GOD WILL NOT BE MOVED

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), an unschooled French girl who died at age 24, intuited the path of descent and called it her “Little Way.” She said (and I summarize), “I looked at the flowers in God’s garden and I saw great big lilies and beautiful roses, and I knew I could never be one of those. But I looked over in the corner and there was a little violet that nobody would notice. That’s me. That’s what God wants me to be.” Thérèse knew that all we can give to God is simply who we really are; or even better, “To do very little things with great love,” which was her motto. That’s all God wants from any of us. It’s not the perfection of the gift that matters to God; it’s the desire to give the gift that pleases God. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 31, 2017

To do little things with great love. There it is. My sincere desire for my own self: Doing that which nobody would notice but would be pleasing to God.

My personal path to head me toward my answered prayer, my personal way of the Cross, is to divorce myself from my own opinions, to agree in some measure or means with you (when you are so obviously wrong) and mentally maintain my agreement which, of course, requires me to divorce myself, etc. It's all about minimizing, letting go, detaching...ego deflation in depth.

The test is always: Can I let go of that which I have proven to myself to be right and true? Can I let "Thank You" not be my mental safety net, my "Open Sesame" to God? Can I rest knowing that no words or thoughts of mine can influence God...that the fact that the Father knows our needs is our completion? 

The answer to the test: It makes no never mind if we do or if we don't...God, pure love, will not be moved. We're freed up to love, laugh and keep on trudging.

Thank you.

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS FANTASY

Magic thinking is mentioned a lot today...and it does not have a good rep. Those who mention it, usually with disdain, follow it with a harrumph. That much resistance invites examination, according to me.

I'm not married to the idea but it may be that desire is the basis of magic thinking, therefore not inherently bad. Desire is just another tool in our walking-around world. It is ego, of course, that takes desire and builds on it with fantasy. Fantasy, then, is the culprit.

Maybe it would be helpful to inspect our desire, turn it until we find its mirror image. I tend to believe that identifying the mirror image of our perceived needs is a gateway to discerning God's will for us in the instant. Therefore, instead of just badmouthing magic thinking, this could be our practice work for identifying God's will for us here.

Hey! That way we even find the gold in a self-determined objective. With spiritual understanding as our base and our guide, our self-determined objective upgrades to a self-determined desire. With a little help from within, that becomes the necessary first step toward building a faith that works.

Thank you.

LIVING BY SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES

A note I found in my "God Calling" reminds me that the Sermon on the Mount is all inner work. As a singular for instance, agree with your adversary quickly. To try to actually do that without first having come to the inner realization that there is no adversary is just another self-determined objective, key word "self." The inevitable result is resentment writ large.

The hard lesson learning is that we must come to that inner realization innumerable times...I'm guessing till three days after we're dead...before we are walking around in it.

That's why learning to actually live by spiritual principles is so vital to us for they teach us how. How to live from that inner, how to take it out into the material world...how to be in the world but not of it.

Most important was the discovery that spiritual principles would  solve all my problems. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

GOD CALLS OUR NAME

I have pictures of friends on my poster board next to my desk. Among many pictures are three of two of my friends, and I just realized that in not one picture is their face showing. Each is holding a different dog, and each dog is right up in their face with a look of total adoration...possibly that's their "I'm hungry" look, but I don't think so.

I've been dwelling on my recent inner revelation that impersonal love is the consciousness of God or Christ. It, impersonal love, is the answer we seek, the way of acceptance, the way we go beyond our reasoning mind to love. In my pondering,  I've asked for clarification...is that my wishful thinking?, my trying to make all pretty?, Truth?, or something my mind has not yet grasped?

Then, just this morning, I read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," in which he wrote: This development of love consciousness is the true Second Coming of Christ. There it is: my recent BFO in re impersonal love...it is love consciousness, and it is of God, of Christ.

It was with that gift that I glanced at my board and noticed neither of my friends' faces were showing, only shared adoration coming to and from them. It matters not from whence it comes, adoration is of God.  Or, as my atheist friend Tom always said, "God...dog spelled backwards."

