TRUDGING ALONG GOD'S ROAD

When we feel a self-need, the answer is to go deeper into that feeling of need. Most often we try to figure out how to fill it or fix it. We obsess on how-to until we must declare defeat...then we pray for God to fix it.

I try to remember this: A sense of need is itself heading in the wrong direction...that is simply our ego, my Lucy, scratching at the door of self, wanting to be let out. Our needs, being spiritually based, are fulfilled by God...our wants, ego-based, are ours to fill or release.

When someone asks me to pray for them or for somebody, e.g., their relative who is dying of cancer, I always agree, and I do. I include them, enfold them if you will, into my world prayer which I pray every morning, and it is always the same: Precious Lord, Help us, each and all of us in this world, to know your will for us and give us the power to carry it out. Thank you for our everything just as it is right this very minute. Amen.

I know in the praying that God's will, which is always love, has already been carried out, and it is for the best for all. Our spiritual task is to see it through God's eyes and feel grace. If, however, it looks like cow piles, Lucy is still doing the viewing.

This is when we turn it, turn it, turn it, until we find the sliver of gold. It is there, it cannot not be there...find it and thank God, for no matter how slim the sliver of gold, it will grow as we are now turned in the right direction.

We are trudging along God's road now...with love and laughter.

Thank you.

WE ARE TURNED AWAY FROM EGO

Father forgive them for they know not what they do. -- Christ Jesus's cry from the Cross.

Father forgive me for I know exactly what I do...and I do it anyway. -- our cry way too often.

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: Both cries, Jesus's and ours, have the same result for God, the Father, cannot not forgive. God, the Father of all, is forgiveness. God is love...how can love not be forgiveness? So we are forgiven...what we must needs remember is a previous admonition: Go and sin no more. Oops.

Here's the hook...old Lucy, my ego, has never met a mystery of God's that she could not use. We must be ever aware of that else we fall into the ego-trap that is so popular today...do what we want and ask forgiveness later. No. Why would we study the Sermon daily and diligently to continue living in self-will? We work with a sincere heart and goal following what is laid out for us in the Sermon (that which makes no common sense at all, may I say) just to selfishly continue serving our ego? No, just no.

At some point, working with God, we are turned away from Lucy's siren to hear our Soul's whisper. Just as, I'm sure, Chief Joseph did when his Soul spoke through him, declaring, "I will fight no more forever." There was a man of God, righteous and holy.

And we all have that Soul within us. We are each and everyone of us righteous and holy. Loose it and let it go. Love it and laugh.

Thank you. 

THE BATTLE IS NOT OURS

But if you do choose to walk through the depths--even the depths of  your own sin and mistakes--you will come out the other side, knowing you've been taken there by a Source larger than yourself.  [I read that awhile back in a Richard Rohr "Daily Meditation" just after my deep quiet time on my rues, regrets and remorses being my gold.]

Knowing, believing and living that knowledge and belief is the essence of a spiritually based being. It is way too difficult to believe (not to know but to believe) even when in the depths of our own sin and mistakes, that God is there. Our Source, our Force of Being, our very own Beloved, is with us, within us, without us ever and always.

I suspect the reason it is so difficult is because that belief, not the knowledge but the belief, totally eviscerates the ego. My ego Lucy doubles, triples, down with the very idea. We want ego deflation in depth and make the mistake of thinking to do it our self. We know what to do, we do for others all on our own...easy peasy.  Lucy exults with the very idea.

To engage in a battle of will or wits with Lucy is to play with Lucy's deck...stacked and marked against me before birth. So imagine trying to deflate her entirely...she's already won the battle the minute I engage in it.

Remember that great civil rights battle cry, "Keep your eyes on the prize!" There it is. We don't ponder our ego and all its shifty, sneaky, low-life ways and how we're going to whip it...mainly because we're getting set to use every one of those ways in order to win. No. That's just another ego trip.

