LET GO OF WHAT YOU KNOW...BE SILENT...LISTEN

I feel like I'm walking a new path. But, actually, it's not new...it's just another reminder of that which I know to be true but ignore too often.

It's all about detaching from my junk-truth. I do not need to read another new book, nor reread another old book for that matter. Which isn't to say I need to give up reading...no. It's all about coming to believe...to accept...that I already have all I need in order to be the better person I want to be. I already am all I need be. Another spiritual book and/or teacher isn't going to add anything to my understanding. Which is to say that the spiritual life is not a theory, I must live it. The Sermon is not just a bunch of pretty words, I must walk them.

So that's the new path I'm tottering down. Now the hard work begins. Being that better person. Doing it. Living it. I need remind myself that of course I'm not starting from scratch. I'm a better person than I ever dreamed of being just twenty years ago...which, apparently, brings me up to ready to get started.

I think I'll stop using Meister Eckhart as my role model though...Pope Francis sets a higher standard than I expect to reach in this lifetime but I am willing to try. And he has a sense of humor. The Pope is a leap  up from my practical wannabe role-model...Senator Elizabeth Warren. She's mouthy, but she's right.

Here comes that good advice again: Sit and wait on the Lord.

Thank you.

ON BELIEF AND DOUBT

Recently I talked at length with a friend who is a believer...but. She just can't quite get over her own self to acceptance. I suspect it's that she is willing to believe, just unwilling to put that belief into action...to walk it. Or maybe it's just that because she cannot believe the vast wonderment of God all the time, she can't believe that she believes.

The great Billy Graham gave me possibly my greatest freedom...the freedom to believe, absolutely believe, in the God of my own understanding in the midst of my own daily doubts.

In an interview with "The Washington Post" some 30, maybe 40, years ago, he was asked if he ever had doubts about the existence of God. And he answered, "Every day."

That to "The Washington Post" and from the Born Again And Still Rising Billy Graham! I became a believer in his sincerity in that moment...not a follower, but a believer.

That backed up the line from somewhere in the Bible that I loved, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. I first heard that when I was quite young and was leery of trusting that it meant what I thought it said but was afraid to risk ridicule by asking.

There it is...the proof of the too-scared-to-believe mind. We doubt the Bible's word, but completely believe when it comes from a human's mouth.

That just cracks God up. He laughs...and loves us a tish more. According to me.

Thank you.

ON FEAR AND HUMILITY ABORNING

Random thoughts...updated:

There was a time, back in the day, when I worried that I was not humble enough. Then I came to see that I would have to get humble before that could be a problem. After which I realized there is no "humble enough." Every waking moment is a realistic chance of our being humbled...and being humbled by our own design. The best we can hope for is enough sense to see our part in it and to take responsibility for it. There...that is humility aborning.

And, no, believing that we are nothing but worms in the dust is not humility...it is ego on parade, dressed up as Less Than Anybody Thus Worthy of Note.

Fear of financial insecurity, fear of  people, fear of anything is just another way to stay stuck in the belief that our fear has more pizzazz than God has power.

Money is not the root of all evil...it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. There is nothing wrong with money or of prestige and power...it is our obsessive desire for money, prestige and power that beggars us.

God loves us just exactly as we are right this very minute. On a good day, I love you a tish more than I love me...then humility whispers, "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

Thank you.

WE TAKE OUR COMFORT WHERE WE FIND IT

There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance. -- Luke 15:7

The first time ever I heard that, my first thought was, "There's going to be some heavy-duty partying in heaven when I get there." But that was a long time ago...in my youth, so to speak. Before ever I repented now that I think on it!

And don't you just hate the very word "repent?" Or is that just me? My feeling is that it's almost enough to make me hope I never get to that point. So sanctimonious...holier than thou. Too high in the instep by half, as my unsainted grandmother would say.

I don't know why but the idea occurs to me that we must needs come to love our self before we can give our self permission to admit, without fear of condemnation, to disliking that which we shouldn't dislike. (Is that convoluted enough?)  Well, think on it...be it words, people, places, babies...and there it is. Babies. Disliking babies and saying so may explain my entire point.  You can get some really evil-eyed stares, not to mention a particularly spiteful "well, bless your heart" or two if you openly admit that babies just do not do it for you, and I speak from experience here. But then I've probably given the spiteful evil eye to people who openly dislike dogs.

Hmmm...I started this thinking to write about the way we beat ourselves up over our mistakes, over past rues, regrets and remorses. The futility of it, specifically. It's entirely ego driven which, even as we admit that, we get a certain approving charge out of being so insightful.

