GOD'S LOVE IS IN HIS LAUGHTER

It occurred to me yesterday that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that our mistake is in believing that it is our ego that needs to be corrected. Every time my ego Lucy comes with the football, I think, since I told her last time what she did was wrong, that I can trust her to do right by me now. Leading me, of course, to do the same thing I did before...trust Lucy. Jerking the football away IS Lucy's idea of doing right by me.

It's the same-old-same-old...living in our head, analyzing rather than utilizing, is self-reliance plain and simple. We put our trust in our self, our ego, rather than in God.

Interestingly, just this morning I read: God’s power comes through powerlessness and humility. Maybe ego, too, is of God...old Lucy sure does bring out my powerlessness, and I do feel deep humility (more like "deep irritation," "purely peeved"). And when will I ever learn?

I think of it this way: If it weren't for humans, God wouldn't have any laughs at all.

Thank you.

FILLED WITH LOVE AND LIGHT

As Rohr writes this morning, "You become the God you worship," so said my mentor many years ago when he told me, "I am the image of the God I adore."

As we are, as we know and show our self to be, just that is the God we experience. Recognizing that and trying to will our self to show forth a better person is working on the façade. No. We stay our mind on God and the things of God which allows our reasoning mind to come from a higher place, bringing forth the love, peace and joy already within us.

To stay our mind on our own self is to see lack, the birth of all wants, despair and dissatisfaction.

We go within to where the change is waiting to be released into our life as our good. It is our duty and our joy to know our life to be as God is within us right here and right now...lacking in nothing, filled with love and light.

Perceive that! Then laugh with delight...and know the grace of gratitude.

Thank you.

EVERYTHING RIGHTS ITSELF FROM WITHIN

Mental resistance is the only block....

There it is, written in my "God Calling" as if it were news...which, apparently, it was to me. But what other kind of block could there possibly be to the personal experience of a loving God in our life?

But this we know for a sure and certain fact: Mental blocks are stronger than metal blocks or titanium for that matter. If our mind is "made up," i.e., "shut down," we are virtually the God of our own understanding...dependent entirely upon our reasoning mind, which, as we well know, is driven by our ego. Oops, wrong road again.

We fret about financial insecurity and physical infirmity and being unloved, unwanted, unneeded, unappreciated...all of those are pish-tosh in comparison to the only thing we need fear, and that is of those three words, I am right.

The minute we hear those words ringing in our head (usually way too long after they begin pealing), we can fall to our knees and thank God we hear them for our mind has begun to be changed. We then acknowledge, although we are willing to change it, we cannot...I am right has its claws in us. "Miraculously," we will almost immediately think to call our mentor or a confidant to talk...and there it is, God, answering our prayer.

The most important lesson to learn, and the one we most often skip, is that we must go to God and admit, "Something ain't right, and I can't fix it. Thank you."

Just declaring our self wrong is trying to make an end-run around God which is very simply a self-determined objective. The end result there is a doubling down on our own misery for we still believe I am right. Now, though, we've added guilty, wronged and put-upon into the bargain...and, unwittingly, someone must pay. That's one way abused animals, kids and spouses come to be.

Keep it simple: Go to God for God and that is all. Everything rights itself then through our reliance on that loving power within us.

Thank you.

TORN ASUNDER...AND I AM GRATEFUL

Well, I had one sleepless, toss-and-turn, night...all because I realized a very obvious fact in my life that I had never before seen...and I refuse to commit in black and white just how teeny-tiny itsy-bitsy that fact is. Just know...it'll take less than three hours, four at most, to fix it. Yes, it is an outside something, but it ties directly back to my innermost fear.

About 3:00 AM I realized that I was experiencing a consciousness raising...and it does hurt. It actually did feel like my skin was being stripped off my bones, and I did say right out loud, "I feel like I'm being 'torn asunder.'"

Now for the good...I'm talking FANTASTIC...news. I journaled about it this morning, and I saw that this consciousness raising began awhile back...several actions I took that were fairly small but were new to me, therefore risky. The very first one was not small; I did my serious thank you prayer (more than once), held my nose and took a leap of faith. It turned out well, and I expect that was the "Gates ajar" that led to the following little biggies culminating in my last night's awakening.