Don't tell me God doesn't know my name. And yours. And Ruckus's, too, for that matter.

Thank you.

ON WALKING FREE IN OUR OWN MIND

We become another version of anything we dislike or react against too strongly. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 27, 2017.

It is a new way of thinking that leads us into the realization that just thinking is the real enemy of peace of mind.

Example: We are gifted with a new, and beautiful, idea. We ponder that new idea, think on it, analyze it, build it bigger...Make It Our Own.

Then we take it out on the stroll...let others see it, envy it if we're going to be truthful about it. Right off, some know-nothing is going to challenge it...challenge us. We must defend for this is a personal attack, and our idea is right...it was given to us from God Almighty his very own self.

Know-nothing is less spiritually advanced than us so she uses spite and malice as his ammo, but we know better than to do that so we withdraw in superior silence...with an unquiet mind.

That unquiet mind is my ego, Lucy With the Football. She seems to have a life of her own, and she natters at me whenever she wants to but especially at 3:00 AM when there is no one to talk to...as if I would because I am right, why talk about it, end of discussion. 

The minute we are gifted with a new insight (what I call my blinding flash of the obvious), we must accept that it is impersonal, is not ours, anyone can claim it or deny it, it makes no never mind. It stands or falls on its own. Otherwise, claimed as our own and thus defended, it seems to transmute in midair, becoming mud we sling at another. That mud invariably lands in the middle of our own face...which we are left to either obsess over (stuck and resentful) or beg pardon for and move on (in that dreaded state, humbled). 

We become another version of anything we dislike or react against too strongly.

Thank you.

THE WAY OF "OTHERS FIRST"

This morning as I read in my "God Calling," Let nothing that others do to you alter your treatment of them, and then my accompanying note, This is my Waterloo...I treat others as I think they have treated me, I felt a melting within me. I knew that I don't live there anymore...I may visit on occasion but seldom rather than often...and I knew a warm sense of gratitude throughout my being.

It may well have been on my reading and noting that, that I was turned from my Waterloo of "self first" toward the way of "others first." I did not know it at the time, but I have read (and since experienced) that it is immediately upon recognizing our defect of character that it is lifted.

We are blessed that we do not realize that until we are ready, and the Father within controls that through our much interior work.

I am grateful today that I do believe that the spiritual way requires that we walk through failure and rejection with a forgiving heart and mind (there's our "others first"). Because it is outside of the realm of reason, I am fairly certain that it is that vulnerability that invites others to follow and do likewise.

Thank you.

THE CHOICE

The choice is whether we want to become a highly polished acorn or a mighty oak.

At some point in life, we are given a choice; i.e., do we want our life to have a spiritual base (we cede control) or would we prefer an intellectual foundation (we retain control)? There is nothing inherently wrong with either choice, and to choose one to the exclusion of the other is not the better answer (which, it seems, we learn faster spiritually than intellectually).

To opt for intellectual, sans spiritual, is akin to a highly polished acorn. It is admirable, enviable even, a beauty to observe. We put that prize on a pedestal for others to aspire to, if you will. It requires constant attention in order to keep it highly polished, looking good. (It bears mentioning that the meat inside is worthless.)

A mighty oak relies not on man in order to grow taller, stronger, bigger, better...nor to protect it from the vagaries of weather...the storms, the droughts, the lighting that can and sometimes does hit and stop the oak dead. Yet, it is from that very oak that other acorns come, take root and spread Nature's beauty...our oak lives on.

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

Thank you.

THE SECRET GARDEN OF GOD

[The following is a reworked 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 and 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. Regrettably, 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.

RESIST NOTHING...KNOW PEACE

Blessed are they who learn not to just know but to do that which they are learning.

Doesn't that have an easy-peasy ring to it? Following it deeper, we just need read the Sermon again. There is not a word there that most of us would need a dictionary in order to understand it...it's the meaning of the action called for where our reasoning mind balks. 

As we head on out into our walking-around world, we set the goal of doing the Sermon. No, who's kidding whom?, we set the goal of doing just one command of the Sermon...say, for example, agree with your adversary quickly.

