THIS IS NOT AN ACT OF WILL

My heart is singing...my Lord, what a morning! Oh, my Lord, what a morning...when the sun began to shine!

I got my new way of looking at the dust up with my friend. My new way of looking at it is my mind got changed...I saw that the dust up had nothing to do with us. It was and is for our benefit in doing that which we are learning, learning, learning. We are learning to detach from whatever we are resisting which is whatever is less than wonderful to our reasoning mind (accept is another word for detach, according to me). Then we get to become grateful for what is. That is the lesson we are learning.

Now to do it...that is another thing entirely. But it's only "another thing entirely" if we keep not doing it! That's exactly why we keep getting these opportunities. We get opportunities every minute of every hour of every day unto infinity. We are learning to realize that this that we are resisting (thereby attaching to) is our gift. We only need thank God for it, and let it be.

This is not an act of will. If our only goal is for still more spiritual growth, as in to know God aright, we will be led forward in ways beyond our reasoning mind's comprehension. Which means, it usually comes as an "Oh, no!"

I'm guessing that's because we'd never let go of our reliance on our reasoning mind if every fear we conjured up became butterflies and angel dust before our very eyes. Which, come to think of it, is what happens, we just must change our mind about the way we're looking at it.

Oh, my Lord what a morning!

Thank you.

ME AND GOD'S SENSE OF HUMOR

Wow. I just reread yesterday's blog and reminded myself I wrote it in the early morning...because yesterday afternoon I got quadruple slam-dunked by a friend who shamed, blamed and disrespected me up the gump-stump.

My interpretation of the Easwaran quote never entered my mind: i.e., "...give no credence to incoming blame, shame, disrespect, or hostile humor...give out respectful silence, starting in my mind with the first aborning thought." I must say I was less than respectfully silent, calmly accepting the incoming, but I get to give myself points for not responding in kind and for not being as nasty as I wanted to be.

Until this morning when I reread my yesterday's post, I had not thought of it again. In fact, I had been borderline regretting my "less than calmly accepting the incoming."

In the rereading, I was reminded that for me less than calm but not as nasty as I want to be is my road toward still more spiritual growth.

My scrupulosity defect will ever (apparently) tell me I failed 100% because I did not succeed 100%. That defect is my ego's sidekick...its give-up-spiritual-growth road to ego on parade. I loose the worry of it by just seeing it and saying it.

Another example of God's hand in it...I just noted that the last word of yesterday's post was "Uh-oh." Specifically: "...return God's love by doing God's love. Uh-oh." Don't tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor.

Thank you.

RETURN DISRESPECT WITH RESPECT

In the spiritual lore of India, it is said that the Lord whispered only one word in our ears when he sent us into the world: 'Give.'  Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," March 29.

My morning's "ah-ha" is that I need to give by not attaching...give no credence to incoming blame, shame, disrespect, or hostile humor...give out respectful silence, starting in my mind with the first aborning thought.

According to me, "I stand at the door and knock" is the I of me, knocking, needing to be let out. An arrow of hostility is aimed at me, and, through daily discipline, I can open the door to let Me catch the arrow and return it as love.

My entire part in this process is to silently repeat my "thank you" and stay out of My way.

God loves me so much...I return that love by doing that love. Uh-oh.

Thank you.

ANGER, JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR VICTIM

[The following is a reprint of my blog of March 25, 2011.]

If all anger is victim thinking, then all angry fantasies are too...victim writ large on my ego.

I cannot expect to meet such as blatant disrespect with calm without doing the thought-work of “thank you” to everything. Sitting in the silence, picturing a lily of the valley and saying “thank you”…sitting in the silence, picturing a person disrespecting me in front of others and saying “thank you.”

Without thought-work (or positive fantasies), my untrained thoughts will invariably go to victim fantasy, i.e., setting the person straight who disrespected me by disrespecting him/her even bigger, stronger, uglier…and more often than not, setting the person straight who has not yet disrespected me, but I just know s/he is going to, wants to, is doing so behind my back…that kind of victim fantasy.