God loves me, God loves me, God loves me. You, too!

Thank you.

GO FORWARD BELIEVING

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: It's so hard to believe in God because we don't rely on him enough...we call on him, beg him, plead with him, but we don't trust him enough to rely on him.

The fact is we make it so hard to believe in God because maybe the promise of God is too wondrous for us to dare believe. Plus his fixes are usually the exact opposite of mine. Not to mention he is a slooow walker...I know, I got a flash just the other day that he goes real slow so we can keep up, but still....

The way to believe prayer works is to pray than go forward believing our prayer has been answered...and in the affirmative. Which boils down to...just do it.

Heck, if I'm going to have to do it anyway, why pray?

We pray to acknowledge the source of good (that's God) within us who is going to do the heavy lifting for us. Because if we could "just do it" without a little help, we wouldn't have been praying about it to begin with.

All of which means, our sole goal needs be building our trust in God.

We build our trust by relying on him. We rely on him by acknowledging his presence daily. Not to convince him, but to convince our own self. Than we can face our next "oh, no" or "oh, please" p.d.q., and quit wasting our breath and God's time praying about it and doing nothing.

Thank you.

GET ABOUT ATTAINING IT

As I asked the Lord to save me from myself...again...I  recalled learning that asking the Lord for my specified anything is denying what I believe about the Lord: The Father knows my needs. He performth that which is given me to do. And I am very alive to the fact that those are just so many pretty promises unless and until I attain the consciousness from which those words originated; i.e., God consciousness.

As Joel Goldsmith wrote in "The Heart of Mysticism" at  p. 1233: You are one with God. Yes, of course you are, but that will not heal [you]. First, you must consciously accept that relationship and then you must get about attaining it.

Get about attaining it...there it is, the challenge of all spiritual growth. In my youth I lived in fear of actively believing in  God...I was seriously afraid that I'd become like my grandfather, a run-round-the-church-jump-and-shout-fun-forbidding-religious fanatic...not to put too fine a point on it.

When I started on my path seeking spiritual growth, I was delighted/despairing at how difficult it is. Getting out of ego into God does not come cheap. Ah, but it is the pearl beyond price...the only pearl on our lifeline worth attaining. Since I know that to be true, it is worth laughing about how easily I can still be lured into trying for Lucy's football.

Thank you.

WHY WE MEDITATE

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. -- Meister Eckhart

I wonder when I read that quote how I can know it to be true and yet not know exactly what it means. Ah, but I do know...only my reasoning mind is left wondering.

I'm a believer that we can only know God through our inner...intuitive?---self. There is no body to hug, hand to hold, arm to lean on. And yet. We are gifted with a sense of each and all of these and everything, all things, more as one unformed package. A Force if you will...a divine Force of love, of love alone.

I'm also a believer that without a sense of something greater than what our eyes can see, our fingers can touch...a something comprised only of goodness...we are stuck in our own littleness, filled with doubts, fear, anger and longing for something greater...to love.

I'm fairly certain I came to my beliefs when I heard the fact that turned me from analyzing to realizing, that fact being: Spiritual knowledge is more about retrieving than receiving. There it is. The short and sweet of why we meditate.

Thank you.

NO MORE ONE-SHOT DEALS

My ego Lucy was on the prowl this morning. Has been for a day or so...I went to sleep last night saying, "You're taking yourself too seriously, girl." And I wasn't talking to old Lucy.

I'm very well aware when I'm taking myself too seriously. It may take awhile before I catch on, but I know...when one or more people are bad-mouthing me, being snarky, putting me down, thinking I think. Bingo...that's when a whisper comes to my ear, almost like a far-away echo while driving through a cloud on the Skyline Drive. And it is chuckling...ah, there it is.

I gave thanks in my meditation for Lucy, for Lucy bringing my angels to my conscious awareness...my angels being those who are bad-mouthing, snarking and back-stabbing, a.k.a., my own self looking out there for someone to blame.

