hill


@7/10/16     As Carl Jung writes, "the greatest and most important problems in life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They must be so because they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown."

@7/9/16   Jesus is the victim in an entirely new way because he receives our hatred and does not return it, nor does he play the victim for his own empowerment.

@7/7/16  We have to allow ourselves to be drawn out of "business as usual" and remain patiently on the "threshold" (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That's a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible. It's the realm where God can best get at us because our false certitudes are finally out of the way. This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don't encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy.
@7/6/16 For Bonaventure, the perfection of God and God's creation is quite simply a full circle, and to be perfect, the circle must and will complete itself.


@7/5/16  NOTE; THIS I READ JUST AFTER MY DEEP QT ON MY R,R,R, BEING MY GOLD:
But if you do choose to walk through the depths--even the depths of  your own sin and mistakes--you will come out the other side, knowing you've been taken there by a Source larger than yourself.
* * *
If we are to speak of miracles, the most miraculous thing of all is that God uses the very thing that would normally destroy you--the tragic, the sorrowful, the painful, the unjust--to transform and enlighten you.


@7/3/16  Spirituality is always eventually about what you do with your pain. It seems our culture has lost its own spiritual foundation and center, and as a result we no longer know what to do with universal pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will always transmit it--to our partner, our spouse, our children, our friends, our coworkers, our "enemies." Usually we project it outward and blame someone else for causing our pain.

PLUG INTO ALL THE GOOD THERE IS

Our good is not coming to us. Our good is within us now...flowing forth now.

It is not sitting somewhere, waiting for us to realize it. Whether we realize it or not, it is right now flowing from us, through us, for us.

We do need to plug into that good. We already have our set of instructions...unfortunately the instructions are all about ego reduction in depth, and we're all about "standing up for myself."

Every great religion that I know of says in some form or other: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That is ego reduction in depth. We can start there. The only catch is, we can't do unto others so we can get...we can only do unto others so we can give.

If we're going for spiritual growth in order to get anything, up to and including peace of mind, we're going for a self-determined objective which has nothing to do with spiritual growth. If we sincerely do unto others in order to give, we plug into all the good there is, i.e., God, the Father within.

Thank You.

WE WORK WITH HIM TO MAKE RIGHT OUR WORLD

All the good that we could ever need we already have. In the midst of this presidential election season, it is important that I remind me of that...repeatedly.

I awoke this morning feeling apprehensive about the massive amounts of money that are now legally and freely given in order to get a person elected. What I'm agog over is the promise of one man to donate one hundred million dollars and the promise of another two men to give four hundred million dollars to elect the man of their choice to be president of the United States.

That is five hundred million dollars that could be going to help the poor, feed the hungry, tend to the hurt and homeless.

I said my "Thank You," and almost immediately I recalled when I was in high school in 1955, specifically, the Montgomery, AL, bus boycott. I'm from a fairly small town in Ohio, and there wasn't a lot I heard about it until it had been going on for awhile. What I heard was the "grownups" talking over their game of Canasta at our house on a Saturday night. Just bits of conversation...like, "What do they think they're doing? They'll never win." And "You can't fight City Hall...you'd think they'd know that by now."

I started reading, and learned that "Poor people braved the elements and the ire of their white bosses by walking to work. Affluent blacks pitched in by giving rides to those in need. Eventually, the black community created a virtual transportation company of its own that operated with an effectiveness that even its enemies grudgingly conceded." ("From Small Beginnings: the  Montgomery Bus Boycott," Randall  Kennedy.)

When I heard back then that local police had starting arresting blacks for violating a state law prohibiting consumer boycotts, I felt incensed...that, by any standard, was not right. I was elated when the people, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., took their case to federal court and won.

I go back to that case in my mind when the overwhelming odds are against me or not in favor of my choice...me, after my retirement, being elected to my office's Hall of Honor, Pete Sampras winning his final U.S. Open, President Obama winning election. I remember how nobody much gave the poor people a snowball's chance...but they came together in nonviolent resistance and won. If they'd come together in violent resistance, they'd probably all still be in jail.