Well, enough said. All we need do is read old Luke at 15:7. If we can't take comfort in being the one sinner, at least we can feel good that we're not of the 99 self-righteous.

Thank you.

ON SEEING THROUGH GOD'S EYES

There is nothing that is not spiritual for those who have learned how to see. - Fr. Richard Rohr

God's gentle reminder to me this morning came in the above quote. Many of us are learning how to truly see...to see through God's eyes. The hard part, of course, is when I look through God's eyes, I must needs take my focus off me...memememe.

From my eyebrows up, that is my goal, my earnest desire, to see through God's eyes. However, if that "earnest desire" is in fact true, I should have no trouble remembering it...meaning I do have trouble remembering it. I can use my ego Lucy as my fun-foil till my face falls off, but who's kidding whom? Do I want to view my world through my own I-am-my-world eyes or through God's I Am eyes? And there is the hook...an honest desire is all that is needed.

It is that honest desire that declares me powerless to do it, that opens the door for My power to flow out and do for me in ways I could never have imagined. And perfectly yet.

It is God's I Am world that brings us all together as one. That brings the truth to There is nothing that is not spiritual for those who have learned how to see. Please and thank you. Amen.

Thank you.

GOD'S UNWANTED GIFTS MADE PRECIOUS

NOTE: This is my November 25 post, yesterday's post. I have no idea why it did not publish but it surely bears out my point of my daily sixes and sevens. Pish-tosh.

I made my two-minute contact with God this morning, and I am so glad I did!

As it happens, to my reasoning mind's eye, the dailies of my life have been at sixes and sevens. Bear with me here because I'm going to list some: Awhile back, I scraped the side of my new car (my fault, but I'm blaming my grocery for their too-narrow parking spaces); then my hairdresser gave me a G.I. Joe haircut...two months ago, and it hasn't grown enough to get it shaped properly yet! Yesterday morning as I brushed my teeth, the tooth my partial hooks onto fell out...just fell out of my mouth. Yesterday morning. My favorite holiday morning. Thanksgiving dinner morning. The dinner for which I had reservations so I pay whether I show up and eat or not.

I used to believe if everything is going to hell in a handbasket that either God is peeved at me or I'm just a screw-up...or both.

God loves me so much that he gave me a new way to understand life itself; i.e., the wonderful mirror-image. As in, if it is true (and I choose to believe it is) that God only sees good, then when to my eye ugly happens, God's eye is seeing good...because it can only see good. Ergo, I must needs lift up my eyes to see through his.

There...that's the entire story of how when something awful happens to you (to your mind's eye), once you're on the other side of it, you can see through God's eye that it was good and for your benefit. That's the mirror-imagery of God's will. According to me.

That's why my two-minute contact this morning was so good...I've been feeling less than wonderful about all the sixes and sevens, and the tooth put the cap on it. Which got my ego Lucy up and running...all set to beat me up for screwing up.

As I sat down to make myself available to God, here came a blinding flash of the obvious...these less-than haps are simply the appearance of ugly. In truth, they are God's gifts solely for the purpose of bringing me consciously closer to him. Nothing opens the door of my God-consciousness faster than my going down that wrong road again...for which I am profoundly grateful.

It is a pure fact that all the uglies are mine to fix, but no blame attaches. As I go forward in righting what and where I can, neither bitching nor blaming, the crooked road is made straight, and I will know the grace of gratitude.

He goes before us to make the crooked places straight. Blinding flash of the obvious: A crooked place is always my attitude.

Thank you.

AWARENESS IS IN THE CONTACT

I just came across a quote of Fr. Richard Rohr's that I saved: We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.

I'd say the absence of awareness is entirely due to our neglecting the daily discipline that is required to attain a belief in...to experience, actually...the presence of God in our life.

The necessary discipline that I have found necessary is to every day, several times a day, make myself available to God. Just make myself available. I kinda keep "thank you" or "welcome" running in my mind whenever I'm not talking or reading...to fill in the spaces of my life so to speak.

On occasion I will sit down. Get quiet. Think, "Here I am, God. Speak or not...my ears are yours to use." If no click comes within that time, I stop and come back later and try again.

Personally, I am not a believer in a 20- or 30-minute period of trying...for me that turns the clock into the God of my understanding, and no clock and I have ever made conscious contact. But that's just me.

I learned early on that it is not necessary to take more than two, three, four minutes...minutes!...daily to sit and wait on the Lord. We know when we've made contact, and time does not exist then. It is in the contact that we become aware. We then walk away, uplifted, knowing a Soul at peace.

Thank you.