I made peace with my angels right there and then, knowing full well, I'd be back with the same thank you for the same angels...only a tish lighter. I'm beyond grateful today to know that is me, heading in the right direction...there are no quickies, no one-shot deals in my fantasizing mind anymore.

God moves in wondrous ways his miracles to perform, and he loves me so much that he moves real slow so I can keep up.

Thank you.

THIS, TOO, IS OF GOD

There are many of us who are deeply concerned about the state of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the rain that falls, our very atmosphere. And rightly so, according to me.

But there's more to pollution of the atmosphere than that. My very first spiritual director taught that we need to arise early, before the world has begun its daily hustle, before the air is trashed by drivers with road rage and fearful pedestrians dodging them. On arising as our feet hit the floor, say our thank you. And it doesn't have to be a thank you for any conscious reason...such as I'm still standing or breathing or whatever...just an in general thank you, the shortcut to acceptance of what is or is to be that day.

I have followed her directions for lo these many years, and I know I am the better for it...both inside and outside my human form. We often read warnings from well-known philosophers, writers and such about the need to guard our thoughts for they determine the quality of our lives, and I believe that to be true.

What I am finding in my today's world is the need to not turn away from the news, ostrich like, but to be ever conscious...to remind myself often and often...that this, too, is of God. Just because it looks less than wonderful to my eyes only means I need to raise my eyes. Long-ago lesson: Don't try to get God to see through our eyes, lift our eyes to see through his.

There is nothing and nowhere that God is not available to and aware of...know that, trust that. Then we can rest because the battle is not ours, it is God's.

Thank you.

GRATITUDE, THE EVER-PRESENT GIFT

Ego consciousness is a gift from God...or so I read this morning. I wonder, is that like free will? A gift that we are best suited by returning to God? Thus becoming our life's work and joy?

Relieve me of the bondage of self...another part of my morning prayers. I suddenly realize that relief comes by way of gratitude. Thank you for the bondage of self for it is the ever-present thorn that makes my choice for me...Thy will, not mine.

In a life of choice between ego consciousness and God consciousness, gratitude is a free gift in either case.

Thank you.

WARTS AND GOD-GIFTS...ALL THE SAME

Real humility about our character defects carries with it acceptance. --  Anonymous

There it is. There is truth, sweet as spring water, pure as mountain air.

We can always be sure we have gotten over our own self when we can admit to our character defects as self-inflicted, self-invited, self-propelled...and then laugh at our long-time denial of that very fact for that is what brought us to defeat.

The only way we admit to our character defects and continue to carry them with us is to admit and continue to beat our self for them, to admit and continue to blame someone else for them, to admit and think we're continuing anywhere. We're not. We're going nowhere...and, as the old saying goes, if you're not going forward, you're going backward...there is no standing still.

It is acceptance of our self that not only makes acceptance of others possible it relieves us of the choice! We no longer need to sit in judgment before we can like or dislike...we accept. Then, if we connect further, we've got a new friend, and if we don't connect further, we've not got an enemy.

Acceptance of our own self...warts and God-gifts...is the pearl beyond price.

Thank you.

FREE-FLOATING FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness is on my mind this morning. I suspect forgiveness is the soul of all spiritual growth for there is no ego in forgiveness.

We are mistaken when we think that only God can forgive and stop there. For sure, I of my own self even with an honest desire cannot forgive. The thought that I want to forgive keeps the reason why I want to forgive foremost in my mind...the reason, of course, being another, the one who caused, or is the perceived source of, my pain.

Forgiveness is the result of a lifetime of prep work. We must needs do the prep work before we need to forgive. Searching, seeking, praying, thanking, a little cussing, a lot of crying...all are the essential ingredients of still more spiritual growth leading to the lessening of our ego's talons.

