WE ARE THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.... -- from The Lord's Prayer

That passage is the only one in the Lord's prayer in which we commit to doing our part...all the rest we're just stating our expectations of the Lord. Letting him know he's got his work cut out for us. But on those eight words hang all the rest of the prayer...all the rest of our lives in fact.

Broken down to the specifics, the prayer states:

thy kingdom come
thy will be done

give us this day our daily bread
forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

lead us not into temptation
deliver us from evil

I submit if we live to forgive...friend or foe, known or unknown...Thy kingdom is ours because Thy will is being done through us. We will be forever fed by that forgiving heart which cannot be led into temptation, and we are thereby delivered from the evil of our ego.

In a perfect world.

And we are the keeper of the keys to that perfect world.

Thank you.

GRACED AND BLESSED

I am convinced that the only thing blocking our doing God's will consistently is our resistance to what he's offering. And, of course, that resistance is based on our own idea of what he's offering.

We hear, "Let go and let God." We say it...repeatedly. Nine times out of ten, even as we pray for God's will, we're picturing our want, our self-perceived need. Then we're gifted with what appears to be the exact opposite of what we perceived we needed! In fact, it often seems to be the one thing we're praying it won't be.

Having no choice, we accept what we got, and, through gritted teeth, thank God for it. Then, YOWZER. it comes to be that what we got was and continues to be much...oh, so much...better than our initial desire. We are forced to realize and accept that only God could have pulled it off.

A thank you prayer: Thank you, God, that I want your will done in my life more than I want my own will done in my life no matter what. Open-ended. Knock yourself out, God. Do your thing. You got the power, use it. You're nothing but good so nothing but good can come from you no matter what it looks like to my eyes. You'll make it clear to me when it needs to be clear to me. I am graced with gratitude and blessed with love. Amen

Thank you.

BELIEVING, TRULY BELIEVING

Reason is like an officer when the King appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun. -- Rumi

We cannot solve the problems of the mind with the mind. -- The Buddha

We must one day pass beyond discursive thinking and enter into a higher mode of knowing. -- Eknath Easwaran

Guess who is driving herself bat-stuff crazy trying to figure out how to be a forgiving person. How to reason her way To Be...A Forgiving Person.

I read those quotes and I agree with them 100 percent, not for the first or the 41st time, may I say. There is nothing in me that disagrees, nothing that says "Yes, but...." Unfortunately, the names of half dozen people who need them pop up, and my name is not one of the half dozen.

From my eyebrows up I've got how to do it: The minute I have a judgmental thought...real or fancied...mentally say, "I forgive." Do not get into specifics of what I am forgiving, else the specific becomes my hook. Just "I forgive" and let God fill in the rest by forgiving. Could it be any more simple?

Blinding flash of the obvious: It is the part about letting God do the forgiving that my reason resists.

It comes back to believing, truly believing, that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf. Or as God Calling says on this very date: "For prayer, believing prayer, is based on the certainty that I am working for you and with you and in you."

I'll realize that I am already a forgiving person when God knows I'm ready to realize that...and God is never too early or too late.

Thank you.

LIVING LOVINGKINDNESS

[The following is a reprint of my blog of December 22, 2008.]

I was thinking this morning of lovingkindness, and what a peaceful word that is.

Then I thought simply of kindness, and a little prayer started to form, in effect asking for more kindness. Before the prayer formed, the answer was there…I already have all the kindness there is to have…all I need do is show it, put it out there, use it.

This is not new information, of course. I learned long ago that as long as I keep asking to be kinder, more loving, more generous, less judgmental…all the goodies…the more I deny the kindness I have, the love I am already filled with, and so forth.

The real problem is the fool-myself Catch-22…I feel downright righteous about asking for all these fine-sounding, God-approved things, totally ignoring the fact that all that I seek was bestowed in me before conception.

It is the act of giving over to another, in lovingkindness, that primes the pump for all the goodies to flow. And it is the lovingkindness that requires still more spiritual growth. My human nature, my ego-victory mind, does not give over just because I want to. To give over by keeping my mouth shut (and thinking judgmental thoughts) is just breeding a resentment.

Living lovingkindness, then, is the goal.

Thank you.

THE DIVINE PARADOX

How privileged we are to understand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection; that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth. -- Anonymous

There is a divine paradox and it is that strength does rise from weakness, humiliation does go before resurrection; that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth. 