DETACH FROM ANALYZING...BE

I heard a very educated lady give a lecture recently on the essence of spirituality, on God, on what God is and what God is not. That sounds like I went to hear a lady lecture. No. I was lectured by a lady. In her defense, she did not consider it a lecture, she was not setting me straight, she was just sharing her educated understanding of God.

Although her understanding is not mine, it's not that far off, but in her world there is no laughing and scratching with God. There is in mine. Especially when my ego Lucy is running wild.

It comforts me to think of God as being on my side, as having my back. Which is not to say that I think of God as a form standing guard over me, but rather of my being conscious of goodness with me/within me...I reckon.

I like to feel God laughing at Lucy who is always trying to make an end run around him...I don't mentally picture that, I feel it. And that fits me. Same goes for Lucy...both are words in my consciousness that help me detach from my reasoning mind's analyses and be at peace. In prettier words, to find love in a loveless place as Thaddeus Golas wrote in "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment."

My spirituality is what I've often called "Grandma Moses spirituality." I have friends whose spiritual understanding I compare to Michelangelo...soaring, breathtaking, beautiful, not to mention educated. Mine's not that. Mine is intuitive, Grandma Moses-like...primitive in a word. Breathtaking to me just the same, but soaring?, educated? No. It is indescribable, actually. Which is my proof that God's hand is in it...or my hand is in his, more like.

Thank you.

NOTHING IS PERSONAL...GIVE UP THE FIGHT

Some friends and I were talking, and the question was posed: What in your recent life has changed you the most? Then, have you kept that change current? How?

With that in mind, I do believe that my deepest change came when I took the leap of faith of trusting that God's hand is in it, in it for my own benefit, whenever I'm going through something less than wonderful, the old sixes and sevens.

My sixes and sevens situations are almost always personal and on parade in minor disagreements. That word "personal" is the clue..."Detour! There's a muddy road ahead...detour!"

My great inner change came when I became willing to give up the ego-need to “stand up for myself,” also known as "take my own part." My new goal became to go for a win/win not an I win/you lose.  I now want to be willing to give over to the other first, to make the first move. I succeed more often than not, but I'm a far cry from...where I want to be.

Keeping it current, I still must make a conscious choice almost every time I run into an ego-block. I must remind me "and here, too, God's hand is in it." Sometimes it feels like I'm arm-wrestling with God before I get a hold on my ego Lucy. Lucy stands guard so efficiently that neither my reasoning mind nor God get first thought. However, thanks to the grace of God and a little help from my friends, I have learned to restrain my tongue today. 

I'm guessing that peace, and keeping it, boils down to there is nothing personal in a God-conscious world.  Give up the fight and follow Me.

Thank you.

PRACTICE LIVING IMPERSONAL LOVE

Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. - My inexact memory of Christ Jesus's two commandments.

I'm reminded of those two commandments by my "God Calling" notes that I wrote on this day, the first in 2005 - Love is  not personal, and the second in 2007 - Practice living love by loving adversity the same as no adversity.

Jesus went on to teach the same love goes to our enemies. That teaching is still today being disputed by many. But, of course we must love our enemy as our self. What else could it be? It is reasoning mind simple to love a neighbor, or a friend, or our folks, or our dog. But to love our enemy? That is not reasoning mind, we must go beyond reason to love. Whole new plane of consciousness

Love is not personal came to full perk for me in 2005, but my inner eye had been glimpsing that for awhile...maybe from the time of my first realization that "resist not evil" is the answer, and "thank you" covers all the thinking on that.

When practice living that impersonal love by welcoming adversity as if it were not adversity came to me, it made sense because I had been given to believe that the Father knows our needs. Knowing, then, means all our prayers have already been answered, all our apparent problems have already been fixed. Adversity/not adversity...the walking-around ingredients of our life to be met with love, nonresistant love. And that is all.

Do note that it is important to accept that we do not live that 24/7, first, because we are plain old brown bag humans. and, second, because our ego speaks louder than God. We truly must get quiet and listen for the Lord...my dear Lucy shouts like a banshee just passing the time of day.

That's why the second note is vitally important...the word practice heads us in the right direction, living puts the cap on it. That's it...for the rest of our lives:  Practice living love by loving adversity the same as no adversity.

If we are doing life right, adversity will visit itself upon us whenever it wants to...for the rest of our life. So will "versity" but we can just bask in that...and with the exact same "thank you."

Thank you.

SEEK...SIMPLY SEEK

{The following is a reprint, reworked, of my blog of July 10, 2012.]

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

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

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

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

I know from my eyebrows up that Christ lives before conception in consciousness which is the universal pool of love, i.e., non-resistance, transparency, acceptance, surrender, invitation, welcome, thank you.

