LIVE INTO THE ANSWER

I read in my Easwaran "Words to Live By" today: A knack for quiet self-sacrifice is the very life and soul of friendship. 

In a heartbeat I saw that I have learned how to 'suffer in silence the slings and arrows' of a friend's peeve. And I have reaped the rewards...love and continuing friendship...without resentment. The pearl beyond price. 

My way once was loud and cutting snark or silent scorn; it was by grace and by God that I learned silent acceptance. But now I realize that my silent acceptance has become my unrecognized pride, therefore, ego's foothold. That is the nature of ego...God's gift can become ego's pride oh so easily. It's kinda like ego's motto is If I can't win, I can claim their victory as mine.

In that heartbeat I saw that my quiet self-sacrifice has morphed into another need now...to become willing to push back with love and laughter. It is a self-sacrifice because that is a scary proposition...I don't know how to push back verbally except with loud snark or silent scorn (which is just an amplified attitude).

Then I read my Rohr "Daily Meditation" which had a Rilke quote that allayed my fear (for the moment) and answered my "Yes, but...how to?" question:  "As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet: I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. . . . For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer."

My question, of course, is how do I speak softly with humor to 'Rude who is blasting me with her/his anger? 

God's answer, of course, is to just try, that's how you learn. Or, hold your nose and take a leap of faith.

That's the God of my understanding being as specific as he gets. But then, how else to build faith?

Thank you.

ON UPGRADING OUR THOUGHTS

An important and oft-quoted tradition (hadith) has Muhammad say on his way home after a battle: 'We are returning from the Lesser Jihad and going to the Greater Jihad,' the far more important and difficult struggle to reform one’s own society and one’s own heart. —Karen Armstrong (from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," September 29, 2018)

I immediately connected with We are returning from the Lesser Jihad and going to the Greater Jihad...the lesser Jihad being the dailies of life, the greater Jihad being still more spiritual growth. I immediately thought of our daily squabbles, within and without, the daily resistances we meet...if the jihad to get over our own self counts, Comcast alone is clearing my path to Heaven.

My running thoughts upon that reading:

We are surrendering our petty squabbles, accepting our daily hurdles.

We are awakening from our prison of wants, entering the realm of needs.

We are awakening from our own ego-framed consciousness into the limitless consciousness of Spirit.

We are detaching from resistance to others, inviting the presence of others.

We are detaching, we are flying free.

We are detached from the tether of human consciousness. We are One with God consciousness.

I hope to add to these...keeps my thoughts aimed upward...or higher than my thoughts about Comcast anyway.

Thank you.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID

Only in the degree that we accept and really understand His word -- feel and gain the connection of God as the reality of our being, feel this oneness, this contact -- only in that degree can we prove the law that says that no harm can come to  us, that no weapon that is formed against us can harm us. -- Joel Goldsmith, "The World is New," pp 104-105

There is the pearl I seek...the conviction, the revelation, the reality of God as my being.

AAAAAAAAh. It is in the seeking that I lose My way!

Now what?

And with that question, I read my today's Rohr, and there's my answer: 'Wash yourself of yourself,' says Rumi [a Sufi]. 'Be melting snow.' 

That sounds so right. And reading it, talking it...hey, look at me, I'm flying!

Howsomever, as Grandma would say...for my poor pitiful walking-around comprehension, that boils down to ego deflation in depth. Which, like just change your mind, cannot be done on want-to alone. We gotta go higher to our deeper place within...God's hidey hole.

I've found try not to be as nasty as you want to be a sure start. That may be as close as I ever get to agree with your adversary quickly, plus it heads me in the right direction...away from want-to toward need-to. 

I suspect I dismiss self-determined objectives too quickly. Wasn't it exactly that...a self-determined objective...that started me seeking still more spiritual growth? God induced, of course. Then, same thing that led me to attempt actually doing less me-first things.

I recall how it is said that self-preservation is the first law of man. It would not surprise me one bit to learn in the end that is the first "law" we need to jettison...that is, if we really want to stroll across Heaven all day.

Face it...that which sounds so right and true, wash yourself of yourself,..be melting snow, wipes self-preservation off the board.

