WE ARE ONE...HAPPY, JOYOUS AND FREE

As I look back over my 2013, and forward to my 2014, I feel the grace of gratitude...I have no regrets, I dread nothing.

And that's the truth. The further truth is, if I took five minutes to ponder my 2013, my 2014, I could have regrets, I would have dreads...and someone to blame. My ego is not dead, nor does it sleep. But neither does the God of my understanding. All I need do is kiss my ego on the lips (i.e., resist not) and keep my focus on God, and all will be well...all in my world is well.

The best part? I know, if I keep my focus on God, I can be a channel for the same no regrets/no dreads for my friends and/or my perceived enemies. For we become one...happy, joyous and free.

Thank you.

NOT TO DISCOVER BUT TO RETRIEVE

It is such a comfort to me, when a problem looms, to remind myself that that problem has already been solved. 

I usually want to get in the midst of it, figure it out (to my advantage), get all concerned to agree with me, but I need to quiet my mind, to listen. To listen...not for the answer to my perceived problem (for in God's world, there is no problem), but for the discipline of simply sitting quietly and listening. 

As Fr. Richard Rohr writes, "...spiritual knowledge is more like retrieving than discovering." 

Whatever answer we need (which likely has not an iota to do with what we're thinking we need) will come to us. That answer may look less than wonderful and a butt-biter into the bargain, but it is, in truth, our gold mine.

All we need remember is the promise: "Be not afraid...it is I."

Thank you.

GOD CAN AND WILL IF ASKED

Our goal is not to agree with that which we know to be wrong...our goal is to not disagree with it. It is the disagreement that is the glue that holds our ego together...our ego's sword and shield in truth. As long as we allow our ego to believe that we need a sword and shield, our ego will be our god. 

Just this morning, in his "Daily Meditations," Fr. Richard Rohr wrote, "The contemplative [quieted] mind does not need to prove anything or disprove anything. It’s…a reading of [our literature] that looks for wisdom instead of quick answers. It first says, 'What does this text ask of me? How can I change because of this story?' And not 'How can I use this to prove that I am right and others are wrong...?'”

This is the path we get to walk in order to cease fighting anything or anybody...that which, when first we read it, we know is either a misprint or a forget it, I can't/won't/don't want to learn how. 

Again we find that the hardest thing life asks of us is to simply change our mind. I can't, God can, It has my work cut out for me, thank you. 

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF TAKING NOTHING PERSONALLY

I had a disrupted friendship once over something I said. The friend was so angry, she wouldn't talk about it, and the friendship stayed disrupted for a long time. When finally we talked, it all boiled down to what my friend heard and what I actually said. 

We must become willing to change our minds. We hear what we hear...why would we change our mind about that? Because how we are interpreting what we heard is causing us pain...we are taking it personally. Even if Gertrude calls us ugly to our eyes, if we don't take it personally, it cannot hurt us, harm us, irritate us or take us down. 

We do not take it personally by allowing the possibility of another way of interpreting what we know we heard. There. That's our open invitation to God to do our thinking for us because we have let go of reliance on our reasoning mind.

We hear A, and we react with anger. We open our mind to another way of looking at A which does not change A, only our interpretation of A...God enters, and we know peace. 

This is a practice that will take this lifetime and the next to do as we breathe, I'm guessing, but it gives us hope. Doesn't that beat living in our own mind...discontented, hopeless and blameless (i.e., put-upon) to boot?

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGH. TRUST AND PRAY.

Love and laugh. Trust and pray. -- "God Calling," December 27.

For this coming year, I hope to continue to love and laugh, to trust and pray. That is the open secret of living happy, joyous and free. To me, that's the inner circle of life.

Before first thought, wake up, feel God's love and smile. That smile becomes a feeling of laughter, of all's right with the world...which we recognize as trust that God is in control, all is exactly as it should be. And we pray our thank you.

Then we get up.

And all the rest is a matter of self-discipline...the discipline of turning our material world thoughts (usually self-centered fear thoughts) over to the care of the God of our understanding. It helps me to just take a short-cut and consciously say, "I've no doubt made a decision based on self that's going to bite me today...I'd best get ready now to admit it and laugh about it."

Getting ready is learning that we must keep coming back to: "I am the source of all my woes. Without fail." Else we get stuck in the outer circle of life...where reasoning mind and I'm right/you're wrong live.

And that, too, is for loving, laughing at, trusting God and praying, "Thank you."

Thank you.

MY DREAM

[The following is a reprint of a blog of mine from May 9, 2012.]

I dreamed recently of my grandparents’ home in Kentucky. I had gone to visit but they were not home. It seems that I stayed for a very long time. 

The house had everything except an indoor bathroom. There was, however, an outhouse way back of the house. I made it my job to put it in pristine condition…I white-washed it, I put fresh lye down every day or so, I tatted little lace curtains to cover the hole in the door. It wanted for nothing.

One day my grandparents returned, and my grandmother asked how I liked their beautiful bathroom…with which, she opened a door I had not noticed. There was a spectacular modern bath. She said it had “always” been there, I just hadn’t looked for it.

When I awoke, I thought about my dream, and I realized it was all about my Father within. My God who is ever with me, never needing anything to be added unto Him.

I get so caught up in looking “out there,” in search of the perfect Something, person, book, talisman, to change me, make me more, better, different…maybe simply acceptable. Landing on first this, then that…like my pretty outhouse, facade is everything…make it prettier, more admirable…uh-oh, not right, not good enough, start again.

All I need do is look right here, right where I Am…go into the silence and give over to the God of my understanding who is already here, here in my heart, my Soul.  

Thank you.

WE KNOW IT AND WE SHOW IT

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all Eternity....But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me. -- Meister Eckhart

And that's the whole message.

What good does it do us to worship a God-sent person if we aren't willing to do as that one did? Be it Mohammad, Jesus, the Buddha, our mentor, our mother...whom we are adoring makes no matter, that's just tinsel on the tree if we're only adoring. 

We get to adore AND look within to find It, to release Him, to let Her take wings from within us...and coo our names as It soars. When we hear it, we will know...when we know it, we must show it, or we don't know it.

Thank you.

SAME OLD, SAME OLD...THANK GOD

I ponder the Sermon on the Mount almost daily, and I remind myself that we need to accept that its words are literal to the material mind, but the underlying meaning is where the goldmine is. Begin to realize the difference between living in the material world of dual thinking (the literal word) and living in the spiritual world of Oneness (the underlying meaning).

My toughie is the one that says if someone slaps you upside your head, you get to turn the other cheek. I got my understanding, my realization, of that...nonresistance, that's all. It's the doing it that my ego will fight until three days after I'm dead...apparently.

In not resisting, i.e., giving up self-determined objectives through God consciousness, we do not respond in kind to any perceived negative action or reaction from another. (Actually, any perceived action, but I'm about the negative here.)

I have been able to do that a few times with a few people; it is their reaction that is my bramble bush. [Sidebar: I suspect my problem has been I did it as a self-determined objective (ego strutting its stuff), not through God consciousness (love).]

What happens then, when ego is driving and love is not there, is that the giving over to another is interpreted as anything from cowardice to dismissive (condescending)...or just being ignored, the ultimate insult.

So, yet again, ever and forever, I get to look within for the solution...for the spiritual solution. I must admit, my ego will, and repeatedly, take the inventory of all those heathens who don't appreciate my higher intentions.

It's the same old, same old...we have ceased fighting anything or anyone. Which is the good news. At least I don't have to learn a whole 'nother something...this one is tough enough.

Thank you.

OUR GIFTEE MUST BE TO GOD

Too often, after a difference of opinion with a loved one (i.e., an argument), we think the air is cleared, and we want to give a little giftee to our loved one...flowers, a new high-tech tool, whatever. The problem being is that the air may be cleared, but our thoughts are not.

It is those I-really-am-right thoughts that we are holding in ready reserve that we get to gift...to God. And we gift them by accepting them...another paradox! 

The minute we start fighting them, they are Velcroed within...in our heart and on our brain. Our ego has won, and those thoughts will rise up in righteous indignation again. No more need be said there. 

With our realization unto acceptance that our thoughts are our real problem, the task of changing our mind becomes considerably easier. We want to change our thoughts? We hug them, we kiss them, and we let them go. We have no good use for them, so we consciously ask God to take them...or he can hold them in ready reserve, and if he ever feels we need them, he knows what to do. There. That's the real gift we are called to give.