So, a dollar or an unlimited amount of dollars...money has never been the winner in the end. All that's good, that's right, that's true and bright we already have. This then, is where one person with God is a majority. This is where we let the good flow from us...the Father within flows forth, and we work with Him to make right our world.

Thank You.

LOVING POWER OF NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE

It is a whole new step out of self to realize that it is not a desire to stop judging others that matters...it is a desire to stop feeling judged by others that sets us on the forward path.

Accept that everything happens by invitation only...we made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. Until we accept that from our toenails up, we're going to feel the victim without realizing that we are indeed the victim...the victim of our own making.

Once we get that nailed down, it is easy to see that feeling judged cannot happen without our own personal desire to feel judged. If we're feeling judged, we're judging someone, plain and simple.

It's the same old same old made new each time we remember that peace gets you peace, anger gets you anger, hate gets you hate, love gets you love. It is only in returning peace for anger, love for hate, that one breaks free...free of self, the instigator of all unease, or dis-ease, to begin with.

Gandhi taught "the loving power of non-violent resistance" as did Martin Luther King, Jr....as did the anonymous source with its principle of giving up fighting anything and anybody.

It was Gandhi who said, in effect, that Christianity is the only great religion of the world that does not know that Jesus Christ taught non-violence. It's a pity that that's still true these many years after Gandhi, not to even mention Jesus Christ.

It is not a desire to stop judging others, but a desire to stop feeling judged by others that can be our goal.

Thank You.

LOVING POWER OF NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE

It is a whole new step out of self to realize that it is not a desire to stop judging others that matters...it is a desire to stop feeling judged by others that sets us on the forward path.

Accept that everything happens by invitation only...we made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. Until we accept that from our toenails up, we're going to feel the victim without realizing that we are indeed the victim...the victim of our own making.


Once we get that nailed down, it is easy to see that feeling judged cannot happen without our own personal desire to feel judged. If we're feeling judged, we're judging someone, plain and simple.


It's the same old same old made new each time we remember that peace gets you peace, anger gets you anger, hate gets you hate, love gets you love. It is only in returning peace for anger, love for hate, that one breaks free...free of self, the instigator of all unease, or dis-ease, to begin with.

Gandhi taught "the loving power of non-violent resistance" as did Martin Luther King, Jr....as did the anonymous source with its principle of giving up fighting anything and anybody.

It was Gandhi who said, in effect, that Christianity is the only great religion of the world that does not know that Jesus Christ taught non-violence. It's a pity that that's still true these many years after Gandhi, not to even mention Jesus Christ.

It is not a desire to stop judging others, but a desire to stop feeling judged by others that can be our goal.

Thank You.

DON'T TELL ME...SHOW ME

As has been written, peace is not simply an absence of war. Peace must first be sought within, then peace will appear without...just a reminder again that whatever is within, shows up without.

I can grasp that peace, love, joy, kindness...all are within. All we will ever need are within waiting to be used. I have a harder time holding onto that as true of health and supply.

I believe it to be true...too many well-regarded spiritually based people, have taught and do teach that today from their own experience for it to be fantasy.

The kicker is that I prove that daily...I have enough. I do not go hungry, have never gone hungry; I am well, have never been point-of-departure ill.

What makes the promise that all my needs have already been met so difficult for me to grasp and hold is my mind's very next question: But, what if...? That's the siren song of the material world...the fork in the road toward spiritual peace or reasoning-mind agitation. What if? The instant those two words come to mind, I immediately remind myself that "if" is a "not Now" word of which God knows naught...it's future garbage, let it be.

The real learning comes with the realization that until we're breathing it, walking it, showing it forth, it is just so many words. The way it gets passed on to others is by proving it through living it, not just talking it. Which reminds me of the time I was explaining how turning our will over to the care of God works, and the person I was talking at, said, "Don't tell me, honey, show me." Ah, yes, there's the nut.

Thank You.