So, what to do? We go to God. Not for the purpose of defeating Lucy...that's staying in the ego-battle. We keep our focus on God, the things of the spirit, love, peace, joy. In effect, we let God hug Lucy, and in his warm embrace Lucy is powerless.

The battle is not ours...it is God's.

Thank you.

GIVE OVER...WITH LOVE AND LAUGHTER

The grace of God cures disharmony and disorder in human relationships. -- "God Calling," August 27

Since the above is true, why do we continue to natter God about a relationship of ours that is at sixes and sevens? Issuing demands disguised as prayers (What?..we think he can't see through that?) as to how he needs to make the other see it our way.

We think we've become a spiritual giant when we remember to "pray" that he make us see it the other's way. Who's kidding whom? If that is what we really wanted, we'd do it already.

It is all about ego deflation in depth...ego deflation in depth is all about giving over to another. Not clinging to our belief that we are right. Not justifying our position since he is wrong. No. Give over. Not as a doormat, there to be walked over...that's just another ego trip.

We give over as a full and complete member of God's world where we all work together to show forth God. Whether anyone else is knowing/doing it or not. Our reasoning mind will not get us there. Thinking it through will lead us back to Whaaa?

We go to God for God and God's ways. Or we don't get to God.

Thank you.

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IS NOT A THEORY

You say you're having a panic attack, Bunky? Feeling sore afraid, entire body clinched, volts of panic surging from your toes to your nose leaving your brain...sore afraid, clinched, panicked....

Oh, do I have an answer for you! The answer requires that you park your brain, which is already about half off the rails so it's no big deal.

The answer is: Don't fight it, invite it...invite that panic to come right in, side down, have a cuppa.

The trouble being, our reasoning mind is just a tish too smart to fall for that. Invite panic in? It is already in!..and it is running away with us!..we are not stupid!..give us a a pill, a shrink, a funny cigarette, chocolate.

Only we've already learned...repeatedly...that none of those work. We have a terrible feeling that the reasoning mind may be the driver of the panic...that feeling of spiraling ever downward, upward, sideways, crossways...all at the same time. But the reasoning mind balks at the answer being, "Welcome it."

Here's our dreaded crash and burn come to save us.

Having nothing left to lose, we turn to God. We accept finally that our salvation will only be found through spiritual answers. Our invitation to that panic is our turning to God, opening the door to let his power flow out...into us and through us.

We come to believe that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. We come to believe that because, having turned to God, we experience that. It is not a theory...we experience it in our walking around world.

We come to know the grace of God can and will...anything.

Thank you.

GO FOR GRACE...HUSH

To live by the letter of the law is to live a rigid existence. Rigid existence is a contradiction in terms. Rigid = hard, unyielding. Existence = ethereal, nonresistant. According to me.

To live by the letter of the law is to choose fear as your God...if it is set down in black and white, it is right, no exceptions. No. There are always exceptions in God's world...and God makes them, not us. God makes the exception to the law that a murderer needs to be murdered. Not always. Maybe not ever, but that's beyond my ken.

I'm still back in the kiddie pool. Like...being right does not make us right; hurt people hurt people; it is better to lose in learning how to win than to win and believe you're a winner with nothing left to learn.

All of these paradoxes lay the foundation for learning how to cease fighting anything and anybody. When remembered, they cause us pause. That means we have just one task, and that is to discipline our own self.

In plain word, hush.

That's the pause when God uses our heart's voice...and we are sore afraid and elated both at the same time. For we have experienced grace, and we know it.

Grace is not under the letter of the law.

Thank you.

THUS AM I LOVE

I ponder again that God's ability to give is unlimited, it is our ability to receive that is not, and I realized  it is limited because our ability to receive is self-bound.

Carl Jung's "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are" is key to unlocking that self...by opening us to who we truly are from our toenails up through a degree of self-acceptance only known on a higher plane, through a higher power.

The privilege is not to give love, nor to receive love, but to be love. The privilege is God's gift of realization that the Father and I are one, the Father is love, thus am I.

Thank you.

GOD LOVES ME...AND MY PEEPS

[The following is a reprint of my blog of August 24, 2015...and still true today August 24, 2016.]