Before we get out the door, the question nattering our brain is, "What exactly qualifies as an adversary?" 

The answer, not to put too fine a point on it, is anything or anybody that we resist...that we feel any resistance toward.

That's our starting point, and it will remain our starting point for a long, long time. We will stay up in our head turning it this way, that way, up, down and sideways until we are led to an admission of defeat but with a willingness to be taught a new way of thinking. There's the key that opens the door for understanding to flow forth. 

This is the process we must needs take through every word of the Sermon that causes us pause. It is a lifetime's journey. We will, however, reach the peace that passes understanding with our first reasoning mind admission of defeat. We have come to the fork in our mental road where we travel away from the desire for intellectual understanding and head toward the gift of inner knowing.

To walk the Sermon unto breathing it is to live and to give peace. To just know the words of the Sermon in order to recite them to others, i.e., those we determine need them, is ego on parade. There is no spiritual growth there, but there is a lot of loving laughter.

Thank you.

PEACE IN THE VALLEY

Surrender = acceptance = ego deflation in depth = peace of mind = impersonal love = God consciousness.

Anymore I try to use the word "surrender" when I'm trying to get over my own self which, invariably, is when I'm resisting another...s/he's wrong, I'm right scenario. I want to think "surrender" because surrender is, no kidding, I lose...there's no "close enough" about it. My ego Lucy knows nothing less than complete surrender...give her an inch, and she'll tie my brain in knots with it.

The wonderful thing about surrendering is that when we do it, when we actually open to God and reach surrender, it transmutes immediately into acceptance. Which, paradoxically, is to win...to win over our own self. Feels like we've been lifted into a whole new world.

There. That's the definition of ego deflation in depth...a whole new world. In that new world we discover our mind at rest...no nattering or race-race, run-run, just peace. It is a mind at rest that births love, specifically an impersonal love that envelops everything. In that place, there is naught our mind will touch that does not feel right...acceptable if you will.

We know we are in God consciousness when there is no ego noise, no inner hankerings, nothing that disrupts. Ah, there it is...peace in the valley.

Thank you.

GOLD UPGRADED TO A MUSTARD SEED

I had a blinding flash of the obvious some 40 years ago pertaining to trouble and finding what I called the sliver of gold in that trouble...i.e., look not at the trouble but turn it around until I find the sliver of gold in that trouble. Then focus entirely on that sliver of gold, cling to it for it will lead me free...it is of God.

[Sidebar: The gift was also in the realization that "free" does not mean the problem will disappear bringing me either adoration or dollar bills in its place, it means my attitude will be upgraded which downgrades my problem. Life is akin to a ping-pong game...don't take it seriously, and you can have fun.]

This morning in my quiet time I had another blinding flash of the obvious: My sliver of gold is my mustard seed. I felt joy beyond imagining.

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed...nothing shall be impossible unto you. -- Matthew 17:20

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

Thank you.

FREE WILL...LOVE MADE MANIFEST

A note I wrote in my "God Calling" on this day in 1984: Simplicity and love...just love the lack and see God there...I cannot pray for prosperity without accepting the lack which is the whole picture.

That was during the time that I was being gifted with the care and feeding of the IRS. [Sidebar: I found the IRS easier to deal with than my friends who, almost to a person, knew what I should do (most of it being different ways to lie, cheat and steal, all of which I'd already considered) and/or who I most needed to shoot.]

I had just enough spiritual growth then to know that this entire thing was beyond my mental capacity to figure out, to get free of, to overcome. I knew from my toenails up that God was in this for me, and my only job was to find God in the midst of the mess, not how to get the IRS off me and onto somebody else. 

God's gift to me then and now is my faith in the fact that my only need ever is to focus on the God of my own understanding however and wherever he leads me.

His perfect gift is the one of free will which allows my ego Lucy to be ever thinking of new razzle-dazzle personal ways to get over on God. It's his perfect gift for it is Lucy's fine thinking that brings me back to God quick, fast and in a hurry.