Oh, here's a thought: Trust God. Clean house. Help others.

God loves me so much.

Thank you.

ON LIVING FREE OF EGO VICTORIES

According to me:

God's will cannot be figured out ahead of time. It is discerned moment-by-moment...as a need arises.

Planning God's will in advance stays us in the reasoning mind. The result we seek is our  self-determined objective...not in and of itself wrong, it's simply an ego booster.

God's will for us is for the benefit of others.

Aligning our will with God's will is all about putting others' needs first.

Spontaneous aid to another is the essence of doing God's will...spontaneous aid to us given by another is the essence of accepting God's will.

When we sincerely seek to put others' needs before our wants, and work toward that end, we can know the peace that passes understanding...and we can smile.

Living by the laws of God allows us to let go of things that create unrest and fear in us.  Ah, then we can live free of our own ego-demands.

God's will is not a one-shot deal. It constitutes life itself. God's will is a one-shot deal.

Thank you.

FORGETFULNESS...A BUILT-IN HUMAN CONDITION

My key to peace in these uneasy times: a fundamental belief in the impermanence of evil in the face of God’s love.

I regret I did not note when or where I read that, but I saved it and came across it again this morning...just as I read, Forgetfulness is what we must constantly struggle against. (I did note from whence that came: Avideh Shashaani, an Iranian-American poet and translator of Sufi mystic texts,  lifted from today's Rohr meditation.)

That second thought about forgetfulness relieves us of the guilt we feel when we stray from the first about our fundamental belief in God's love.

We do have that fundamental belief but we do forget! Realizing that forgetfulness is built into the human condition, and we all must struggle against it, gives us permission to believe in our belief...to know it's not just a want-to. To accept our forgetfulness is to accept that the world is ever with us...ah, but so is God's love.

Our spiritual growth map, simplified: a fundamental belief in the impermanence of evil in the face of God’s love and forgetfulness is what we must constantly struggle against.

Thank you.

CHOOSE PEACE...KNOW LAUGHTER

Nonviolence. Passive resistance. Detachment. Depersonalization. Peace.

We are born into the material world, and blessed are those who learn early that there are two ways to trudge destiny's road: by reliance on our reasoning mind (a constant push/pull)  or by dependence on a power greater than our self (peace...slow but certain).

I think of war and peace...opposite sides of the same coin the core of which is one thought or, really, one decision...peace or war? One thought...welcome it and have inner quiet; resist it and our battle within is set.

There it is, the choice with which we begin our discerning life: the material road or the spiritual path?  Our decision determines our life's perspective...as realized through self's eye or through a Selfless view.

We will rest assured of our better choice when we find our self praying not for others to change but for our thoughts about them to change.

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

Thank you.

OR GO TO GOD FOR GOD AND THAT IS ALL

One of the great gifts I get from reading the same spiritual books daily, year by year, comes when I read and remember the occasion for the notes I have written in them. When a biggie...good or ill...happens, I note it with the year beside it. A biggie does not happen every day, of course, but over the years there is something on every page.

The majority of my biggies bear the names of friends, co-workers, relatives...the people in my world who were either "doing it wrong" or had, out of the blue, graced me with their love. All these years later I get to see the end result, and the "doing it wrong" crowd invariably wind up as a gift. It is easy to see that is the natural result once we learn to recognize the source of all our woes...namely, our own self.

It is true, we can forgive any insult, any put down, any slight if we so choose. That's all it takes, to choose. Ah, but we know there's a catch. Isn't there always to so-called easy-peasy stuff? The catch in all that it takes is choosing is we cannot make that choice stick all on our own.

Doing it on our own keeps resentment's eternal flame burning. Let a friend or foe, parent or second cousin thrice removed make a snide one at our expense, we either must respond in kind or.... We rarely finish the thought since we've already responded and lit payback's fire ablaze.

It is through spiritual growth that we learn, slowly, slowly, that those remarks do not need to be addressed. They can and must be transmuted...made impersonal to us. They are not ours. They're akin to misaddressed mail or a wrong number...we need not accept delivery no matter how much we want to.

And there it is. The nut of our woes...our want to. We go to shrinks, shrines and sponsors trying to justify our wants. The hard lesson a-learning  is, we personalize our wants...we see them as our own self.