Oh, it's a great gettin' up morning!

This is my golden day.

This is the day the Lord saved for me...put my name on it...and when I got to it, he picked me up, hugged me, kissed me, sat me down with my peeps, and called my name Blessed. 

Cling to the belief that all things are possible with God. This truth accepted and firmly believed in, is the ladder up which a soul can climb from the lowest of pits to the sublimest of heights. -- "God Calling," August 24.

Thank you, great God almighty, thank you.

SCRUPULOSITY...WHAT A HOOT!

The literal level is one of the least fruitful levels of meaning....A heart open to the power of metaphor ("that which carries you across"), a heart open to the feminine and open to intimacy, will leap every time. A heart trapped in historical literalism, or closed to the power of poetry, will remain bored, reactive, and trapped in critique. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," September 28, 2015

That I believe defines those of us who talk in exaggeration. We are poets, weaving fun in and out of the daily-ness of life. Which reminds me of the point made in The Cloud of Unknowing by an unknown 14th century monk to "be wary of the overly scrupulous."

The overly scrupulous use a one-inch yardstick to measure us by...and our saving grace is we let them because that's the stuff we use to weave our fun in the telling of it.

God loves me so much...and the overly scrupulous, too.

Thank you.

THE BIRTH OF HAPPY GRATITUDE

To walk free in my own mind. That is my calling. That is my purpose. That is my goal.

The main block to our walking free in our own mind is our own mind. More specifically our own undisciplined mind.

According to Goethe, providence moves mountains immediately upon our making the decision to do something about something (my greatly simplified version of Goethe's idea).

God already has fixed, healed, made mute any self-perceived problem our  mind can fancy way before we get all tangled up in that perception. There is no problem to be fixed. There is just our perception to be upgraded.

Our ego, my Lucy, gets hopelessly attached to that which God has already made not present to begin with. Relying on our reasoning mind, we justify not letting our self be run over, stepped on, snubbed and/or snarked, thus ignoring the spiritual knowledge we've sought for so long; namely, that we cannot be any of those if we do not pick them up...if we do not attach our own self to them, they do not exist for us.

We know this to be true for there are too many spiritual leaders and just plain folk, including you and me at some point, who have done it. What it amounts to is putting another's needs before our wants...and it is as hard as the ego is strong. It generally is only possible through the daily discipline of our own mind...of turning over our will and our wants to the care of God.

It's called meditation, and I'm convinced God does not care how we meditate...just make our self available to God on a daily basis, and he'll do the heavy lifting. And ain't that good news?

There it is...the birth of happy gratitude. Love and laughter.

Thank you.

CLING TO NOTHING...FLY

I remember over 40 years ago having the thought that the chains which I felt were binding me were of no more strength or power than a cob web. That it is was solely my mindset that made my seemingly 200 pound chains unbreakable. 

That was a wonderfully freeing thought...it, however, did not free me from my feelings of being chained. That took daily spiritual, physical and emotional work...to be more honest, that takes those three to this day.

"God Calling" this morning reminded me of that; specifically, It is only those strands that bind you. Therefore your freedom will mean your rising into the realm of Joy and Appreciation.

And there it is...again...still...always: Love and Laugh and fly free.

Thank you.

STRENGTHEN THE INTEGRITY OF OUR SOUL

I very much regret I did not make note of who wrote the following or where I even found it originally. I stumbled on it in my e-files yesterday when I was looking for a Goethe quote. I'm glad I saved it, I think it is excellent.

Having power is having integrity of the soul.
This requires that you regularly express your best self.

If something is getting in the way of that integrity, ask yourself, if I met my 17 year-old self

on the street today would s/he be proud of who I've become?  

We humans are the only species on the planet that can refuse to be who we are. The snake slithers,

the bird flies, but we humans can close off important aspects of ourselves. We must not allow

busy-ness, somebody else or the way we learned to manage stress,  hijack who we were meant to be.