 I know this in my heart most of the time. In my need to know it unto breathing it, every morning after I've walked and fed Ruckus, I make myself available to God...just seeking a deeper knowing.

I go to God for God, and that is all.

Thank you.

RESIGNATION VS. ACCEPTANCE

I desire not to desire, for my will is without value, since I am ignorant in any case. Therefore choose Thou for me what Thou knowest to be best and do not put my perdition in what my autonomy and free choice prefer. -- Bayazid Al-Bistami

I've come across this quote before, and every time I do, it sings to me. I either love it or maybe I just love the idea of it because desiring not to desire is akin to trying to unthink a thought...impossible! And, by the way, is precisely what we do every time we beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up.

For why I don't know, but I'm reminded of the difference between resignation and acceptance. When we resign our self to, say, a really bad habit, we commit our self to that bad habit. We give in to that bad habit on the grounds that "I can't help myself."  Indeed, relying on our self alone, we cannot.

On the other hand, with acceptance, like surrender, we give up to a power other than our own self because "I can't help myself."  It is that power that we surrender to, providence if you will, that lifts our burden of self and walks us free.

I tend to think of resignation as negative energy or self will and acceptance as positive energy or God's will.

Chose you this day whom ye will serve. -- Joshua 24:15

Thank you.

NEVER SHORT-SHEET SELF-DISCIPLINE

Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have sent my spirit upon him, he will bring fair judgment to the nations.--Isaiah 42:1

I sent the above quote to a friend on the day of President Obama's first inaugural, January 20, 2009, with a note that I felt it perfectly described our new president.

My sincere prayer for myself is to upgrade my own opinion of President-elect Trump so that I can know within myself that quote perfectly describes this new president.

Achieving that upgrade is my responsibility through the grace of gratitude and God...and self-discipline.

Thank you. 

ON DROWNING IN OUR OWN PATHOS

Loving means to love that which is unlovable,

Or it is no virtue at all.

Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable,

Faith means believing the unbelievable,

And hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Ponder that!, for there it is...that which explains, plainly, how we get right within our self. It's beautifully worded poetry for ego deflation in depth, that which we claim to be our goal.

Ponder it still more for who's kidding whom? We have a ways to go before we're free. Our emotions feel like November the 8th, 2016, was October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday on Wall Street), December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor, "a day which will live in infamy"), and September 11, 2001 (9/11), all bound together like a ball of hibernating snakes.

Interestingly, I personally have not felt at sixes and sevens within myself. I've been kinda proud of myself for taking things so well...haven't beaten my breast and cried like some people I know have. Haven't gone into a black funk like some other people I know have.

I did, however, scream "That is stupid" at a friend yesterday...which is stupid. I've mentally decided a couple friends (who have not asked me) need my advice...badly. Ruckus pooped in the foyer last night.

Uh-oh.

I know denial when I see it...in others. But apparently it takes hard evidence for me to see my own. And all of the above amounts to that hard evidence, and that my ego Lucy is in charge and charging hard.

God bless our ego. It can serve a good purpose. It can awaken us to the fact that we're on the wrong road heading in the wrong direction...that we'd best turn around, don't drown in our own self-induced pathos.

All we are saying is give love a chance. A gentle reminder to self.

Thank you.

SOMEDAY SOON, LORD

Francis and Clare showed us it is possible to change the system not by negative attacks (which tend to inflate the ego), but simply by quietly moving to the side and doing it better! -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 6, 2016

Simplified, and according to me, that explains resist not evil, which, when applied, is the how-to in learning to tame the ego-victory mind with its negative attacks.

That brings to mind the I-wish-it-wasn't-true line, what we see is always ourselves (from I forget what book but it was a goodie). Speaking of a goodie, there's always the Sermon on the Mount with its warning about seeing the mote in his eye and seeing not the beam in your own...and how different is that from today's favorite, if you can spot it, you got it?

All these very well-known quotes are guides for taming our attack mind and "quietly moving to the side and doing it better." I have to laugh as I recognize how easily and eagerly we advise others of their need to use these guides, yet we break no records in applying them to our own self.

The lesson for me boils down to: Cling not to self-determined objectives, seek always still more spiritual growth...move to the side away from the ego, turn within to the Father who doeth the works.

What we're learning is how to change the system...i.e., our own thinking. Then, and only then, can we say without lying: All our troubles, Lord, soon be over.

To which Lucy wonders, "How soon is soon?"

Thank you.

LET HIM...THE HARDEST PART

Not by might, nor by Power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord. - Zechariah 4:6

There it is, the simplified version of the Bible, according to me. I say it is the one instruction we need hold near and dear in our head and heart. Fighting with words or guns...or silent scorn...will never get us free. This is especially true if we win our fight; we have a better chance for freedom from self if we lose.