LET IT BE

The debilitating heat is back...it hadn't gone all that far anyway. I'm talking 85 degrees feeling cool and refreshing, But we're back to a forecast of 97 today, 100 tomorrow. That, too, depends on which forecast I'm looking at. It doesn't really matter...anything over 90 degrees is all the same and just too hot according to me.

Trying to find the good in that, I find it's not really the heat that gets my mind going...it's the people who deny global warming. I remind me that's just one more thing to keep my mind in a roil. I go immediately to my favorite place: Let it be, let it be, let it be, oh let it be...speaking words of wisdom, let it be, oh let it be. Right up there with the greatest words of wisdom and works of literature.

Thank You.

Which reminds me: They shut off the sound on McCartney and Springsteen in mid song?!?!?!?! I cannot stand it. I'll have to thank you later.

GOD-REALIZATION

[The following is a reprint of my blog of June 29, 2009.]

People ask me fairly often what I do now that I’m retired. When I’m not actively doing and going,  this is what I do: I seek God-realization for I do believe “there is no purpose or goal beyond God-realization, and once God-realization has been attained, that realization takes care of everything that happens in life.” (”The Contemplative Life,” by Joel Goldsmith, at p. 100.) 

For a long time now, I’ve studied people on the public stage, especially those who seem to live their lives with a total focus from the inside…they exhibit an uncommon grace. I became a huge fan of professional tennis back when Steffi Graf was playing, watching her on the tennis court overcome herself was purely of God. I see the same in Roger Federer today. I consider myself a member of Team Tiger when Tiger Woods is on the golf course…his focus is phenomenal. I am always studying President Obama, hoping to learn how he does it, that is, not react out of self to petty provocations. Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady held a press conference (I believe it was in relation to the Travelgate problem at the time). She utterly opened herself to some extremely pointed questions, quite a few fairly hostile. She was focused, polite without in any way currying favor, unself-protected.

Several years ago, I watched a debate on TV of religious leaders. There were several men on stage, two of whom really interested me. One was the leader of a major religious denomination, the other was Deepak Chopra. I knew Chopra’s name, but that’s all I knew of him, and I knew the other's religious denomination but not the man. I do not remember the question being discussed, but Chopra said something to the effect that today’s world is not God’s doing and went on to speak of the Spirit within. 

The religious leader became irate to the point of rude, red-faced and nasty, apparently feeling that Jesus Christ was being maligned. Chopra responded courteously, attempted once to correct the misunderstanding, and then simply made listening noises while the religious one ranted (or so it seemed to me). I’ve always felt that Chopra made more points simply through his quiet demeanor…or, more accurately, the religious one lost a lot more than points by being disrespectful…in fact, he did Jesus Christ no favors.

These examples speak to me of God-realized people…and any one or all of them may be agnostic, even atheist. It is not the dogma we believe, it is what we show forth that matters. None of them show forth self, rather they show forth a power greater than self.

Thank You.

ACCEPTANCE...A GIFT OF GRACE

"Just do it," "action is the key word"...just two slogans of wisdom that I didn't fully understand for a long time. I thought they meant to step up and out...move it, shake it, get up and gogogo. All of which may be true, but there's a much deeper meaning that is even harder to do and stick to.

"Just do it," "action is the key word" are also clues to stop looking "out there" for what we need to do, to be, to change. The only way to lasting change is the way of acceptance. And acceptance always comes from within. Acceptance of who we are and what we're all about right this very minute is not a commodity we get from out there...it is, however, a gift of grace.

Praying "Thank You for me just as I am right this very minute," is the essential jumping off place. We pray that until we mean it from our toenails up. Then we pray, "Thank You for my everything just as it is right this very minute," and again pray that until we mean it...and meaning it takes its own sweet time.

"Meaning it" is just another term for realizing...for without the realization, we just got so many words. Just because we understand the words doesn't mean we realize their truth. We can memorize whole passages of words, recite them on demand and never live a word of them, because we have not realized what each and every word means to us personally, within us/without us.

A good test for me on how well I'm doing with my being grateful for everything just as it is right this very minute is to picture Rush Limbaugh's face...and I'm back on my knees.