 

If your teenage version of yourself is not proud of who your adult self has become,

keep digging, keep asking, and consider making adjustments to make that teenager proud.

This is one way to find who you are meant to be.

A client had an extensive work-up for unspecific, painful abdominal complaints

with no conclusive diagnosis. When he recognized that he was in a career his father wanted for

 him which did not suit him and he had no affection for, he leaned his ladder on a different

tree and began training for the career he always dreamed of. His abdominal complaints abated.  

So don't let the endless to-do list of life limit or confine who you are supposed to be.

Strengthen the integrity of your soul, check-in with your teenage self to deploy your best self

and make sure it is fully expressed.

Thank you.

HELP IS ALWAYS AT HAND

There are several thoughts from the Bible that I turn to a lot. The first three I have posted before...the last two are equally important to me:

When we feel the road before us is too difficult:

Isa.45:2 - I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight....

When an unexpected or scary situation pops up:

Matt.14:27 - ....it is I; be not afraid.

When called upon to meet a life situation that weighs heavy over our head:

Job.23:14 - ….He performeth the thing that is appointed for me....

When we're about to head down that wrong road again:
Joshua 24:15 - Choose you this day whom ye will serve....

And then there's the one that does the heavy lifting (it helps us get over our own self):
Matthew 5:25 - Agree with thine adversary quickly....

Thank you.

SERVING OTHER THAN SELF IS THE GOOD NEWS

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: In God's eyes all is perfection, thus all of us are perfect to God. Perfection beholds perfection. We cannot go to God to fix us...we are perfect in his eyes.

Ah, here comes acceptance, all clad in white. We catch a glimmer out of the corner of our eye, and we understand that we must go to God not to get fixed but for acceptance. Acceptance, not being of the reasoning mind, takes us to a new plane of consciousness. We find acceptance of self in God consciousness.

It is acceptance that transmutes our defects. Through the grace of humility, we accept our defects as ours, ours alone, and in that instant they are transmuted into love and laughter. (I think of my defects as my ego Lucy's toys...keeps me from taking them and/or me so seriously.)

Let me quick add: For you and me this is a one-at-a-time proposition...there is no wholesale transmuting of defects for trudgers such as us. Which is just one of the good reasons that we are trudgers...it gives us our life's spiritual work which, who's kidding whom?, will no doubt continue until three days after we're all dead.

There. Ain't that good news?..serving other than self for our eternity. God is so good to us.

Thank you.

KEEPING OUR SELF CENTERED

[The following is a reworked reprint of my blog of December 31, 2012.]

I am free to use all [my] capacities to alleviate the suffering of those around me. In living for others, I come to life. – Eknath Easwaran, “Words to Live By”

I heard a speaker recently make the point that is so essential to freedom from self. In effect, he said that it is in living for others that we are opened to God's gift to us...the gift of God Itself.

His message was quite moving. For it is true, it is not enough to live to help only our family, our community, our friends. We must be ready, willing and available to help any and all who come to us in need...and especially those with whom we are less than enchanted. Those we resist because they are wrong...according to self-centered us.

It is only by allowing into my life those with whom I disagree that I discover they are truly my angels...for nothing and nobody sends me to God so quickly...so sincerely. That is when I understand the words, "Help me seek to understand rather than seek to be understood," not to mention,  "Relieve me of the bondage of self."

The balancing act, that which requires us to turn to God, is in keeping our own Self centered, in keeping our own primary purpose in life first in our consciousness. For if we lose our center, forget our primary purpose, we are back to being self-centered...alone again, un-naturally.

We learn that self-centered is that place where none other is allowed entrance into our consciousness, certainly not a higher power and for sure not God. We learn to move on up, deeper...to our Self center.

Thank you.

WHEN WE KNOW GOD'S HAND IS IN IT

"We do not want to be the individual who cannot die to herself enough to actually seek the common good; this requires a very real death to the ego self, which most will not endure," writes Fr Richard Rohr.