Loose them and let them go. Or forgive. Or love and laugh. With the grace of God and a little help from our friends, we can do any or all of those. Without, we can't. Plain and simple.

Thank you.

FIND THE GOLD!

[The following is a reprint of my post of September 19, 2016.]

This is what it means to be awake: to be constantly willing to say that God could even be coming to me in this! Even in this! -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 9, 2014

I love that quote sooo much. Probably because that is the foundation of my spiritual growth which began the day I was graced by a blinding flash of the obvious: "Find the gold in this."

To my eyes, the "this" was just awful, and I was just powerless to do anything about it. But I had never heard of such a concept, and I felt like I had just run out of gas in the fast lane on the freeway.

I know now that God, or a whole flock of angels, was coming to me in that...even in that!

There have been a lot more "oh no!" times that have come, but none as "oh no!" as the first one. Every time, I've turned it around in my mind until I found the gold...and all it takes is finding the slightest sliver of gold. Hold to that, and gratitude just starts flowing through body, mind and spirit.

Gratitude is the gate God uses...go there often and sit and wait on the Lord. He cannot fail to come, laughing and scratching. Or maybe that part's just me.

Thank you.

EXACTLY WHAT DO WE WANT AND DESIRE?

There is never an unanswered prayer. According to me.

Just yesterday I was coming to my realization through acceptance (or vice versa) that my age was my pearl beyond price...that this time of my life is the time of peace, love and joy multiplied endlessly. It was more or less a prayer that that be true, I suspect.

This morning I am led to the following from my post of August 18, 2012...that's six years ago when I was still trying to fit into being 70. It is to laugh...and to love because why not? 

The following is adapted from "Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life",  p. 160, by Fr. Richard Rohr: Remember this: no one can keep you from the second half of life except yourself. Nothing can inhibit your second journey except your own lack of courage, patience, and imagination. Your second journey is all yours to walk or to avoid. My conviction is that some falling apart of the first journey is necessary for this to happen, so do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting, lost jobs, failed relationships, physical handicaps, gender identity, economic poverty, or even the tragedy of any kind of abuse. Pain is part of the deal. If you don’t walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it. God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. So make sure you desire, desire deeply, desire yourself, desire God, and desire everything good, true, and beautiful. 

Note: God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. 

Note well: Ego will always speak louder than God...not truer just louder.

The time is come in our life when we shuck our shield of pretense...the one we hide behind pretending that we want to be sweet, kind, consider, lovable and generous not to mention wholly spiritual.

Ah, comes the dawn...it does not matter what our shield of pretense is...cool, calculating, sophisticated, a total goofball or a lovable rube from down on the farm. That is our own idea of who and what we are, and its only purpose is to keep us feeling separate and apart...not one.

Again we know, the time is come in our life when we shuck all shields for God will always give us exactly what we truly want and desire.

Our latest path in life, then, is to truly want and desire God for God...and that is all.

Thank you.

CLING NOT...FLY FREE

Blinding flash of the obvious: This is my time for finding myself in 80...old age is not a harbinger of all that is not good...it is not hard...it is not anything that it wasn't at age 20 except for my attitude about it...an attitude of hope in positive expectation is more likely at 20, but 80 years of experience tempers that lively expectation...it does not need douse the fire! It needs turned over to God, that higher power within me. It is only through the gift of long-lived experience that I can turn it over for God has come to my aid repeatedly...daily if I but paid attention. That is what I must needs look to now. It is not out there I need look...not another BFF, not another lunch buddy, not another gossip pal that I need...want, yes, and that's ok, but I need focus on the fact that 80 is my open door to flying free. As my beloved David told me all those years ago, Cling to nothing, fly!

God is so good to me...and to you.

Thank you.

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

We are born into the material world with God's gift of free will to choose...a life based in Love or a life based in Fear. We prove our choice to live in love by doing love...at first through our decision, thereafter through grace, disguised as love and laughter.

Fear comes in so many sizes, shapes and modes that love and laughter are, practically speaking, the last best chance we have of mentally overcoming it. That's especially true if we've followed God's directions to love and laugh...with everything.