We who are forced by our own decisions to know this paradox for truth...to realize it by walking through our weakness, our humiliation, our pain...we are blessed. But the greater truth is that this is a divine paradox for all, everywhere...or it is not truth at all, it's fantasy...or luck...or magic thinking.

We who are "privileged to understand" are blessed because we gave away our choice to accept or not such as "divine" or "spiritual" or "God."  If we want to live happy, joyous and free (and who doesn't?), we throw in with divine and spiritual...with God. According to me. 

Thank you.

TO FORGIVE WITHOUT THOUGHT

Forgiveness...the very act of forgiving. I still have a hard climb over my ego trying to embrace just the word "forgive." It sounds sanctimonious to me. Holier than thou. Yet the majority of my prayers for (that which I preach about not doing, i.e., praying for) is a prayer for forgiveness of myself...for not forgiving.

The only thing in this world that keeps me from forgiving is my unwillingness to change my mind. Just on the basis of how it sounds, I keep me wrapped up in self, pondering.

See why we're advised not to analyze? Until we're willing to seek and accept another's help (which we belatedly realize as seeking God), the only thing self-analyzation leads to is more self-analyzation.

To forgive without thought...ah, there's the grail.

Thank you.

THE THIEF WAITING BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

The thief waiting by the side of the road in order to steal all our worldly goods? That thief is ego. The worldly goods? Those are self-determined add-ons. They begin with fear...namely, fear of losing all our worldly goods.

I am reminded: My gifts are not of this world...be of good cheer I have overcome this world.

I want to remember that it seems every time I hear of or read about a better or deeper or easier or harder Way, I immediately KNOW I am (and have been all along) doing it wrong, and I need to try this other Way.

What I really need to remember is that that is the thief waiting by the side of the road.

Thank you.

THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME

We know this because the still small voice has told us so.

That was a blinding flash of the obvious which I wrote about a couple of days ago. The trouble with rereading is I see, or think I see, my own arrogance. It is towering. Or is that just more ego?

I woke up this morning with Edith Piaf's song about no regrets playing in my head. That's one of my favorites from way back in the '60s when I was a walking-around regret and didn't even know it...had not a clue.

But the song made me realize that I have no reason for regrets today. Which isn't to say I don't have regrets, I just have no reason for them. But I read that sentence and blushed from my toenails up. It sounds so arrogant to my eye.

There. That's no doubt the key to "tell no man" which refers to spiritual lights going off in our head and trying to tell another about it. Nothing extinguishes the light quicker, and we lose our inch forward into the bargain.

I just give myself points that I didn't delete the sentence when I reread it...let it stand, if it really is my arrogance on parade, let it march. Hiding it won't stop the arrogance, but it will allow me to believe I've taken care of it. Just another CYA waiting to spring out somewhere else to take me unawares.

That's a "thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" as he shepherds me through my life.

Thank you.

SILENCE IS THE KEY

For those of us who seek, the value of an unquiet mind is this: We are  required by its very demands to think that unquietness through.

The kicker is that "through" means to surrender...think it through unto surrender. It does not mean until we've figured it out. By the very process of analyzing, we come out more convinced than ever that we were right to begin with. And the unquiet continues its painful ride.

To try to still the unquiet without surrender is to nurture that unquiet...and thus it becomes our perceived reality. What we suspected, dreaded, just knew is now "real," and that reality becomes our god. And we live in that unquiet mind...with the added spurs of guilt because we "can't help it."

The hardest part of the whole process is accepting the fact that our reasoning mind is clueless as to the perfect outcome. We have conditioned our mind to believe it has, or should have, the right answer and to seek help is be a loser.

It is the beginning of spiritual growth when we realize that the word "help" is of God. It is a complete thought...sentence...paragraph, and silence is its key.

There is no ego gold in spiritual growth. Like charity, spiritual growth is its own reward...and, again, silence is its key.

Thank you.

GOD AS LOVE...ONLY LOVE

Sit quietly with our attention focused on the Within, the still small voice will thunder....Only one thing is necessary and that is to wait until there is a stirring or a feeling which is our assurance that God has uttered His voice. -- Joel Goldsmith, "The Heart of Mysticism," at p. 1135.

We sit. We get still. We see God as love, only love, love flowing without boundaries. Love as a source and a force of love, that is all. In all the world, there is only love. We see each of everybody and everything, every grain of sand and every drop of water, as that very love shaped into the form chosen before conception.