I'm convinced that the only thing we'd best fear is choosing to follow ego. My gravest danger is when I choose to follow my ego Lucy for just one eensy-teensy one-one-hundredth of an inch...no one will ever know I apparently believe.

But Lucy will.

This is our cross-roads...go with self-will or deny self now? To choose self-will is to throw in with Lucy, going for the slight possibility of an ego victory. Knowing full well, from our eyebrows up anyhow, that an ego victory will feel like a defeat less than an hour after scoring.

There. That may well be the dilemma...feeling defeat comes quick, fast, and in a hurry, but feeling spiritual success? Well, isn't that the paradox, the conundrum, the bitch (if you'll pardon my word selection)? Feeling spiritual success is an ego trip...how can one in all humility feel spiritual success? I'm guessing we only know our spiritual growth by looking back, by remembering the way we were, the way it was...and feeling undeserved gratitude from our toenails up for our today.

The thought occurs that even throwing in with Lucy, even going down that wrong road again, we're going down the right road for we still find God...it just takes longer and is more painful than denying Lucy originally.

Knowing that is good, accepting it is better, and doing it is our cross to bear and our pearl beyond price all at the same time. But, hey, that's when we know God's hand is in it. 

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGHTER, GOD'S WILL

I am brought back yet again to Fr Richard Rohr's statement, "Spirituality is always eventually about what you do with your pain."

I used to say, only half joking, that perfect peace is having somebody to blame. To my ego Lucy that will never not be true, and her job is to find that ever-changing somebody and roost in that mare's nest.

In proving Rohr's statement, our continuing need for spiritual growth leads us to finally accept that having someone to blame brings not perfect peace but rather a perpetual resentment...clarified, purified, justified and holy.

And there it is. The difference between living in the reasoning mind, seeking the right (ego-victory)answer, and living from a higher dimension, seeking the answer in love and laughter...God's will as it happens.

Thank you.

RESIST NAUGHT, WELCOME ALL

The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart. -- Seng-Ts'an

Only unitive, nondual consciousness can open our hearts, minds, and bodies to actually experience God. * * * When you can be present in this way, you will know the Real Presence. I promise you this is true. You will still need and use your dualistic mind, but now it is in service to the greater whole rather than just the small self. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," August 14, 2016

The less you are bound by likes and dislikes, the more clearly you will be able to see the core of purity and selflessness that is the real Self in everyone, even in people who cause trouble. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," August 14, 2016

Well, there's agreement all around this morning...out there. My ego Lucy has a difference of opinion, but that difference is Lucy's reason for being (I was going to attempt the French but who's kidding whom?).

I am in total agreement with each of those quotes, and my aim is to live a walking-around nondual life. Lucy's Me magnet is strongest, however, when I do the nondual thing...walk forward with peace in my mind and on my tongue, toward that which I fear (which is appearing as a petty pisser)...and I afterward feel meh.

There. Right there is the source of all our woes. Doing God's will and expecting ego-victory results.

And there. Right there is the source of all our spiritual recovery. That is our golden goose turning us within...away from self to God.

Thank you. 

SELF-DISCIPLINE...THE UNLOVABLE MUST

Most of what we call thinking is narcissistic reaction to the moment.

As it stands, that sentence from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" of June 27, 2016, is so spot-on that to add anything to it would be narcissistic reaction on the hoof and breathing.

And yet I want to.

Thank you.

AWAKE! THE TIME IS NOW!

Going down that wrong road again is going down the right road.

We can and will learn something we needed to learn even it's only that this is the wrong road and why it is the wrong road.

If we don't learn the why of it, we'll just have to do it over...it keeps coming back until we get it right.

We so often don't learn the why of our errors because we are in the midst of our own rues, regrets and remorses for having gone down that wrong road again. All the while heading down that wrong road again...same road, same us.

He perfects that which is given us to do...let him!

Thank you.

THE SPIRIT OF GOD WILL DO THE WORK

No matter how honest our desire for still more spiritual growth, attempting to grow spiritually by using the reasoning mind alone will not get us there. Mainly because spiritual growth does not make sense. It goes against every humanly perceived "need." The need to not let others run over us...the need to stand up for our self...the need to speak our truth...there are too many to recount.