But a bouquet of flowers, a hi-tech tool? Probably not an altogether bad idea.

Thank you.

LIVING IN GRACE-FILLED GRATITUDE

[The following is a reprint of my blog of December 28, 2011.]

Why is it so hard for me to remember that God knows my needs?

The instant I hear you wishing for something, I know God knows your needs. Then I’ll hear my head asking for patience or kindness or love…and aren’t those pretty wishes? Clearly, I’ve upgraded them from my two banes: glory and money…probably my ego thinking that if I make my wants pretty enough, then God will give me them.

I have read, and I believe it to be true, that to know God aright is to never seek anything…is to live in a state of grace-filled gratitude. 

Knowing it is the first step, proving it is the test.

Thank You.

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS FANTASY

Love has no errors, for all errors are the want of love. -- William Law

I think the reason for a "want of love" is the want of knowing what love is. Too many of us are still thinking that the feeling of love should be warm and wonderful and good and happy and uplifting and freeing and joyous and bippity bippity tra la la. If just one of those feelings is missing...uh-oh, not love. In fact, disrespect is hovering near: Why, he/she really doesn't like me...I am utterly innocent, offering nothing but good and happy, etc., etc., etc., and look what I'm getting in return. Dissed. All that in the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart.

Love, to me, is simply nonresistance...to whatever comes my way. Especially the feeling of dissed, which I apparently have an affinity for since I can manufacture the feeling on my next breath. Ruckus always comes running when I get out his leash. Except when he doesn't. I guarantee, without thought, I can feel unloved...rejected...in that instant. After all I do for him.

Sidebar: I used to laughingly say that feeling unloved/unwanted/unneeded/unappreciated must be my favorite place, I go there so often. Imagine my surprise when an unhealthy majority of the people to whom I shared that said, "Me, too!" At least we got a laugh out of it.

Back to my thinking that love is simply nonresistance...which is another word for acceptance, which is another word for surrender which is sometimes known as crash-and-burn. Take it back to that taproot, and it becomes clearer why we'd rather think of love as happy, happy, tra la. 

Surrender is a hard act to want to experience. There is no warm and fuzzy around surrender. 

The paradox is, if we live a nonresistant life, we don't have to surrender...we're there. And one cannot live a surrendered life in a vacuum...there must be a guide, a guiding light, a guiding force. A higher power. To whom we surrendered.

That's the gold in nonresistance...we have given up resisting anything and anybody and found a power greater than ourselves who can and will intervene in our lives in our behalf. (To paraphrase a great teaching.)

On that rock we build our faith...knowing that faith without works is fantasy.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE, THE ROOT OF THANK YOU

Never seek anything or any condition in prayer. Let harmony define and reveal itself. Let your prayer be letting the IS appear. -- Joel Goldsmith, "The Heart of Mysticism," at p. 790.

We have a defect of character that has finally become an irritant to us...to our friends' relief, I might add. The usual path is that we decide we're going to stop doing/thinking/feeling/being that.

We can't.

We immediately start praying for God to remove the shortcoming, and we discover that anything we ask God to remove then owns us. The problem, of course, is that we are in truth telling God what to do and how to do it. We are binding ourselves to our defect ever more tightly and calling it prayer.

We remember that our prayer must ever be, "Thank you." That is all. As Meister Eckhart wrote, "If 'thank you' is the only prayer you ever say, that will suffice."

The root of our thank you is acceptance...it is that root that we nurture unto full growth that changes all. That is the aligning of our will with God's will, the working with rather than working for...with God, for self.

Our thoughts will go back to our perceived problem. Repeatedly. We welcome them. The instant we resist them, they've won again, and we'll not realize it until we're dragging butt, crying the blues, hoping nobody can tell.

Again, we go to our "Thank you, God, for my everything just as it is right this very minute." We are opening our mind...changing our mind quite simply. Changing our mind from "I know what I need" to "God knows what I need. Knock yourself out, God. And thank you."

Thank you.

IS FEAR JUST DOUBT OF SELF?

Want to scare yourself silly? Just say to yourself, "Fear is a lack of faith," or "You can't have fear if you have faith,” or any variation on that theme really. Which, to me, immediately translates into, "There is no God in your life because you fear, and it's all your fault and shame on you into the bargain."

Personally, I have learned to substitute the word "doubt" for "fear" which is closer to my reality. I think of doubt as seeping into my consciousness, settling in, then directing my feelings...not coming in a flash and leaving devastation behind. Fear does...that's exactly how my fear operates. The devastation left behind is anxiety.

I wonder if doubt isn't born in the ego and is actually doubt of self. Doubt is probably the mother of most fear, beginning as the smallest of niggles in our mind, ignored (or stuffed) until it grows legs, feet and a mind of its own...steps right on out and tramples rational thought.

Those little niggles are the ones we learn to pull up, look right in the eyeball and mentally allow them to be as bad as we don't want them to be. For we also learn that the more we try to mentally make them go away or change them to pretty, the uglier they become, the tighter they cling. 

This is when our "Thank you" grows its legs and feet...for, of sheer necessity, we turn our own idea of our needs over to God. We allow ourselves to believe that this...this fearsome ugly that is living in our mind...this, too, is of God, is God's personal gift to us, and we don't need to know how. 

From my own experience with an incurable, progressive disease, I have learned there is nothing so ugly to my reasoning mind that cannot be God's gold to me, his beloved. And I am grateful.

Thank you.

WE ARE CHANGED THROUGH PRESENCE

We hear, "If you will upgrade your attitude, you will upgrade your problem," and after awhile we learn that is exactly true.

However, between the hearing and the learning...long period of bumbling and doubt. Mainly because we start out trying to upgrade our attitude by calling what we are feeling, i.e., the "bad," something acceptable or pretty, i.e., the "good."  That is just exchanging one judgment for another. We are still into self-determined objectives, underlying which will always be self...which most often is just ego victory through resistance.

We learn that we cannot upgrade our attitude by self-will alone. We get to bring in the Peacemaker (and not a Colt 45). We begin building our inner connection with a power great than ourselves. This is the cornerstone of meditation...being led down into the silence...turning our reasoning mind over (within) to anything other than self. 

We turn our attention away from the bad and/or the good, and we focus on...the wings of a dove, a dogwood tree, mine is always the lily of the valley. Then we sit and let...that is all. A blinding flash of the obvious will come, a click-click will be felt.

And our attitude is upgraded...not through will, through presence. God is present...heed It.

Thank you.

USE GOD'S EYES TO SEE

My prayer of peace: "Thank you, God, for me, for my life, for my everything just as it is right this very minute."

I've prayed this since I first heard it back in the '70s, and it has been invaluable in turning my focus from what I thought I needed to acceptance of what is.

I then branched out and started praying it for others. It has become my go-to prayer for such as my friend diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, another's daughter with autism, more than a couple others with cancer, another with degenerative neuropathy, another with chronic back problems...and the list goes on.

“Thank you, God, for him/for her, for each one’s life, for each one’s everything just as it is right this very minute." 

This surely removes the self-determined objective prayer...the prayer of the narcissistic ego which immediately knows what needs to be done, tells God, and then determines that it's probably hopeless...oh woe, woe, woe. 

God knows our needs...we get to stay focused on, say, a lily of the valley, and let all be well. No matter what our lying eyes tell us…for unless we are using God’s eyes with which to see, ours are lying eyes.

Thank you.

SELFLESSNESS...AND SELF-ABSORBED

Selflessness. Selflessness does not come naturally to me...to few of us, truth be told. This past couple weeks, we've all been reminded of Nelson Mandela's selfless life which brought me to Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Gandhi...it's the measure of my ego that I compare myself to them! Come up short, of course, but staying there is just an excuse to not even try to be a tish more caring and considerate. To everyone. Period.

I had an experience of another's selflessness toward me just yesterday. To my reasoning mind, it is such a little thing that it's taken me nearly 24 hours to process the layers of it...and there may be even more that I haven't gotten to yet.

I came in from walking Ruckus, and we followed a man onto our elevator here. I asked him to push 5 for my floor, and he did. As Ruckus and I got off at 5, I glanced over my shoulder, and the man was pushing G...he was going to the Garage! When I asked him to push 5, he did not demur, did not turn a hair...simply said, "Sure," and smiled. As the elevator doors were closing, I called back what I had just realized and apologized, but I can't be sure he heard me.