We know this because the still small voice has told us so.

Thank you.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

All disagreements, all arguments, all wars start with self-centered fear (for what other kind is there?). And I believe that that fear births disrespect, the driver of all disagreements. One person, one side, one party, one country disrespects the other simply by not listening.

The disrespect is in the first one's belief that she is right and he is wrong, and the other's belief that she is wrong, that he is right...so why listen?

And neither one will sit down, get quiet within and without, and ask for the grace of guidance. Not for how to win him over, not to get her to see the right way...according to her, she is already seeing the right way, and it is her way. Nor will either ponder ways to see the problematic issue from the other's viewpoint.

That is at the core of disrespect. Which is also the core of fear. The fear being I may be wrong...and will look like a fool, be laughed at, humiliated.

So, humanity itself rests on the minute feeling of self-centered fear from which disrespect blooms and nuclear bombs are born which prove too annihilating to use so heads are chopped off which make nuclear bombs seem like the only answer.

I'm guessing the whole world knows the right answer...and we wait for the other side to do it first lest we look like the loser.

Please. Thank you. Amen.

LOVE, LAUGH AND GET OVER YOURSELF

We no longer have anything to prove or protect, so we can let go and surrender to Reality/God, which are now experienced as the same thing.  Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," 12/20/14

Now there's an old idea put into a new concept to me...reality and God as the same thing. And my ego immediately goes, "Well, what do you think you've been learning all these years? How dense are you?"

The good news is I have been learning all these years, and the most important thing I've learned is to let my ego say whatever it wants...I have ceased fighting. Right behind that most important thing, and the key to its importance, is: Love and laugh. That's takes both the sting and the self-importance out of the ego's words.

Immediately after having my uplifting talk with me, I happened to glance into my foyer. My beloved Ruckus had peed there...on the marble foyer. I neither loved nor laughed. All the while I'm cleaning up and having a real hissy fit, Ruckus is sitting there looking at me with adoring eyes. I had to hug him.

As I hugged him, I thought, "There. That's the answer...whatever is coming at you, pee on the marble or rose petals on the wind, look at it with adoration.  And adoration will be returned."

At least in my dog's world.

Thank you.

THE COMFORT OF UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

I just love when I hear or read something that perfectly describes me and comes from someone I consider a spiritual giant.

Like today, Fr. Richard Rohr in his Daily Meditation wrote: "I’m so aware of what I’m not and of how phony I am and of how I say it so much better than I live it."

I have said those very words often and often...to myself at first, but now to others. The impossible truth is that  every time I have admitted that, I have felt comforted. How can that be? And who would think it possible..especially before actually out loud sharing it?

I thought it a long time before I ever risked saying it aloud to another. The first time we share a less-than-wonderful truth about ourselves it feels like a monumental risk. I mean, what if the listener gives a resounding, "Ain't that the truth?!" Or, worse, titters, "Oh, no, that's not true, dear."

Interestingly, when I first felt that I knew how phony I was, it turned out to be an ego trip in reverse...beating up on me hoping that was humility. It's not. It's just ego still playing its siren song. The fact is, how phony I am today means I'm not all that much. I'm fairly straight forward, as in, what you see is what you get...unless someone catches me unawares, and I go to my default CYA. All I can do then is admit it and move on.

The one that is as true today as it was the first time I ever admitted to it is, "I say it so much better than I live it."  I expect that will be true three days after I am dead. Here's the gold: That's what keeps us seeking still more spiritual growth. Why seek if we think we already have it all?

Thank you.

GOD WILL FLOW FORTH

Trying too hard to "get it" is as detrimental to spiritual growth as dismissing it all as happy talk. Mainly because we can't get spiritual growth.  Seeking to get is the ego-victory mind determining and dictating. As long as that is the case, we will be seeking our wants...dressed up pretty with a lot of spiritual-sounding words, but they will still be wants.

Wants are of the ego, needs are of God.

We have within, at our core, the Spirit...God. If we are seeking still more spiritual growth, our need is to detach from our reasoning mind, go to our center, and open our heart, our mind, our Soul. God will flow forth...in Its own good time.

According to me.

Thank you.

LOVE BEGETS LOVE

My dream: I'm all bent out of shape over what I think they think. I'm judging them for judging me. I know they have found me guilty without ever talking to me to hear my side. I know they all agree that I am wrong and they are right, and they will shame me silently in the public square.