Then there's the fact that the reasoning mind, entwined with ego, demands that sense be made. Regrettably the sense we demand is fitted to our ego-victory thinking. Ego deflation in depth is often an eyebrows-up desire...we want to preach to others the need for it, but doing the work to achieve our own? That leaves a lot to be desired...as in, where's the immediate feels good? Where's the glory? Where's the atta girl? 

It is a hard lesson learning and harder still accepting that if we will seriously and sincerely turn our body, brains, bones and blood over to the care of God, those "needs" will be erased, deleted...transmuted.

The kicker is the only way we can know that unto realization is by denying our self those self-perceived needs...don't stand up for our self, don't speak our truth...or just agree with our adversary quickly.  That is powerlessness, and it's like saying "No" to a baby...or a puppy. It is, however, the way the grace of God enters our heart to show those "needs" as the ego-wants they are.

We go to God for God. We go to God to make conscious contact with God. When that contact is made, we wait for the Spirit of God to do the work.  In other words, we say no to self, yes to God, and let others walk free in our own head.

The spiritual mind is about giving over, the material mind is about getting. Loose it and let it go. 

Thank you.

BE THE FIRST TO GIVE OVER

My friend Gertrude has taken offense at something she thinks I'm doing. She has begun the process of setting me straight. Silently. Speaking not a word, but with rolling eyes and attitude prancing like a race horse.

My ego Lucy is not amused. Every second or so she gives me excellent put-downs of Gertrude for Gertrude.

I turn to God who is amused. He reminds me that he has all in hand.

This is just an angel drill, the end result of which has been perfected for the benefit of Gertrude and me. Only the when of it is in doubt, and that's only because the when of it is determined by us.

Whenever we choose, i.e., come together in love and laughter, God's perfect solution will have unfurled.

I wonder who will have the good sense and the spiritual need to be the first to give over? Which would be more spiritual...to hope it's me, or to hope it's Gertrude? Oh, Lucy, give it a rest.

We come to believe that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf.

Thank you.

CLING TO NOTHING...FLY!

When we feel resistance from anyone for any reason, we know (from our eyebrows up anyway) to move closer to him, to prepare a place for her and assure her peace...in our own mind. We have learned that we will need to fight our ego every step of the way to even head in the right direction if that is our honest goal.

Refreshing my own memory this morning: We do not curry favor, we do not pretend love while thinking pay-back. That is all of the material mind...the reasoning mind...through which ego operates. That mind is clever, conniving, manipulative and wants only good for us, the singular me. There is no you, or other, in the ego-victory mind to embrace only to resist.

We cannot get to God on our own brain power because we only have our own facts; i.e., I've been done wrong (1) through no fault of my own...or (2) and it's all my fault, always was always will be, there is no hope.

Each of those choices leads to victimhood from which self-centered fear is born. There. Right there God stands at the door and knocks...to be let out, to be released. Loose him and let him go!

Open! Detach! Cling to nothing...fly!

Thank you.

PRAY FIRST, THINK LESS

Fr. Richard Rohr has written that the contemplative mind is really just the mind that emerges when you pray first instead of think first.

More and more I am believing that all my prayers must needs be prayers of gratitude...welcoming my rues, regrets and remorses, thanking the Father for my fears, knowing my nemesis for my angel...and pondering that.

I talk to God...tell him how I feel and what I fear. Most important, I assure him that I know he has the power. I encourage him to use that power in whatever ways, means and endeavors that I need in order for me to show forth him, his power, his will.

I know I have made conscious contact when I hear He performeth that which is given me to do.

As an aside, I  had a blinding flash of the obvious recently. I was meditating on the 23rd Psalm and Mary came by. She was preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies; she served my enemies first, and my heart joyed. I have tried but I cannot form a picture of God serving my enemies...loving them I get, but serving them meat and potatoes, I just can't get there...or I haven't yet. I consciously bring Mary back a lot now...she is a comfort.