To me, his action is pure selflessness. Especially with our elevators. I often think they have a mind of their own, and they sit and ponder whether they're even going to answer a call. As often as not, I get on one and it'll go to whatever floor it chooses...I'm just grateful the things don't go from side to side, or I'd never get where I want to go.

Oops...clearly the elevators and I have issues...uh-oh, I have issues with our dim-dam elevators.

Back to the man's selflessness (back to me trying to be spiritual). I did feel badly that I hadn't been able to let him know how impressed, how touched, I was by his unselfish action. In particular that he said not one word, not one eyeroll did he give, nothing to indicate that he was going out of his way for a total stranger. And even more particularly with our elevators...but I've been there, haven't I?

It finally occurred to me that my words would have been nice, but they were not really necessary. His reward is in his gift. Whether he realizes it or not, his own will come to him.

Our lives are made better not by what we get but what we give.

Thank you.

ABTW, we're getting new elevators next year...praise God!

THE COMFORT OF THY ROD AND THY STAFF

[The following is a reprint of my blog of December 29, 2011.]

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. - The 23rd Psalm

I like to think of “thy rod and thy staff” as my rues, regrets and remorses. Then, when my memory brings up a rue, a regret or a remorse, I can imagine that as the Shepherd’s rod and staff, letting me know not to go there…i.e., bringing the lamb back from danger of hurt or harm to safety.

The lamb (my mind) is always going to go gamboling, frequently landing where it oughtn’t…that’s why it has a Shepherd.

The key is to never forget the Shepherd...which I do when I beat myself for going gamboling where I oughtn’t.

Thank You.

THE INNER ROAD TO FREEDOM

I dreamed last night:

Tom disrespects me. I react in kind, then I gossip to Sylvia about Tom's actions. I immediately regret the gossip, and I want to walk it back...but my objective for walking it back is just so Sylvia (and I) will think it shows spiritual growth.

I recall lecturing others: "Just so you'll not be blind-sided again, it is always you...it is never them.'" My upset with Tom over Tom's upset with me is mine. Tom's upset with me is Tom's.

The question is: What if what Tom does with his upset with me is entirely contingent upon what I do with mine?

What if that is the "Way of the Cross?"

What if the "Way of the Cross" is the inner road to freedom?

Maybe the inner road to freedom is, quite simply, forgiveness. That's all...forgiveness of you, of me, of us...forgiveness of all known and unknown prickly pears or atomic bombs. With the kicker being that self cannot forgive...forgiveness is of God.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, 'Let it be, oh, let it be.' -- "Let It Be," The Beatles

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE, I.E., LET IT BE

We hear, "God has my back." We like that...what's to hate? We start saying that...that becomes our go-to phrase. Then SPLAT...we get a less-than-wonderful right upside our head.

This is when we start building our trust in that which we have been mindlessly repeating,"God has my back." That beginning feels like we're just whistling by the cemetery all the while repeating, "I expect the best," "All is as it should be," etc. Those are the exactly right words, we just need to raise our expectations deeper. Which means, give up our idea of what is "best" and/or "as it should be." Our idea of what is best at that point is just that, our idea. Which is, in fact, just another self-determined objective.

We get to give up any personal idea of what is best. We begin by UNknowing our idea of best by changing our mind. We come to believe that our impersonal best, that which is of God,  is already ours through the power of God within us/without us now.

Our job is to stay focused on the fact that God is only good. I keep my focus by saying unto believing, "You got the power, God. Knock yourself out. I'm on your side no matter what my eyeballs tell me."  We are building a gut-bucket belief that God does have our back...that's our only construction project. Digging deeper to let what is in out.

This is acceptance in a word...if we will accept that which is, no matter what it appears to be to our reasoning mind, we will live in peace. All that is required is that we learn to say "no" to whatever freak is appearing...because, after all, God not only has our back, but our front, sides and center. So let It.

Thank you.

THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

We know God's hand is in the mix when we get a win-win. The trouble is our ego is ever with us, and we have to be wary of a win-win that we have engineered...or manipulated if we want the word with the bark on it.

We must be wary because the ego, always legislating for itself, can pull off an apparent win-win when, in fact, it is a "You win, but I win a tish more and/or better." This, of course, leaves the other with a less than wonderful feeling, wondering what just happened...and that he's going to have to pay somebody back about something.

The real ego-tripper is winning by looking humblest...we both win, but I, being ruthlessly, scrupulously honest ("too much information" aborning) win bigger. Again, the other walks away feeling (but not knowing why) she's going to have to pay somebody back about something.

The source of all our ills may just be in the unconscious feeling that we must win. Just win. How to be an always winner? Be right. How to always be right? Know...never be caught not knowing.

In truth, unknowing is the source of perfect peace. That can only be, unknowing as perfect peace, if and as we trust that God has our back...lives within us/without us...is ever with us...and only shows/flows forth as good, our personal good.

There. That is truth. And we can never know exactly how that is...how it is that God is.

Thank you.

PROJECTING ANGER, EXTENDING LOVE

Without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true, that without extension there can be no love.  -- "A Gift of Peace, Selections From 'A Course in Miracles'" at p. 52

I had to ponder what the difference to me is in "projection" and "extension." I think of projection as a negative, as not attached to me, a throwing out; I think of extension as a positive, attached, a reaching out.

We are warned about projecting our outcomes and are encouraged to extend a hand to a fellow in need.

It's a real ah-ha to read that "without projection there can be no anger." But, really, aren't all feelings either projected or extended? Hate, a hard negative feeling, even when we think we are holding it within us, is flowing, seeping, projecting outward. Distrust, envy, jealousy...all the fears in fact. They form the basis of anger, and all are projected outward, at someone, something...and sometimes even ourselves. That's when they feel like they have a life of their own, walk up and slap us upside the head.

A similar process goes on with love, the basis of which is joy, gratitude, forgiveness, et al. Except that when we're feeling any of those, it doesn't enter our mind to hold those goodies in...each extends itself without our thought or effort. The best part is each draws the same back to us.

The book goes on to say: Accept only loving thoughts in others and regard everything else as an appeal for help. 

Now there's a high bar to aim for...but why not? A low bar doesn't even require that we aim...we just trip over that. I do know if I set that as my goal, I'll immediately fail. It is to hold it as my goal...then I'll return to it ever so often and be amazed that I've gotten an inch or so ahead of where I was.

Another cliché: It's hard by the yard, it's a cinch by the inch!  I love those things.

Thank you.

THE MORE WE GIVE THE MORE WE GET

It's an inside job. -- Anonymous

What is "it?" Easier to say what it is not. It is not diamonds or dollars, gold...or good health, even. It is all...peace, love, acceptance, gratitude, grace. That is, in truth, all there is, and it is within, awaiting release.

Really, if you can't find it inside, where are you  going to go to get it? Tiffany's? Amazon? Wegmans? It is a fact that we can get any material thing we could ever want or perceive that we need at a store near us...if we've got the money. We can even get a fairly good substitute for what we want for a little less money...and buy a resentment right along with it...because we don't have the money for what we really want.

What we get to do is very simply change our wish list...from "I want" to "Whatever." Our job now is to mean it...as in, get happy about it. Enough with the resigned to blahblahblah.

The trick is in finally seeing that all we need do to own all...is to give it away. We've got a storehouse full to overflowing, and the more we give, the fuller it gets...pass it on.

Thank you.

GOD CHANGES OUR MINDS

I am so glad that God doesn't hold resentments. Just yesterday, the following quote from Fr. Richard Rohr had me irritated, resistant and not happy about it. I could not...would not...let it lift me. It was a downer to my ego's eyes, and that was good enough for me.

This morning I read it, and I feel like singing, if I could sing...my heart can and is which is close enough to perfect for me. What a wonderful gift:  Struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejections and abandonment, daily humiliations, experiencing any kind of abuse or your own clear limitations, even accepting that some people hate you: All of these are gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul. 

That just confirms that all my rues, regrets and remorses really are gateways into my deeper consciousness and the flowering of my soul. 

God is so good to me...he can and will change my mind for me! How great thou art.

Thank you.

CLING TO NOTHING...SOAR

The following is from "Daily Meditations," Fr Richard Rohr, December 8, 2013 [the trouble with it is its probably true, every single word]: Struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejections and abandonment, daily humiliations, experiencing any kind of abuse or your own clear limitations, even accepting that some people hate you: All of these are gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul. 

