TO FIND OUR FATHER WITHIN

What if Donald Trump is our Saul of Tarsus? As in Saint Paul before his involuntary conversion.

What if that's you and me? What if we're all Saul, rigid, righteous and right, before involuntary or voluntary conversion? According to me, some of us crash and burn leaving no place to turn but to a power greater than ourselves; some of us are born seeking a higher power and some just stumble onto it. It makes no never mind how we get there, get there we must...again, according to me. 

Will we open our mind to the possibility of it?..to the possibility that we are Trump in disguise...or Pruitt...or Hillary! Are we willing to find within our own self that part of them we are repulsed by, to seek for that identity in order to release it...loose it and let it go...and find our Father within? 

Until we do, we will be tied to our own repugnant thoughts...calling our own thoughts Trump, Pruitt, Hillary, et al. And those thoughts will grow...but we won't.

Thank you.

FIND THE CONNECTOR, GOD

And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. -- Romans12:2

Finding my own personal definition of Oneness has been, and continues to be, important to me...probably because the idea doesn't come naturally to the ego-centered reasoning mind.

Many begin trying to get our own picture of Oneness by meditating on the waves in the ocean...how some are bigger, some more forceful, more breathtaking...attention-getters! The little ones, however, the ho-hum bump-in-the-water ones, are the connectors...the underneath connection. We realize Oneness begins at the root, underneath, in the ever-so-small seed...unseen as it were.

It seems easy to our reasoning mind to see your problem and think we know the solution...if you would but listen. It is considerably harder to get our own attention, to turn our so-called solution toward our own self...and there discover our problem, the underneath connector.

We remember that what we see is always our self...ah, the calm of the spiritual solution opens up to us. That calm is the gift of Oneness.

Find the Connector, God, and be at peace.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL...MIRROR IMAGE

I've long been a believer that learning to take nothing personally is the path to God's hidey-hole.

Which leads me to answered prayers. Learning unto acceptance that answered prayers seldom even resemble the result we sought may be one of life's hardest lessons to remember. That's why thank you is so important for us to hold to...that's the proof of our open mind. To pray thank you and mean it in the face of an apparent Oh, no! can only be God calling.

I am in the midst of such an answered prayer right now...which invites me to prove how well I've learned to take nothing personally. The miracle is that I know this even as I go forward...know it from my toes to my nose. The tripwire is the human condition...it is such that from the nose up, our reasoning mind runs the show or wants to.

Sometime back, I said to an acquaintance, out loud and in perfect sincerity, that I wanted to be able, just as Jesus did, to have calumny visited upon me and to answer, to respond, not at all. Yes. I did say that. And I meant it. I still do, only not out loud anymore...I'd forgotten the command: Tell no one.

Here's the nut of my learning: (a) I can reasonably understand that for whatever reason, my acquaintance took my statement personally, as a personal offense, and she is delivering my answered prayer. (b) I can spiritually believe that my acquaintance is my angel in disguise, and she is delivering my answered prayer.

I am at peace with this learning process, and I can say with experiential authority that one of my life's hardest lessons today is to remember to take nothing personally and to keep the emphasis on her as my angel for she is only carrying the message I sought.

 This is my own answered prayer, and I am grateful for this proof of God in my life.

Thank you.

AN ATTITUDE OF FAITH REWARDS

This attitude of faith will receive its reward, as surely as the acting upon My direct Guidance. -- "God Calling," June 24

Ah..."its reward." What a grand and glorious day, hour, minute...instant!...it will be when I read about receiving my reward, and my first thought isn't of money, glory or society.

It would not be surprising to learn that God's will, or our ego-need, is for us to win a grand prize, a no-money-just-glory prize, and for no one we know to hear about it...ever.

My ego dreams of winning big with an audience present to applaud...and enviously. Or, more particularly, it dreams of winning with its current bane of life present...and envious.

The U-bie we must make is to accept our ego just as it is: Our ego. The more we try to make our ego a spiritual tool, the stronger our ego grows. Same goes when we try to make our reasoning mind that proverbial highway to heaven...ain't gonna happen. That's just Miracle-Gro for our ego.

We must go higher than our reasoning mind to be raised deeper than our reasoning mind.