Thank You.

EGO REDUCTION IN DEPTH

Here's my goal...probably my unreachable-in-this-lifetime goal, but my goal nonetheless: To be one who is so spiritually fit within/without that, "if you curse him, he will bless you; if you harm her, she will serve you; and if you exploit him, he will become your benefactor."

Interestingly, on first reading, that was like a magnet to my resistance: I don't think so...give me a break...Oh, how great I art! are just a few thoughts that flitted through my mind.

Reading back through my daily notes awakened my memory to all the mini-breakthroughs that led to my today's realization that that truly is the only path to the attainment of peace of mind and soul.

My prayer from high school had been for peace of mind. Imagine my surprise when I finally saw that my idea of peace of mind was virtually to have a lobotomy...which shouldn't have surprised me. I'd always been one for the quick fix.

But true peace of mind and soul pretty much requires the death of the ego...ego reduction in depth, then, being the starting direction. There. That is the road one gets to walk...bless them, change me, in short.

Thank You.

SHOWING OUR VULNERABILITY

It is a wonderful/scary thing to realize the power of "we." And just two people count as "we" with 100 and/or more also being "we."

What is powerful, and where the scary hides, is how I can be talking to another person, and her interpretation of what I'm saying may be more accurate than my own. For instance, I was with friends yesterday and asked Joe about the health of my friend John. Joe had no new knowledge about John's tests...end of conversation.

I took no further part in the discussion. I later thought I probably had given Joe the impression that I was so concerned over John's health that I simply withdrew into myself. I felt a tish guilty because I hadn't been pondering his health, I'd just withdrawn.

In my quiet time this morning, the thought occurred that if Joe did indeed interpret my withdrawing as concern over John's health, he may be right. The fact is that, in general, withdrawal is not me...I enjoy participation.

There's every chance that my self-protector (which I thought I'd rooted out and sent packing long ago) is not letting me be too aware of the negative possibilities regarding John's health. But neither delayed hurt nor instant gratification, both cut from the same cloth, are the healthiest way to go.

Back to the "we" of all this. It is only by our out-loud-to-another sharing that we become fully aware of our inner fears, fanciful facts, fantasies. And we don't get to select what we'll share that will open us to that inner awareness. We just get to share and be aware of what comes back...and remember to say "thank you" for whatever comes for there's where God intervenes in our life in our behalf.

Probably why letting our vulnerability show is essential and scary good.

Thank You.

THE PEACE OF CHANGING ONE'S MIND

[This is a reprint of a blog of mine from April 30, 2011.]

I found when a tried-and-true spiritual message doesn’t make sense to me that if I’ll just take the time to look underneath the message, I’ll often find the sense of it.

“You must go beyond reason to love” was one of my first puzzlers. Luckily, I recognized fairly quickly that my reason is driven by my ego, and therefore most any problem I had, my reasoning mind’s solution would be for my benefit. To go beyond reason to love meant seeking a solution whereby all parties could be winners. It was perfectly clear to me that I alone could not do that…I would need to let a power greater than myself wholly into my life. That’s when I made my decision to let God have my will, my wants, my hopes, my worries…simply to let God do my thinking for me. I succeed the majority of the time…that’s 51%, but I usually do a tish better than that.

When first I heard ”We have given up fighting anything and anybody,” my reasoning mind balked because reason said not only was I going to have to be a doormat, but I was going to have to like it. In opening deeper, my win/win solution came up. I needed to give up fighting, that’s all. I do not have the option of fighting, arguing, being disagreeable just because I think I am right, in short. So the goal, when I find myself in a disagreeable situation, is to buy time (shoot a “thank You”), and let some other solution bubble up from within…a solution for the benefit of everybody. 

Imagine my surprise when I realized that this is the exact same basis for “agree with your adversary quickly.” The goal is not to agree willy-nilly, making myself a hypocrite or a bald-faced liar (both of which I admit to having been, and I’d just as soon not go back there). The goal is to open my mind (actually, to change my mind from self-based to others-based), to go beyond reason to Love which brings a win/win solution every time.