I have read that by giving up the belief in good and evil, or dual thinking, one moves up to deepest consciousness, known by some as the Garden of Eden, and what I call before-conception consciousness.

A simple “thank you” to everything…good, bad, boring…takes away the ego glory in perceived good and the resistance to perceived evil…and, in effect, leaves one transparent.

Thank you.

ANOTHER GREAT GETTIN' UP MORNING!

I picked up on a line in God Calling today: “You are only beginning the new life....”

I had never noticed that line in particular before. Just reading it filled me with hope and wonder for I know it to be true. That is true whenever we read it...at any and every stage of our lives.

On the spiritual path, that is an awe-inspiring truth...it's true for those not on the spiritual path, too, only the "awe-inspiring" is more like "dread-filled."

As long as we are living a self-determined, self-driven, self-powered life, we're living on the razor's edge of fear.

There are little old people, there are young people today, who are living in less than wonderful outer conditions who get up every morning filled with the grace of gratitude. And there are young and not-so-young billionaires who get up and go to bed every day with a mind living on that razor's edge, some of whom are making that work for them. Good on 'em, I say.

I'm sticking with the grateful folks who remain unmoved in their gratitude. There is no anxiety there, and when there is, all we need do is welcome it. Oh, it's a great gettin' up morning!

Thank you.

GRACE WILL SMILE UPON US

Don't we often think, when we're trying something new and it's going utterly smoothly...no glitches, no doubts, just gliding right along, that that is our proof that this new thing we're trying is God's will? Has to be...it's going oh so smoothly.

And yet, when we're living in a world of selfish desires, our self-determined-objectives world, that "oh so smoothly," can become "oh no" in a heartbeat.

And we will live in that world until we make a decision to learn to live in the grace of gratitude. This is the world of "welcome," smoothly or not so smoothly, "welcome."

Learning to live gratefully as we breathe is a daily discipline. We are learning to discipline our own minds...to detach from resistance in order to become a channel for welcome.

Our daily fears, peeves, snubs, slights...sent and received...are as dust motes to grace. The hard lesson learning is that grace is not available on demand...we must make ourselves available through our changed minds and actions.

Then wait. In the waiting we go forward, obeying the laws of God and man...which basically eliminates the majority of our fears, peeves, snubs and slights.

Interestingly, if we just don't be as nasty as we want to be, grace will smile upon us.

Thank you.

LOVE IS OURS, USE IT

I'm glad I made a decision, or the decision was made for me more like, a long time ago to just follow the spiritual guide that I knew something about...very little, but something...so I just went with the Sermon on the Mount. Didn't believe 99% of it, didn't care...I just knew I had to find some spiritual message to follow, and I'd already gone down the road of any and every Church of What's Happenin' Now...which only encouraged my self-will to blossom like a dandelion and blow me away.

I've settled on accepting and trying to walk by the precept that our lives are our personal miniaturized "way of the cross"...every invitation to hurt or be hurt, to anger or be angered, that we do not accept, personalize, internalize, is the Main Man in the Book refusing to defend himself or to react in kind to the jeerers or to take their bait.

Every friend who "betrays" us (and it is interesting that it always feels like betrayal to me) is a Judas, the role model for betrayers.

What is harder to live, to make my own, is the fact that every person I bad-mouth, or "bad-think," I am betraying. There are no dual standards in spiritual life. If I choose to feel betrayed by a simple put-down from another, then I am betraying by a simple put-down of another...even/especially when I'm reacting in kind.

Back to Judas...the person he betrayed forgave him yet he hung himself. And there's the rest of the story. We can be forgiven by those we betray, it is for naught if we do not forgive ourselves. We cannot forgive if we will not accept forgiveness...from God or from another human...and we "hang" ourselves by our own self-hate. It is not "them" doing it to us, it is us doing it to us. All because we refuse to change our mind.

We change our mind not by praying for God to make us more loving or a better person...no. We go to God for God, then we Be loving, Be forgiving, Be a better person.

As long as we're asking for, we're denying that for which we're asking. We don't want to become, we want to Be, a loving person...wanting to become is just holding love out there, away from us. We're denying the gift of love we were given at birth.