Don't you just hate it?

I get up this morning, ice is forecast so my mouth is complaining but my mind is cheering...I'm excused from doing anything at all this whole day (except walk Ruckus, of course, and that's serving the Lord). 

With that single thought, I'm off...I'm dreaming, not of a white Christmas but of winning...winning big time. A life of luxury and adulation are to be mine (a tish late, but hey...). I even remember that shaman’s "If you can see it, you can be it" which affirms my dreams as plain truth. 

Then a blinding flash of the obvious: God has but one desire for me and that is that I have but one desire: To wash the feet of the beggar man, of the bag lady. To seek and to be gifted with that honest desire is to soar...to cling to nothing...to soar.

Rats.

Thank you.

PONDER AND REMEMBER

I was talking with a friend, who happens to be an atheist, and she said something to the effect that these days make suicide look good. Nothing, to my thinking, makes suicide look good. As the cliché goes, suicide is a permanent fix to a temporary problem.

My ever-ready-to-fantasize mind has a full-blown story break forth: Gertrude commits suicide and the instant she's dead and gone, she's standing before her own concept of God. He's big, he's old (long white beard), he's meaner than a rattlesnake (angry eyes), and his forefinger is shaking in her face, and he is saying, "You little bitch." AND, her mother is sitting on his right side, knitting, and saying, "I told you so."

With that in mind, ponder suicide. There is nothing on this earth, in this life or the next, that would make suicide look good in comparison to that...according to me.

Thank you, God, that I know you are my fuel, my inspiration, my need. I am your hands and feet, your eyes and ears, your voice...all of which you use sparingly. My only job may be simply to remember that.

Thank you.

BY WHICH I MEAN GOD

"You got the power." 

That's the word. The word I keep forgetting to say to God when I'm stumped yet again with an ego biter. God has the power, and He can and will use it in my life in my behalf. 

I keep hearing friends talk about getting their power back. I do not want my so-called power back. When I had that power, I was a reasonably successful woman and eaten alive with fear that I couldn't hold it, would get it taken from me, would be shamed and blamed because I misused it. Living like that was never an option for me...but I hadn't yet found my inner strength (by which I mean God!) to turn from it. 

It took some time (all good things do), but one day I realized that all the power I needed was not of me but of We. And that power is not available to our ego...in fact, its goal is ego-deflation in depth. That fact is what our ego resists and trips us with at will. The ego always legislates for itself (seemingly for us!), and we can't hate that...it is our song of the Sirens. 

I suspect if it weren't for our warts, our uglies, our defects of character, we'd sit right there with our ego-legislating selves...all alone and feeling superior about it. Those warts though become too ugly, too hurtful to our own selves to live with. They drive us to a power greater than ourselves...and, like magic (sometimes in a year or two, sometimes longer, say 30-40-50 years!), our defects of character are transmuted. 

I am grateful to God, to my rues, regrets and remorses and to all my imaginary enemies that I know today: "You (by which I mean God!) got the power." 

Thank you.

"I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER"

The ego-based reasoning mind is ever with us. Our job is to transcend it, not "just stop using it"...which is not possible to the overwhelming majority of those of us living in this world.

It is the daily practice of surrendering unto acceptance of the ego-biters, the so-called "little" things, that will head us in the right direction. We'll know we got there (i.e., free of our ego-biter of the moment) when we laughing tell another about how we used to get crazy when she did thus and when he did so.

In that moment we are blessed with the grace of gratitude that we transcended our resistance...a.k.a., got over ourselves. For it was never the "thus" that she did, the "so" that he said, it was our reaction to it...our resistance to it.

We have been taught that nature abhors a vacuum...take away resistance and most of us will have a huge hole in our soul. Then is when we feel our most vulnerable...alone, scared and clueless. Now is when we shoot a "thank you," and it is never more appropriate for we are at the place we need to be...surrender. It is then that we are open for grace to flow forth and fill us with gratitude.

We are reminded of Lincoln's "People are as happy as they want to be." Take away our own resistance, and...aha! Live, love, laugh and be happy. Those are all just words unless and until we choose to do just exactly that. In short, we give up fighting anything and anybody.

Thank you.

HUMILITY APPEARS WITHOUT VOLITION

Geez, just yesterday the thought flitted through my mind that my pride was peeking up from under its dark cover. Then today, in "God Calling" is the admonition: Do not seek too much the praise and notice of [others].

Humility is found within....ain't no going out and buying a bucketful...but, mercy, it is hard to want, much less to welcome, its appearance! I guess that's because, to me, humility feels like humiliation when it is being born. It appears without volition...that's its very nature. If we could self-will humility, it would not be humility...it'd be looking-good power!

Once again...stumped by my own ego. Looking for the gold, I remember that when the need arises, God appears.

Here's me...looking forward with dread.

Thank you.

NOT BY SELF, BY GOD

We are told the promises of God will always materialize if we work for them.

Why is it so hard to remember that the "working" for them is the "work" of maintaining conscious contact with our God? It is the work of aligning our will with Its will, of detaching from our wants (most often fear based and always of self), knowing our needs (always of God) are already met...are within us waiting to be released.

As we are released from our ego-victory wants, our needs flow forth, materializing as that which we need in that moment. And we think, "What a coincidence! I was just saying...."

"The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it." -- Anonymous

Thank you.

GOD'S WORKPLACE

I said something recently, another person was overly impressed, my ego grew wings and was within Ames' ace of soaring. The truth…my truth…is that an ounce of spiritual growth to those not in a like place can appear to be walking-on-water quality. From my eyebrows up, that is off-putting to downright scary…regrettably, the ego…my ego…loves it.  

The fact is it is written (and to paraphrase): “Spiritual growth requires that we go counter to our own natural desires…it requires ego reduction in depth.”

I was gifted many years ago with a reading in re paradox. At the time, I wasn't one hundred percent certain what a paradox even was. The reading made it clear, and I was enchanted. “You have to give it away to keep it.” “You have to lose to win.” All those oldies but greaties speak to me today with the same power they had when first I heard them.

The practical reason that I  try always to look for the paradox is it helps me change my mind which, to me, is the hardest thing life is ever going to ask of us...just change your mind.

That process begins with the gut-bucket belief that whatever comes to us, no matter how dreggy it looks in the coming, and on its arrival, there is gold (a.k.a., God) in it. All we need do is turn our attention from the dregs and look for the gold. That’s becoming willing to change our mind…from “Oh no” to “Thank you.” That’s it.

The rest of the process (which takes as long as it takes…God knows when we’re ready) is to stayed focused on the gold, no matter how tiny that nugget, that’s now our center of attention. BUT, say the word “lose” or “loser,” and see how we run! Half the time with me leading the pack. 

That’s the Catch-22. We’re not entirely stupid, and what we’re thinking is right…to our thinking! So what right-thinking soul is going to go for “loser?”

That’s why changing our mind is the hardest thing life can ask of us. It’s not just changing our mind from “this is good” to “this is bad,” and back again. No. It requires a new level of consciousness.

We must move away from self toward God…up from the reasoning mind, down to our spiritual center, God's workplace.

Thank you.

REALIZING THANK YOU

[The following is a reprint of my blog from December 5, 2011.]

If it is true that “God comes to us disguised as our life,” then God was/is in my rues, regrets and remorses. It was my (ego’s) invitation to my rrr’s which caused them to bloom, and God was with me, within me, as love, for every thought, word and deed, and it is through that love that all is forgiven, made whole.

Defects of character cannot be changed by the self…cannot be removed that is…can be made worse by the self, by self-will. Fr. Richard Rohr has written that being ”willing to creatively work with the hand that life and sin and circumstance and God have dealt [us], that is our deepest life of prayer and devotion.”

Today in Eknath Easwaran’s Words to Live By is his great line about changing compulsive craving, jealousy, blind fury (”some may be fortunate enough to have all three” [NOTE: That is not a misquote.]) and how each person must look for that defect where urgent work, i.e., the transformation of consciousness, must begin. 

That is my how-to for working with God, but not doing God’s work…being willing to creatively work with the hand I've been dealt. The only way I know to do that is through the grace of gratitude…not just to say thank You but to realize thank You for my worst defects…and yours.

Thank You.