When we run up against our nemesis du jour, and we recognize it as such (from having met it so many times before), that recognition is the beginning of our rise to glory, a.k.a., our complete defeat, the defeat of our attempts to think our way to forgiveness. We surrender...often with the thought, "Oh, forget it...I am over this."  Usually not until some time later do we realize that our less-than-spiritual thought was God's work being done through us...God forgiving through us.

All of the still more spiritual growth that we have sought and still seek is geared toward climbing that steep and craggy mountain of ego. Only by conquering through grace our own self-centered wants can we be free "to empathize and relate to each other without fear, judgment, demonization, or division." Free-floating forgiveness in other words.

Thank you.

BLESSED ASSURANCE

To long for God...to sit in silence, longing for God...to go about the day with a longing for God...to never be without a longing for God...that, Beloved, is your Way. Fret not...your longing is your reward.

Thank you.

NEVER ALONE...ALL ONE

Not by aspiration but by inspiration...there it is. That is the path that opens me to my inner peace, love and joy...or, God.

I can add, for me:  Not by education, but by intuition.

Not by analyzing, but by realizing.

Not by resisting, but by receiving.

Not by intellectualizing, but by recognizing.

Not by outer, but by inner.

Not by thinking, but by sensing.

Not by i, but by I.

The most important leg on my path: Nothing by self alone, but by the sharing and caring of, for and with others.

Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

SIT AND WAIT ON THE LORD

Time takes time.

In my "God Calling" on today's date I find several notes I wrote that are in reference to a sentence in the reading that in 1985 I had underlined as important to me, i.e., The poor, sick world would be cured if every day each soul waited before God for the inspiration to live aright.

In 1986, as the business where I worked collapsed around me, I wrote: Can I do gofer work w/o feeling defined by it? Resist not - I personally must let God handle my feelings about it for I, of myself, will resent.

In 2016, I wrote, I have only just begun.

The rest of the story: In 1986, I was primarily filled with dread that I would have to work as a gofer in, say, a rinky-dink real estate or insurance office at low pay and no benefits. At that time I was taking care of the IRS so it was a heavy-duty fear. The probability of resentment was my prompter, but getting right with God was last on the list, truth to tell. 

To fill in the years, I did not need to do gofer work for "miraculously" a position came to me in a field I knew naught of.  I stayed, learned, advanced and, fifteen years later, retired from there...with icing on my cake: a full 20 years later I was inducted into their Hall of Honor. 

I am just short of ecstatic that I wrote in 2016 that I have only just begun for that is as true today as it was a year ago, and if I live to be a lot older will be as true three days after I'm dead as it was in 2016. The reason why is because God loves me so much.

Thank you.

FREE THEE AND BE FREE

I  am reminded this morning that I sometimes have extremely high standards for others, and they can fall short in my mind in a heartbeat.

I am relieved to be able to say, although a friend has come up lacking, it's not a bother to me.  It is a small pleasure...a nice-nice...to know that right this minute I have no desire to fix it. To fix neither me nor thee...I'm just sitting here kinda in awe that my mind hasn't gone chasing rainbows to wrap us up in, make it all pretty...or chasing hair shirts to dress us down in.

To walk free  in my own head is to accept my imperfect self just as I am, but even more it is to accept your imperfect self just the same.

It feels good...calm. Like a farmer's pond at dawn.

Thank you.

ON REGIFTING OUR FREE WILL

[The following is a reprint of my blog of August 20, 2014.] 

Our free will is God's gift to us as we are aborning. Our life's work is our journey toward acceptance that this gift has but one purpose...for us to regift to God.

Our free will easily and immediately becomes as Velcro to our ego/self, and it takes complete surrender to divorce ourselves from it. We come to realize that our peace lies in returning our free will to God in exchange for his will in order that he may intervene in our lives in our behalf...which, we only learn by doing, benefits all.

It is only in complete surrender that we are awakened to the fact that free will is a secondary need in our life. It must take a back seat to God's will in our desire to seek and to do God's will. We still use free will for nothing is wasted in God's world...but we seek to do God's will first thus aligning our free will behind God's will.

When a conflict is resolved, all parties benefit, and by that fact our hearts sing ...depending, of course, on how completely we are living a turned over life.