The great gettin' up news is "My Spirit" is always, always, always available to us. The uh-oh, wait a  minute news is It is not available on demand. Although It is within us, without us, we accept that it is our privilege, our honor, our very duty to seek My Spirit. Our seeking is what brings us into the atmosphere of God.

It is in the atmosphere of God that our mind is changed, upgraded actually, from our hard-charging, gotta win, gotta get mine, runaway thought-train into the peace that passes all understanding. Into the presence of the Father within "who doeth the works."

Let him.

Thank you. 

ON A MISTAKE MADE BY GRACE

God is so good to me.

I awoke this morning feeling less than wonderful about myself for I knew I had betrayed my own beliefs. Long/short: Yesterday I received from a friend an on-line petition to and for the Electoral College to vote for Clinton period. Sign and send on was the request. Without a by-your-leave, I did just that.

So there it is, my bad.

Here's God's good...I awoke feeling really uneasy, a something ain't right, skin's on crooked feeling. With which I was gifted with a blinding flash of the obvious: By my actions with that petition I have made myself beholden to President-elect Trump. Holy moly. I can no longer sit in judgment, blathering loving-kindness words and thinking butt-ugly thoughts.

I realized in that flash that God knew I was going to need the golden goose to get over my own resistance to the results of this election...ergo, there went my signed petition. Nothing else would have so clearly opened the window in my mind for God's grace to show me that I had started down that wrong road again and needed to make a u-bie NOW.

With acceptance I find the correction isn't all that difficult...I upgrade my attitude is all. My proof to me of that happening is I think and speak against the petition's passage, for the President-elect's success, for acceptance of the election results in all respects. Which, of course, means for my own salvation...ah, the win/win.

God is so good to me.

Thank you.

ON BECOMING ONED

To walk free in my own head. That is my one, my only, my unifying goal.

If I am not free in my own head, all the spiritual education I have or think I have...all the sacred tomes ever written, read or to be read...will, to quote the late and beloved Sen. Everett Dirksen, "have all the force and effect of a snowflake on the bosom of the Potomac."

To walk free in my own head is the Father within flowing freely from me to and through thee...ever flowing like the sea.

And we are Oned, unified.

Thank you.

SMILE...LIFE IS CANDID CAMERA

The election of Donald Trump is not the cause of our misery...our opinion about that election is the cause of our misery. The election of Barack Obama was not the cause of their misery, but look where their not knowing that, not being willing to accept that, has led this country...has led us!

Which calls to mind the definition of insanity...doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Let's not do that.

I do believe Hillary Clinton is taking the loss better than a large part of the country. We voted for her as our leader, lets follow her lead. Enough with the rues, regrets and remorses...let's change our mind, upgrade our attitude, smile.

As the old saying goes, get happy if it kills you.

Thank you.

THE WILLINGNESS TO TRY

Initiation precedes all real work and success for Me. -- "God Calling," March 28

For whatever reason, I was led to believe that spiritual initiation was basically mind-messing...being led to believe you are going to be buried alive, or forced to jump off a 1,000' cliff into shark-filled waters, and/or worse. The objective being to prove one's faith in God's love and protection always and all ways. For all I know that is spiritual initiation; if so, it's obviously for others far more spiritually advanced than I am or anyone I know is.

But that line from my "God Calling" has caused me pause. Over the years, I've hi-lighted, underlined it in blue and then again in green and orange-tabbed it. When it says that initiation precedes all real work and success for Me, I'm fairly certain it means just that which must mean there are lesser degrees of initiation.

I recently came to see that initiation for me may be simply discipline of self in living the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount and all that follows from that. Specifically my initiation is learning to live the denial of self, to learn unto breathing to deny self-centered objectives.

Which I doubt can be done without grace and a boatload of gratitude, but...here's a flash...the doing isn't as important as the willingness to try. And with God's grace, I am willing.

Thank you.

POGO WAS RIGHT

I am so blessed. I had a blinding flash of the obvious two or three weeks ago that the election results might turn out to be not my first...or even last...choice. I started then making peace in my own head with my perceived worst-case scenario for which today I am grateful from my toenails up.  Most of the day yesterday, I talked with some really sad, sad friends...I could all but reach out and touch the resistance I heard.

It's times like these that I bless the really hard-rock times I've gone through in my life...cursing and kicking and crying, resisting every step of the way. I'm grateful today because that is the way...The Way...we learn unto realization that acceptance is the answer. That is what taught me to be grateful for the gray days almost more than for the sunny days because the gray days required me to dig deep for God...the sunny days I could just sit and bask in his love.