Love is ours, use it. And use it in the most unlikely places. That is God walking.

Thank you.

GOING TO GOD SOLELY FOR GOD

In my nightmare, a madman was burying me alive which only happens to be my own worst fear. I still get claustrophobic over the memory of little Kathy Fiscus who, back in the late '40s or early '50s, fell down an abandoned well and suffocated.

In the midst of the nightmare, with my heart pounding in fear, I realized that I could be lifted into God consciousness. I remembered that myself in the material world is my false self...that "necessary suffering is needed to find 'the pearl of great price' that is always hidden inside this lovely but passing shell."

In God consciousness I would know naught but peace even while I died physically through actual suffocation, and that could not touch me...my consciousness would be in another realm.

I awoke...still a little clammy, a tish shaky, but wonderfully relieved. And I knew again, when all we choose to depend on is our own mind-power, we are ever caught in that mind's inability to lift us out of self. To be lifted into God consciousness is not an as-wanted thing. It requires the daily discipline of meditation, giving of self for another, and going to God solely for God...among other things I haven't even heard of yet.

Thank you.

GETTING UNTANGLED FROM THINKING

It is a puzzlement. We so often hear mockery at another's "burning bush" experience. And yet that's the promise...the carrot to our even beginning the practice of meditation.

Why else are we trying so hard to learn how not to try? Why else are we seeking to learn to quiet our mind, to go deeper in order to go higher in consciousness, to seek...always to seek for there is no enough...if not to experience another level of consciousness?

Yet someone tells of getting still, quieting her mind, and a bright light comes filling him with awe...and the listeners' eyes roll with a disbelieving OMG heard in the land.

Why is that? Is it our fear that we will have an experience like that? Or that we won't? Or is it simply envy?

Ah...there's the end result of getting tangled up in my own dualistic thinking. For what does it matter what other peoples' reaction is to someone's "burning bush" experience? What matters is that that is possible to anyone anywhere...it is just not guaranteed.

We only need to ever make ourselves available...as it says: Watch, therefore; for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. (Matthew 24:42)

Thank you.

SO BELIEVE, SO RELY, SO DO

The Promise: God can and will intervene in my live in my behalf...in spite of me. God does not play favorites, ergo: God can and will intervene in your live in your behalf...in spite of you, meaning God can and will intervene in our lives in our behalf...in spite of us.

The only thing that holds that promise in abeyance is me, is you, is us...believing unto relying unto doing.

Thank you.

SAY "THANK YOU" AND BE AT PEACE

My God Calling note to me this morning was just what I needed just when I needed it: "I joy in realizing all my rrrs are special to God for they need him most."

Which brought me back to my first joy in the realization that all my rues, regrets and remorses are special to God for they are the lead-strings that bring me to him through my very need. It was a feeling of awe for my reasoning mind would never have caught that.

I needed for that to be brought to mind this morning for, since yesterday, I've been hanging out on the periphery of a regret. According to Saint Augustine, we will ever invite that opportunity into our life, that's how we learn...to loose them and let them go with grace.

I take that as inviting regrets in is the nature of life in the reasoning mind's world...the world of comparing me to thee, my actions and reactions to my mental picture of yours, hers, his, Princess Diana's...never feeling a unified peace which is highfalutin for feeling good about you and me equally.  

So today, I can immediately shoot my "thank you" for feeling the regret aborning and releasing it back into the wild for it did indeed lead me to God.

Thank you.

KNOW IT AND SHOW IT

It's no wonder the splinter I see in your eye is naught next to the plank in my eye for the splinter I see in your eye is one defect. The plank in my eye is me. It is my ego which is without boundaries, formless, towering...giving it cause to believe it is God.

And that, that plank in our eye, is the only thing that ever needs to change...the only mindset that must change if we are ever to know permanent spiritual peace...to give and to get.

We cannot remove that plank through more reading, more pondering, more analyzing, more intellectualizing...although those are our first tools. All necessary, all useful. Which is why it is so hard to loose them and let them go. They worked! And they are ours. It's hard to accept that they no longer work.