As we grow older mentally, physically and spiritually, we become less rigid, righteous and right...or we're willing to give up quicker more like. We now accept that fear will whisper in our ear as and if it wants. Now we can joy in our free will to choose...do what fear whispers or love what fear whispers.

I suspect that explains my blinding flash of the obvious that fear is God's camouflage...nothing draws me to God faster than a panic attack. But that BFO surely took away my fear of fear. Which, of course, will return some dark night when I'm sleeping with my ego Lucy, both of us all fat and happy.

It will come as I See Me, and off we'll go...which proves the worth of still more spiritual growth...with just two words, those harrowing rides end fairly quickly. My beloved thank you sweeps in to save the day, the night, my fanciful mind. 

Fear not, it is I.

Thank you.

SURRENDER vs. RESIGNATION

Paradox - the more you fight your nemesis, the more you lose your battle with your nemesis; the less you fight your nemesis, the more you lose your battle with your nemesis. 

We are each given one road to walk in life. When life in the form of suffering brings us to the proverbial fork in that road, we get the great choice: Resign our self to that which we cannot fight anymore or surrender to that which we cannot fight anymore.

Hard lesson learning: We must fight in order to lose. How else do we reach surrender? To not fight is to have no choice but resignation.

Surrender, crash-and-burn surrender, births acceptance...painful but pure. Acceptance is powered by grace and by God and rewards us with a grateful life...even in the berm-of-the-road days when our powerlessness again proves our friend and sunshine does prevail.

However, the word surrender does not have the best rep...who's kidding whom? It means you lose. Resisting losing, we are drawn to resignation. Ah, but there is no God in resignation, only self-will which despairingly declares that we have no choice but to keep doing the same-old-same-old, and so we do...and live self-driven lives, sometimes happy, oftimes depressed, always in conflict within our self.

Surrender...losing...holds the Holy Grail, acceptance, the place where with love God takes the battle away from us infusing us with love and a need to share it. No longer do we fight our nemesis, no longer do we fear our nemesis, we are centered in the flow of love of God and others.

Thank you.

DEPERSONALIZE AND WALK FREE

Still more spiritual growth in one word: depersonalize. Thereafter, our emphasis is on the inner spiritual journey.  

Neither self nor God can be found by human search...it is by detaching from our own idea of self, i.e., depersonalizing, that our Knowing begins. Through constant contact with our spiritual center, our inner Knowing continues to grow throughout life.

We lose that contact often and often for self, driven by ego, does not die easy. Slowly, slowly (if we're doing it right) we learn not to resist that loss, but to welcome it for it naturally brings fear, God's camouflage. Nothing draws us to God quick, fast and in a hurry like fear. Praise it.

We feel the fear, we pray our thank you, we are reunited with our Father within. Our contact is reestablished, and we realize it cannot be broken. It is when it feels that it has been broken we can  take comfort remembering: God has our back...let him.

Thank you.

GIVING GOD GRINS

This morning's blinding flash of the obvious: I can't make a fool of myself with only me seeing it...I be the fool for the benefit of others for however it comes to them to be benefitted. 

After that daunting BFO, I read this interesting anecdote about Thomas Merton: When, at his monastery, a complaint was voiced to him, Merton would say, We don’t come to the monastery to get away from suffering; we come to hold the suffering of all the world.  

What's fancifully wonderful is that I can equate my making a fool of myself to holding the suffering of all the world. 

I say again, if it weren't for us, God wouldn't have any laughs at all.

Thank you.

IT IS NOT OUT THERE...IT IS WITHIN

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of May 15, 2012]

Listen...learn to listen. This is the message I'm getting from everywhere right now. Find the silence. Find the silence within...within our self. Learn to listen, find the silence within, is all about discipline...disciplining our very own mind.

The silence of a forest glen is all well and good, but that is not the silence we must find. No...right where we are, come apart from our world and learn to listen right where we are.

If we have thoughts that just race/race, run/run, we are blessed. For we know the time is now, the place to start is here...sit down, sit comfortably erect, close the eyes, hold a word or a thought in mind ("thank You" works well), and simply let....