It is an attitude of faith that we seek, and that starts with an attitude of gratitude. And that starts with thank you...for everything, be it an Oh, No! or an unearned glory.

We say thank you and that is all. That attitude of faith will receive its reward.

Thank you.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

In my quiet time this morning, I was praying my standard "bless all my beloveds," and the words "and all my un-beloveds" followed without thought. 

I realized, there it is, the nut of my searching mind, the how-to toward peace, love and joy...consciously seek more for a loving heart for my un-beloveds than for my already beloveds. Face it, as the Man said, I already love them. 

It's the uns that make a mare's nest in my mind. Which, therefore and of course, get the most attention...and not the needed spiritual attention, but the unneeded ego attention. Ah, but even when making the self-determined attempt to love the unlovable, we stay in the un position by identifying the uns as such.

I'm guessing this is what opens the teeny-tiny window for light to come in on Oneness. It's only through comprehending unto living Oneness that we can love the unlovable for only then is there no unlovable to love. All is One.

I wrote my blog, then read my Rohr, and  I was taken by this statement: We abhor and denigrate welfare for the poor but hardly blink at welfare for corporations or for the banking and military systems. Doesn't that say the same thing? The poor being the uns, the moneyed being the beloveds. 

When will we ever learn?

Thank you.

REMEMBER TO DO THE LOVE YOU RECEIVE

I had two quite different experiences yesterday...one of incoming ugly and one of incoming love.

First, the ugly: I was at lunch with several people. A friend and I were at the end of the table, seated across from each other. The two people next to us literally turned their seats away from us and talked with the others at the table the entire time. We were never included unless we threw a remark or a question up and over. Another lady seated down the table told an incredibly hurtful story about two others (who, of course, were not present). She excused her story by saying the unkind remarks originally made "had just fallen out of her lips without forethought." But she told this disparaging story to people who had no need to know...and with forethought. 

I am exercising not taking the behavior of the first two personally because it says nothing at all about me. My insight is in understanding why the other lady would break bad with such a mean-spirited  story. The reason, it seems to me, is that ugly begets ugly. Specifically, whether she consciously realized it or not, she was in the presence of uncivil behavior. If we do not in some way address that incivility, it will inform our behavior. Plain speak: It will do our thinking, our acting, for us as the rude behavior of the two did through her.

Second, and best part, the love: Before lunch, a lady I know but am not close with, came up, and, kinda stuttering, said she had an offer to make me: She'd heard me say that I'd love to visit my hometown one last time but this and that were making it unlikely to happen. So, she was offering to drive me to my hometown (an eight-hour drive!) in the Fall, that she'd make herself scarce while I visited friends, etc. I am beyond touched at such a straight up example of love, such heart-generosity...gobsmacked fits here. 

It is worth noting...and not forgetting...how ugly spreads like spilled ink on a white tablecloth...p.d.q. with no good following. Then, how love takes its own sweet time...it spreads by growing up and out. I know the offer-er will continue to show forth love, I will have her example to follow and share with others who, no doubt, will catch the fever and show it forth. Ugly just leaves a stain.

My goal today is to stay my memory on the love...and pass it on. Equally important, I want to not forget that ugly does beget ugly, to not forget the less-than-wonderful behavior I experienced...and not pass it on.

Thank you.  

OUR EGO IS OUR DICTATOR

[The following is a reprint of my post of March 15, 2014.]

We hear of a person's life being changed...and it is!..but what must change first is our reason for desiring change.

We get Soul change when we are no longer trying to change in order to get anything including peace of mind.

Peace of mind generally is the cover story we tell ourselves when we're really seeking ego satisfaction...financial security, to love and be loved, personal glory (if only in the form of agreement that we're right). These are self-determined objectives. We can and will change in order to get them but that seldom brings the peace of mind we think we're really seeking.

These ego-based wants masquerade as needs, and become the God of our understanding, fooling only us. Their sustaining root is our desire to believe that i am and you are not.

As long as we believe there is a "you" to resist, our ego is our dictator.

We go to God for God...that is all.

Thank you.

WE MUST START SOMEWHERE

Just knowing God lives within is not enough. 
Just knowing God lives within is enough.

I suspect those two thoughts exemplify the difference between reasoning mind and spiritual intuition...not enough being reasoning mind. (We've got to do, do, do...but what? how? when? where? Oh, I give up.) And enough being spiritual truth. (Sit and wait on the Lord; speak, Lord, your servant listens; How long, oh, Lord?).