It is only through still more spiritual growth that we learn free will is love made manifest...love made manifest by our turn away from it.

Thank you.

LET OUR LIGHT SHINE

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in. —Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

It seems every time I come across Cohen's "Anthem," I am comforted all over again by his There is a crack in everything that’s how the light gets in.

This morning, without conscious thought of the "Anthem," out of the blue came There is a crack in everything that’s how the light gets out.

Of course I had to ponder that.

It comforted me so much more when I realized that the light has ever been within us, waiting to be let out. It shines shuttered within but we know it not. It is only by releasing our light so it may be shared by and with others that we know our light does shine.

The light, like all the gifts that we are blessed with before conception...patience, kindness, peace, love,  joy...was never ours to keep sheltered. They are, in fact, useless if we don't share them...else how will we know they are ours?...that we have them deep within us even as we pray God to gift us with any one or all of them?

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Can't you just feel God grinning?

Thank you.

ON CONTEMPLATING, NOT THINKING

Every year on July 18, when I read again my beloved "God Calling," I come to the sentence: See yourselves as those around you see you, not as you wish to be, and walk very humbly with your God.

It seems almost every year my first before-thought reaction to that directive is "No."

The deep meaning in that sentence qualifies as one of the many "most difficult" that I've had to internalize. Doesn't it just go flat-out against everything our reasoning mind has ever thought we knew to be right? Or is it just me? Lucy and me, truth to tell, who's kidding whom?

After I read my "God Calling," and noted again that sentence, I read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation." One sentence sang to me: Faith is more how to believe than what to believe. 

How to believe is our lesson to learn; i.e., suspend our analytical thinking until without thought we know and trust that God has our back...period. What to believe is then fed to us as we walk very humbly with our God.

Thank you.

THERE BE PEACE

The deeper I go the more I know that there is deeper to go.

This morning, for whatever reason, I am reminded that magic thinking is holding to my own idea of what is truth. My realization that that which to my reasoning mind looks dreadful coming toward me is God's will and therefore for my good took me to a higher plane deeper within me. I married myself to it, and I have not budged.

I am being moved I know not where...but the action of Love is speaking, whispering, to me, whirling through me. And I trust that.

My life's goal is not to stand up for myself, to take my own part, to speak my own piece. No. My life's goal is to believe unto trust unto faith in the Power greater than self within...that It stands up for us, takes our part, speaks Its peace through us, individually.

That is love, a love we know naught of...it is impersonal Love flowing from that Power within. I suspect that to view anything with a personal thought attached to it is to stay in the reasoning mind. I try to stay my thoughts on lion cubs and rainbows, lilies of the valley and water falls...and trying not to be as nasty as I want to be. There be peace.

The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love. --  St. Paul (Galatians 5:6),

Thank you.

I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER

If one wants to abide in the thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable. One must fight one's way through before regaining one's original primal state. If one succeeds in the fight and reaches the goal, the enemy, namely the thoughts, will all subside in the Self and disappear entirely.-- Ramana Maharshi

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. —Proverbs 3:5

There it is. A roadmap in those two quotes for all who seek still more spiritual growth.  According to me, if we are going in the right direction, this is our struggle to loose our self from our reasoning mind.

With every moment we give to accepting God and the wonders of God, we are being lifted deeper into the new dimension of consciousness. Our struggle is to not lean on your own understanding.

We learn to divorce our self from our own thoughts, feelings, opinions. That is how we find trust with our heart, not with our mind making sense of it.

We find grace-given faith...our trust is transmuted into faith in God, and our own understanding is put at peace. We have ceased the fight within and without.

I will fight no more forever. -- Chief Joseph

Thank you.

KISS IT ON THE LIPS AND WALK FREE

Never get in the way of our own crash-and-burn for there be sacred ground. -- Morning blinding flash of the obvious

Today, our own crash-and-burn is simply ego-deflation in depth...that which, from our eyebrows up anyway, we are striving for so diligently. We have walked through the flames of our most serious burnouts, learning, and living the majority of the time (that's 51%), that God has our back, he's doing the heavy lifting, and we can trust that.