I awoke to the thought that this is my greatest fear, being secretly shamed in the silent open.

In pondering my dream, I'm hit with the realization that I keep my greatest fear riding herd by my reactive judging...it is not their judging me, it is me judging them that causes my obsessive pain.

I tested this for several minutes and found when I turn to any kind thought toward them...any kind thought at all...I am quieted. There comes a feeling of peace which, when held, grows and becomes loving...until I invite a defensive thought up and out. The fear with its lash-back springs forth as if it had never gone away.

I had the dream last night, and these are from my readings this morning:

We all needed to prove we were right. Have you noticed that people who need to prove they are right cannot laugh or smile? * * * My true identity and my deepest freedom comes from God’s infinite love for me, not from what people think of me or say about me. Both the people who praise me and those who hate me are usually doing it for the wrong reasons.  -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 17, 2014.

Love begets love. - Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," December 17.

I love when I realize a spiritual answer and right after read that which tells me I'm on the right track heading in the right direction.

God loves me so much...you, too.

Thank you.

GOD PROTECTS US FROM NOTHING

Sometimes I feel like I'm learning spiritual principles just so I can beat myself up for not living by spiritual principles.

It was a heart breaker and a mind bender when the writings of Mother Teresa were published after her death. I identified way more than I wanted to. And in what world is that an acceptable reality...I identified too much with Mother For Heaven's Sake Teresa! But she was some kind of hard on herself for not living up to her own God standards.

That's one of the giftees I get from journaling...I can look back a year or more later and read about what I was mentally arm-wrestling with back when. It is usually a jolt when I realize...and fairly often...that that problem has been cleared...either resolved in my favor or transmuted as another piece of gold for me to learn to love.

And there's the joy...recognizing a personal rue, regret, remorse as the gold I get to love.

I'm probably putting on airs, but I'm reminded of Fr. Richard Rohr's writing in his "Daily Meditation" of December 4th:  However, as a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.

Thank you.

EXQUISITE WILDFLOWERS HIDDEN WITHIN

[God] creates exquisite wildflowers in hidden valleys that no human eye will ever see—just for the inherent joy and beauty of it! -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 15, 2014

As I read that the thought occurred that this exquisite place is within us, and it is only reachable through attunement with God.

To realize our attunement, first, we come to believe there is that place within. Then that it is reachable only through God's lifting us deeper into it. The  reasoning mind cannot get us there, and thinking, trying only creates a more impenetrable mental block.

Meditation in whatever form we meditate is one path. Opening our mind to the unacceptable as God's gift to us is another.

We make ourselves available to God...we clear our mind without straining,,,we sit and wait on the Lord.

No one knows the day or hour the bridegroom will come. [From somewhere in the Bible.]

Thank you.

GRATITUDE AND GRACE

Gratitude is the handmaiden of grace. Grace leaves us with our facts unchanged, but our feelings about our facts upgraded, uplifted, enlightened.

We know peace by developing and maintaining an attitude of gratitude. Then, no matter the appearance to our reasoning mind's eye, grace through our own gratitude lets us realize...again and again and, yes, again...that this, too, is God's will. All is well.

Thank you.

DEBATING ONLY DELAYS ARRIVAL

So I'm talking with a friend who was a construction worker until he was like 40 years old. He is now a professor at a well-known university and pretty happy about it...as who wouldn't be?

He is now seeking more, and the more he is seeking is spiritual growth. And resisting every spiritual concept he is given, or is led to, or arrives at on his own. To him, spiritual concepts do not make reasoning mind sense...which is indeed true and is the whole point!

My friend does not yet know that he is delighting in shooting down every concept through logic. His bottom line being, why would one change one's mind when one is provably right?

Which I am (delighting in) resisting obsessively.

My ah-ha! My fretting about convincing John that he needs to get out of his reasoning mind world is ME still in my reasoning mind world.

I can't convince spiritual consciousness onto or into anyone. I have a hard enough time staying put...or, actually, bringing myself back there when I get up in my own head.

All I need to remember is...all paths lead to God, we'll get where we need to get to when we get there. Debating only delays arrival.

If we are growing spiritually, we are depending less on our reasoning mind and more on our intuition, and that really cannot be black-and-white proven, according to me.

Thank you.