It is the marriage of the two that gets things done, isn't it? Just because we don't know what to do in order to find the lost babies of the disastrous immigration policy should not keep us from doing something about something.

With our heart, soul, body and brains focused on God's best transmuting that policy...quick, fast and in a hurry...scrub the bathtub.

Holding to the fact that God's will is better than my will no matter how good I believe my will to be, I can clean out my closet and separate clothes to be let go of. I can sweep my balcony. I can look for a home for my planters that I can no longer plant. There. That's handing my skein of tangled thoughts over to God to do with as he wills that changes me. Like lemons into lemonade, our hate-filled judgments are being turned into good works through our good intentions. I choose to believe that our intentions matter to God.

I'm reminded of a favorite Bible story where the guy who was sold into slavery by his brothers, got lucky and became the pharaoh's right-hand man. The bros got unlucky and came running to him, admitting their wrong and seeking his favor...to which he said, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good."

And, who's kidding whom? Our ugly judgments, no matter how true they are to us, get nothing changed for the better...they only bring us down further into inaction, hate and self-harm. There's about the same amount of God in that as there is in the separate-the-children-from-their-parents
policy.

Think of "everybody wants to go to Heaven, nobody wants to die"...everybody wants to love, nobody wants to be the first to love an unlovable situation. But hate doesn't work, does it? If it did, we'd all be healthy, wealthy and wise...or better off than we are at any rate.

Love the Lord with all our heart, soul, body and brains, and love our enemy as our self. Or set our heart in that direction and trust...that's our decision for God.

Thank you.

VARIOUS BLINDING FLASHES OF THE OBVIOUS

• The secret to true happiness is to lower my standards for others and raise my standards for me.
• We cannot get love, we can only give love...with which love returns.
• I am grateful for my cane...it is humility.
• We are God's laugh-and-love track.
• Saying Yes, Thank You, to everything is to resist not evil.
• God knew alcoholics needed AA more than they needed the disease lifted out of them.
• God must go slow in order for us to keep up.
• We seek the stigmata so our hands can't make fists. [I call my stigmata "arthritis."]
• Never fear being thrown into the lion's den for the lion in the den is Aslan.
• It's the pain we pray to be relieved of that leads us to God...welcome the pain.
• There is no me to protect...there is no you to fight.
• Mistakes are humility aborning.
• Not feeling gratitude, grace and God does not negate the fact of gratitude, grace and God.
• Take nothing personally...welcome everything.

Thank you.

GOD UNTANGLES...LET HIM

We do not need to beat up on ourselves for our attack mind thoughts...in fact, continuing to live there is staying in the reasoning mind. We'd best realize that those judgmental thoughts (of our own self in our rues, regrets and remorses and of others in setting our bar so high for them) is the tangled skein we are taught to give to God to untangle and return to us as love.

I feel comforted that I had that thought and then read: Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield [writes]: . . . So many of us carry a kind of unspoken assumption that something is very, very wrong with us, that we’re damaged, guilty, and unlovable. Stepping into our divinity—acknowledging and accepting our fundamental nobility—is the ultimate paradigm shift. * * * May we point our feet toward this heaven and begin the hard and necessary work of walking there.

My spiritual goal is and has been to find no fault in them...them being you, me, my smart phone, Comcast, the president, etc., et al.

Pointing my feet toward heaven, to me, is finding no fault to judge, but recognizing the ungod when I see it and seeking to bring that to the Father within to be righted.

The hard and necessary work of walking there, usually begins with self...detaching from the ego-ugly I see in me in order to accept (welcome?) the ego-ugly I'm judging in you. That, I'm guessing, is stepping into our divinity—acknowledging and accepting our fundamental nobility. 

To know that as a goal may well be as close as we ever get on this plane. Ah, pray Thank You...that will suffice.

Thank you.

ACCEPT, ADMIT...WALK FREE

Blinding flash of the obvious:  Every mistake I make is for my own good for this is the seed of humility aborning.

That is one of those comforting/oh-no spiritual facts. According to me.