It is through this returned gift to God that we are enabled to live happy, joyous and free...with no agenda to enhance ourselves, just the grace of gratitude that we've tried free will and found God's will to be infinitely preferable.

Thank you.

AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

We can deny it till our face falls off, but superiority is the siren song of ego...and resentment is my ego Lucy's throne...it proves her superiority, plain and simple. Who cares if it only proves it to Lucy? Lucy is all there is to Lucy.

As Fr. Richard Rohr so aptly wrote ("Daily Meditation," June 1, 2016), And only hour-by-hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.

Here's an oldie but a goldie: Develop an attitude of gratitude. Because it's an oldie, too many of us hear that and think, oh yeah, blahblahblah. But it is a fact that gratitude is a spiritual principle...gratitude standing alone is a spiritual principle. According to me.

It has been written that spiritual principles can solve all my problems. You got a problem with that? Get grateful! Your problem will disappear, guaranteed.

Take all your fanciful resentments (you think you've only got the one? Think again, and whoa! There are 3, 4, 5 oh my!)...but I digress. Take your resentments, one by one, and say, out loud and hopefully, "Thank you."

Keep doing that until you are resentment free...takes a while but you'll feel better in the doing than you feel sitting in your resentments. In a world of no guarantees, there's another guarantee.

Thank you.

CLING TO NOTHING...FLY!

I am convinced that it takes deep suffering (or sublime unearned joy) to find our tenderest place. I am convinced, too, that our tenderest place is God's hidey hole which is unattainable by our own self-will. Not that self-will is a bad thing...it's necessary if we want to live a reasonably orderly, fairly comfortable life. But self-will alone will not get us peace of mind...or happiness for very long.

It is through our deep suffering/sublime joy, that some few experience transformation. That transformation is particularly paradoxical in that the desire to avoid suffering is obvious, but the nature of unearned joy is our very ignorance of it. It is paradoxical in that the end result of both is our personal transformation.

It is in that tenderest place within, God's hidey hole, that our resistance and our ignorance are transmuted, and we are transformed. In that transformation we are lifted out of self-consciousness...concern, protection...into other-consciousness. Just as hurt people hurt people, transformed people transform people.

It is in other-consciousness that we are set free...free to be unselfed for the benefit of others.

Thank you.

BLINDING FLASH OF THE OBVIOUS

When there is something that is wrong and you know it and you can see exactly what it is that is wrong and you try to fix it and it does not fix and you try again, harder, and it stays unfixed...you are looking in the wrong direction. You are looking out there...at the problem. Look within. To the solution...spiritual principles. All spiritual principles are within us, have been there since before conception, will be there three days after we are dead...and 1,000 years after the world as we know it is no more, spiritual principles will be in the ether...waiting to be realized and released by a willing soul once again.

Thank you.

STUDY WAR NO MORE

Many years ago, I talked with a friend who was sick with her self because she had put on weight, or as she put it, "I am fat." She thought of nothing but what a piece of no-good-dirty-rotten-turkey-tripe she was because she had put on that weight. In her mind, she was that weight, that fat, that no-good-dirty-rotten-turkey-tripe.

She assured me that she was repeating constantly, "I am a beloved child of God." However, that wasn't helping her feel better about herself which led her to believe she was hopeless, and the ugly circled ever downward.

The problem, of course, was that she expected the affirmation, "I am a beloved child of God," to take away the weight, make her fit and bring her peace.

No affirmation is going to do the work for us, whatever our work may be. If we want to lose weight, we must stop overeating. If we want to feel better about our self, we must start taking the action that will help us feel better about our self. The secret we resist is that almost exclusively the action we need take is for the benefit of another. It has nothing to do on its surface with our weight, our self-esteem, our financial situation or our love life even.

To stop overeating in order to lose weight does not in itself make us feel better about our self...deprived is more like what we feel. But when we stop overeating, get on a healthy regimen, and reach out to be of help to another, we feel better about our self.