KISS THE FROG...RIGHT ON THE LIPS

The lowest level of consciousness is entirely dualistic (win/lose)—me versus the world and basic survival….The higher levels of consciousness are more and more able to deal with contradictions, paradoxes, and all Mystery (win/win). This is spiritual maturity. -- Fr Richard Rohr, “Daily Meditations,” November 30, 2013.

It is moving from the dualistic win/lose to the spiritual maturity of win/win that takes time, discipline, willingness…ego reduction in depth, in short.

The eye-opener is when we realize that we will not get there by striving, working for, trying harder…no. We will (or not!*) get there by letting go, detaching, shucking our shields, holding our nose and taking a leap of faith. This is also known as practicing the Sermon in all our affairs; i.e., "turn the other cheek, agree with your adversary quickly, resist not evil." We have given up fighting everything and everybody.

*Ah, the “or not,” the trickiest part…or it is for me. It is when we make “getting” this spiritual maturity, this win/win consciousness, our goal, our God if you will, that we lose the spiritual mind and fall back into the reasoning mind for we now have a self-determined objective...for self. We forget that we are in it, not to win it, but to give it.

We are reminded that we go to God for God…that is all. 

Whatever God imparts (which is already within us), like the fragrance of a lily of the valley, flows forth without our efforts. How could one through human effort make a lily of the valley smell so sweet...or smell at all? Same way one produces love…open to the scent already there, give to others that which is already ours. In other words, sniff the air, kiss the frog.

Thank you. 

YOU DON'T...GOD DOES...LET IT

"You need not aspire for or get any new state. Get rid of your present thoughts, that is all." -- Ramana Maharshi

To be graced with God consciousness, "it is necessary to transcend thought." -- Joel Goldsmith

Both of those quotes point to the toughy that we all come to at some point if we are sincerely seeking still more spiritual growth. It's the one that asks, "Would you rather be happy or would you rather be right?"

Almost without fail our first answer is, "Both!" Which, of course, means "Right," not only because right makes us happy, but it represents "winner" or, at least, "not loser." Which is our ego's only theme.

Regrettably, right is the wrong answer...if indeed still more spiritual growth is our goal. According to me, the hardest thing life is ever going to ask of us is that we change our mind...and it's never harder than here.

The quiet truth is that there is no spiritual growth in advancement of self, protection of self, self period. Our ego has that covered, and nothing does it better. It succeeds beyond our wildest dreams when we wind up with yet another broken relationship, yet another lost job, yet another shot-myself-in-the-back-of-the-head. Wondering still, how did that happen? Praying, "Please God relieve me of the bondage of self."

And that's when we're making progress! It takes a long time to not wind up with a hole in the back of our head, wondering why/how the other one could be so wrong and so blind about it, too.

I'm of the belief that "right" is of the ego-based reasoning mind, "happy" is of the spiritually based mind.

There are times, many times, when we must rely on the reasoning mind in order to make good orderly decisions. Get up or call in sick...again? The et ceteras of daily life.

Those times are not when we're in a "discussion" with another human being. And we're not being listened to, we're being ignored, if only he'd hear me out, she'd see my point and agree with me...never at those times. Those are the times we say to ourselves, "S/He may be right" and leave the ego's arena. Not to fight another day, but to sit in the silence and ponder: How do I change my mind when I am right?

You don't...God does. Let It.

Thank you.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

 A Thanksgiving Blessing by Joyce Rupp

May an abundance of gratitude burst forth

as you reflect upon what you have received.

May thanksgiving overflow in your heart,

and often be proclaimed in your prayer.

May you gather around the table of your heart

the ardent faithfulness, kindness, and goodness

of each person who is true to you.

May the harvest of your good actions

bring forth plentiful fruit each day.

May you discover a cache of hidden wisdom

among the people and events

that have brought you distress and sorrow.

May your basket of blessings surprise you

with its rich diversity of gifts

and its opportunities for growth.

May all that nourishes and resources your life

bring you daily satisfaction and renewed hope.

May you slow your hurried pace of life

so that you can be aware of, and enjoy,

what you too easily take for granted.

May you always be open, willing,

and ready to share your blessings with others.

May you never forget the Generous One

who loves you lavishly and unconditionally.

-- from Out of the Ordinary

[I received the above blessing from a beloved friend and knew it must be shared. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you.]

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

There have been days of rain, gray unending around here. This is the time I know to find the gold...seek the light. There was a time when nothing would sink my spirits quicker than a gray day. I am so grateful that I've learned I have a choice...whatever is happening, or appears to be happening, I have a choice in my response to it.

Sunk spirits or light and laughter?...choose ye this day. The gray day is, let it be. We find the light within. In order to do that, we turn our thoughts away from the rain, the gray, and we just envision sunshine, roses, laughter....

OR:  Batkid in the City...and the citizens of the City of Love still bringing it! I can live on that if I live to be 200. All of us who left our hearts in San Francisco sure saw them put to good use, didn't we? I joyed in the fact that my heart was right there with them for him...ah, the beat goes on!

Days of rain, gray unending...pish-tosh! I've got my glory days...1967, the summer of love...alive in my heart again.

Thank you.

LIVING IN GOD'S LIGHT

Oh divine Master, grant that I may seek to comfort rather than seek to be comforted, to understand rather than to be understood, to love rather than to be loved. -- from the Prayer of Saint Francis

If those three things were our only goals in life, we would be successful beyond our wildest dreams even if we lived in a two-room walk-up, dependent on the generosity of others and the Food Bank.

This is one I fairly well know to be true from my growing-up experience. My grandparents lived up a "holler" in Kentucky. Neither was educated beyond grade school, my grandfather farmed the rocky land, my grandmother did all else...with ten children to boot.

She knew all about the seasons, as in planting, when to reap and when to sow, when to slaughter the hogs, shear the sheep [they didn't have sheep...just saying]. She didn't learn any of that from a book, this was lore passed down. She couldn't say how she knew what precise amounts of cloves or dill or mint, etc., to put in whatever she was canning but her pickles, her beets...ah, to die for.

But her one inner desire was to please God, and she knew that we only please God by, her words,  "doing right by others." She did not seek to be comforted...she was as comfortable as she wanted to be; she did not seek to be understood...that'd be a concept totally unfamiliar to her; she did not seek to love or to be loved, she just loved and was loved, no seeking about it.

Materially, she did not have two extra pennies to bless herself with; spiritually she lived in God's light. There. That is the pearl of great price.

Thank you.

OBTW...do wrong to one of her kids, and stand back!...a mama grizzly could takes notes.

UNEXPLAINABLE BY REASON

I was held back by mere trifles, the most paltry inanities, all my old attachments. They plucked at my garments of flesh and whispered: 'Are you going to dismiss us? From this moment we shall never be with you again, forever and ever. From this moment you will never again be allowed to do this thing, or that, for evermore.' -- Saint Augustine

If it weren't for the fact that this is a saint confessing, I'd be embarrassed at how much I can still identify with his experience. My ego whispers, "You're very much like a saint," and God laughs. I still kinda preen...who's kidding whom?

But isn't that the most perfect description of our thinking when we desperately want to quit thinking, feeling, doing, being, eating, drinking, smoking, snorting, shooting, sniffing?...and the list goes on. Here's the paradox: Wanting to doesn't count...until we do it. Then we realize that it is the wanting to that is the first step. We just wouldn't accept that the first step is all about crashing and burning. Which is the right (only?) road to freedom from self.

And today I'm only talking about judging others! But it's always the same process...ego dies hard, and I am ever my cross to bear.

It's no wonder our reasoning mind will never get us there...it is unexplainable by reason. Only still more spiritual light can clarify it and that light comes from within. It lights our path and leads us out of our own way.

Thank you.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Here's an I-wish-it-weren't-so quote: "The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow."

Making it mine thought: "We need to make wise choices every moment just to keep from being swept away." The brain-buster is realizing the speaker was referring to foods. In fact, we must make wise choices especially as to whether to take anything personally or not. Not is the wise answer, but the doing, the choosing, is where the spiritual work begins...just begins.

Then there's: "[Like the fragrance from a flower] love from within us radiates towards everybody and manifests as spontaneous service." Spontaneous service. Every time I go back and reread that entire quote, I'm struck by those two words. For they are the perfect description of getting out of our own way, letting go and letting God. Spontaneous means without forethought...or it does to me, and I'm not looking it up in the dictionary. Love as "spontaneous service" has no "me" attached...it's purely God flowing  from his container, me, you, each and all of us. It begins when we connect with our core, God, infinity on the head of a pin, our center, love.