Plus what we find ourselves being offered in replacement is a promise, just a promise. And it doesn't come from someone we trust...it comes from within!

We hear this little voice telling us we already have that which we seek...we not only have the love we seek, we are the love we seek. So we grab another book, think some more...put some space between us and that little voice. We are torn between our reasoning mind telling us that we are not stupid, that just cannot be right, and our spiritual world aborning whispering of love. Which we oh so desperately want to believe.

There's our stuck place. Wanting to believe and daring not to. Wanting to believe that all we seek we already have and daring not to believe for how do we prove it?

Then that little voice gives us the quiet word: We prove it by using it...by giving it away; all that we seek, give. We want love, love. We need a kind word, give a kind word. And here's where our proof grows its legs and walks: We need patience, be patient...to the one who is bugging us unnecessarily and incessantly. 

There's that splinter, that splinter that is our blessing for nothing gets our attention faster than the splinter in the other one's eye. We realize that we just need to change our mind. To refocus in a word...in order to recognize your splinter for our plank. The plank that is our ego once again and always, our ego.

There it is. All that is needed to prove we already have all that we seek is to change our mind...then live it.

Thank you.

PROVING IT...AH, THAT'S THE TRICK

It isn’t that God is not "out there, up there." It is that God is within and without...out there, up there, within and without.

I believe God is in our heart, our soul, our body, our brain, in the sunrise and the sunset and in every little child’s face and all the baby animals. God is everywhere, timeless, formless, Present. Our job is to let it Be.

Harder for my reasoning mind to grasp is that God is also in the heart and soul of the one I don’t like, don’t agree with, the evil one, the despicable one..."mine enemy."

And "mine enemy" is the real sticking point. My ego will fight every inch that I desire to give to God, and it lives especially in its fear of "mine enemy." It cleverly skips my real enemy, my resentment in the form of the one who awakens me at 2:00 AM with my desire to shame and blame her, and brings me, say, ISIS, which has never awakened me at anytime...and demands to know how to see God there, how do we love that? Which is unanswerable to my poor self...and ego scores again. I just know that as long as I listen to my ego and ignore the Word, ego will win again...and again and again.

I choose to follow the God guides, and the one-size-fits-all direction, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," is the one where saying it and believing it are two different things. But we've got to say it, repeatedly, to come to believe, and that is my desire.

Maybe we could start with, "Father forgive us for we know not what we do...but we're willing to learn." Then prove it.

Thank you.

I KNOW NOT HOW

I'm just feeling scatter-shot today. I'm reading the Gita, and I'm loving what I'm reading. Yet, it is so identical to the Sermon and to every other spiritual discipline that I'm familiar with, know and love, that I wonder why I feel the need to read it. I can read all these things till my face falls off, but until I'm living it as I breathe, it's just so many words.

I accept that I'm living it to the best of my ability, but I feel like I'm hearing Hank Williams's lonesome whippoorwill calling me...for more.

I need more to go deeper to a higher level. I know not how.

Thank you.

A MOMENTARILY EGO-FREED MIND

Again this morning I realize that it's all well and good to have the blinding flashes of the obvious but they are only as good as my proof of them. Like, for instance, to be blinded by the realization that it is wrong to lie and then to continue to lie is a waste of a good realization, a denial of that BFO.

This is on my mind this morning because I found myself wrestling with my mental image of a friend who is doing it wrong according to me...and my ego.

My yesterday's BFO floated through my mind (everything and everybody that my life touches is made perfect through the Presence within), and I understood that I need to love Gertrude just as I am perceiving her to be. And here, to love is to not resist...to welcome that which I am resisting for that which I am resisting is my lesson about me. This is what I need to love in me, i.e., to accept, to not resist, to release out into the open.

There. That is how the BFO proves true...by releasing my ego-need to the Presence within which perfects everything and everybody my life and my thoughts touch. There is nobody to correct, set straight, turn around...only my own thinking that there is.

Doesn't it seem that our perturbance most often starts with a disrespected ego? If that be true, we can be grateful for it for there's our impetus to learn within acceptance...not just acceptance in our mind (which can change in a heartbeat), but acceptance in our heart, in our soul. Only then is our momentarily ego-freed mind open to love. Through simple non-resistance.