Our goal is to loose the power within. It makes no difference what you call this power...God, Father or the Christ, by whatever name you call It, It is to be found within you! (Joel Goldsmith, "The Heart of Mysticism," p. 116)

That's the entire purpose of meditation...to open ourselves to that which we already have and are searching for so diligently out there.

It is not out there. It is within. Loose it and let it lead.

Thank you.

KEEPING MY LONG-HELD GOAL

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. —Matthew 6:6

I have in my time actually gone into my closet and knelt on the floor, along with the clothes, shoes, and laundry basket, and prayed. And prayed for whatever it was I was obsessed with either getting or getting rid of at the moment.

It was (and continues to be) a mentally great gettin' up morning when I realize that I am rewarded, and my always reward is God consciousness deeper at a higher level or higher at a deeper level. In fact, sometimes I am rewarded in the instant with a blinding flash of the obvious, but sometimes...ah, sometimes weeks/months go by before realization surprises me, and I feel graced.

Interesting to me, whenever I read Matthew 6:6, my natural mind's immediate thought is that the reward God will bestow is something of egoic value, as in money or glory or a special relationship. Interesting because I do not have a conscious need for more money or glory or a special relationship...but to my ego and apparently BFF Lucy, there is no enough. Of anything.

Which explains why my long-ago decision to seek still more spiritual growth is still my from-my-toenails-up goal.

Thank you.

LOOSE ME AND LET ME GO

Two BFOs of 9/14/05:

The realization of God is in unknowing.

I give up all my conscious ideas of who and what Jesus is, was or ever will be: Express Yourself through me as You are, I pray. Amen 

Being born into the material world, with God's gift of free will to choose, we live in Love or in  Fear. We prove our choice to live in love by doing love...at first through our decision, thereafter through grace. (It is our choice to live in love that graces us with the realization that fear has no power. Fear is simply God's camouflage, ever drawing us to God.)

I tend to believe that our first act toward doing love is to attempt to forgive our self. Failing at our attempt, we ask God to forgive us...and learn that God does not give forgiveness. God is Love and sees nothing to forgive.

Ah, comes the wonderment: Only I can give me (or thee) forgiveness...by a-borning into Christ consciousness within. Self-will cannot get us there, but it is self-will that turns us again and again to that place of surrender within, God's hidey hole. Where God stands at the door and knocks...to be released.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock...Revelation 3:20

Thank you.

ALTERED ATMOSPHERE THROUGH LOVE

Uttered aloud, or in the silence of your hearts, it will alter an atmosphere from one of discord to one of Love. - [referring to the Name of God] God Calling, September 13

There is no permanent spiritual growth in practicing “good behavior” while continuing to think attack thoughts. Just keeping our mouth shut instead of responding in kind does not get us points in God's good-conduct book. It is our stilling our attack mind that alters our mental atmosphere and invites
peace.

Our world today appears to be going to hell in a handbasket...a hurricane train a-comin', ongoing sexual abuse in the church, all three branches of our government in disarray...and, scared, we bounce around in our mind wondering What can I do? 

First, we quiet our mind; second, we affirm what we have learned, if we upgrade our attitude, we upgrade our problem; and third, we take comfort in the fact that a fundamental belief in the impermanence of evil in the face of God’s love is already ours.

An upgrade in our attitude seems to me to be the only place we each can begin in order to bring a change to our world. We need not agree on any specific anything...just go to God in the silence of our heart which will alter an atmosphere from one of discord to one of Love. 

The atmosphere of Love encircles me, then thee, then we, and all are encircled in an atmosphere of Love, God's perfect peace. And our world is changed.

I can of mine own self do nothing...the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

Thank you.

IT IS EVER BY GOD AND BY GRACE

Do not you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is? -- Saint Augustine

Again, I am met with the assurance that there is a fourth dimension within us whether we know it or not. That is our goal...to realize it. We must needs seek it (seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven....) for there is God's hidey hole.

It is not that we are in error when we go haring off looking for peace, love and joy in all the wrong places...that's how we learn the wrong places. It is detaching from the comfort of the wrong places that try our Soul...or being willing to detach more like.

