IT IS "WHEN WRONG" THAT WE DO RIGHT

I have come to believe that for me, for my Grandma Moses-like spiritual growth (i.e., stick figures and primary colors),  "God Calling" is the deepest spiritual book I will ever read. The fact that the book is so simple and straightforward...no frills, no fancy-schmancy...is what makes it a spiritual rarity. In its simplicity I missed its depth for way too long.

I felt poleaxed when I finally recognized first that, second why, his directions to "love and laugh" are on so many pages. I had always read them as if they were throw-away lines...fillers if you will. Then with one blinding flash of the obvious I realized those words as the entire directions for living a life of peace, love and joy...impersonal love and impersonal laughter are God's love incarnate.

We will never avoid rues, regrets and remorses...if we're doing it right. Once we've accepted that living by God's will is better than living by our own will, and then trying to do God's will, we tend to believe we have our guarantee for a regret-free life. God loves us way too much for that.

It is "when wrong" that we give our self the opportunity to learn...to learn how to agree with our adversary quickly, to turn the other cheek, to resist not evil. And that gives God his opportunity to laugh...in joy at our learning.

I love pondering God loving me through laughter...like, for instance, if it weren't for humans, God wouldn't have any laughs at all. Maybe "the human condition" is just fancy talk for "God's laugh track." Maybe our sole, singular, one and only purpose on this earth is to give God laughs. And there it is...the way to love our rues, regrets and remorses! We're giving God a giggle! How loving is that?

Thank you.

HOLY, HOLY, HOLY

Blinding flash of the obvious: The trick to non-resistance is to hold our self with the Father within so as to not accept the invitation to dispute, disagree with, question that which we are seeing/hearing/thinking and which is not acceptable to us.

That came this morning as I was up in my head getting all twisted on how to explain to Gertrude (so there could never be another question about it) that the axiom, "we have ceased fighting anything and anybody," is right, spiritual, God-given, God-dictated, infallible, Truth with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Phooey.

Why do I get myself in my own binds? It is a given the two of us have not, will not, get in a verbal confrontation here...Gertrude and I are both much too spiritually advanced to actually come to words. As I said, phooey.

How petty am I that I hope she's as up-in-her-head about this as I am? No, it's not "hope" as much as it is "absolutely certain."  Who's kidding whom, my ego Lucy would have it no other way.

That's how we keep our virtual food fights alive...up-in-our-head with no way out except through forgiveness, which is just a holy-sounding word for giving over, and No. We're not entirely stupid, giving over means wresting "I am right" from Lucy, softening it to present to Gertrude...with no strings attached. That's not holy sounding, that is holy.

And there we go again. Go to God for God, and that is all...for only God can referee a virtual food fight and have everybody come out a virtual winner.

Thank you.

IMPERSONAL FULFILLMENT, OF GOD

Matthew Fox writes that 'laughter may well be the ultimate act of letting go and letting be: the music of the divine cosmos. For in the core of the Trinity laughing and birthing go on all day long.'

I loved reading that this morning because I've been building on my belief concerning the different levels of love and laughter. For myself, I am finding that the love and laughter that we find spiritually is an impersonal love and an impersonal laughter.

Personalization is the glue that holds opposites together. Love, personalized, is attached to its opposite, hate...or dislike at any rate. Likewise, laughter, personalized, is attached to sadness, both being at or about something, usually out there. Both love and laughter are commonly shared with another.

Impersonal love and impersonal laughter flow together from within and attach to nothing. They cannot be deterred by appearances for they are evidence of God intervening in our life in our behalf. They are fulfillment as we stand bare-butt naked in our socks, and they cannot not be shared...felt...by others.

Thank you.

INNER FREEDOM THROUGH GIVING OVER

The wise recognize that without a certain degree of inner freedom, you cannot and will not love. Spirituality is about finding that freedom. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation" of August 29, 2016

I'm finding that inner freedom can only be found by releasing others from our resentments. We can never walk free in our own head if we are holding another accountable for any reason...which reminds me of my old crutch, "Having someone to blame is perfect peace." 

And doesn't that sound right? It is only when we try to use it that we find having someone to blame is endless resentment...as in, my blaming another gives that other someone to blame, namely me, starting the endless circle and cycle of resentment into anger into fights into battles into war.