I wonder, is that all love is in the end? Simple non-resistance? And there's an oxymoron...simple non-resistance. But what an of-God goal toward which to trudge.

Thank you.

ON LIVING A TURNED-OVER LIFE

Blinding flash of the obvious: Everything my life touches...made perfect...everybody my thoughts touch...made perfect...through the Presence within and without...All. 

In pondering that, I understand this: Everything our lives touch...made perfect...everybody our thoughts touch...made perfect...through the Presence within and without...All, as we live, think and be.

This we do by living a turned-over life, turning from self to Self...daily. And that is all.

Thank you.

THE PEACE IN CHANGING ONE'S MIND

[The following is an edited version of my blog of April 30, 2011.]

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

“You must go beyond reason to love” was one of my first puzzlers. Luckily, I realized that reason is driven by ego, and therefore most any problem I had, my reasoning mind’s solution would be for my benefit. 

To go beyond reason to love meant seeking a solution whereby all parties could be winners. It was clear to me that I alone could not do that…I would need to let a power greater than myself wholly into my life. That’s when I made my decision to let God have my will, my wants, my hopes, my worries…simply to let God do my thinking for me. I succeed the majority of the time…that’s 51%, but I hold me open for a tish better than that.

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

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

This has taken me years of practice, and I flub it more often that I would like, but to flub it can also mean I'm at least trying a new way. The peace of mind brought by simply changing my mind is truly the pearl of great price.

Thank you.

LIFE'S TIERED NEED

Two of my daily readings have a from-me-to-me note that I love to ponder.

From my Easwaran daily reader today, a quote of Meister Eckhart, one line of which I have underlined: "[W]e must learn to penetrate things and find God there...."

Out to the side is my note: "2013 - i.d. self in each Marigold [and find God there]."

There it is. Life's tiered need: To "i.d. self in each [everyone]" is to recognize our ego-victory self in each and all. Moving on up deeper, it is to realize Self in each and all and thereby know Oneness.

The other note is in my God Calling: "Did not My servant Isaiah say, 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.'"

In 2014, I wrote out to the side, "My golden years now...thank you," and I felt overwhelming gratitude all over again this morning.

The essence of Isaiah's quote so describes my golden years today which can only be true because my ego is no longer my sole source of truth. Not to say ego doesn't call my name at will, but I don't answer nearly as often now. For that I give all credit to the grace of God and a little help from my friends...a lot of help from my friends actually. It's just that I  love quoting the Beatles...brings back shades of my youth in my golden years!

God is so good to me. And you. Us.

Thank you.

CHASING GOD

In 2011, I wrote in all three of my daily readings, "BFO: my always chasing God...really me always chasing forgiveness."

As I have for the past four years, I wondered...forgiveness for what? I just haven't been all that bad...maybe only because I never got a chance to be downright evil, but free-floating guilt is free-floating guilt with or without an anchor.

Today I was jolted by the thought, what if that is true?...that my chase has been for forgiveness. That the forgiveness I chase is for "original sin" (and, make book, that was named by ego), having naught to do with the people, places and things of my life which have been long-since mutually forgiven?

But...what if it is both! The reasoning mind's people, places and things being ego's hidey hole, the place from which ego slithers for it's 2:00 AM house calls. "Original sin" being our Source, the gold hidden under the trash with no other purpose but to bring us back to God.

And there we realize it for what it is...original goodness.

Thank you.

[NOTE: Original Goodness by Eknath Easwaran is the first book of his I ever read, and it was wonderfully enlightening.]

GOD HAS OUR BACK...BELIEVE IT

We're often, too often, told that we must stand up for ourselves, take our own part, be responsible for our own self. Being a doormat will get you stepped on...leading to resentments, and that is all.

But learning to love is, I'm told, learning to bear with people. I'm guessing that's why learning to love is called a lifetime job.

If we are to know peace, we must unite within our self those two seemingly opposing concepts; i.e., that we must stand up for ourselves, that we must learn to bear with people.