If we're on the right road, aiming in the right direction, here's how we learn to love the gray days: We begin by reading our spiritual literature every morning, finding great comfort, even inspiration, there. We feel at One with the Father within...with all our fellow beings. Our head is on straight, God is good, we're ready to go out and shower love and laughter!

Then a less-than-wonderful happens...a really, really less-than-wonderful happens...if we hadn't banished the word "bad" from our life, this would qualify for that word.

We cry. We sob. We can't seem to stop. We're all but beating our breasts and wailing. We know we're sinking into depression, and we feel fairly righteous about it. This, after all, deserves depression...has even earned depression!

We talk to a friend who quotes some spiritual junk...what a Pollyanna she is...we walk away from her p.d.q. We may be ready for that spiritual crapola in a couple weeks, but this hurts too good to let go so soon.

Now is when our very own past experience comes to our aid. We remember to go take a good look in the mirror. That piece of paper we taped there so long ago is long gone, but its message is still there: You Are Looking At The Problem.

It is not the election results, it is not our newly diagnosed Stage 4 cancer, it is not our best friend's sudden and wholly unexpected death, it is not the broken fingernail...it is us. Pogo was right.

Why are we giving an hour or more a day to the God of our understanding if we're not going to practice what he is imparting to us daily...hourly...even as we breathe?

Lest I come across too righteous by half, it is a flat-out fact that my stomach turns whenever I am caught unaware with the thought that Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United State of America. And that's with all my prior, proper planning.

Then I hear God lovingly whisper, "Get over yourself!" And I do have to laugh...with love.

Thank you.

GOD'S HEALING PRESENCE

Lessons I have learned unto living them:

I know whenever I think that the worst thing that could ever happen...happens, God's hand is in it.

I know our perceived "worst case scenario" is the mirror-image of God's perfect gift to us.

I know to welcome that gift...before my ego Lucy gets to thinking on it.

I know if I upgrade my attitude, I upgrade my problem.

I know it is not what happens in our life, it is our reaction to what happens that determines our happiness...or lack thereof.

I know whatever the perceived problem, the answer is: Get grateful.

I know gratitude does not take away a problem, but it does take away our anxiety about the problem.

I know gratitude is God's healing presence always and ever available to us...we need only pray "thank you" to receive it.

Thank you.

LOOSE IT AND LET IT GO...DETACH

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. --The Beatitudes, Matthew 5:5

I wonder if that isn't the most questioned of all the blessings set out in The Beatitudes...like, how can meek be a blessing? Truth to tell, my first thought seems always to be from the reasoning mind so ego gets first crack, and my ego Lucy's first thought when "meek" is mentioned is, "Door mat, and no thank you."

Actually, if we only stay in the reasoning mind, it makes sense that the meek shall inherit the earth. All the un-meek will kill each other off so there's nothing left but the meek. And if we remain attached to the reasoning mind, if we never seek higher ground, there won't even be any un-meek left. There will always be someone who is stronger, more clever than the other one which he'll prove by besting the other...and the beat goes on. There it is, the reasoning mind leading us to that which we're trying our level best to avoid...death, or worse, humiliation.

It is only by making our self available to a higher power, that power which we already have within us right this very minute!, that we will ever become willing to take that very first, teensy-tiny step up to a higher plane...a.k.a., divorced from our own ideas. The word quite simply is "detach."

It is on this plane that we find all our thinking has been done for us...its unlikely answers are our perfected world. We find giving over, giving up, giving in brings a solace that we've never experienced before...could not even imagine because our reasoning mind knows naught of it.

No doubt that is why "detach" is suggested so often in spiritual books, sermons, and the like. The instructions are pretty direct: Loose it and let it go.

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGHTER...EVER AVAILABLE

The key to living a complete and fulfilled life lies in the realization that there is a mystical, transcendental Presence within us that has already provided our infinite supply unto eternity, that contains within Itself our companionship unto eternity, and that has within Itself the power of fulfillment. -- Joel Goldsmith, "A Parenthesis in Eternity," p. 269

I first read that I do not know how many years ago but I knew it to be true. I even typed it out on my handy-dandy portable typewriter, a hint at just how long ago it was, and I still have that original typed note taped inside my "God Calling."

The good news is that I knew that to be true on reading it, the better news is that I have proven it to be true in my very own life. The less-than-wonderful news is...I still forget. I still link arms with Lucy and go haring off, setting people who need to be set straight...straight. Pretty much only in my own mind today. And I consider that spiritual growth!