Our spiritual life begins when we decide to follow directions...i.e., be the first to give over. At first, when the other smirks and walks away, we feel less than wonderful about the whole thing, and then...and then, we feel God's smile. We know an inner wonderment that we actually did it! We actually let the other off the hook, and our joy beats their smirk by endless miles. 

Enlightenment is the realization that in going against our reasoning mind's objective, the other "won" rationally and we "won" spiritually. Ah, God's hand really is in it when both sides come out the winner!

There's the beginning of a certain degree of inner freedom because we have just proved that being the first to give over is love.

Thank you.

LOVE...AND THAT IS ALL

"God Calling," 9/26/01 Note to Self: When our actions are 'less than' toward others, we are living in two worlds.' Love = One.

What we see is always our self; what we receive is always sent by us to us...it is never her/him/them. There is no her/him/them.

The Father and I are One.

Thank you.

THE FATHER IS SEEKING US

If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master, as he himself will be seeking you -- Ramana Maharshi

Isn't that a comfort? I first read a like thought in C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," one of my all-time favorite books. This is where I first met Aslan who has been in my life since, and I am the better for it.

Coming into contact with goodness in the form of a walking-around, breathing entity or a written-about being or, on the rare occasion, intuitively, and consciously realizing this as goodness...ah, that is our consciousness being raised...without our effort.

We can read love your enemy till our face falls off, agree that that's a good thing (or not...in which case, bless you; if you're reading this, you're seeking) but until we consciously realize that as truth, it is just so many words.

As Fr Richard Rohr has written, We don’t have the power to follow any of [the] major teachings about forgiveness, love of enemies, nonviolence, humble use of power, and so on, except in and through radical union with God.

We must needs remember that we cannot settle for being a quoter, a talker, a spiritual thesaurus on the hoof as it were. It is possible to believe every word we quote, but until we experience them...prove their truth...we are faking it. (Or not being true to our self, which doesn't sound so harsh.)

However, I am a believer in keeping it simple...Grandma Moses simple as in stick figures and primary colors...so it is a comfort for me to believe every conscious "thank you" we pray, every conscious thought of a spiritual nature that we have, that is God making contact with us.

Simply put, we can quit trying so hard...for  God will be loving us, even as we are straining to change our own self. He will be seeking us even then...maybe especially then.

Thank you.

SEEK, FIND...BE GRATEFUL

My power to save increases as your power to understand My Salvation increases. -- "God Calling"

I chanced upon that sentence once, and it set my sights a tish higher. It was at a time when I was nattering my mentor as to why I needed to study the same literature over and over and still over again. And there it was, my answer.

That was proof to me that God does indeed listen in on our conversations, does hear our questions and does answer them in his own way. Truly, my mentor had explained and explained well and true, I just refused to "get" it. Then, at the exactly right time for me, I "chanced upon" the answer...and I got it.

To paraphrase the old saying about when all we have is a hammer, our entire world looks like a nail, it is true that when all we seek is still more spiritual growth, all that happens to us is of a spiritual nature. And there it is. The seeking alone upgrades our understanding.

Whenever less-than-wonderful happens in my life today, when it comes looking like "Oh no, Mr. Bill," I remind me that this, too, is God calling. I don't always remember in the instant, but I am inevitably brought back to it by the nature of life itself...meaning, it'll continue to look like crap until I upgrade my attitude. Which is little enough to do, who's kidding whom?

Go to God for God, and that is all.

Thank you.

BEFORE WE KNOW OUR NEED, IT IS OURS

A Day In The Life...Or A Diary Of Consciousness

1. My 'God Calling' Notes - a) '88 - today I look for $10 million. 

    b) '17 - today I realized I got the $10 million and more by my consciousness of enough...I realized the limitation of $10 million. I particularly noted that it took me 29 years to realize this particular truth.

2. My Experience of Yesterday - Had lunch with Gertrude wherein, for whatever reason, she mocked all things of our Fellowship, from "the sacred coffee pot" to service work,  and I laughed and let her, almost encouraging her...all the while wondering what I "should" do, in effect, turning my thoughts to God.