We get in the way of our own crash-and-burn by trying still to do God's work for him. We analyze the problem, using everything but a slide rule and a compass, and come to the only right conclusion about what needs to be done...only to wake at 2:00 AM with a whole new slant on the problem which tells us we must start over. And we believe it. This can continue for years especially if we have had a childhood trauma...and, really, who, to their own way of thinking, hasn't?

I made a decision about death when I first heard of such a thing, and I wrestle with that decision to this very day. It is too telling that I remember where I was, who I was with, and what was said. I was two years old at the time.

And, please, do not think I have not talked to God about this...I have talked to God about it so much I can hear him yawn when I again ratchet it up.  Which brings the good news: We both laugh even as he yawns, and I say, "Yes, but...."

I wonder if our sacred ground isn't formed by our holding the source of our crash-an-burn so dear? There is our comfort, there is our justification for who we are. Without that, wouldn't we be the dolt we fear we are? With no excuse in the world, and no one to blame but our self.

Ah-ha! There it is...that is the actual truth of the matter with or without justification. There is no one to blame...or applaud...but our self. That's the basis of our note on the bathroom mirror, i.e., You are looking at your problem. To which I add, You are looking at your solution.

Embrace the problem and walk free. Not necessarily free of the problem, just free of the fret about the problem. Which is close enough to perfect for me.

Thank you.

WE'RE NOT TALKING ONCOMING TRAINS HERE

Psychiatry teaches us how to take care of our own self...how to build our self-esteem, how to stand up for our self, how to fear no one. And if we do fear, how to avoid that which brings out that fear without doing harm to our self. Psychiatry is self-help and can be very helpful. There is nothing wrong with that, per se, except that we are ever consciously aware of our self, the need to protect self. It leaves us in the dual mind mode when our spiritual goal is to realize Oneness.

Still more spiritual growth leads us out of the belief that we need to take care of our own self. Through the daily practice of making our self available to God, we get a glimpse that there may be nothing to fear. Then we get a clearer look within and recognize that which seemed fearful is the channel to the Source of our good.

After many years of daily conscious contact, our ever deepening realization is that there is nothing to fear for fear is of the reasoning mind. The oh-so-wonderful news is that during those years of daily contact, we are living, breathing, being more at peace within our self. We are less anxious, less self-conscious, more open to and for others.

We can finally and joyfully accept that there is no end to this still more spiritual growth process. No doubt we will ever have a fearful thought or two or more. And there it is. We welcome our fearful thoughts with a simple "thank you" and walk free in our own mind.

We go beyond reason to love...to God. 

Thank you.

EGO VICTORY VS. GRACE

Serving others is more about our attitude toward others than it is about bringing food and dollars to others...it being a given neither food nor dollars are ever unwelcome. The point being if we give material goods with a hateful attitude, we are all but guaranteeing those goods will be received with a resentful attitude.  That resentful attitude has our name all over it, and only we are unaware of it.

Where there is no love, there is no God.

Sincerely serving others is all about love. If we are serving others as a self-determined objective, just to put a check on our 2-DO list, we have our reward...which is, plain and simple, a check on our 2-DO list.

Playing Lady (or Lord) Bountiful does not elicit love or even gratitude. It is playing, i.e., acting. Which brings us to that fork in the road of free choice...the choice between ego victory or spiritual growth.  Ego victory is the siren song of the sinner, and who amongst us isn't, or at some point in life hasn't been, just that? Ego victory is really hard to pass on it.

We can be acting in order to look good, snow others, be thought wonderful, or we can be acting in order to discipline our self, to get to the place within where we are graced with gratitude. Being thought wonderful is so enticing...compared with graced with gratitude which nobody outside our self sees for a long time...unless we tell them and then we lose it.

Probably spiritual growth is so hard to pick over ego because it has no bells and whistles, no frills and add-ons. Spiritual growth is just that, and we know it when we have it...sometimes not even then.

There it is...the razzmatazz of ego victory versus the grace of God. Razzmatazz is the language of the reasoning mind, grace is the peace that passes understanding.