Humility. I'm guessing all sincere spiritual seekers recognize humility as essential to our personal growth. We may recognize it, but who amongst us goes looking to be gifted with it? Humility does not come with shouts of hurrahs and a brass band marching along side. On its way to becoming our own, we dread that it is going to feel like sackcloth and ashes.

However, it is not until we accept our mistake and 'fess up to ownership, that we know freedom...which to the more pious feels...well, I don't know, not being one of those. I do know how the defiant feels..."so sue me" is often our first feeling. But we get there however we get there, and thank you, Jesus.

What we must accept is that for every mistake we make, it is in our admission of responsibility for it that is humility. To cover our mistake up, to hide it, to lie about it...the reasoning mind CYA response...is an avoidance of the humility we seek. It is ego-ism in God's seat.

The CYA response is just another detour on our return journey to our destination: the before-conception pool of God consciousness. Think about it: Humility is our inner-NetJets to God.

Thank you.

SOOTH OUR ATTACK MIND FIRST

My God. Lord God Almighty. We see what is happening at the border...at the border of sanity, the border of insanity...and our heart weeps, our very thoughts stutter with incomprehension. By the sight, of course, but, oh so much more...by the actual and original thought. The first thought that was considered good enough to speak aloud...not who would think such, but why? Why? For what godless purpose? Power and profit, control and conceit, of course.

Though there be no God in power, profit, control and conceit, no God is necessary...nay, no God is possible...for the ego-victory consciousness.

Here's where a Power greater than oneself fits a definition of God. Power and profit, control and conceit can be and obviously are the God of someone's understanding. But none is a Power greater than oneself. Each is driven by the ego, and the ego is driven by the me, myself and i of  anyone looking outside their own self for their own safety and security.

There is no love in that. If there is no love, there is no God. Since God is love, God can only love, and God loves even the conceited control-freak who first thought of a policy of separation of children from their parents.

My spiritual discipline is trying really hard to get me to be willing to love even the conceited control-freak, and I do want to be willing. But the name fits so perfectly I'm having...ah-ha...the devil's own time in letting it go. Which, naturally, is placing me right smack dab in the middle of that which I'm condemning...and I'm not even getting power or profit out of it. Whoa...conceit may have more pull with my ego than anything. And God loves that, too. But I'm not having lunch with God today, so I'd best clean up my sermonizing mind.

And I've just realized my own in this...I have not had a single thought toward my Thank You prayer. There it is...the soothing cure for the attack mind. Which is, after all, the first thing that ever needs soothing.

Thank you.

FEAR NOT, LOVE ALL

Per Fr Richard Rohr, in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus teaches, If you bring forth that which is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.

According to me, we'd best not pray for, or affirm, perfect eyesight, hearing, mind...health in a word...for those are all self-driven wants. No. Our need is to know God aright. It is that inner knowing that brings the peace that passeth understanding. For only  then, in the midst of eyesight gone bad, hearing dicey, mind muddled, cancer, et al., we know peace, that perfect peace which is not addled by the reasoning mind's take on anything.

We may well lose our eyesight, our hearing...many do. And in their loss, there are many who have found...and mayhap would never have found if not for the loss...the peace that passeth understanding. Which in no way suggests we not see our doctor, ophthalmologist, oncologist  and the like as needed. That's what doctors are for.

It is peace of mind, however, that seems to be the Holy Grail of oh so many of us. The hard lesson a-learning is as long as it is our Holy Grail (something not attained), in seeking it, we will never attain it.

The paradox, of course, is fear not cancer and all its minions, ALS, dementia, but let the love that we hold within flow forth, and all ill health's minions will fret us not.

We cannot fear that which we love, so love all. Or, better: Resist not evil.

Thank you.

GIVE OVER AND BECOME WHOLE

We often forget that the actions we are contemplating contain the seed of its result.. - June 17, Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By"

What we see is always our self. - Lazy Man's Guide (?)

Our toes get stepped on, seemingly without provocation, invariably we find we've made decisions based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. - Anonymous

Those three quotes (and many more meaning the same thing) are the key to peace of mind...to learning how to give up, give over, give in and feel whole about it. We know we are whole when we can do our giving and love and laugh about how hard it still is.

We go through all the inside muck and mire and come out the other side believing we have cleaned our wreckage up and out. The jarring discovery is that cleaning up our wreckage does not mean we'll never need go through it again...we are, after all, still our own self. 