I came home half regretting my actions, or non-actions, but I was grateful that I'd turned to God as it was happening so I let it all perc. Being freed of regret, the goal I was given several years ago came to mind. The goal is from Deepak Chopra's entirely fictional book, "Jesus," and the short version is that Jesus let Judas walk all over him in their growing up years...the punchline being Judas was the angel that helped Jesus do nonresistance which helped Jesus fully realize and show forth his divinity. I took that as the God instruction I had sought and that I had acted on...which relieved me of the  resentment that was begging to attach itself to Gertrude for she, too, was doing God's work, and I can be grateful for her. Plus, it was neither my ego nor my hypocrisy.

3, Today - I read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" with the Vow of Nonviolence, and I knew   that as, in essence, God's instruction, given to me before I ever heard of the Vow of Nonviolence. 

Vow of Nonviolence: Recognizing the violence in my own heart, yet trusting in the goodness and mercy of God, I vow for one year to practice the nonviolence of Jesus who taught us in the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God. . . . You have learned how it was said, “You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy”; but I say to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. In this way, you will be daughters and sons of your Creator in heaven. (Matthew 5:9, 43-45)

Of secondary importance to me is the fact that I had just noted that it took me 29 years to realize the first gift, and I now recognized the second gift as before it happened. 

Our reasoning mind looks at how long it takes for God's work to be done, but spiritual mind sees it is  already done before we are aware of it. 

The Father does indeed know our needs, takes care of them before they are needed, and gives us freedom to realize that fact as we need it.

Thank you.

GOD ALWAYS PROVIDES

[The following is a reprint of my blog of November 27, 2008.]

I thought this morning of a woman I knew (minimally…I was the secretary to her attorney) many years ago in California. She was of Hungarian birth, was very rich, and she loved to talk of her youth when she fled Hungary just as the Nazi army was moving in. She had a hair-raising story to tell.

Her family was very wealthy, had royal blood according to her, and I had no reason to doubt her. But almost (which is the operative word here) all they had, had already been confiscated, and it was looking dire for their survival. She and her parents barely escaped in the dead of the night, with all they owned on their backs.

The “almost” included several pieces of very fine jewelry which she and her mother pinned and sewed to the underwear they were wearing.

When they got to America, they converted the jewelry to cash, settled in, and, long story short, through lousy investments, lost everything. By now, her parents had passed on, she was alone without a penny to bless herself with, and she prayed that God would come to her aid.

She came across the petticoat that her mother had worn out of Europe, was wadding it up to throw it away and felt a lumpy something…she shook the petticoat out, and there, pinned on the underside, was an emerald and diamond broach they had missed. She had her nest egg. (And may I mention, I never saw her but that she had that broach pinned to her shoulder…in the morning, at noon, or in the evening).

Most interesting, she swore then and every time she told the story that she had never laid eyes on that broach before the day she “found” it, and she knew well all the pieces that they had since there were only a half dozen or so pieces.

I love this story, and I love it not for the mystery of the broach which I tend to believe was her way of making a good story better (and I’d do the same!), I love it for the fact that she always had enough...she just did not know it, and until she asked for God’s help, could not see it.

God’s job is to provide…our job is to trust that.

Thank you.

WE LET GO AND LET GOD...STILL, YET, AGAIN

Our challenge in seeking still more spiritual growth is to accept that there's every chance this very day that we will choose to remain in the pondering posture...a.k.a., stuck in self...all the while calling it "seeking spiritual growth."

We know we have accepted this is not spiritual growth. per se, when we see yet again that self is doing our thinking. When self is doing the thinking, even when we are right, we are wrong for there is no God there. That is simply ego on parade, and self will always legislate for self...ah, but with God knocking on the door. God is within, always at the door, waiting to be released.

There's our mental salvation: stuck in self thinking spiritual growth is our attempting to open the door for God all on our own. I don't believe that can be offensive to God, but it is a waste of our energy and his time.

The most important word in "...choose to remain in the pondering posture" is remain. Since we do live in the world, we use the mental tools we have in order to get above our need to use the mental tools we have. It is not a waste to ponder still more spiritual growth...it is a waste to do nothing but ponder. Question. Answer. Ponder. Question the answer. Answer. Ponder. There it is, the ego's parade.

It is in meditation that we realize that we can get out of our own way...let go and let God.  

Thank you.