Thank you.

ANSWERED PRAYERS REALIZED

"Everything beautiful has to be worked for." That's the last line in the August 3rd reading of  Eawaran's Words to Live By. Which caused a line of thought to pop...I wonder if that's not the key to answered prayers.

We are told to pray without ceasing, but we ignore the rest of the message which is to pray thanking God for, not asking God for. We thank God for that which is not yet visible to our mind's eye or our naked eye...it is still a restless hope, or sometimes a restless dread. We thank God and walk toward that hope, that dread.

It is in walking forward toward our perceived desire that our path is made clear, one step at a time. We may...no, we will...make many missteps and wrong turns (if we're doing it right) before we arrive at our perfected desire which...surprise!...turns out to be not our perceived desire, but something way better.

Quite often that better thing is the one thing we were praying to not be true or to not happen. And, as foretold somewhere in the Bible or the Koran or the Torah or any other piece of spiritual literature we've not read, the scales fall from our eyes. 

God's will is not available to our reasoning mind. It is beautiful and has to be worked for.

Thank you.

DETACH...SEEK STILL MORE SPIRITUAL GROWTH

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. -- Meister Eckhart

I'm about half way convinced that all our natural woes come from attachment to our own opinion; i.e., our refusal to believe that the other person has a different point to make. We hear...in fact, it is a well-known adage...that there are two sides to every story. Our ego...my Lucy...will allow that to be of import only when she is pushing her side. To her, there may be two sides but the other side is wrong...why listen to wrong? End of discussion.

There it is: The impetus, cleverly disguised, to seek still more spiritual growth. It is a tish lowering to admit that my spiritual growth starts and ends with "get over yourself." That's detachment plain and simple. Obviously too simple for Lucy, but God has already given me the quiet word that Lucy is mine to corral. I must needs remember that "mine to corral" means using his tools, his thoughts, his Steps to freedom.

He gave me the best tool when I got that all my problems could be solved by spiritual principles. Then came the short form of that...love and laugh. After which he gave Lucy her name. Then he gave me leave to laugh with him at her never-ending antics to get over on him.

Even as I write, I realize all of that is detachment. All my problems can be solved not by my thinking about them, worrying, pondering...nurturing them in fact...but by doing, as in giving over, ceding my vaunted power, agreeing with my adversary quickly. There's where our mind-power comes in...just think "don't hit him, hug him." Maybe the best that'll get us is a grin at our own self...but isn't that heading in the right direction?

She who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. -- Meister Eckhart

Thank you.

GOD DOES PAY ATTENTION

This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak [God’s] name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship [and daughtership]. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," August 5, 2016

Well there it is...just one of my many pet peeves. According to me, it is the constant use of brackets to make everything gender neutral (or gender not male) that is so distracting to the message. Gender male material neither makes all females less-than nor does it give all males a leg up.

Females who buy into that are usually stuck in their ego's desire to feel the victim. There is no spiritual growth there. Actually, I believe that males have the harder job in detaching there. That belief on the face of it (the place no one cannot afford to stay) can be used to justify the male in believing that he "was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple," to quote Ann Richardson. a former governor of Texas, speaking of a fellow Texan.

I've found it to be a rewarding spiritual exercise to consciously realize Oneness in any gender specific material that I read...as in the Bible or any literature that is practically all male specific. Reading and resisting the gender is not reading, it is editing.

I read to get a deeper understanding of the message, not to critique the message. I'm hoping spelling this out will help clear my resistance to those distracting brackets. Uh-oh...blinding flash: I read to get a deeper understanding of the message, not to critique  the message...don't tell me God doesn't watch over my shoulder as I type.

Thank you.

ALWAYS GOD LOVES AND LAUGHS

...in the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. --  from a writing of Thomas Merton's

In that half sentence, one phrase in particular spoke out loud to me. I heard, "...in the depths of my heart where self-knowledge cannot reach is who I am in God's eyes."