The spiritual gift is that the next time(s) we will go through at a deeper level with less blame and shame, more understanding and acceptance...of our self and the (always) other in the picture.

Ego is with us 24/7 and can only be made peace with, never risen above. But then the same goes for God. Isn't it interesting how the same fact can get a feeling of Oh, No and YES! both at the same time? I like to think that's the oneing of dual thinking..

Thank you.

THE NEW DIMENSION OF LOVE

The sacred gift of old-age, I'm coming to believe, is love...finding love within in a whole 'nother dimension. 

We once defined love by how we felt for another...is it possible to have a better remembered feeling than that of first love? Interestingly, that's one place the memory only improves...that remembered feeling becomes gold, and that memory too often becomes our yardstick for measuring good/bad...anything. 

Over the years, however, we learn to hone, to slice and dice...to redefine that remembered feeling. Before spiritual growth enters our life, we just call it making do with what we  got. That is also known as resignation; there is no acceptance in resignation.

Then old age creeps up, at supersonic speed, and we are faced with finding a new way to deal with our own self as we are right now, or, actually, our own feelings about our self as we are now.

Our fading eyesight and hearing, our creaking bones and aching  joints...learning to accept those as our own today...ah, to accept! That's it. That's the new dimension of love...acceptance without a scintilla of regret...or entertaining ideas of how it/we should be. 

Our big ah-ha is the discovery of all that's necessary is to accept that God knows our needs. Dealing spiritually with the fact of my body, myself  just as it is/I am right this very minute is already ours. Peace, love and joy define us, if we will but use them...as in, live them. They are not ours until we loose them and let them go.

I wonder if we could find this new dimension of love in anything but the sacred gift of old-age. Best part: This new dimension helps us feel the same age as each and every person we meet...there is no age in peace, love and joy.

Thank you.

PASS IT ON

I was deliberately and defiantly disobedient to my own self this morning.

I consciously and on purpose defied my own hard-won discipline:  I did not get up until well after 6:00, watched "Morning Joe," ate a treat, then breakfast. Not until 8:00 did I make myself available to God and then meditating only, not reading anything. Then I watched more of "Joe" and just now at 9:30 a.m., am sitting down to blog.

I do believe all this started maybe a week ago with my consciously and deliberately saying to myself that I'll eat a self-forbidden treat whenever I want, as much as I want, because who's going to say me nay...my exact thoughts and actions. 

Only I can turn back to God, to spiritual principles, to living at peace within myself...for only I turned my back on them. 

Oh, I bring good news: I wrote the above, and then I read this morning's Fr Richard Rohr wherein he quoted Bryan Stevenson who, in his book "Just Mercy," wrote: ...what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable. *** Embracing our brokenness creates a need for mercy....

I am grateful I acknowledged my self-driven disobedience before I read that...but reading it ensures I'll not just post it, but tell it...out loud and to others because I do believe embracing our brokenness creates a need for mercy.

Thank you.

WE GO TO GOD FOR GOD AND THAT IS ALL

If there isn't some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down. The natural movement of the small self or ego is to protect itself so as not to be hurt again. As I shared last week, neuroscience now shows us that we attach to negativity 'like Velcro' unless we intentionally develop another neural path like forgiveness or letting go. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," February 26, 2016

There is a Higher Power within us that leads us to our good. That is the sliver of gold that we need seek unto realization unto enlightenment.

And our enlightenment is: There is a Higher Power within us that leads us to our good.

Thank you.

AH...WHEN OBEYED

I awoke this morning with a busy mind. I stumbled out of bed nattering to myself: OK, that which I seek is already mine. But how do I recognize it? If I'm still seeking, I'm obviously missing it. For sure I haven't inner-eye seen it. 

I sat down to my beloved "God Calling," and there it is: Looking to Me, all your thoughts are God-inspired. Act on them and you will be led on. They are not your own impulses but the movement of My Spirit and, obeyed, will bring the answer to your prayers. Love and Trust.

It is not the prayer fully answered, gift-wrapped and bow-tied, that brings peace, it is the seeking. It is in the very looking to God, away from self, to God that we are led on, led aright. 

Looking to God in love and trust with all our heart, soul, body and brains, when obeyed will bring our answer.

God is so good to me. God is so good.