WHETHER WE REALIZE IT OR NOT....

Whether we know it or not...whether we understand it or not...whether we believe it or not...God has already provided for our every need.

Whether we know it or not...whether we understand it or not...whether we believe it or not...every fear of past, present or future is ego born and reasoning mind bred. There is no God there.

Whether we know it or not...whether we understand it or not...whether we believe it or not...we are God's vessel...now...for his use in pouring himself forth...now.

We do not earn this, we cannot go get this, praying for it blocks our realization of its truth. We need only say "thank you," and be at peace.

Thank you.

ON THE ART OF FOREVER CHANGING

Just change your mind...seems simple enough. Who knew there's a real process to it? Which process begins with our not trying to change our minds.

We get to experience the trepidation of un-knowing: We don't know, and we don't know what we don't know. That can leave one feeling clueless and powerless...the mother of hopeless. Which is fairly hard to love.

Then we are gifted with the why of our feeling so clueless and powerless. It is because we start off in our own mind trying to think of ways to change it. And that can't be done. That's akin to staying in our own bed trying to think our way into a new home...in a different city.

The realization that we want to...that we need to...change our minds begins the process. Then we learn through trial and error that the change is not in saying how right you are or how wrong I am. No. The first step in the right direction goes beyond reason, giving us a strong sense of  "this feels wrong." That's because our reasoning mind has always been our safety zone...our ultimate security.

Here comes God to save the day!

We discover our great gift is our hopelessness. It's the necessary that sets us on the path into a new consciousness. We get a glimmer of the fourth dimension within us. Ever so slightly and oh so seldom, but we know from our toenails up that this now is where we want to live...and that it is possible.

We have changed our mind. We have been lifted from the false and fleeting security of the mental and delivered deeper into the true and forever security of the spiritual.

The bad news...we get to do this repeatedly, daily, forever most likely. The good news...same goes.

Thank you.

BEING IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF IT

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -- Attributed to Edmund Burke

Every time I read that, I immediately think that that justifies war.

Then I remember the anonymous quote, We have ceased fighting anything and anybody.

And I realize again the difference between living in a reasoning mind world and living in a spiritually based world.

I am a believer that we get to choose which mindset we will live in. And neither is the right way or the wrong way...if our mind is set in the reasoning mind world and we're happy there, why change?

However, for some of us, life makes our decision. By our choices, our very life itself hands us an unfixable-to-our-reasoning-mind problem, and it is horrendous, and we are hurting beyond our capacity to accept it. There. That's when our minds are changed for us.

In a heartbeat, we bump into the fourth dimension, and, knowingly or unknowingly, we have made a U-turn...somehow a higher power we may never have considered necessary or even "real" is in our lives.

We begin to realize the necessity for daily contact with that higher power, which we find by getting quiet and seeking a new way to live our lives. Acceptance sneaks into our consciousness...as a good thing.

All our efforts now are not in "getting" but in detaching from...from our old ideas, our reasoning mind solutions. There's very little, if any, physically running around activity required. It's much harder than that...our answer is in getting quiet and waiting. We get to sit and wait on the Lord...all the while carrying out our daily life. We're learning to be in the world but not of it.

The process of detaching daily from self, listening for the still, small voice, brings a peace beyond reason. We can now aim, like Chief Joseph, to "fight no more forever."

Thank you.

ALL IS WELL

A dear friend of mine had to let her little dog go back to heaven yesterday, and I feel like my heart is ...missing? All the usuals...heavy, burdened, sad, broken. It is a gray day in my soul. And I know this gray mantle is also for my other beloveds...Si and Carlton and Lily and Sandy and now Nellie.

This is a clear example of what we know doesn't determine how we feel...feelings trump knowledge in the p.d.q. of life. But isn't that (or something like it) what our seeking still more spiritual growth is all about? Our quandary is the fact that denying our feelings is a shortcut to more misery, and whoever was able to just not think? Especially about something we don't want to think about!

And a bright light flickers...our need is to quit depending on how we feel, what we think (key word, "depending").

So we don't deny. We give ourselves permission to feel whatever, without self-censor, in the certain knowledge that dwelling there is a no-go. We then begin to change our mind. To make the turn from our reasoning mind's very legitimate recognition of our broken heart to the equally very legitimate recognition that gratitude is our answer. And we pray, "Thank you."

Thank you.