AND OUR HEART GRINS

I know that when (not if) I am feeling hurt, slighted, angered or afraid,  my need is to examine that feeling and consciously detach from it, to not attach to it. To detach we must decide to go within to God's limitless supply of impersonal love, or we will surely attach to our ego's limitless supply of resentment. 

We remind our self that need is of God, want is all ego.  It is need that seeks God's will over our own wishes. 

We are on the right track when we realize that our attachment is to our feelings of hurt, anger, fear...each bringing its own unlimited supply of self-pity. Think about it...is there any other feeling as sincere as self-pity?

If we do not decide on the spot to consciously detach, i.e., to not pick it up, we will invariably personalize our self-pity. Gertrude has just become the source of our woe, and it is now a win/lose proposition. The game is on!...the game where nobody wins.

The hard lesson learning is that when we detach, God's hand is in it...we win by losing.  

The Father knows our needs.

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGHTER...THE DETOUR-LESS ROAD

"Get over self" is the entire message of the Sermon. Extended: "...for the benefit of the other." [There's always an other.]

As I read my "God Calling" this morning, the last line of the passage gave me an ah-ha moment...Had they lived My Teachings out in their daily lives they would have had Fullness of Joy. With that I realized that living out God's teachings in my daily life boils down to Get over yourself.

According to me, that's the entire message of the Sermon on the Mount, also for that matter, the Twelve Steps of recovery groups, the passive resistance of Gandhi and King, et al. Which causes me to wonder if all the how-to preaching and teaching about self-acceptance and/or -improvement (emphasis on self) isn't another detour around real spiritual growth.

Face it, getting over our self for the benefit of another requires a change not only of our mind but of our consciousness. This is hold-your-nose-and-take-a-leap-of-faith time...which means turn off the thinking, start doing. In full knowledge that we may be wrong...that's trust on the wings of an angel. But how else do we build trust? Thinking on it surely does not get us there.

And there it is...that's how we know "Fullness of Joy." Trust, be wrong, admit, correct, trust, be wrong...until the day or hour we do it right. Who knew that "right" was to do it selflessly...for the benefit of an other? Without thought or preplanning about our self and how our self is going to look or feel.

That is Fullness of Joy.

Thank you.

THE ONLY PRAYER WE WILL EVER NEED PRAY

It comes to mind again this morning that to ask for God's favor is to deny God's favor for he knows our needs and cannot not have fulfilled them already...we just haven't realized it yet. Which leads to the follow-up thought: That is right where we need be in order to honestly seek to know God's will for us.

If we are so stuck that we think we must seek special help, God's favor, we are clinging to a self-determined objective. We are clutching a want masquerading as a need, in short.

Until we go all the way to and through that stuck place, it is a surety that we will never realize God's will for us personally. It is by going all the way through that we reach our own ocean of despair...all alone, no lifeguard not even a dolphin to help us.

We have reached crash-and-burn. Truly, the blessing in disguise. 

Some of us (the lucky few) give up...feeling hopeless, helpless and stupid into the bargain. Some (the lucky minority) give up, kvetching and shaking our fists at the heavens, but we give up. The unlucky ones do not give up...they sometimes go to their  graves, maybe years later, still cursing their fate.

The wonderment of it is that God's will rarely looks like a gift, but it is. It is the pearl beyond price. There. Now we realize why the only prayer we will ever need pray is "Thank You!"

Thank you.

FRIEND...ENEMY...ONE.

I'm toying with paradox this morning. Standing alone, love your enemy qualifies as a paradox according to me.

It has been said that praise is a fickle bitch; paradoxically, incoming snark is our angel on the wing, again according to me.

Praise is a double-edged sword...it's really hard to not appreciate praise, it's just very difficult to accept it with grace and let it flow on through to another. It's when praise makes a home in our ego that we invite incoming snark. There. Angel wings...our spiritual work begins.

If we are ever going to even try to love our enemy, incoming snark is made to order for learning. For many of us, it matters not if the snark is a toes-stepped-on comment or a public takedown, our ego will respond atomically.

I suspect that's why many respond so negatively to President Trump...we see our self. It is said that what we see is always our self...or, if you can spot it, you got it. Since either is true, we can start right there and try to learn to love those unlovable facts. It's about changing our mind.