If we keep overeating, don't get on a healthy regimen, and reach out to be of help to another, we will feel better about our self...which will lead us to healthy eating habits.

Life...a healthy, happy whole life, is not about our self...not you, not me, not him, her or them. Life...a spiritually based, healthy, happy whole life...is about others. If everybody got on that wavelength, we would have everybody concerned for us just as we would be concerned for them. We could study war no more.

Imagine.

Thank you.

WE SURRENDER IN ORDER TO LOVE

We must do the prep work for God's will to be done in our lives. -- long ago blinding flash of the obvious.

For too long I believed that we could forgive nothing, that only God could do forgiveness...which I still believe. But that's the end of the process of forgiving...the beginning of the process starts with serious preparation on our part.

For instance, God does not do our forgiving without we first prepare our self, i.e., become willing to forgive which in its initial form is pretty much just wanting to, wanting to forgive because we hurt too much to hold on.

Until we become willing, which is a far cry from just wanting to, we cannot surrender all of our resistance (become entirely ready). The instant we are ready, God moves through us, forgiving all concerned...the other and anyone on the periphery and our own self.

We must give up, give over, give in to win. Only then can we realize that winning is nothing...we give in to love.

Thank you.

THE ART OF DETACHMENT

Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace. -- Sri Krishna (Bhagavad Gita)

I'm forever reading that surrender of attachment to results, detachment in a word, is the key to peace, to love, to joy...and I doubt it not. The how to, of course, is to "practice living love by loving adversity the same as no adversity." I'm about half convinced that the only way to do that is to take nothing personally.

The most important word in "practice living love by loving adversity the same as no adversity" is "practice." The first three words are a complete sentence...paragraph...book. Bible?

They clarify the original quote of Sri Krishna...his "surrender of attachment to results." There it is. We skate right by "practice living love" to being resistant to the idea of loving adversity. No...doesn't make sense...not looking for perfection...boring.

To practice living love is to meet adversity, resist it, win over it...and have it return bigger, badder, blacker, and we meet it again, resist it...a tish less...win, etc. Until we meet it again, mentally bow to it, smile as we kiss it on the lips, and walk free of that one itsy-bitsy example of adversity. It is the mental kiss, the utter acceptance, that advances our soul a hundredfold...or more.

And that, Babe, is the name of the game.

Thank you.

SELF-ACCEPTANCE...THE PRIZE WE SEEK

One of the only ways God can get us to let go of our private salvation project is some kind of suffering. It is that very suffering that forces us to let go of our ego. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 15, 2016

Truer words were never spoken...heard...agreed to. Yet, still we struggle, fight, resist giving over, giving up, giving in. As Laurens Van de Post has written: One of the most pathetic things about us human beings is our touching belief that there are times when the truth is not good enough for us; that it can and must be improved upon. We have to be utterly broken before we can realize that it is impossible to better the truth. It is the truth that we deny which so tenderly and forgivingly picks up the fragments and puts them together again.

Just reading the written word, agreeing with those words, will never change us. The words may give us a new way of seeing, a different view from the head, but the change we still seek is for a way to avoid the suffering we agree is necessary.

We may even believe we agree to suffering, give our permission as it were, but we are just trying to make an end run around God's will, or what we fear God's will is for us. We must needs be in deep pain  before we would ever agree to more, not recognizing that this pain, this suffering, is the resisting ego trying to win...i.e., avoid suffering.

The surprise...shock, in fact...is that this is the right path, the only road I've ever found, to get to self-acceptance for it is self-acceptance that is the prize we seek. The self-acceptance that turns self into Self, and we know God the Father lives within us, without us, and we are free of me, free to be Me.

Thank you.

OUR FAITH AND GOD'S POWER

I read and I quote from "God Calling" a lot...I quote from it more the older I get and realize through my own experience that this little book which borders on elementary is my pearl beyond price. I do believe that it was more than my personal choice that this book came to me. It spoke to my heart and my head over forty years ago...and I've read it daily since.