It occurred to me that it is our constantly seeking still more self-knowledge that is the detour that defines us. We need self-knowledge primarily in order to turn it over to the care of God.

Making peace...actually making friends...with our reasoning mind is the goal according to me. We don't want to, and can't, just turn off our reasoning mind for it plays a vital role in our life...in picking and choosing and deciding and selecting, all functions of our reasoning mind. It is after we've picked, chosen, decided and selected that we must needs turn from our reasoning mind and let God finish off the project.

God has already perfected that which is given us to do...it is our reasoning mind's choice that he gets to work with in bringing it out into the open. And there's the sink hole. His perfect will is our gold, and we're wanting nickels and dimes.

Thus begins our rocky road to still more spiritual growth. Learning to detach from our wants in order to realize God's perfect, and unknown, will becomes our one heart's desire. We sit in the silence and wait on the Lord. As Fr Richard Rohr says, "We shed our thoughts about ourselves."

My ego Lucy cries, "Boring!"  And my reasoning mind sometimes agrees and goes haring off on its own. Sometimes I stay put and thank God for my everything just as it is right that very minute.

Always God loves and laughs.

Thank you.

THE SECRET GARDEN OF GOD

[The following is a reprint of my blog of December 1, 2015.]

...you have to let God reveal your real faults to you, usually by falling many times, and by other people's opinions of you. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," November 29, 2015

The secret garden of God fits on the point of a pin, is within, and is nearly always only accessible through our own falling, our failing. 

Every time we have a disagreement with another, we are in conflict with our Source within, our own Self. Until we get right with our Self, we will project our failings onto the other and call her responsible...obsessing on ways to hurt him the way we're hurting and/or to get an apology for our hurt.

We waste so much mental, physical and spiritual energy trying to fix our own feelings so we can feel good about our self, and we do it by thinking of ways to hurt another...setting her straight, making him pay. 

There is that secret garden within each of us that we can go to and in that instant be free. Finding that garden must needs be our singular search. All else is self on parade.

Thank you.

DETACH...AND GROW

My morning blinding flash of the obvious:  The power of positive thinking is only power when we're not consciously thinking.

When we manufacture the "positive" and repeat it endlessly, even calling it an affirmation, that is simply fear dressed up pretty. That's us trying to make something happen or to keep something from happening. We're still into being the God of our own understanding.

When we sit in the silence and open our mind to receive, not send, that which floats through contains our gold...most times well-disguised gold, but that ensures we ponder it. We learn to look beneath the apparentness of it...that's where we find the positive.

It must be noted that sometimes that which floats through our thoughts is just an idle thought...and there is gold there, too. That teaches us to use our patience...think Waiting for Godot.

The power of positive thinking, then, comes from detaching from reliance on our reasoning mind, from our own thinking. We acknowledge (never deny) whatever is foremost in our thoughts, usually a fear of another, and entrust God to "intervene in our life in our behalf."

Loose it and let it go. -- somewhere in the KJV Bible

Thank you.

ON LOVING AS GOD LOVES

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: My job is to love Lucy as God loves Lucy.

Anatomy of an ego trip:

My ego Lucy is easily offended. She does not accept that nothing is personal to her so that it takes not that much to set her afire. Off she goes into a tizzy, tossing her curls, stomping her feet, and plotting revenge...endlessly plotting revenge, each revengeful act more dastardly than the one before, and always aimed outward...out there, out toward the one she blames.

And God lovingly observes. He takes no control because his perfect will has been gifted to me as my free will to use as I choose. It is mine to control Lucy. Eeek!

So, I lecture Lucy. I harangue Lucy. I awaken at 3:00 AM in despair of Lucy. I have not a clue how to control Lucy. I admit defeat. Repeatedly. I crash and burn in my attempts. Repeatedly.

Finally, I listen. And I hear God whisper, "Just love Lucy. Love her as I love her...and you. Love and laugh."

Which, boiled down to it, is just don't take Lucy...i.e., myself...so damn seriously.

Thank you.