The first concrete step toward that end is the gut-bucket acceptance that responsibility for our self is reliance on a power greater than ourselves. We begin to get a glimmer of the idea that God has our back. It is that pinpoint of light that leads away from the belief that only we can protect our self and moves us into the realization that God can and will intervene in our lives in our behalf.

In other words, all we need do is change our mind...again, a lifetime job. But it's the same lifetime job! Learning to bear with people is learning to change our mind is learning to love. And that's true in whatever order we choose to go... learning to love is learning to bear with people is learning to change our mind.

All of that requires that we make just one decision...to trust that God has our back. Because that one decision is proof of our desire to get over our own self. We're half way home with that...the rest of our lives being the final half.

God is not only within but also without for God is formless...cannot be held to a form...is within and without fitting the form of  you and of me and the birds and bees and lilies of the valley and branches of the tree, the ocean waves, the air we breathe...God is formed in thought, to be set free. Thank you.

Thank you.

THE REWARDS OF GOD'S WILL

It is not enough to know and believe what all of our spiritual leaders teach, all of our spiritual readings set forth, as necessary as the knowing and the believing are. They are as the cracking of a window...bringing just a whiff of fresh air.

Our fruit begins to ripen when we realize, and begin to walk our realization, that we have a choice...to live by self-will or to have an earnest desire to live by God's will.

To live by self-will takes no practice...knock yourself out, see how far that gets you.

To earnestly desire to have God's will done in our lives rather than our own will done in our lives opens us to the active grace of God. All it takes for that to happen is to believe it and get out of the way. 

We can believe we're changing when we're no longer just quoting what we're learning. We find we are practicing it daily...or rather in the moment. In the moment of choice, when Sylvia steps on our toes, or Jed smarts off at our expense, we remember that we do not have to respond in kind. We can return respect for disrespect by simply not being as nasty as we want to be.

The first few times we practice that, not being as nasty as we want to be...wow and whoa! There's God. There's our proof. There's the active grace of God in our lives.

The rewards of self-will can never ever feel so good...or so right.

Thank you.

IN BEING, GIVE

....we think we have to climb up to God by Herculean efforts and will power to show ourselves as superior, separate, pure, and saved. That's the ego's need to feel significant and 'worthy.' But we are already worthy, and it doesn't have anything to do with our efforts. A sincere 'yes' to our inherent dignity is all that's needed every day. Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," March 10, 2105

That's the "freedom from action" that the Gita speaks of. To attain Self-knowledge is to attain "the supreme perfection of freedom from action."

Freedom from action means that our race-race, run-run mind no longer is. For that's all that racing mind is about...what to do, what to DO. Freed from action, we rest in God consciousness. Free to do as the lily of the valley does...Be.

In Being, the lily of the valley gives...gives forth the look of beauty, the scent of beauty, the essence of beauty. It lives to give its life to adorn a table, a lapel, a bridal bouquet...for a minute, for an hour...for its lifetime. That is its all...the lily of the valley lives to give.

According to me, this is proof that in God's world, length of time is inconsequential, immaterial...all that matters is in the time we have, we give.

Thank you.

THE HEALING LOVE OF POWERLESSNESS

I'm sure I've had this blinding flash of the obvious before but it seems truer this morning. I again got that our deepest fear (our nemesis) represents crucifixion to us. We will and do go to incredibly self-destructive lengths to avoid experiencing our nemesis loosed, i.e., crucifixion.

We may well know that it is only by walking to and through that fear that we reach acceptance/surrender and yet stay stuck in the fear of the unimaginable: the flogging, the nails, the thorns, the stabbing. None of those is an actual mental picture (we're too afraid to bring that picture into focus), but all are there in our niggling "what if" terror. 

Our decision to welcome rather than resist our fear of our nemesis, invites it to come out...to see and be seen, and out it comes! And brings nothing we feared...our nemesis is relatively painless for it could never be as painful as our fear of it. 

It is our decision that opens us to the healing love of powerlessness. We welcome rather than resist, and our painful fear is allayed. We can laugh and love and let the fear go. Our nemesis becomes our strong suit.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE...AN ACT OF GRACE

[The following is a reprint of my blog of February 19, 2012.]