This has taken me years of practice, and I flub it more often that I would like, but to flub it at all is more often than I would like. The peace of mind brought by simply changing my mind is truly the pearl of great price.

Thank You.

WHAT IS TO US IS NOT WHAT IS TO GOD

This is my truth for today: We all are born from a spark of The Divine, from the consciousness of love, i.e., God consciousness, into material world consciousness. It is only within our reasoning mind, that we separate from God into the material world consciousness. All of our life is a returning to that God consciousness we were before we were born.

Those of us born deformed, unformed, deaf, blind, not whole to the material world consciousness, having come from that core of the Divine, are complete in our Oneness with God. Those of us whose minds break, who lose an arm or an eye, or have any malady appear...at age 10 or ll0...having that same core of the Divine, are complete in our Oneness with God.

It is through our realization of that Oneness that we refind the peace we were before we were born, and that realization is not ours to get, it is God's to give.

What we, the world, sees, is not what God sees, is not what is to God. What is to the world is not what is to God. We can release from our thoughts the idea that we need to pray for the sick, the maimed, the poor...or for the wealthy and powerful...God already is within them.

We can thank God that our only desire is to raise our consciousness deeper...unto knowing God as we did before conception, and from whence goes forth all good.

Go to God for God...that is all.

Thank You.

SEEK...SIMPLY SEEK

"The Christ is a spiritual entity, a spiritual impulse...a spirit that is in man, and S/He it is that is blessed, anointed, upheld by the Father." -- Joel Goldsmith, The Heart of Mysticism, at p. 220.

It was a real ah-ha moment when I grasped that Christ is not a person. That Christ is a spiritual impulse within us, upheld, sustained and maintained by God.

That was my initial mind-broadening venture into the meaning of love...or what love as an action really means to me, within me...no matter what another's definition is. It clarified for me the essence of love.

I realized that this spiritual impulse called Christ is love. Therefore, I knew that God, through the Christ, loves me, and that it is more important that I know that God loves me than it is that I know that I love God. It cannot be otherwise.

I know from my eyebrows up that Christ lives before conception in consciousness which is the universal pool of love, i.e., non-resistance, transparency, acceptance, surrender, invitation, welcome, thank you. I know this in my heart most of the time. That is why every morning after I've walked and fed Ruckus, I make myself available to God...just seeking a deeper knowing.

Thank You.

GETTING OVER ONESELF

"We have given up fighting anything and anybody." -- Anonymous

"Ahimsa is not a policy for the seizure of power. It is a way of transforming relationships so as to bring about a peaceful transfer of power, effected freely and without compulsion by all concerned, because all have come to recognize it as right." -- Thomas Merton

"Bearing with people is the essence of nonviolence. To do this with a feeling of martyrdom, however, is not very helpful; we need to bear with people cheerfully. But this does not mean making ourselves into a doormat....Letting people take undue advantage of us is not helpful for them any more than it is for us." -- Eknath Easwaran

Thank you for protecting my heart from my ego-victory mind which will always seek to top or to stop anything and anybody it feels is resisting it. -- my morning blinding flash of the obvious.

Thank You.

BEGIN!

[The following is a reprint from my blog of January 31, 2012.]

“Don’t wait for ideal conditions…Begin! And the conditions you need will come to you!” I read that in today’s Eknath Easwaran’s  “Words to Live By,” which means I’ve read it on this day for the past 20 years. It has to be laughable that I still feel a tiny shock of pleasant surprise when I read it again.

Actually, I have read and heard that many times in many different places…more importantly, I have experienced it many times, and each time I have known that this was outside the human scene…not of my ability to pull it off.  I consider it evidence of the strength of my ego’s need to be my answer…my reasoning mind’s “I’m in control here!”…to always be surprised when I recognize that neither my ego nor my reasoning mind can meet my real needs.