There it is...loving our enemy starts with upgrading our own opinion. We go to our awareness of the limitless impersonal love within us and become willing to not resist the unlovable that is appearing, i.e., our ego's interpretation of the "enemy."

"It's all about me" is often said in a pejorative manner, but isn't that the reality? It really is all about our own Self...our Self, the Father who lives within, who knows our needs, who can and will intervene in our life in our behalf.

My Father and I...our Father and we...are One. Friend. Enemy. Love.

Thank you.

STAND ON IT!

Blinding flash of the obvious: To live in a consciousness of forgiveness is to be free of self...to walk free in our own head...to be alive to the fact that everything is as it should be...even that which is an abomination in the eyes of God for that very abomination is our clarion call to act, to stand on our knowledge of and faith in the fact that God is with us, within us, and we can act from our limitless supply of impersonal love.

Thank you.                                              

TO FORGIVE IN THE INSTANT OF NEED

[The following is a reprint of my blog of November 26, 2014.]

I was given the most wonderful advice recently...pearls beyond price actually. I was told that I must make a decision to be a forgiving person and to forgive in the instant of need. That's it.

I was gifted with the realization that to forgive in the instant of need is the secret to being a forgiving person: We must be ready the moment before the arrow of resistance enters our consciousness. Only in that instant can we with God's grace respond not with feelings of hurt, harmed or a desire for pay-back...all fear, simply fear...but with the certain knowledge that this, too, is ours to forgive.

This is living in the now...in the consciousness of forgiveness.

To be a forgiving person is to be released from the bondage of self, free from our reasoning mind's dictates. We cannot wait to "think it through" for therein lives the ego's trap. There is nothing to think through when we are going to forgive no matter what.

None of this is news to me...all of us seeking still more spiritual growth have been learning it for years. It is that this is the difference between learning the words (which too often means "learning how you need to do it") and realizing that I personally need to be a forgiving person...now. Right now.

I will with the grace of God and a little help from my friends be heading in this direction for the rest of my life...no matter how falteringly.

Thank you.

ON KNOWING SELF AS ACTIVE WITHIN

This question popped out of the mist this morning as I was half awake: What if the true meaning of original sin is our acceptance of freewill as opposed to steadfast reliance on God's will?

As I walked Ruckus, I pondered that. It seems almost like a Catch-22. If we never accepted freewill but maintained steadfast reliance on God's will, it'd surely cut our journey...geez, not in two, but simply cut it out.

There'd be no journey out into the material world from which we return to God. No errors in judgment. No foes to fight. No overweight drunken addicts on opioids. No exhilarating...anything. I mean, unless we count all the things we wouldn't have to deal with as exhilarating, that's as good as we'd get.

There'd just be God being God.

No wonder he created humans...all that goodness seems a tish boring to me. Which is maybe freewill thinking? Possibly, self-will thinking? It surely isn't God which answers that.

Right, wrong or just another flight of fantasy, it deepens my gratitude that we are given freewill. Doing wrong and needing to right it and finding we must needs go to God to truly right it is the pearl beyond price. That's how and when we experience the joy of forgiving and being forgiven...with, really and truly, forgiving being the best.

Forgiving it is not of self. Forgiving is us, unselfed, and we know Self as alive and active within.

Thank you.

MAGIC THINKING VS. THE 4TH DIMENSION

Magic thinking has been much on my mind recently, as in I can walk through Isis territory, waving an American flag, with no fear for God will keep me from getting hurt, harmed, made sick or afraid. That is magic thinking.

To live not in magic thinking but in God consciousness is to know that God does not save us from our worst fear, something akin to getting our head chopped off. No. If we're about to face our fear, we know fear or at least trepidation even as we know God is with us. Then, as it is happening, we are present to the Now where we find the peace that passes understanding.

With magic thinking, God's job is to keep anything less than wonderful from ever happening to us or ours. To seek fourth dimension thinking is to ready our self to walk through life's muck and mire with a steady mind, free of self as it were. 

I'm guessing that is almost certainly an impossibility for anyone who has never had a crash-and-burn experience and walked away a changed person. It is unfortunately possible to have a crash-and-burn experience and walk away unchanged and cursing it, continuing to cling to our very own ego's idea that victory can be ours for the thinking.