I read things today that are the basis of my spiritual life, and it's as if I'd never read them...real "ah-ha" moments. I credit Meister Eckhart with telling me "thank you" is the only prayer we'll ever need, but it is "God Calling" that first told me that. But, who's kidding whom, Eckhart was a 14th century monk that even popes quote...he has a tish more gravitas than my little red book. (I give over to Lucy when it's a fun handoff.)

Just as an example of how rich the book is, here are a couple of my journal entries for the past two days:

• As "God Calling" says so perfectly, Your faith and My power -- the only two  essentials. Nothing else is needed.  I note that is "your faith," not "your will." 
• Per today's "God Calling," When human support or material help of any kind is removed, then My power can become operative. I am beyond grateful that I believe this based on my own experience...that which I have resisted caused me to crash and burn. Then, out of my fearful ashes, there was God, come to carry me to the other side, home free.

It takes the entire Bible to tell us that our faith and God's power are all that is needed in our very own life...that the worst that can happen to us is God's invitation to shine in our life.

God loves me...us...so much. Always and all ways.

Thank you.

JUST AS I AM...BY GRACE AND BY GOD

This I gratefully know: My greatest gift has been my acceptance of who I am, just as I am...good, bad, ugly, warts and wonderment and to love me anyway...and to falter in that loving acceptance on occasion. (I'm convinced we falter just to bring God into our conscious awareness. Where do we go but to God when we're floundering in our own selfdom?)

I once had a friend who wanted to be me...for whatever reason that I cannot imagine...but she all but made herself sick trying to do what I do, say what I say, think what I think. Made me half crazy, too.
From that experience, I did learn a vital lesson, and I sincerely hope she did, too. What I learned is who I am right now, right here in my socks, is who God loves. Who I want to be, if it is not me, is not available to God...because that one is not available.

My spiritual practice is to sit each day in childlike sincerity with an inner stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by the God-given, godly nature of myself just the way I am. -- Center for Action and Contemplation faculty member, James Finley

Thank you.

KEEP IT SIMPLE...LET GOD

[The following is a reprint of my blog of May 11, 2014.]

I am reminded this morning that true spirituality is a mystical matter, not a moral matter. Mystical, meaning not of the reasoning mind. My reasoning mind right now is sitting in judgment, and my ego is calling it God's will. It is not...it is just another self-determined objective.

Interestingly, this came to me this morning when I read a note I wrote in my "God Calling" on this day in 1989...AFTER we'd followed what we took to be God's will. What a mess. What a mess that I am grateful for today. For we had talked back then with mentors, many friends and some total strangers, and all had agreed on the course of action to take, and we took it.

That's how we learned that God's will is in the mess, too. Just because we did not get the result we were going for, doesn't mean there was no God in it. We each learned something that we would not have learned otherwise...something different for each since we each had our own lesson to learn.

That's how "the mess" is transmuted into "the gold." Let God change the way we're looking at it.

Thank you.

RESPECT...GOD'S PERFECT FOUNDATION

It is disconcerting to hear people disrespect Jesus but love Buddha, knock Allah but adore Jesus, make light of Buddha but go gaga over Jehovah, etc., etc., etc. It is disconcerting because the basic message each and all preached was the same message...love. It is our own interpretation of the message that is the source of our resistance...that is our bane.

Even further and more disconcerting is how few people will take responsibility for their own negative opinions. Jesus is hateable because the nuns were so mean in their teaching of him; Allah is bad because he's clearly a foreigner; Buddha is the new "in" thing, just a fad; Jehovah is woo-woo...and the denying judgments go on.

What we finally realize is that God chooses us and there is no one God has not chosen.

For some of us, that realization sets our feet moving in the right direction...i.e., toward God and the spiritual. Then we let our minds be opened as to which of the many teachers of God's word we hear...in other words, who we will follow.

Note: It is helpful (as in, essential) to know the difference between being a follower and being a fanatic. Fanatics make themselves the god of their own understanding.

Finally, this we must remember: Never disrespect another's spiritual teacher...mainly because what we disrespect we will bow to before ever we can move on up, deeper. That's karma in a silk suit.

Thank you.