WE SHALL HEAR ANGELS

Oh, to go forward a'singin'. There. That's whats missing this morning. I'm feeling burdened, there's no...what? I guess, even humming in my heart. But, thinking on it, the real uh-oh is there's no concrete awful in my life either. Nothing is hanging fire in my worry zone. I just feel dissatisfied.

I went to a wonderful memorial for a friend on Saturday, and in talking it over with friends later, we all agreed we were feeling a tish melancholy...not the morbid melancholy, but the how-sweet-it-was melancholy.

Maybe my well, hell feeling is just a hangover from the melancholia, and my feelings aren't paid to know good melancholy from bad melancholia...if it don't feel good, it's bad, according to them.

That's what happens when we let our feelings dictate our mood...I guess I need to take my own advice: If I upgrade my attitude, I'll upgrade my problem.

And my eyes fall on a Christmas card I received some years ago that I keep on my bulletin board beside me:

we shall find

PEACE,

we shall hear

ANGELS.

we shall see the

SKY

sparkling with

DIAMONDS!

(chekhov)

God loves me so much.

Thank you.

GOD IN THE CHANGED MIND

A Truth: God can and will if sought.

How It Works: Change your mind about the end result of your want, i.e., how and when you get what you want.

Example: I prayed for a million dollars. I was gifted with a dollar. I thought, "Well, I'm not surprised...one lousy dollar isn't going to do me anything. Poor, pitiful, put-upon me. There is no God."

I Changed My Mind: I thought, "Thank you! This is a step in the right direction...if he can gift me with one, he can gift me with more than one. How can I help out?"

Fact: I'm still getting my million, one dollar at a time, but I have never gone hungry, I've never been without a roof over my head, and I've had enough to give something to others.

The Pearl Beyond Price: I haven't thought of myself as poor or pitiful or put-upon in a long time. That's worth more than a million dollars...that's priceless.

Thank you.

MY GRACE IS THY SUFFICIENCY

[The following is a reprint of my blog of December 13, 2009.]

“My grace is sufficient for thee.”

God’s grace is always available. It is not waiting for me to do, think, say some special thing…to earn it. Grace is mine now. God’s grace is the sufficiency I seek…all ways and always.

Just as air is not waiting for me to earn it…it’s there for the breathing.

Thank you.

OUT OF MATERIAL INTO SPIRITUAL

What we see is always ourselves.

It's never what we think it is...when we're fighting, struggling, resisting, after all's said and done, we're amazed to realize, the problem was within our own self to begin with.  And that's if we're doing it right.

If, however, we're thinking, "I sure showed him or I don't take nothing from nobody or she'll think twice before she comes after me again," we've just lost another round to ego.

What we see is always ourselves. There. That's the great cosmic truth, and the only way we ever come to believe that is by simply changing our minds...mental upgrade if you will. Out of the material into the spiritual.

In the reasoning mind world, developing healthy self-esteem is right up there at the top of our wish list. To develop healthy self-esteem we are taught that it is necessary to "take your own part," "stand up for yourself," "make yourself heard."

Healthy anything is better than unhealthy so we never negate healthy self-esteem, but we must change our minds about how we release our unhealthy and let our healthy walk free. Spiritual principles is the how-to key. Learning to live by spiritual principles, we walk free.

Remember...never forget...we must go beyond reason to love, and Eknath Easwaran's instructions for transforming consciousness (or, changing our minds) are profound. He writes,  "To begin...you have to look for the right spot [within yourself ]. In some people it is a particular compulsive craving; in some it is jealousy; in some, blind fury. Some may be fortunate enough to have all three." [Emphasis added.]

That is the nut, the going "beyond reason" core. For how can it make sense to feel "fortunate" to have compulsive cravings, jealousy, blind fury? We are fortunate to have these deep defects of character because nothing else would make us dig as deep as we must, trying to rid ourselves of them only to find complete defeat. This is our lesson...we can dig to the bone, but on our own we're not going to get free.

We must go beyond reason to a power greater than our own reasoning mind if we are ever to be free..."free of me." We must dig deep to be raised higher.

Thank you.

FREED FROM OUR OWN IDEAS

God protects us not from the belly of the beast; God transmutes the belly of the beast to our streets of gold.

This morning's blinding flash of the obvious takes me back to my first deeper realization of love...of the expandable, flexible nature of love. Love not just of other humans (or of another human, two at most), but love as a way of living my life. Filleted, in a word. Because that is what living love as we breathe does...splits us open, leaves us without defenses, invites any and all in...and showers us with joy immeasurable in the doing.