Giving up the siren song of magic thinking in order to live spiritually is to praise the darkness even as we walk through it. We are going through the crucible, and He will not remove the gold from the crucible until all the dross has gone.

Thank you.

SLIPPING THE TIES OF SELF

I have been given a new insight: I am not afraid of getting egg on my face. 

A dear friend  recently said that of herself, and I felt gobsmacked. I knew that I had been given that gift but had not realized it as such. But there it is...not realizing is the why of self-doubt one minute and Self surety the next.

I know from my toenails up that I must speak my inner truth so I do...and there are times when my inner truth just shines like a diamond. However. It is those times when my inner truth sounds tinny, looks kinda puny after I've put it out there for all my world to observe (judge) that cause me pause.

Thus far, when I've been in my self-doubt stage, I have searched for and found My comfort, my blankie, in knowing that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf.

Actually, that alone is hard to hate. Maybe feeling elated with my new insight is just cutting out the middle ground, the self-doubt stage. That for sure is close enough to perfect for me.

Thank you.

NOTE TO SELF, PONDER UNTO LIVING THIS

The following is from Fr. Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," of October 27, 1015:

"'The nonviolent resister is willing to accept violence if necessary, but never to inflict it,' The Rev. King writes. 'Generously endured suffering for the sake of the other has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.' Almost more than anything else! It is not that suffering of itself is 'good.' It is just that one's newfound intimacy with life, with others, and with God is usually attained in no other way. "

Nonviolent resistance goes beyond the reasoning mind's capacity to comprehend. That's why we must needs seek for an open mind...open to impersonal love. Impersonal love passes all understanding. It attaches itself to nothing. It is within/without all...everything, everybody, every molecule and amoeba.

Impersonal love is not ours, it is cosmic...of God, always available but we know it not until it is loosed from us and flows forth. Then we know: This is unselfed.

Thank you.

ALL WE NEED IS TO LOVE

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace...

I am grateful that I am an imperfect instrument of thy peace...imperfect being the holy word for it is my imperfection that turns me to God. I find my rest in knowing that God created me just as the Navajo create their rugs, imperfect in order for his Light to come in.

It is that imperfection that proves to my ego, which is ready to take charge 24/7, that God is already there, serving.

All We Need Is Love -- The Beatles

Thank you.

THE WORLD JUDGES...GOD WELCOMES

Your reward will be sure. It will be perfect success, but My success...the world judges not as I judge. -- "God Calling," September 9

And there's the double-edged sword: My success is being judged and found wanting and all the while  knowing peace of mind. The hook is that the reasoning mind can agree that that's the Way, but on its own it can never get us there.

The lesson is to not rue knowing, but being unable to prove, truth for that is the golden goose that keeps us seeking still more spiritual growth. Seek still...ah, there it is.

My recent experience (see yesterday's blog) is my excellent example. When memory of that turns within to my Father, I feel a joyful peace...when I call it up to think on it, I cringe in doubt and disgust.

The great and glorious news is that I know that is the "right" way...and I'd still prefer an easier, softer way. So sue me :>).

Thank you.

DOUBTS...JUST ANOTHER GOD-HUG

I had an "out of head" experience yesterday. A long-time friend had passed, and several of us gathered to share remembrances. We were talking about the way we were back in the day. Nearing time to break up, I was moved, for I know not what reason, to share how I was feeling right that very minute...which was very like I used to feel at any gathering back in the day; i.e., anxious, intimidated, near tears, shaky...uncool in a word. A couple of others shared and we parted with hugs, end of that story.

Later, as I sat watching the U.S. Open, my head went into overdrive: What a fool you were!  Will you never ever learn? What is the matter with you? I'll bet they're all thinking, 'Whoa, what a dolt she is!' Lord, why do you take coffee breaks just as I need you most?

And in a flash I heard, What were you wishing for? Did you share exactly how you were feeling just to get admiration for your honesty? Your humility? And if you pulled that off and they are thinking how admirable, etc., you are still being ego-led. If, however, you had no ulterior thought, and they  are thinking, 'What a dolt!',  you have been blessed beyond imagining.

And I knew that to be true.

This morning, I'm having my doubts...and God grins.

God loves me so much.

Thank you.