Thank you.

GROW WITH GRATITUDE, GRACE AND GOD

For this day, I am grateful that I am open to God and grace and growth. No matter how little I feel it.

It is in the time of not feeling gratitude that we need to cling to the fact, not the feeling. The fact is, whether we accept it or not, God is. Whether we know it or not, Grace flows. And Growth grows.

Get grateful.

Thank you.

PERSEVERE IN PRACTICING LOVE AND LAUGHTER

'14  It is not to overcome others' ugly, it is to not resist it so as to let it pass by...with love and laughter.

I ponder my yesteryear's blinding flash of the obvious, and I marvel that I have written '15 ditto and this year, '18 same. 

My first thought was that this is just proof that it keeps coming back until we get it right; then I realized, actually this is getting it right...else the message would be different. This is how we come to own it.

I just picked up a book I haven't read in a long time, and the first thing I read is apropos of what I was thinking, but oh so much clearer:

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

Thank you.

GOD HAS OUR BACK...ALWAYS AND EVER

It is necessary, living in our day-to-day world, to learn to speak up for our self, take our own part, not be a doormat. However, once we have learned how...or, more to the point, that we actually can...our need for still more spiritual growth leads us to a new way of thinking. Ah, then we get a clue that freedom from self begins with giving over, giving up, giving in.  

It is hard enough to learn to do the egoless thing...give over, give up, give in...but once we learn, as in once we do that very thing (and usually after arm-wrestling with God about our need to do it), we then must contend with our ego after the fact.

Our ego will ever want to take all credit, tell the whole world, how spiritual it is and has been. No. Our just walking-around directions state that when we feel our toes have been stepped on, seemingly without provocation, invariably we find we've made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt.

We have not gone above and beyond to a whole new spiritual plane...we've followed basic directions in order to live a relatively happy, joyous and free life. Which, in order to live there, puts us in a whole new spiritual place.

I was pleased this morning, after I wrote the above, to read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," in which he, a lot more clearly and concisely, spells out and then names this procedure: 

Clear-headed dualistic thinking must precede any further movement into nondual responses, especially about issues that people want to avoid. We cannot make a nonstop flight to nondual thinking or we just get fuzzy thinking. First use your well-trained and good mind, and then find your response in a holistic (body, mind, soul, and heart) response. This is the heart of spirituality. 

Thank you.

WE ARE THE LOVE WE SEEK

...love the innermost self of all about us. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words To Live By"

There it is. In order to love your enemy as yourself, we need to love the innermost self of all our perceived enemies. The Father is within everybody so we'd best open our heart...beginning with out mind...to loving the Father within everybody. 

I'm guessing we err when we try to love our enemy by trying to love that which we object to. Our error is when we get specific and our ego objects...in righteous indignation. As in, we picture Gertrude, who cheated us, lied about us, whatever, and we're trying to love that cheating, lying Gertrude. Well, good luck...we're going for spiritual not stupid.   

We make our U-bie when we remember the gift from our original decision to seek still more spiritual growth...specifically, we now follow directions from a higher plane than our reasoning mind is accorded.  

We turn again, and always, to spirituality's first lesson: We must flow with the go, with the good, with God. That starts in our head where we let go of our own idea of what we need, and we invite a spiritual solution. This is probably the hardest part because it takes time, but we soon learn that we get nowhere until we take the time needed. When we get it there, it will begin its journey down to our heart, and almost without stopping, it flows freely into/out from our Soul, God's hidey-hole. 

The it, of course, is love, and our perceived enemy is no longer personal to us...s/he is the love we have. 

Thank you.

ON DETACHING THROUGH SPIRITUAL GROWTH

My sister in  dissing me is seeking God...my being made to pay (for whatever/from wherever her anger stems) is her God.  She needs me to give her something to get over on...I want to let her for my own good. -- My 6/8/04 note written in reference to Easwaran's statement that there is nobody who is not seeking God.

Reading and rereading my daily spiritual books, in particular the notes I had written to myself, sometimes surprise me by giving me a deeper insight than I originally had.

Today, 14 years after I first wrote that note, I look back in surprise that I grasped then that I did want to let her for my own good, only I realize now that I needed to for my spiritual good. I have come to experience the fact that someone will ever be passing through our life seeking God through something to get over on. We seldom want to, always need to, let them.