We must go beyond reason to love.

Thank you.

ACCEPT THE DIRT, LOVE THE GOLD

We must seek to know our own self until we accept that the dirt we find is our gold. By accept, I mean love. Love the dirt, love the gold for they are one...not two sides of the same coin, but one through and through.

With that love, we are turned away from our constant naval gazing, our ego search to find (and correct) our self, and we know. That is God's gift...we know that in our whole and complete trust in the God of our own understanding, our search is over.

We seek no more in our bellybutton or in our brain. We are now living wholly by spiritual standards. We will know spiritual standards for they seek us out.

Thank you.

DON'T TELL ME, SHOW ME

Again I am reminded that it is not only that we must be willing to change our mind, it is that we must be willing to change our way of thinking...constantly.

When first we get that God can and will intervene in our lives in our behalf, we think we're home free...and we are! Our lesson to learn is that our ego will never concede that fact without resistance. It is our ego's resistance that tells us the chances of God intervening in our life in our behalf is just a fantasy. It is at that point that we make our choice...again...to follow our ego down that rabbit hole or to throw in with God and try not to be as nasty as we want to be.

Our new way of thinking is to welcome that resistance...in the past we fought that battle and lost every time. I know better today than to fight my ego Lucy's trauma and drama...which doesn't mean I never do, I just know better. When I catch myself doing it one more once, I laugh at how tenacious she is rather than beat me up for being so lax...and often that is as good as I can muster.

The secret of living for still more spiritual growth is to surrender to the fact that we can no longer understand...realize...a deeply spiritual truth (e.g., agree with your adversary quickly) and indeed make the change with one or two, then go back to slinging mud and trash talking them if only occasionally.

Still more spiritual growth has very little to do with talking it. It is all about walking it...until we're  breathing it.

Thank you.

JUST AS I AM

....contemplation gradually opens our hearts, minds, and bodies to Love as our True Self. -- Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation."

As I read the above quote (which I had saved from I know not when), I had a blinding flash of the obvious: How others see me is my invitation sent out from me which is being returned to me so that I may see me as I appear to others and thus accept, with grace, their reaction to me.

There. That is the fruit of our daily meditation...our walking around world gradually changes from our feeling the need to guard our inner self to feeling a welcoming from our self outward.

It is by opening "our hearts, minds and bodies to Love as our True Self" that we are free from our own reactions...free to accept others' reactions to us just as they see us.

Thank you.

MAKE GOD HAPPY...GO TO BED A' GRINNING

Ahimsa is not a policy for the seizure of power. It is a way of transforming relationships so as to bring about a peaceful transfer of power, effected freely and without compulsion by all concerned, because all have come to recognize it as right.  -- Thomas Merton

We have ceased fighting anything and anybody. -- Anonymous

When everybody comes out the winner, we know God's hand is in it. When I come out the winner, my ego Lucy is the winner...I, however, have just lost.

Be the first to give over. Lucy will fight this, the Father within will smile, we'll go to bed a' grinning.

Thank you.

ON MAINTAINING A GRATEFUL ATTITUDE

It's hard to be sad when you're being useful. * * * Service to others brings happiness; self-involvement leads to depression, to spiraling questions about the meaning of things.  [I forget where and when I found these quotes.]

Although the quote is that service to others brings happiness, I'm not convinced that is wholly true. Service to others as we self-determine that service to be does not bring happiness; it becomes just another item on our 2-DO list. Items on our 2-DO list can and often are moved forward for days, sometimes for weeks...who deliberately drags out our own happiness until it qualifies as a chore?

Service to others brings happiness when we are called to serve, and we answer the call just as it is asked of us. The minute we begin bargaining, it belongs to ego...there is no happiness there, spiritually. There may be "looking good" pride which isn't necessarily awful but it brings no spiritual growth.

Reading that it's hard to be sad when you're being useful brings a mental picture of me being unhappily useful at Spring Cleaning Time with my mother wielding the broom and mop...and, of course, that's not at all what is meant here. But no matter how spiritually useful we're being for whatever God-given reason, if we have a put-upon attitude, old Lucy is driving the tractor. We may not be feeling sad, but happy is nowhere near, either.