It elevates my spirits every time I reread it. What a comfort. For it is true...the Father and I are one, the Father knows our needs, ask and ye shall receive...all or any one of those say the same thing.

That's how and why we can cease fighting everything and everybody. Comfortably. Without fear. That's also how and why, when we're feeling resentful for any reason, we can know we have made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt.

If we stay focused on the Father within and our connection to him to the best of our abilities, we will for sure find our self slinging mud in our own face at some point...which is the good news! For that gives us another reason to remember from whence that mud came and why: It wasn't his, she didn't do it, they aren't to blame...thank you, Father, I clearly needed another lesson.

Then we love them, him, her, our own self...and laugh. Or, then we laugh and love them, him, her, our own self.  Love and laughter...interchangeable.

Thank you.

STAND ON IT!

That all things are possible to him who believes; that they are less difficult to him who hopes; that they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues. -- Brother Lawrence

If you overcome your enemies, you’ve failed. If you make your enemies your partners, God has succeeded. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 9, 2016

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. -- Sun Tzu

For awhile now, the goal of my life, daily, has been to soften my mind toward the possibility of the worst presidential candidate in the history of the United States of America winning this election. I read and think on the above quotes often because I'm a believer that the "enemy" is my own thinking, my judgment in a word.

At any rate, if that possibility comes true, I'd best be ready. I'm reminded of the old gospel song that has the line, "I want to be ready, I want to  be ready, I want to  be ready to walk in Jerusalem just like John."

That's my guideline today...to be ready to love. To love the fire in the forest, the plague in the village, the rot in the fields...for they are nothing but a call to surrender. I take heart in reading of those who lost everything in floods and fires, disasters of all kinds, and years later testify to that being the change that bettered their lives. In breaking them, it caused them to seek and receive help from a power greater than themselves.

I know for me that the more I resist the picture before my eyes, when I let go, the more surely it will be that God's hand was in it all the time. We can rely on our belief that God can and will intervene in our life on our behalf, and that his intervention is seldom by fulfilling our wants. It's by showing us our needs (his will) is better for us that our wants. We slowly move our belief from the head, into the heart, on to our gut, down to the soles of our feet. Then we stand on it!

There. That's why, like I said, I started awhile back softening my own rigid, righteous and right mindset. Accepting its rigid righteousness is moving in the right direction. Which tells me God is on the field, and that's all that is necessary.

Thank you.

GOD LOVES US SOOO MUCH

Jesus is the victim in an entirely new way because he receives our hatred and does not return it, nor does he play the victim for his own empowerment.  (Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 9, 2016)

There. That is what I aspire to...well, not quite that high. Not that high because I cannot imagine receiving hatred without feeling ticked or hurt right back. Hurt, and unjustly hurt (is there a justly hurt?), most especially. Doing it without being able to imagine it?...unlikely to happen.

To know another's hatred, or contempt, and not experience any change in my feelings about the other ("you're one, too!") or about myself ("poor, pitiful, put-upon me") is unfathomable to me. Yet, that's what to "not return it" means to me.

Although, given some thought, I can't say it is entirely unfathomable...I know that I have made minor strides forward. A minor stride toward that goal is spiritual growth walking, according to me.

I have a for-instance: A friend ticked me off/hurt my feelings recently, and I was blessed with understanding from whence his action came...that's all it took for me to know that I wanted to be the first to reach out. So I forwarded him an e-mail of an impressive fact...impersonal but interesting. That broke the discomfort, and, in no time, we're laughing and chatting as if nothing happened. Because nothing happened.

That oh-so-teeny incident tells it all...how many (uncountable!) lifetimes I'll need to ever reach Jesus's "entirely new way," yet how far I have come from my yesteryears of dropping dear friends without a by-your-leave for what amounted most times to imaginary hurts.

It is true...when used, spiritual principles will solve all of our problems.

Thank you.

SIT AND WAIT ON THE LORD

In pondering the word “love” this morning, I'm trying to find an apt description for my understanding of it. Nonresistance may best fit it, the hook being that nonresistance cannot mean to do nothing in the face of evil. Some famous someone once said that all it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.

Yes, but! What about the Sermon's "Resist not evil?"

Ah, here comes the sun: Resist not evil must take us into a higher consciousness...where we rest in the understanding that the Father knows our needs. That is the place we need live. We resist not in Love, which is not only the home of our inner Source, it IS our inner Source. Nonresistance, love, is what releases our higher power. That power we need to change an ugly appearing situation for the better is not in the reasoning mind but in our higher consciousness.

Resistance is reasoning mind, ever thinking, ever analyzing, ever keeping higher help at bay; nonresistance opens the door for our Source to flow forth (I stand at the door and knock).