I must needs keep it simple...and the longer I live, the more I understand that the "it" that I must keep simple is every single thing in my field of comprehension. Shuck it, clean it, strip it, sit and wait on the Lord, and when I hear what I hear, then shuck that, clean that, strip that...else, count on it, I will put my spin on it.

It is in becoming willing to detach from our own ideas, our own interpretations...loose them and let them go...that we arrive at realization. We get the Word, we know it, and, if we stay out of our own way, we show it.

All that rarely happens in one or two or three sittings. It takes as long as it takes, and all it takes is willingness. That's how we learn to welcome...or not fear...despair. I doubt anyone ever crashed and burned while giggling and grinning. (Although I do love Tom Lehrer's song with the line in it about dancing around the funeral pyre singing rickity-tickity-tin.)

Sometimes still more spiritual growth is simply divorcing our self from our own opinions. According to me.

Thank you.

THE COSMIC GRACE OF GRATITUDE

'82 - It seems like ever since I started seriously trying to do the Sermon on the Mount, I have never looked uglier or felt more alone...what if this is the way God wants me to look, and I am doing it right? -- a just-found note to myself 

How wonderful it is to find these notes scattered in my books. I get to see myself as I was then and ponder how I am...how I feel about me...today. I felt graced when I read that note. That I had the barest glimmer that "this" may be the way of God fills my heart with joy. That I might be "doing it right" was very, very far from my personal prayers...which, obviously, were based on how I thought I looked.

Even better, this may be my personal Rosetta Stone.This is evidence of my first entertaining the possibility that the way I am just might be God's will for me. I had started on the path toward self-acceptance...heading in the right direction. 

I have long held that self-acceptance is the first baby step toward spiritual growth. According to me, self-acceptance is to accept myself just as I stand with all my warts, blemishes, tongue-tied and tarnished and without excuses, albeit with a single desire: to love and to be loved. 

I intuited that if I did not accept me just as I saw me, I'd never pray aright for I would always be praying for God to change me in some way. There is no gratitude in that, and gratitude paves the way for grace to do her cosmic thing.

Thank you.

BELIEVE IT...LIVE IT

The paradox of praying "thank you" without ceasing is we are thanking God for our good before we see the good not that we seek but that we need. Quite often those are two entirely different things.

Hard truth: We may never see the good we are personally seeking. The gift is coming to realize how blessed we were not to have received the good we were personally after. But then we get to glory in the good we got which looked less-than-wonderful arriving.

What we receive, whatever it is, is the good we need. We know that to be true because it is what we got. Our new way of thinking allows us to accept...or to not resist...that truth, but it takes as long as it takes for us to live that turned-over life.

Harder truth: We learn nothing if we live a resigned life...to think of whatever comes as just another Cross we have to bear. That is ego all dressed up in its Sunday best...looking good to no one but self.

God is good, has naught but good for us, believe it...live it.

Thank you.

GRATITUDE PASSES ON...AND SAVES THE DAY

Old Quaker saying, 'Let your life speak.'  Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen to what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent. -- Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" quoting Parker Palmer, a Quaker teacher and activist.

According to me, we live by our ego-driven free will until we realize a need for more...for something...something other than what we are relying on, i.e., self. I think of that as ego crashes and burns. For some, that crash-and-burn is simply a realization that the selfish way is not the best way, and they make their U-bie and head on Home.

For others, and I'm convinced we are the lucky ones, that crash-and-burn means exactly what it sounds like...painful beyond endurance. That's why we're the lucky ones...our choice is toast. No more self-debating, we make our U-bie and head home.

In making that U-turn, we unconsciously make our decision to live by spiritual principles. It takes time to catch up with our own self which makes living what we are learning very often a surprise...only discernible after the fact. And, who's kidding whom, we're not always entirely happy about it.

It's akin to looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains. That's my interpretation of finally settling in to not being as nasty as I want to be and wishing I could still be as nasty as I want to be only without regrets.

Ah, and here comes God to save our day...we are reminded of the unendurable pain of our crash-and-burn, We get un-nasty right quick, and we feel gratitude from our toenails up. Which itself passes on. There...gratitude tells you what truths you embody, what values you represent. 

Thank you.