Thank you.

ON ROACHES AND RESENTMENTS

I'm of the belief that those who don't or won't believe in God simply have an ego problem. Happiness is all about ego reduction in depth, according to me. I'll never ace that course, but I know the right answer, and I aspire to do it. That answer, of course -- "Others...for the benefit of others."

Here are a few of the things I've heard that help me remember that all I need do is get over myself:

• You know you're not in the now when the one you're talking to is not in the room.
• Message to be taped to the bathroom mirror: "You are looking at the problem."
• The recorded message on a friend's answering machine: "It's not them."
• Silent reminder to self about one you're resisting: "S/He may be right."
• The only way to do your inventory wrong is if you come out the victim.
• The hardest thing life is ever going to ask of you is to change your mind.

That last one is particularly important because the need is not to change our mind in order to agree with whomever we're resisting. No...for we both may be wrong. The need is to open our mind to God...to get a perspective from a higher consciousness altogether.

The fact is if we don't believe in a power greater than ourselves, by whatever name we choose to call it, we're going to be purely peeved...a lot. Ego always legislates for itself...each walking around ego is legislating for itself, and somebody's is going to lose. Resentment aborning. 

The only thing harder to get rid of than roaches is a resentment...don't let either in to begin with which takes our sincere cooperation with a power greater than ourselves...else roaches would have been eradicated long ago and resentments wouldn't STILL be our number one offender.

Thank you.

I REMEMBER...AND WEEP STILL

As are so many Americans right now, I'm remembering fifty years ago this day...the assassination of President Kennedy. The unspeakable horror, the unimaginable...blank. I just draw a blank...my feelings back then refuse to be categorized.

I do remember I followed others out of the office into the streets of Los Angeles. People were just milling around, and here came the Los Angeles Times with its Extra, along with the Herald Examiner (I think was its name...now gone, of course).

I remember at first we only knew he had been shot, and there was a low-murmuring which I finally recognized as prayers, and several of us headed for a church...any church...to pray. My prayer was that he live, and then that he not be incapacitated. I don't really remember, but I don't think I prayed for America, maybe not until I witnessed on live television Lee Harvey Oswald being shot before the entire watching world.

I do distinctly remember, as if it were now, standing on a street corner crying. An older black woman was standing next to me, and she, too, was crying. We were talking to each other...just words, not whole intelligent sentences..."Why?" and "Horrible" and "Please" just fell from our lips.

Then she said to me (and this is the indelible now-feeling memory): "You're crying for yourself; you should be crying for me. You're young...you may see his like again. I'm old...I never will." And we hugged and sobbed.

I thought of her the night of President Obama's first presidential win...I thought of her and cried again, this time in joy.

Thank you.

TAKE COMFORT IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

I'm in the middle of my yoga exercises (my first-thing every morning discipline), and I find my attack thoughts going after my sister with the news of the unexpected gift to me from our mother's estate, which was a sum of money. I mentally remind my sister of the dirty trick she played on Mom shortly before she passed having to do with Mom's memory. I let my sister know that the gift was designated for me alone, which it was, and the reason was no doubt payback for the dirty trick which my sister thought Mom hadn't been alert enough to figure out. I know my sister, the atheist whose god is money, would ask how many dollars, and my gleeful punch line: "You don't want to know."

How mean is that? Can I tell you I love it? At least there's no doubt that "Get thee behind me, Satan" is all about my own self.

Whoa! It is now a short time after I wrote the above, and I just read my today's Easwaran, the last line of which is, "Love means that regardless of what someone does to us, we will not strike back in anger." I had written out to the side, dated 2006, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

No one will ever mistake me for a quick study, but I take comfort in the proof that I'm still heading in the right direction.

Thank you.

DECISION BASED ON SELF

That which makes sense to me may be whoo-whoo to ten other people. God's personal gift to me is that I no long feel the need to convince the ten other people...or any one of the ten...that that which makes sense to me is right. It simply is...if only for me.

Ponder this: I'm of the opinion that I made a decision before conception for my entire life, and every fact and act in and of my life from then to now stems from and was/is in support of that decision.

So that every event of our lives happened by invitation only, based on a decision we made on our behalf while we were still in the before-conception spiritual consciousness pool. As we came into the world, we selected every single fact and act that would happen in our lives in support of that decision.

As we come to understand that everything happens by invitation only, our rues, regrets and remorses are transmuted. We can finally realize why that which causes us regrets seemed like a good idea to begin with. This is the first step toward ownership of our own lives.

But wait...there's more: Since we made our decision before conception, that means with God, within God consciousness. So that God is and has been with us every step of our way...we just never thought to turn to him first as we were carrying out our decision.

Here again, I'm of the opinion that we never thought to turn to God first because we knew God legislates for all...ego legislates for self. If we turn to God first, we're probably going to need to let someone else go first, get over on us, win. We made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt.

Thank you.

FLYING HIGH...AND SPLATTERING

I'm reading some really high-flown spiritual material, and I'm underlining in red, highlighting in yellow, putting exclamation points out to the side in green...I am flying.

I put my head back to rest and to ponder all this, and my first thought? My very first thought is that I've got to tell Gertrude how wrong she is, how disrespectful not only to me but to blahblahblah. It was, or it felt like, an hour before I caught myself...before I reined my thoughts in and brought them back to reality. The reality that God is ever with me and so is my ego.

The good news...no, the great news...is, that God loves me so much he encourages me to laugh at myself. My ego? Not going to happen, not only no....

"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused." 

Thank you.

MY PEACE I GIVE TO YOU

[The following is a reprint of my blog of February 25, 2012.]

My brother died when he was 12 years old…I was 10, my sister was 13. He died of a tumor on the brain and tubercular meningitis.

Paul was the center of our family…we each considered him “my best” friend and/or child, and we paid little, if any, attention to each other. None of us in our singular grief could understand God’s purpose in calling him home…at age 12 yet. But this was a long time ago, and families did not question God out loud then…or families in my neighborhood at any rate.

A very few years later, I was given an insight, a gift of understanding. In the short time since my brother’s death, my sister and I had become good friends…my father doted on us as did my mother. One day, in a blinding flash of the obvious, I had a mental image of my brother as a sort of May pole…as he was lifted up into heaven, the tie to my sister, the tie to my father, the tie to my mother, the tie to me drew us together. We had become a family unit.

That gave me peace, and I never questioned it.

In dealing with another grief recently, I realized that although that picture had given me peace, it did not answer why my brother had to die so young and in such a painful manner.

My thoughts immediately kicked into raceracerunrun…why?why?why?

Again I was given an insight: None of us have any way of knowing another’s God-path. Paul lived and died as he lived and died. I simply get to accept the peace I was given in the certainty that God was the giver, and it is, therefore, reasonable to assume that Paul was given the same peace…then in the midst of his illness and now.

Thank You.

20-20 VISION, WALKING 'ROUND BLIND

Loving means to love that which is unlovable,

Or it is no virtue at all.

Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable,

Faith means believing the unbelievable,

And hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.

-- G. K. Chesterton

So live with Me, in that Kingdom of Joy, My Kingdom, the Gateway into which may be service, it may be suffering. -  "God Calling," November 17

Twenty-twenty vision, walking 'round blind. -- from an old country love song

The desire to love and be loved is the human condition, according to me. The trouble is the human condition is based in the human mind, meaning driven by ego and adverse to surrender...to anything not of its own understanding and/or approval.

Love, like God, cannot be fully understood by our reasoning mind. Check the "God Calling" quote again. It says quite clearly the gateway into the kingdom of God (which we're told is nothing more nor less than love) may be service, may be suffering...who when she's thinking "I want to love and be loved" is thinking "service" much less "suffering"?

"Twenty-twenty vision, walking 'round blind"...we must go beyond the reasoning mind to love, i.e., to the kingdom of God.

Thank you.

BLESS THEM, CHANGE ME...AGAIN

[The following is a reprint of my blog of February 28, 2012.]

A couple of quick thoughts that I read this morning really caught my attention. The first was just four words: “fascinated by our sins” and the other, “the attainment of a merciful heart.”