Everything depends on our attitude, according to me. Upgrade our attitude, we upgrade our problem. We know that we cannot upgrade our attitude relying on self-will alone. That's where our reasoning mind hits the wall...we must go beyond reason to love.

That is not a one-shot deal. The deal is we upgrade our attitude and maintain that upgraded attitude. I'm guessing that's what pray without ceasing means.

Thank you.

MY GOOD COMES FROM ME

[This is a reprint of my blog of August 9, 2013.]

My good does not come to me. My good comes from me. It only appears to come to me.

As I'm journaling this morning, I realize that several wonderful things came about yesterday...it was one thing leading to the other, and I was grateful. That led to my conscious realization that each of these happenings had been the basis of my "bless him/her, change me" prayer that I have prayed for some time now.

As each thing happened yesterday, I thanked God at the miracle of each...for each appeared to come from several different people, no event related to the other.

I realized that this is the road to peace within outward even while it appears it is the outward event that is bringing peace in to me.

It was my need (God's will) to do St. Francis's instructions; i.e., if you are slandered and skewered, honestly and sincerely in your heart bless the slander-er and skewer-er in the name of God. That is all.

All the outward appearing gifts to me start with my prayer for peace, love and joy for others...that I may bring, not that I may get.

I have to keep it simple, so my prayer of "bless her/him, change me" covers all the bases, and keeps me from haranguing God with my perceived needs (my will).

God is so good to me.

Thank You.

SUPPLY RESTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS

I am my supply to the extent that I realize I Am my supply. --  blinding flash of the obvious this day

Fr Richard Rohr writes in his today's "Daily Meditation," I know there is nothing in any book that is going to be better, more truthful, or more solid than what I *** experience on the cellular, heart and soul level.

I'm glad I'm aware of how dicey it is for me to believe I live and breathe all the wonders that my soul perceives. I know I am my supply, but my ego Lucy in a flash of that thought will see dollar bills as my necessary supply.

No, no, and no again. Supply rests in consciousness. My supply rests in the level of my consciousness of the Father within.

I identify with Rohr's statement by knowing there is nothing I'm going to read that will be better than what my heart holds, but I read anyway. I seek to facilitate my BFOs, to validate my soul's unaware but already opened doors and windows, to help me discover God's truth stored within me.

Having set that out, let it be known that I am not a reader of deep, highly intelligent spiritual tomes, sarcastic as that sounds. That's probably me being defensive...not because I look down on highly intelligent spiritual tomes, it is just that they are over my head, plain and simple.

I keep it simple...not by choice but by necessity. It is that simple fits me...and I am grateful.

Thank you.

ON SHARING OUR SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

If we don't live by spiritual standards, we must live by self-will.

That thought flashed and the problem with it came right behind...the problem being that we tend to take our own interpretation of spiritual standards as our guide. Yet, it seems that every other time I reread the Sermon, which is the basis for my set of spiritual standards, I am given a new slant, a deeper point of view about that which is written.

Is it pretty much mandatory that we accept that we'll only ever have our own idea of what is right? And if that be the case, then it seems to me to follow that we must be willing to conform to others' ideas, to well-recognized spiritual leaders' experience and teachings. Otherwise, we're just going it alone in spiritual matters which is warned against by every spiritual director worthy of the title.

I must admit, I love my conclusion to my meanderings...my conclusion being we need each other. We need to be willing to share our inner glimmers with others. That's how we get those in our life with whom we know the spiritual kinship of connection.

We need each other in order to build and maintain our spiritual connection.

All that boils down to is people need people. There's a song about that which is much prettier, not to mention clearer, but hey...that's just me sharing my inner glimmers.

Thank you.

WHEN WRONG...WATCH WIMBLEDON

[The following is a reprint of my blog of July 4, 2015. It's a sobering reality that this fits me today as well as it did two years ago.]