THE JOY OF LIVING UNSELFED

I'm fairly well convinced that the way to a fret-free life is the way of depersonalizing...taking nothing personally. Feel a nip of resistance? Say "thank you," find the sliver of gold in it...then build on that.

Depersonalize, detach, loosen, release, let go. In the long-ago words of my beloved mentor, Cling to nothing, fly!

I'm becoming more convinced than ever that to get a contented life we must live a turned over life...our free will turned back to God. When we turn our will over to God, we are graced with the spiritual care and concern of and for others. Meaning, our thoughts are for them, their well-being...especially those we don't have a natural affinity for. You know, those we once called dirt bag.

And why not? We are secure knowing we are God's care and concern which, in order to live it, we must pass it on.

Isn't it amazing? All we need do to have a contented life is to develop an attitude of gratitude...and live in it.

Thank you.

ON BEING AT ONE

[The is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of January 27, 2016.]

Everybody's scandalous flaw is mine. -- Rumi

This to me is the exemplar of Oneness.

We talk being at one, we seldom walk it. We walk it when we least know that is what we're doing. We're looking to become the Lily of the Valley when we already are...and also the Thorn of the Rose.

If it is true, "everybody's scandalous flaw is mine," then everybody's pearl of great price is mine, too. We are the flaw and the pearl...there is no scandalous flaw apart from me, nor pearl of great price separate.

According to me.

Thank you.

GIFTED BY GRACE THROUGH DAILY DISCIPLINE

I find the difference between resignation and acceptance fascinating. I know it as the difference between relying on self-determined objectives (ego) and relying on spiritual principles (God).

To me, resignation is driven by self-will and acceptance is graced through God's will. We can know to the last dotted i what resignation brings. We can never know with any certainty what God's will may bring...plus it can take years for us to get a clue that God's will is always for the best for us personally. It's just rare that on its face it looks like it.

In short, resignation keeps one in self-will...we resign our self to what we perceive, even though what we perceive is not what we want. We usually identify it as "our rotten luck,"  which belief keeps us stuck right there, looking no further because we do believe in "our rotten luck."

Acceptance usually comes from the same place of pain; however, it is only in our crash-and-burn that we accept our powerlessness. It is in not resigning but accepting that we turn in despair from self to Self.

The help we seek is often the mirror image of God's will for us. We're hooked on cigarettes, booze, a love, sugar, gambling...broccoli! The help we seek is to be able to keep smoking, drinking, etc., but to suffer no adverse consequences. God's will is that we cut that crap out and start living by spiritual principles. To the enlightened mind, there are no adverse consequences in living by spiritual principles. Ah, but getting that enlightened mind is our work for the rest of this life and the next if we're doing it right.

The paradox: We must make our self available for it on a daily basis...it is a gift of grace; it opens in a heartbeat.

Thank you.

MY LORD, WHAT A MORNING!

'13 BFO: I dig the ditches that allows God a cleared road.

Giving my reasoning mind its righteous props was/is a steep climb for me. For ever so long I was taught ...or I thought I was taught...that the reasoning mind is our bane and not to be trusted. Which I still believe is about half right...speaking of my own reasoning mind only. But the half that is right is good, necessary and as righteous as it's ever going to be.

For instance, my blinding flash of the obvious from five years ago, I dig the ditches that allows God a cleared road, speaks of the inside work I must do to begin to be free of me...the necessary ditches to be dug to go through my ego Lucy's tools and toys and tamperings.

That inside work cannot be done alone; it requires another person, a lot of other persons usually, to hold us honest. As has been said, going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous. And going alone on a dig within is perilous.

We need our reasoning mind not only to choose a reasonably fitting person to do our dig with, but for all the other non-digging times...to decide between ice cream and sugar-free yogurt, for Pete's sake.

It is the melding of our reasoning mind with our still more spiritual growth that needs hands off, or  quieted mind, but also...and here's the hook...an open mind. We sit in the silence with our intention and attention focused on...nada. Which lasts a nanosecond. Refocus...bring it back home. Focus on nada.

And then...and THEN...we experience a teeny-tiny shift, and it feels as if the entire Book of Revelation has just been revealed...in a heartbeat. And we know, and we know we know: He goes before me to make the crooked places straight.

My Lord, what a morning...when my sun began to shine.

Thank you.