In general, we don't live 24/7 in a state of higher consciousness, but that is exactly why we need to make our self available for God every morning. We set aside, say, fifteen minutes every morning to sit and wait on the Lord. That's my entire meditation...I've never felt lifted into a new dimension, but that's when I usually get any blinding flash of the obvious.

Sit and wait on the Lord -- found somewhere in the Bible.

Thank you.

THE WORD TO REMEMBER...SIMPLIFY

Like so many of us, I am suffering the torment of my own thinking right now. This political season reminds me of old age...it ain't for sissies.

Every time I get up in my own head...slinging mud, calling it prayer...I eventually remember to simplify.  My precious "God Calling" is my great simplifier. The advice there always boils down to the great KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid.

Today's entry is particularly comforting: 'Ask what you will and it shall be done unto you.' How I can fulfil the promise is My Work, not yours, to consider....Have a big Faith, and expect big things, and you will get big things.

Remember always the quiet word: What we ask for, on receipt, may not look like what we asked for. With that, I realize that my self-described Evil One may win this election. If that happens, the comfort to my mind is that is God's will (and if it happens, it is God's will with or without my consent). Going for gratitude, I must needs question nothing and expect better to come of that than if my choice had won.

Simplify. Get grateful now, and it won't be so hard down the pike. Better yet, live an attitude of gratitude, also known as qui'chyurbitchin'.

Thank you.

GOD IS A STITCH...IN TIME

I believe we are born into the material world, and our journey, our life's walkabout, is to return to that time and place before conception, i.e., to God. We live in the third dimension until something either horrific or beatific shoots us into the fourth dimension, the egoless place within. We would never get to the fourth dimension without that shooting star whatever ours may be.

It takes great faith and no small amount of courage to risk opening our self to the fourth dimension. Interestingly, it matters not what causes us to take that risk...great suffering seldom begins as great suffering. Too often it begins as a pointless pimple...or a resentment. Someone demands (!), and uh-oh! There it is. Ego rarely reflects, it reacts, and my ego Lucy doubles down every time. The demand could be the equivalent of a pile of butterfly poop, Lucy pushes back with a snowplow.

The snowplow, of course, is our reasoning mind. We think about it, and it is our ego doing our thinking. Legislating for our self. Pondering the injustice of the demand.

The lesson is to not beat our self for our reaction but to remember gratitude...to say "thank you" and that is all. With our thank you, we've just passed that dimdam football off to God. He's got it, leave it with him. Then, if we cannot agree to the demand, simply say, "No, thank you," and keep on moving.

The hook is: We don't get to the fourth dimension that way. We get to the fourth dimension by agreeing to the demand without a thought...without judgment in our head or heart, without a pat on the back for our self. We are lifted into the fourth dimension when our reasoning mind gives up, gives in, and gives over to a higher power to do with us as It will.

Apparently, and according to me, the fourth dimension only comes when we are utterly detached from our reasoning mind. Another paradox: My great fear has ever been of losing my mind and winding up in an insane asylum, and here's me advocating detaching from our reasoning mind.

Don't tell me God doesn't have a great sense of humor...love and laugh, love and laugh.

Thank you.

SURRENDER TO WIN

It is always comforting to me, when I find myself at sixes and sevens, to listen to those around me. Almost without fail, the majority of them will be at sixes and sevens, too. Which reminds me that nothing is personal...our sixes and sevens may be caused by a full moon, it may be the weather, it may be the vibrations of our time...but it is not personal.

At times like these, I try to remember to not try to fix it, that it is not personal. It's simply the human condition presenting me with another chance to learn acceptance.

I'm a big believer in acceptance as the always answer. Unfortunately, actually doing it is fairly elusive. I find naming it "surrender" helps. Acceptance sounds so warm and welcoming...and that lends itself to trying to make that which we're resisting more swallowable...less true in other words.

Surrender on the other hand...who's kidding whom?  Nobody ever came to surrender feeling that this was a winning proposition. Acceptance and winner are more compatible in our own mind...or to our ego, more like.

Surrender shucks all our shields...which, for a fact, is the one sure way we're ever going to get to God. Feeling broken...not bent, broken...bloodied AND bowed. How are we to know that those broken, bloodied pieces are God's will...his to lovingly and tenderly pick up and put together again? How are we to know if we never surrender?

Give up the fight...it was not ours to begin with. Give to get...give up the thinking, the analyzing and get peace. In truth, that's the one thing we've ever gut-bucket wanted. It's the want that keeps us from realizing we already have it...that holds it off even as we pray for it.

Surrender to know...I am the peace you seek,,,ever and always with you, within you, without you.

Thank you.