Each of these was personal to me…”fascinated by our sins” spoke of my, back in the day, getting bogged down in my rues, regrets and remorses. I would never have put that label on it because “fascinated” has such a glitzy sound to me…like, something good I’m seeing or experiencing. I am reminded of the snake…is it the cobra?…that the story says holds one in thrall in order to strike…and kill. Which pretty much describes getting bogged down in regrets. Caught up in a fascination of my sins leads to a deadening…a deadening of spirit, mind, want to…want to do anything but mull those regrets.

The other, “the attainment of a merciful heart,” spoke to my today’s focus…finding understanding within me for Rush [Limbaugh] and Franklin [Graham]. The quote is attributed to Isaac of Syria who said, in part, that the attainment of a merciful heart comes from constantly offering prayers with tears for the enemies of truth.

I felt both comforted and electrified by the words “with tears.” I doubt Isaac meant that the way I’m experiencing it, but for today I've got to believe that the tears are for my inability to move off of my resistance to those two. I still just have a strong desire to smack them.

Bless them, change me…sigh.

Thank you.

ON GOING BEYOND REASONING

Friends and enemies merge into the one Self, and that Self is the God-Self appearing as infinite individuality...as an infinity of people and things. -- Joel Goldsmith, "The Heart of Mysticism," p. 760.

To realize oneness...all there is is One...we must realize the universality of God. When we realize that God and I are one, all enemies (and friends) disappear, melding into the One.

It is the ego-based reasoning mind that resists the very concept of oneness. Its need to feel unique, special, important, better than you in a word, will ever question the very idea that oneness is even a desirable thing.

The person stuck in the reasoning mind, self-identified as "analytical," will argue endlessly, not until he understands the proposition, but until she approves it. And the ego-victory mind can never approve giving over its power to an unseen, unprovable power...or just plain giving over. It will fight until three days after the last dog is dead.

We must go beyond reason to love.

Thank You.

SLOW DOWN

A friend tells me that we talk about two years ahead of where we are. I hope that is true because what I talk and what I walk are sometimes in two different centuries...no, in truth, that's a feeling not a fact. Sometimes it just feels like two different centuries. So if it's only two years...hooray!

I am reminded of a wise old man I knew some 40 years ago who was forever saying, "The most spiritual thing you're ever going to do is slow down." I, of course, thought he was full of it and sped away from him.

But I never forgot that, and it may well have been two years before I realized that as truth...whatever we are speeding to get...or to lose...becomes our god of the moment. We are 100% focused on that self-determined objective...probably praying, "Please, God, help me get/get away from this that I have determined is necessary to my life."

Be patient. The path of self-discipline that leads to God-realization is not an easy path: obstacles and sufferings are on the path; the latter you must bear, and the former overcome -- all by His help. His help comes only through concentration. Repetition of God's name helps concentration. -- Swami Ramdas

Thank you.

THIS TOO SHALL PASS

We honor that which we resist by giving it presence...it is nothing, it has no power nor presence except that which we give it by resisting it. And that only in our own mind.

I awoke this morning saying, "Resist nothing." And I immediately thought of three different people I am resisting because they are wrong (and disrespectful into the bargain) and I am right (and being very decent about it…according to me at any rate).

I then thanked God that he knows my needs. Out loud I said "Yes...yes to each of the three, and I invite them each to be exactly and to do precisely what they are being and doing according to my judging eyes so that I can, with you, overcome my own self that I am seeing in them."

I then picked up my Goldsmith, "The Heart of Mysticism," and at pages 756-757, I read: It is a constant remembrance that 'This too shall pass,' and then...carrying on one's affairs in the realization that whatever the name or nature of the 'this,' it will pass, not by any concerted effort of our own...but by virtue of the nothingness of this 'it' which we have been honoring by fighting.

That's it! I honor that which I resist by giving it presence. It is nothing; it has no power nor presence except that which I give it by resisting it. And that only in my own mind.

God loves me so much.

Thank you.

RETURN TO OUR DECISION...REPEATEDLY

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed. -- Saint Francis De Sales

My BFO: Staying power - the only thing that determines personal staying power is our own willingness...even when there is no desire.

The big whoop is learning that the willingness is not to stay with our own idea of what we believe we need. No. The key is to be willing to open our mind...to admit that although we know what it is we want, we do not know what it is we need. 

The fact is that deciding what it is we actually want takes a lot of pondering. Once we can make a decision as to what it is we want, then we let God do his perfect work in and through us. The other big whoop, is that what we get is often not be what we thought we wanted...but we will know that it is exactly what we need.

God can and will intervene in our lives in our behalf...it is just that the reasoning mind doesn't always recognize God's perfect work right off. That's when our staying power comes in...we rest in our admission of utter defeat and...repeatedly...return to our decision to let go and let God.

Thank You.

FORGIVENESS...GRACE RELEASED

My morning's blinding flash of the obvious: We will never know peace until we let go of our personal sense of right and wrong.

Our personal sense of right and wrong is our petty fears...not getting or losing ours, someone getting over on us, getting unfairly slapped down (has there ever been a "fairly slapped down"?)...any one of which, when we're in the midst of it, is our God. We focus totally on it and will not allow ourselves to know peace until we win or it loses.

More important to me today, though, in knowing peace is the fact that we lose, or never build on, our childhood sense of wonder at life itself. To me, that is simply encouraging our own intuition to blossom, to grow. It seems we are "sore afraid" of our own intuitive sense.

I have discovered that I am a very intuitive person. I like to think of myself as the Grandma Moses of spiritual growth...meaning I am unlearned, self-taught, simplistic..."no frills," in fact. But early on I intuitively knew a truth that set me on the spiritual path of my life. I relied on that and it has never failed me.

I also learned, however, to check myself out...because at first we can't be sure if we're getting God's word or our own wishing/dreading thinking. We learn to build on our intuitive thoughts, nourish them with spiritual readings, take careful first steps at trusting them...until we get that click-click, and we know.

We spend way too much time trying to rid ourselves of our uglies while ignoring God's pearl within. I'm convinced that it is within our intuitive sense that the capacity to forgive lives. It for sure doesn't live in the reasoning mind...or in my reasoning mind at any rate. I have never been able to think my way into forgiving any person even associated with my personal sense of being wronged.

I have forgiven, however, and even wondered how I got so blessed as to give that. Of course it was, of course it is, grace. Grace released and blessing the forgiver and the forgiven, and I am grateful.

Thank You.

THE BEST: EGO REDUCTION IN DEPTH

Both "God Calling" and Eknath Easwaran today are about resisting, the need to resist wrong...to overcome, conquer, wrong.

Easwaran - We need to be able to recognize wrong desires and resist them.

"God Calling" -  Whatever it is must be surmounted, overcome....Do not let a difficulty conquer you. You must conquer it.

Both seem to spit in the face of the one claiming, "Resist not evil," and "We have given up fighting anything and anybody." "Seem" is the word to pay attention to there.

They are both right, they just don't go all the way through to the farthest side where we find that rising to conquer is, in fact, surrendering. All through the rest of both books is the same theme of giving up to win, ceding our ego-power to God-power.

It is that our reasoning mind gets first crack and generally goes the way of the ego, which is always in it to win it, and thus does not like "We have given up fighting" one little bit. However, when we slow our thoughts down to think it through, we recognize that this advice is the first paragraph in the "How To" book of life.

This is the paragraph where we make our decision to conquer through another way than the way we've lived so far; i.e., by our ego-based reasoning mind.

Again, per "God Calling," Remember that life's difficulties and troubles are not intended to arrest your progress, but to increase your speed. You must call new forces, new powers into action.

Easwaran goes on to quote St. Teresa of Avila: We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can -- namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.

I believe, as so many spiritual leaders teach, that we win by giving up. Giving up self-determined objectives to be precise. We must let go to get...let go of the good to get the better...let go of the better to get the best. This is also known as "ego reduction in depth."

Thank You.