The Fourth Dimension beckons me…I seldom touch the reality of the Fourth Dimension, but it beckons me, and I know it for truth. So I read, I study, I practice…and I learn: “…you do not have to struggle for enlightenment. It is coming to you as fast as you can accept and respond to it.” (Joel Goldsmith, “Leave Your Nets,” p.107)

Further, per Goldsmith, all we need do is to practice seeing this universe from the standpoint of God as individual being, “…letting every opinion, thought, and conviction stem from God.” We will, no doubt, not break free immediately or entirely, “but that is not your concern. Your concern is that you begin….”

The exact advice with which I began my quiet time this morning: Begin!

Thank You.

DOING THE NEXT RIGHT THING FIRST

Every Saturday morning I get up at 5:00. Almost without fail I get ready to go to my 7:00 meeting even though I decided the night before that I wouldn't go.

I then walk and feed Ruckus and then do a shortened version of my regular quiet time exercises.

It's now 6:30 and since I got ready to go to my meeting at 5:00, I go ahead and go to my meeting. Never having decided I would definitely go.

This is proof that if we will first do the right thing, we will do the next right thing.

Thank You.

ON REALIZING WHAT IS AS GOD'S WILL

I have read that the purpose of prayer is to realize what is, just as it is, as God's will. Which is a hard fact to remember...or to accept...when we have been taught to pray for something...our perceived needs, in particular.

The prayer of "thank you" is ideal for just that purpose. I try to keep a simple thank you going in my head for whatever I'm seeing...I play Spider Solitaire and every time I win or lose, I shoot a "thank you." That's my "pray without ceasing" which I originally believed could only be done by hermits or recluses on mountain tops.

I was talking with a friend recently who was updating me on a situation she'd been dealing with. One she was less than delighted with but she was willing and did keep showing up and working within it...not resisting, not carping, doing her continuous thank you prayer. She finally declared herself finished, done, over it, and said, "Well, here's one where 'thank you' and gratitude didn't work."

I had to smile. She hadn't yet realized that she had been doing her thank you in order to get something...to get the situation to turn out the way she envisioned it rather than to see the situation as necessary for only God knows why. [I will be in that same place before the sun sets tomorrow, count on it. That's how we learn if we're doing it right...a little too far to the right, correct; a little too far to the left, correct; and again....]

It is in our willingness to accept a situation that our reasoning mind finds unacceptable that opens the window for our surrender to enter, bringing the peace of acceptance with it.

Thank You.

GETTING OUR OWN REWARD

I remind others a lot that they need to consciously take credit for every itsy-bitsy good thing they do for others...or just good they do. There have been three or four very minor things I've done this past week for others...put myself out to the least degree. In recalling them, I feel really good about myself.

That conscious awareness is vitally important in building our base enabling us to move to the next level, i.e., not resisting negative situations.

It's akin to when we first hear of the power of positive thinking...I, for one, loved, loved, loved the idea when, in high school, I first heard the concept. I immediately started repeating to myself,  "I am healthy, wealthy, wise and beautiful."  Did not believe a word of it, did not show it forth.

Over the years, I've come to realize that for me the power of positive thinking starts with my thoughts of others...how I interpret what s/he is saying and/or thinking (indeed!) about me. It really is all about us, and it needs to be when we're going for change within ourselves.

Being sweet, kind, considerate, lovable and generous is just an act if our thoughts are suspicious, nasty...even dismissive...of the person we're showing all the pretty to. And if our thoughts are ugly, our reasons for acting the pretty role are equally ugly whether we are aware of that or not. Ugly, as in self-serving, to avoid a projected unpleasantness or to get a self-determined need.

When we're hearing a possibly hurtful remark, learning to interpret that in the best possible light is an art. Assuming the best when our eyes are seeing questionable is vital. That is the path toward non-judgment of others in our minds...when we're just walking down the street, or at 2:00 AM, or when we're talking to our bathroom mirror. That's how we get our own "Atta girl!...Atta boy!," of which there is nothing sweeter.

A conscious realization of a change toward the better in our thoughts, words and/or actions lays the concrete foundation we need to climb the ladder toward a higher consciousness...toward "Resist not evil."

Thank You.