MOTHER MARY, THE BEATLES...PEACE

I think that the only "fight" trigger in us is based in ego. I refuse to believe that God is good with our fighting for any reason. I mean, the quiet word is love achieves the same result. What throws us off is love's result looks wholly different, and ego is all about façade...looking good, making sense, being surface right.

As long as we stay married to our reasoning mind for the "best" results, old "fight or flight" will be our guide.

There is such a much better result which we mostly all know...from our eyebrows up. Moving that down to our heart, to our belly where it connects with our Soul, is the purpose of still more spiritual growth. Our refusal to go with it because we'd rather stop and think about it is the only thing that blocks our progress.

Here's my challenge: To rest in my head-knowledge that that is true. Then to let it be.

Ah, Mother Mary just came to me, speaking words of wisdom, "Let it be, oh, let it be." With a nod to my beloved Beatles.

Thank you.

AND GOD SMILES

It is the concrete we resist that will lead us free...it is the nemesis we pray to be lifted that will not budge until we kiss it on the lips and call it our own. And it is a long haul between kissing it on the lips (resignation) and owning it (acceptance).

That long haul is our own personal and sacred path to peace, and it feels like a bed of nails...if we're doing it right.

Few of us come to a desire for spiritual growth without a thorn in our heart, there by our own  placing. It is our nemesis.

When we're making our turn from the material mind into spiritual thinking, we learn, we recite, we quote, we think...and think some more,,,hoping all the while this means we have accepted that which we know and quote and think on. No. We are not "there" until we welcome our nemesis, and rarely with joy in our heart for this is crash-and-burn after all...but not with resistance either.

On the way to acceptance, we must needs surrender. When we come smack up against surrender, we know our race is run, our fight is done. And of all things...relief is what we feel.

That is acceptance...a feeling of relief that we're over fighting, we've given it up to whomever or whatever takes it...it is no longer ours to even quibble about.

And God smiles...he has led us out of our own darkness into the sunshine of a surrendered life.

I will fight no more forever. -- Chief Joseph

Thank you.

I CAN'T...IT IS TO LAUGH

An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth -- in short, materialism -- does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited. -- E. F. Schumacher

Every time I read that quote in Easwaran's "Words to Live By," I hear a faint uh-oh. I get a glimmer of my "single-minded pursuit" of the moment...of anything...as the makings of my transitory God. (That is the God of my understanding when my ego-wants edge out my desire to know and to do God's will.)

And yet, today I'm caught by a deeper uh-oh: An ego-want of mine cannot fit into this world of mine because it does not contain within itself any limiting principle. Ego has no limitations, spiritual or otherwise...which brings to mind, "I want what I want when I want it."

It matters not how high-flying we make our ego-wants sound...say, to love and be loved...underlying, it is all about me...me getting. If we truly wanted to love and be loved, we would love, starting with "our enemy as our self." And there's another uh-oh!

That's the essence of spiritual growth...when we see for our self that we cannot do it on our "want to" alone, and we know it is to laugh. And we begin to love our very own self in that laughter.

Thank you.

TO KNOW ALL IS WELL

It is not having everything in life  go smoothly that shows forth a good spiritual condition, it is when things go awry and I go smoothly that shows forth a good spiritual condition. - Note to self, 9/4/88

I am the Father within. I am changes not. I am wholly pure, good and ever present in life...mine, yours, ours.

I am blocked solely by our unbelief, our lack of trust, our self-reliance.

My Dream: I have been rescued from a terrible battle. I have lost my legs, my arms, my eyesight, my hearing, my tongue. I wonder why I wasn't left on the battlefield to die already. I don't even know what to pray for since, clearly, all is lost. What's God going to do...grow me a new tongue? Not bloody likely.

And in a flash I am "rocketed into the forth dimension." I realize all is not lost...I can do the same thing I have ever done, pray for the same thing I've ever prayed for: God.

I go to God for God. And that is all.

And my world turned beautiful again...there was sunshine and Hawaiian raindrops kissing my cheeks and lilies of the valley surrounding me and I knew love. I giggled like a teenager for I knew All Is Well.

Thank you.

OUR CHOICE...BY GRACE AND BY GOD

It is my belief that there are two ways upon which to walk in life...the material road and the spiritual path.