TRUDGING THE ROAD

A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. -- Albert Einstein

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians we have the premier texts of the evolving concepts of the Cosmic Christ: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians1:15). Did you get that? The firstborn of all creation! So what happened in him, and what it means to be born again, is to be born into this new experience. He was the firstborn and we are the second-born. “For in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth” (Colossians1:16). Here we have the Cosmic Christ. He is not just saving “human beings.” But all of Creation is included—Earth, birds, and animals, too. Now we have a truly Cosmic Christ. Now we have a notion of salvation that includes everybody and everything that exists on this planet. Finally history coheres and “in him all things hold together” (Colossians1:17) – Fr Richard Rohr, “Daily Meditations,” July 1, 2013

To me, these two separate quotes say in essence the same thing...Einstein, from the material world; Rohr's quote of Paul, from the spiritual world. They both state quite clearly, to me at any rate, that there is only one mind, one world, one concept, One...and as long as we chose to live in our own idea of me AND you, right AND wrong, good AND bad, we will live in our own world of resistance to reality.

When I say they both state quite clearly to me, I do not mean I therefore walk, talk, eat and breath that which I can understand "quite clearly." No...I can understand from my eyebrows up. The walking it, the as-I-breath consciousness is slooow slogging...but I give myself points that I'm heading in the right direction, "trudging the road of happy destiny."

Thank You.

ONE AND NOW ARE ONE

If we are not prepared to realize the unity of life, the Lord in his infinite love will let us suffer until we are forced to change our ways. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," November 8.

The "realization of the unity of life" is awakening to the reality of Oneness. That awakening opens us to the realization of Now, the fact that One and Now are inseparable...one is now is one.

Further, per Easwaran, The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow. Since the qualifier is, "If we are not prepared to realize the unity of life...," I'd say that by our degree of resistance to sorrow, to pain (to anything our ego-victory minds will not accept, actually), we set the bar for our own misery.

I've ever been drawn to the movement of non-violence...victory through non-violence (to me, non-resistance). The Civil Rights movement, the life and acts of Gandhi, for example. It seems to me one's very soul must be prepared to accept the fact of pain if one is truly resolved to achieve victory through non-violence. I can't imagine how one could do that without an equal resolve to forgive, to live forgiveness for those dealing out the pain as they are dealing out the pain. 

I remember the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, and the fact that those who boycotted...non-violently...won sang in my heart. The best part, I've come to realize, is that by their winning, both sides won for they all came out the better for it...whether or not all knew it.

Keeping it simple (for my own self), resistance is self-will, non-resistance is God's will, and I'd rather have God's will done in my life than my will...no matter what my ego-victory mind says.

Thank You.

AND GOD'S CIRCLE GROWS

"If we are resentful, we will be resented." That's a clearer way of saying, "What goes around comes around" which is what is known as "karma."

The best way to work with karma is to take nothing personally...taking nothing personally makes one transparent. To be transparent (non-resistant) is to let resentment flow through us; when we are resistant, we become opaque and are as Velcro to resentment...ours, yours, theirs. 

However, we cannot live in this world on only one side of the coin...every action has a reaction. That is one reason we seek still more spiritual growth. It is learning to live by spiritual principles (of the Sermon, say) that when, not if, we are wrong, we can lovingly (or without undo dramatics at any rate) extract ourselves from our own skunk-junk. 

Our job is to keep constant contact with our inner Self in order to pull ourselves back from living in another's resentment. This clears the way for God to do Its perfect work in and through us so we can help others to keep constant contact with their inner Self...and the beat goes on, God's circle of love keeps growing.

Thank You.

UNKNOWABLE TO THE REASONING MIND

Per Fr Richard Rohr, "spiritual power is always hidden inside of powerlessness," and yet we often hear so-called gurus pontificate on how to "get your power back," like that's an asset.

We're going down that wrong road again if we're wanting our power back...once we've truly given our so-called, self-identified power over, we leave it there. The rest of our journey is all about leaving it there and building our trust, our faith, on the personal power and promise of God within us/without us. Your power, my power, our power is God power, i.e. love...non-resistance, acceptance, gratitude, grace.

Our humanness will not easily let go of the belief that we need to protect ourselves. The reasoning mind's "need to protect" is code for resist, fight or at least get over on. No. We rest in the assurance that God can and will intervene in our lives on our behalf. Then let It.

We begin again detaching from our own opinion about the person, the situation...begin again taking ownership of our part in it...and if we truly can find no way do we own any part of it, then we ponder why we cannot accept that. Finding no suitable-to-our-reasoning-mind answer, we turn again to God who in a blinding flash of the obvious blesses us with Its answer of peace, unknowable to the reasoning mind.

This only fails when we fail to do it...to take the necessary steps.

Thank You.

BE NOT AFRAID, ACCEPT IT

I keep recalling the answering machine message someone told me about awhile back. You call, his answering machine picks up with, "It's not them."

That's the answer to life itself, according to me. It is never him. It is never her. It is never the taxman, the boogeyman, the scarecrow...it is ever and always I.

Reminds me of the New Testament story of the Main Man walking across the water, and the men in the boat being scared silly...Main Man says, "Be not afraid...it is I."

Whatever we're seeing that is scaring us silly, with the fear feeling like hurt/anger, try to remember: It is I. It is peace, joy, love coming to our rescue...be not afraid, accept it.

Thank You.

GOD DISCLOSES HIMSELF TO US AS LOVE

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: Just call His name. That's all.

When we are dealing with personal relationships that at the moment feel tight, opaque, confining...the answer is ever the same: Turn our minds and our motives inward...and wait. According to Eknath Easwaran, "Calling on the Lord in our heart by repeating his Name, we find access to our deeper reserves of devotion, firmness, and love."

Every idea, every solution that comes to the reasoning mind, is still a self-determined objective. It may be right, but even when right, by depending on our own self, we're going down that wrong road again. Even the relatively simplistic book (and thus my favorite) "God Calling" states, "Do not seek to realize this...as the result of effort."

And while we're waiting on the Lord, we can take a look at this person(s) who has stepped on our toes, seemingly without provocation. If we look, we will invariably find that we have made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. (That from another spiritual source that is never failing.)

Owning our part is the for-certain-sure way to clear our access for God's "deeper reserves of devotion, firmness, and love" to flow forth.

The eternal question, of course, is, why don't we leap to do that? Why do we linger in that ego-victory land of angry hurt (right's righteous masquerade), where we hurt so justifiably and so futilely? After all, if we simply change our mind, we can immediately know God disclosing himself to us as love.

Thank You.

RESIST NOTHING

I had a dream once that I was at the shore, wading in the ocean. A wave knocked me down; I was immediately caught in the riptide and pulled out to sea. I knew I was drowning, and I heard me say, "Just breathe through the water, just breathe." And I did and walked away.

This morning I read from The Illuminated Rumi:

Late, by myself, in the 

boat of myself, 

no light and no land 

anywhere.

Cloud cover thick.

 I try to stay 

just above the surface, 

Yet I'm already under 

and living 

within 

the ocean.

Thank You.

GOD IS THE PERFECT RECYCLER

All of us are so liable to human error that unless we have some capacity to bear with the errors of others, we will not be able to maintain a lasting relationship with anybody.... - "Words to Live By," Eknath Easwaran, November 2

I was with a friend I love yesterday, and she was just irate over the petty carping and whining of others. The more she thought on it, the more irate she got...and the more she carped and whined about it. God loves me so much that he let me be satisfied with just making listening noises.

Why I believe that God loves me so much is not only that I could be satisfied with just making listening noises...it is that I saw me so clearly in her carps and whines in regard to another's carps and whines!

And just this morning, here comes Fr Richard Rohr in his "Daily Meditation," saying, "God's one-of-a-kind job description is that God actually uses our problems to lead us to the full solution."

I'm of a mind that God uses our problems as a mirror...whoever or whatever we're resisting at the moment stands before us as our mirror. Whatever we're seeing as wrong, petty, horrific, disgusting...we're doing it in the judging of it. It is cosmic and it is without fail. I've tried my best to prove this wrong and have failed consistently.

Some years ago, I almost quit a job because of a co-worker who disrespected me daily. (I disrespected him right back, "but he did it first.") One day, in a blinding flash of the obvious, I wrote a note to me that said, "I am seeing X as real. X is not real, X is me. I am seeing me, and I am resisting me. I cannot stop that, change that, make that in any way different. I can, however, now that I've realized it, take it into my consciousness and let it perk. God can and will perfect it." And God did. That co-worker and I parted that job sometime later as friends.

The rest of Fr Rohr's quote is worth noting: "God is the perfect Recycler, and in the economy of grace, nothing is wasted, not even our worst sins nor our most stupid mistakes. God does not punish our sins, but uses them to soften our hearts toward everything."

Thank You.