“If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it.” — Fr. Richard Rohr

To me, the rest of that thought is: "in your search for something or someone out there to blame."

“If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it in your search for something or someone out there to blame.”

There is no one to blame, not even yourself. There is no one to blame for anything, no reason to shame anyone. You are, however, responsible for your pain…no matter who or what the apparent cause.

It is through surrender that pain is transformed…and then becomes the instrument through which you can be of benefit to others.

All pain is beneficial to you when you learn to take responsibility for it…and the instant you think, “Yes, but…,” you’re going down that wrong road again.

There are two truths about pain…1) all transformed pain is beneficial; and 2) finding someone to blame nurtures, grows, your pain.

Another truth: Acceptance, like forgiveness, cannot be received through an act of will…it can only come through the grace of God.

Thank you.

THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS THE SAME

Per Gandhi, his life could be summed up in three words, "Renounce and enjoy."

Saint Augustine said, "Love, and do what you like."

I find it striking that those words fairly well describe the life of anyone who has given up the love of her life when that love, for some, was a compulsive addiction. The "and enjoy," the "and do what you like" are transmuted. No longer do we just do what we like for no longer do we search for "something," "something else," "something out there." Now we seek fulfillment through still more spiritual growth...from the inside out.

What makes the difference is that in renouncing, in loving, we start to live not for self-determined objectives but for God in others...and we don't get to choose what other(s).

It matters not who or what comes to us to be loved. It may be a feral cat or a low-life member of that other party...the answer is always the same, "Love and laugh." If we can't laugh at getting a member of that other party to love, we'll for sure get our own self...and at our worst. Love that! And laugh.

Thank you.

ALL ONE IN LOVE AND LAUGHTER

I'm reminded again this morning that we do God's will always whether or not we know it. When we make our decision to seek still more spiritual growth always and all ways, we are not freed from mistakes, self-determined objectives, errors in judgment...showing our butt in a word. What we must needs remember is that those very errors become God's gift back to us, perfected.

It is our job and our joy to find the gold in the gift God returns to us...and use it in the service and for the benefit of others.

Here's how I experience that happening: I promptly have someone in my face doing exactly that which I did, only hers will look UGH-LY. I will feel repulsed with a deep need to correct him, sometimes for their own good even. Usually, though, just to feel superior. Either way...I'm going down that wrong road again.

Here's the gift: Today, I don't go very far down that wrong road before I get the word. I make my U-turn, and I laugh. Which lets me love...me, the mistake, the other, God.

And there it is...all One in love and laughter.

Thank you.

ON DAFFODILS

A daffodil in winter is still a daffodil.

Thank you.

THE GOOD LORD, THE DEVIL AND ME

It is no little wisdom for a man to keep himself in silence and in good peace when evil words are spoken to him, and to turn his heart to God and not to be troubled with man's judgment. -- Thomas A Kempis

Mercy. The things that come to me just as I need them the most are truly of God. I went to bed last night and awoke this morning with a race-race, run-run mind, trying to figure out how I could get that Israeli told off, i.e., set straight...not to mention that less-than-wonderful one who invited him.

I am grateful for the words of Thomas A Kempis for they are the reminder I need to turn my thoughts away from self...for it is in my own ego that agitated, irritated, and resistant thrive. I remember the goal is to resist not evil, and I can change my mind: The Israeli, et al., are my agitated mind's emery board, just what I need to hone my ego-victory thoughts into smooth awareness...unresisting awareness.

Which leads me to another of my favorite quotes: I will fight no more forever. -- Chief Joseph

I'm guessing Chief Joseph, in saying that, did not immediately sprout wings and become saint-like. In my mind (because it is the road I am walking), he continued as he had been, a very human being, doing the best he could, and trying to remember that he'd decided to fight no more forever.

In trying to remember that as my goal, and trying not to be mentally as nasty as I want to be, I can bless all the peoples of my agitated mind...hug 'em and kiss 'em and let 'em go.