But we have to invite the filleted part before we can know the joy immeasurable part, and there's the stumbling block. I mean, consciously, who isn't going to try to make an end-run around the filleting, going for the joy?

For me, it's just like the biblical "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be added unto you." I could never not think of the added things first, all the while believing I was seeking the kingdom of heaven.

Maybe it all comes back to getting out of our reasoning mind...for we're not stupid, and getting filleted, willingly!, will never qualify for smart to the reasoning mind.

Here comes paradox to save the day! We finally accept that we have to become willing to walk utterly un-self-protected in this world if we are ever to know the utter security of love...of the love we have and have always had within us, waiting to be used.

When we become willing for God to do with us as he will, we are freed from our own idea that we can get the kingdom on our own terms...and we know love.

Thank you.

SPEAK THANK YOU TO GOD, KNOW PEACE

The miracle working power of "thank you" begins the instant we quit fearing that saying "thank you" will cause the disaster we're fearing to happen.

We've probably all heard about the need to develop an attitude of gratitude. I had heard that many times, seriously tried to practice it. I got stuck trying to feel gratitude for the roof over my head, for the air I breathe. My feeling was, I've always had a roof over my head, and everybody has air to breathe...what's in this for me?

Then one day I read, "Meister Eckhart said, 'If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.'”

Thank you as a prayer! I  knew in the instant that was truth.

I still had to speak it (repeatedly) and have it "work" "not work" "work" before I realized the full miracle. Thank you changes the fact of nothing. It does better than that...it changes our attitude about that fearsome fact.

Thank you in the face of a self-perceived disaster relieves us of our resistance...our panic, our self-pity...our rigid, righteous and right. There. Right there is where we are changed...for our fear at that moment is the God of our understanding. Speak thank you to God, to God in whatever form we perceive God to be...and know peace.

A good indicator of whether we're on the right track is when our reasoning mind says, "Huh?" "How?" "I don't get it." We remind ourselves, once again, "We must go beyond reason to love."

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF A NEW PAST

Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains and lying in your loving arms again.

Why that line, from one of my once favorite songs, came to mind just now I don't know. And the OMG is I'm not sure I remember the name of the song...it may be "If They Could See Me Now."

The words that went straight to my heart are "longing for the freedom of my chains." The first time I really heard them, I knew that was where I was living at the time...looking back and longing for the freedom of the chains of my compulsive-addictive-ego-self. I didn't know it then, but that's the place where my rues, regrets and remorses are born, live and, if not transmuted, only grow more vindictive.

Here's the good news: We can let ourselves be gifted with a new past! We do our part, as in we clean up the wreckage of our past, make our amends, atone, forgive...then repeat each of those daily...and by our actions, the God of our own understanding flows forth.

There. That's where, what, why and how our rues, regrets and remorses are transmuted, are revealed as our gold. There's our gift of a new past. 

Without that as our goal, we have become a loving person whose joy is in others. In the peace, love and joy of others. Which showers peace, love and joy on us. 

God is so good to us...for only God could make such a transition.

Thank you.

GO WITH GOD AND BE

More and more I am learning that our wants, our hopes, our desires are in reality our blocks, our stonewalls, to experiencing that which we're wanting. As long as we're praying for anything, we are believing that we are in need of it, that we don't have it. That is the block to our realizing it is already ours.

We hold our deepest desire out in front of us, praying for it to come to us when, in fact, there is nothing we are seeking that we don't already have within.

Once we get the quiet word that what we want is already ours, that we just need to look within to find it, we waste a lot of time trying to make that come true. No...it already is! It is ours to do, to experience, to show forth, to be grateful for.

And the cynic wonders..."So where's my billion bucks? I've looked within and it ain't there." That's why the cynic only lives in the reasoning mind...there is no cynic in God's world. And as long as we're relying on the reasoning mind, we will keep wanting, wishing, desiring our good to come to us. And sometimes it will, sometimes it won't...but even when it does, it's not quite right. Off by a hair. Or it turns into the proverbial, "What was I thinking when I asked for this?!"

Go with God and be the good you want. For the source of our billion bucks is within us...the source of all our good is within us. There from before conception, there now, there three days after we're dead.

Now to live that.

Thank you.