I come again, speeding down life's highway, having learned all the driving instructions when I was 15, ignoring many of them now...and asking God to tell me again, "Does a red light means stop or go?"

I know the answer, of course, At my age, there are very few questions pertinent to my life that haven't already been answered. Remembering the answers is not the Catch-22...remembering is on God, according to me. It's choosing to use the right answers...to do the right thing...to really and truly not be as nasty as I want to be (a favorite phrase but my pulling it off can be a tish dicey at times).

And I did it yesterday. I gave over to another (who, may I say, and I wish I wouldn't, deserved a boatload of nasty). But I did. I did give over and graciously if I do say so myself.

Here's the dunk in the ice water: I don't feel all that wonderful about it. I don't have that well-earned gold star feeling. In fact, I strongly suspect the problem is that he thinks he got over on me! There. And nobody has to guess what that's all about. I know ego when it spits in my eye.

I open one of my morning readings, and here's Meister Eckhart, dead these 600 some years, speaking directly to me: Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love their cow -- for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort.

It's that "inward comfort" that trips me every time. I guess I'd best take my comfort in the fact that it could be worse...I could be utterly unaware of where I need look to fix my problem. But I think I'm going to watch Wimbledon first.

Thank you.

THE PERILS OF SELF-REFINED THINKING

I often think that the hardest thing life will ever ask of us is that we simply change our mind. The thought occurred to me this morning that, in fact, the hardest thing we are asked to do is to change our thinking,

To change our thinking puts us in a more fluid state...nonresistant, actually. Letting my mind flow, that is the place where surrender, acceptance and gratitude live. A state of grace. An egoless place. God's hidey hole.

Back here on Planet Me, that's a real fine idea, it's just best I don't let my ego Lucy attach to it or I'm living hair shirts and fake humility from here on out.

I've found that attaching to such fine ideas is the essence of scrupulosity, i.e, taking an idea to the outside of enough. That's where a seed dropped by God becomes a self-determined objective, and there is no God there.

Be wary of the overly scrupulous. -- From "The Cloud of Unknowing" by an unknown 14th century monk.

Thank you.

REMAIN EVER GRATEFUL

In meditating on the 23rd Psalm, when I come to "Thou prepares a place before me in the presence of my enemies," I always stop and picture my enemies as ill health (me, on crutches looking like Lazarus in tatters emerging from the tomb), ego (me, looking like a broken-down Kewpie doll with too much rouge and an attitude), fear and anxiety (me, with sharpened knives as my appendages all turned inward). I let the picture of me become upright and crutch-less, pastel-toned, with flowers as my appendages...all melding into Our Lady into me.

This morning when I pictured my me-enemies, I did not change in my appearance, but each image had an inner glow.

I realized me just as I am, and not prettified in order to be acceptable because it is my insides that are my beauty...God's hidey hole, radiant and whole. Nothing about me, skin out, needs to be changed. It is my inner conviction that the Father and I are one that is being changed, deepened. I only need know it to show it ...and remain ever grateful.

Thank you.

NOTHING IS PERSONAL...ALL IS OF GOD

To the illumined man or woman, a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same. -- Sri Krishna (Bhagavad Gita)

To me, that proves the truth of the spiritual axiom that whenever something upsets me, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with me.

Toward that end, here's my take on how to get headed in the right direction (which is always away from self toward God): A snarky putdown, high praise and idle chitchat have the same equivalency when we do not take them personally.

Learning not to take our own self too seriously is life's first step, after which, with grace and gratitude nudging us along, our aim becomes to not taking life's "dirt and gold" personally. When we learn to accept that as our forever marching orders, we can and will be free of our own self...the only real freedom there is.

There are few...very, very few...who achieve that goal, and in this our material world, that's almost not the point. The point is to accept that not taking life's ups and downs personally is our forever marching orders.

In short, our new desire is to live a turned-over life...from me to He. (Geez, speaking of not taking our self too seriously, for a few minutes there, I got all up in my head with whether I should write "He" or "She" or "S/He."  Proof yet again...God has to go real slow in order for me to keep up.)

Thank you.