And remember Winston Churchill, England's towering hero of World War II, lost his first election after that War. (The devil made me write that.)

Thank you.

THE WILL...SELF'S FRIEND AND ENEMY

So I'm reading Eknath Easwaran's translation of the Bhagavad Gita. I just read a passage that is going to keep me pondering for awhile...mainly because it is so self-evident. I know from past experience that anything I find so self-evident that I don't even have to think about it is probably over my head.

Here's my new ponderable:

Reshape yourself through the power of your will, never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self. (6:5) [I'm guessing the "6:5" is the chapter and verse in the original Gita, but that is just a guess.]

I'm going to go ponder.

Thank you.

HOW TO LOVE A FROG

Those of us seriously seeking still more spiritual growth often (and often and often) find blocks, stonewalls, sheer cliffs to either scale up or rappel down...it is a hard lesson learning that those are our God-gifts. Those are not for us to beat, to get around, to pound into submission...no, those are ours to love until those very stonewalls bless us.

Moses stuttered...which, I'm guessing, was not a gift in Moses's mind. But, to God, it was just a tool to use. Those of us who have been gifted with anxiety, depression, self-centered fear (and what other kind is there?), can get on the right road to free of our own self when we remember Moses's God experience.

Then there's Jacob...who, in wrestling with the angel, said, "I will not let you go until you bless me." There. That's the quiet word...recognize our anxiety, our depression, our fears for the angels they are, and don't let go until they bless us. For they can and will just by our acceptance of them.

I say this not because I'm betting it is true...I know from my own personal experience that this is true. I am a believer of hardly anything that I have not had actual experience with...faith does not come easy, and, if it does, it's usually fantasy.

So here's my experience of my own personal stonewall turning out to be God's gift to me: Starting in 1981 and lasting until 2001, give or take, out of the blue I became unable to read aloud before others (anxiety would cause my throat to feel as if it were closing, and I could not get words out). I would test me and read aloud at home alone...no problem. But in meetings where we often read aloud, I would attempt to read and sometimes be able to without a hint of a problem, but usually...croak! I did not try to hide my inability to read, I would just admit to anxiety and pass off to the person next to me.

Let me be clear, I did not initially recognize this as a blessing, and I tried what I could to get over it. I knew I could not trust anti-anxiety meds and the like, so I went to a shrink. He very cleverly told me my throat wasn't really closing, it just felt like it was. I thanked him, paid him, and left.

Now, here's God's gift...over those twenty years, many people came into my life, were drawn into my life actually by what was to me, at first, a curse. And most of those people are still in my life, have become very dear friends. It was the openness with which I was graced that attracted others to me. I take no credit for that openness because I knew then and know now that secrets are our ego's hidey-hole where we go to drown.

So whatever is in our life that looks like a frog...kiss it on the lips. It may still be a frog, but a frog gift from God is still a gift from God! And all we need do to love our frog gift is change our mind.

Thank you.

ON PROVING OUR POWERLESSNESS

Just carry out My wishes and leave Me to carry out yours.

That one sentence in today's "God Calling" is, eyebrows up, fairly simple to get if we just want to talk it...but walk it? Rarely, oh so rarely, do we walk it in our lives.

Yet, I believe that is the very nut of how we are God's hands and feet, his voice box, eardrums, eyeballs...we start by carrying out his wishes. How do we know what his wishes are? Any proven spiritual principle...and there are few on this earth who haven't heard at least one...any proven spiritual principle will take us away from our ego-victory thoughts, so there's our starting point.

Then we leave God to carry out our wishes...and it's okay to laugh at that. That in fact is a very valid response.  To laugh at and love our inability to self-will ourselves into leaving anything, much less our wants, to God is heading in the right direction. The right direction being powerlessness.

And there it is. There's our life's work...proving our own powerlessness by the new, the unselfed, way we walk and talk, see and hear. We know and show that our will and our life are in the care of God. Are, indeed, of God.

The good news is we get started on this new, this unselfed, way of life the minute we serve another, help another, inconvenience ourselves for another.  To inconvenience ourselves for another with whom we disagree...now that is divine.

Thank you.