We are born into the material world, thus it is that road that will always sing to our ego-based reasoning mind.

The spiritual path is ours by our choosing and also by grace and by God. It is a lesson usually late in learning that we all must turn to the spiritual path at some point in our many lives. We usually come to it late...and by grace and by God...when we lose all hope. Through utter desperation in other words.

Those who live and walk the reasoning-mind road and excel there, i.e., are smart enough, adjust to their life as it is, get a good job, have a happy marriage and well-adjusted children, live in a good neighborhood, have a satisfying religious life, know the "normal" amount of ups-and-downs...they have a much harder time of even seeking the spiritual life within them, i.e., the fourth dimension. Excelling in the third dimension is hard to hate, who's kidding whom? (The tripwire is that our unacknowledged, and without God unsatisfiable, conscience lives there.)

Those who come to the spiritual path usually begin life seeking what the reasoning-mind world appears to offer. When we think about it, it truly is the picture of perfection. That's why enlightenment is not reachable by thinking.

The pearl-beyond-price is crash-and-burn...which is almost always necessary for detachment from our reliance on our reasoning-mind. It is also that which we resist right up to death's door because however we cut it, "crash-and-burn" is not ever going to be inviting to the reasoning mind.

That's not all, when we manufacture a crash-and-burn scenario, that doesn't work either. That's just the reasoning mind running on empty from working overtime. OBTW, a manufactured scenario is calling an unacceptable situation acceptable because we've heard that acceptance is the answer no matter the question. We can call it acceptable till our face falls off, but until we honestly accept...a.k.a., hold our nose and take a leap of faith...we will be the sole source of our own misery no matter what other name we put on it.

Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven....

Thank you.

FOR THIS, THERE IS GOD

Blinding flash of the obvious: to forgive slights, grudges and hurts is to forgive myself for reacting in kind.

My interpretation - Forgiveness is not about forgiving another, it is about forgiving our own self for mentally or physically, reacting in kind to another. Which removes the other entirely.

Further, we  must forgive the instant we feel our inner self impinged by anyone or anything for to ego, impinged is attacked, and we will react in kind.

On first hearing the ugly news coming from Charlottesville, VA, recently, my immediate reaction was a whispered "thank you." This I learned from my friend who, upon hearing of his daughter's murder, thanked God for he knew not what, but he knew that was essential. We must "forgive on the instant" for later (five minutes later even) has given a resentment a toehold in our ego and is then nigh impossible to uproot, i.e., give over to God.

From our eyebrows up, we want to become unselfed. We become unselfed by getting out of our head into our heart, and only God can get us there. Only by our coming to God for God are we unselfed for all else is self.

For this, there is God.

Thank you.

GOD'S HAND IS IN IT...ACCEPTANCE

The happenings in today's world remind me again of Fr Richard Rohr's description of a teaching of Saint Paul's which states, in effect, "Everything is a disguise: weakness is really strength, wisdom is really foolishness, death is really life, matter is really spirit, religion is often slavery, and sin itself is actually the trap door into salvation.”

The thought had flashed years before about the possibility that everything we see in our reasoning-mind world might be a mirror image of God’s world…that left is right, bad is good, weak is strong, smart isn’t, etc. Because it was only an intuitive thought, I just kept it as my comforter. It became my hold-to truth when I read it was a sanctified teaching of two smart people, Rohr and Saint Paul.

Think about it. Doesn't this explain the dreaded future happening that turns out to be our piece of gold? Or the wondrous happening we're expecting that shows up as considerably less-than-wondrous?.

That teaching became the basis of my belief that in every ugly, bad, terrible occasion in life...and the worse the better...God's hand is in it. God's hand is there for us to cling to. It is God's hand that will bring us through to him, to his side of the Oh-No! that we perceive...to peace. Not our thinking, not our will...God.

It is St. Paul’s teaching that today encourages me to keep my focus stayed on God's hand is in it...North Korea, Russia, Harvey, Arpaio. There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

And, who's kidding whom, my thoughts are never far from me. It occurs to me that my self-determined troubles are simply the result of my trying to fix what I perceive as “bad” or trying to cling to that which I perceive as “good.” The result of me relying on me in a word.

There it is...acceptance. Giving God the courtesy of letting him go first.

Thank you.