RESIST NOT, NEITHER CURRY FAVOR

"...all negative situations only have power when we ourselves recognize and deepen our awareness of them by concentrating in a battle to overcome them." (Brother Mandus, as quoted by Joel Goldsmith in the "The Heart of Mysticism" at p. 198)

It is never a good idea, when a friendship hits a rough patch, to try to talk it over. Which is heresy on its face only if you don't understand the premise.

"To try to talk it over" implies thinking it over first, and there's the problem. Thinking it over is the reasoning mind's invitation to ride. Thinking it over puts the reasoning mind in control, and the reasoning mind is never going to bring permanent peace. The reasoning mind is at peace when we win and they lose...the very source of impermanence because then they are plotting how to win the next round.

True healing comes to a cracked or even ruptured relationship not through what we say but through the state of consciousness that we are.

Trying to solve our problem involves the reasoning mind, and the reasoning mind always legislates for itself. Trying to solve a problem, then, is resistance which only  nurtures the problem, growing it stronger...but currying the other's favor is also resistance. They are both just different ways for the reasoning mind to try to win.

To see us as one with God, to realize that, is to be set free. We are on the right path when we recognize our various paths, our different ways, all lead to the same place...at One with God, happy, joyous, free.

Thank You.

CLOSE ENOUGH

For years now, when someone asks how I am, I automatically say, "Close enough."

I never particularly realized that until a pridefully positive person I was working with gave me a lecture on how negative that was...that I needed to catch his positive attitude. "The glass is always half full" was his mantra. (He was not overly happy when I told him mine was always full, but I that's another story.)

I got the "close enough" from a country song where the guy sings about his darlin' being always late, a  tish lazy, bad driver, rotten cook, but "She's close enough to perfect for me."

I remember the first time I heard that, I thought that that's the way I could choose to view anybody and everybody, including me, when I'm all set to judge them for not living up to my high standards for them.

That's how and where I get most of my spiritual growth, in fact. Not from reading the Bible (because without an interpreter it still doesn't make a lick of sense to me), not from thinking pure and lovely thoughts...but from country songs, Dear Abby-type advice columns, a victim of a disaster being interviewed on TV who is concerned for his neighbor, from hearing friends in my fellowship share their stories. It comes to me, I don't have to sit for hours trying to ponder original thoughts...for that's a sure sign of stuck in ego when (not if) I do!

God is so good to me...all my thinking's been done for me. Hey, all my thinking is being done for me!

Thank You.

HAPPINESS...CONTAGIOUS HAPPINESS

This wild storm we've experienced...well, the aftermath of it, really...has brought what may well be an answered prayer that I never really wanted to happen, but it is a pretty prayer. The one about being able to put others first...as in, before me.  

Because of the storm, there are electrical outages all over...it's the very lucky few who didn't lose power and some of those who lost it on Friday night are still without it this Monday morning with no sure sign of when it will be returned. I did not lose power, thank you, Jesus, and that isn't even the answered prayer. 

A friend who did, specifically lose her a/c, called yesterday really suffering with the indoor, over 100 degree temperature. I told her I have an extra bed- and bathroom, she could come over and stay until her a/c came back. Those words came out of my mouth without my pondering, hedging, or even praying she'd refuse...and I meant them. There it is. There's the answered prayer...I meant it.

And she came.

And I didn't get claustrophobia from so many people crowding my space.  I'm talking miracle, seriously. It's one thing to pray to be able to put another's needs first, it's a whole 'nother thing to actually do it.

Maybe I've caught Ruckus's spirit...he loves people more than he loves the air he breathes. He was so happy to have company he all but turned cartwheels around the place. Happiness like that is just contagious.

The best part: Her a/c is back on, and she's gone (first best) so we didn't have time to decide this was a bad idea (2nd best), and we're still friends (3rd best). Just my little test to see if I can walk on water...not yet.

Thank You.

THE PROMISE

It seems to me that we need to reread the words at the foot of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Either those are true, right and good words that we live by, or we retire Lady Liberty.

Thank You.