We know that comfort, even with the gilded guilt that goes with it; we do not know, nor can we fathom, the comfort of the profound deep of the kingdom of Heaven within. That is what faith is for. That is why we seek still more spiritual growth. Not knowing, but daring to learn, we open our self to the Unknown.

Thus, by God and by grace we are fulfilled.

Thank you.

TRUDGING THE PATH...WITH LOVE

I may be depressed, I may be experiencing PTSD, for sure I See Me which is doing my thinking for me right now.

It is a comfort to understand that I am powerless over that being so. It is a relief to know unto doing that I am not powerless over finding God right there in my powerlessness...and beginning to move out, upward deeper.

Underneath, this is fear; fear is God in camouflage, pulling me ever nearer to God.

Thank you.

A SPIRITUALIZED CONSCIOUSNESS

I read recently that the hardest world to leave is the one within the heart. That epitomizes the need for a one-centered mind. To the dualistic mind, the hardest world to leave is both the negative (snarks, snubs and pay-back thoughts) and the heart-attached ones (for friends, pets and loves).

Our Journey is ever inward, never outward...it is within that we are united, that we are oned. Looking outward, we cannot know Oneness. One (1) is here looking out there to (2)....

The hardest part of our Journey is learning that to sit and wait on the Lord is all. However, we must needs learn the spiritual meaning of sit and wait. That is where all the activity takes place...the activity of the Father within over which we have no control, no ability to steer in the right direction because our right direction may well be his big red STOP sign.

Our Journey now consists of quieting our conscious mind...bringing it back to infinity on the point of a pin...again and again and again. And again.

In The World Is New (at page 2), Joel Goldsmith holds that the purpose of meditation is to open consciousness to the inflow of the Christ so that it becomes spiritualized....

And there it is, all we need to be ready, not just willing, to begin our Journey.

Thank you.

WE MUST LIVE TRUTH UNTIL WE BELIEVE

What if Jesus' words are absolute truth...what if the meek shall inherit the earth is true?

What if Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Mother, Brahma, Mary Baker Eddy, Great Spirit, etc., et al, spoke, taught...are...absolute truth?

Why do we follow, say, Jesus, if we do not believe...and do...what he said? Same goes for all the others, of course.

What if Jehovah, Jesus, et al., really are God?

What if I am? What if we are? Ah, knowing we are is like knowing we have all the patience there is to have...to be made manifest, we must needs live it. 

What if we can only realize God's truth in fits and starts...ah, but what if that is The Way? 

What if those little bits, teeny steps, tiny forwards, and coming to believe by living them, are our building blocks to Heaven within?

We must use them, those tiny BFOs, to break the steel-appearing mental cobwebs that bind us to our recurring egoic wants, even as our wants masquerade as needs.

We must live the words until we believe them. We can quote them, but we cannot believe them until we live them for they will stay up above our eyebrows, as if in cold storage; and we will continue judging all the others who are "doing it wrong," never seeing our self, never realizing our Father within.

According to me.

Thank you.

WE MUST GO BEYOND REASON TO LOVE

I awoke this morning praying for the high-up Secretary at the Vatican who is spewing his ugly. His ugly, to me, is his own personal want which he must spew in order to be rid of for his needs to be realized. His needs are love, love and love. Thank you, Father, that Pope Francis knows that and shows that and takes nothing personally...thank you for leading the Secretary free of his own self...thank you for protecting all. Amen

[Sidebar: I am not Catholic, I know less than nothing about the Catholic church, its workings or unworkings. What I do know is that Pope Francis in all humility...out loud and in public...asked us to pray for him, and so I do. I choose to believe that to him, praying for him includes praying for his church and for all, every single one, of the victims of the sexual abuse suffered by those done-to and for the conscience of those done-by. Knowing nothing, I pray freely.]

Perhaps those whom we value least have the most to teach. — Barbara Holmes with Fr Richard Rohr

Thank you.

LEARNING LOVE IS OUR JOURNEY

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Geez, the word is so simple...the doing it, however, ain't.

I'm reminded of the first time I heard this smart-aleck in my sixth grade class say that "live" spelled backwards is "evil." I suspect that some adult said that to him, and I also suspect neither me nor he ever forgot it. Not that we would want to hold onto it...it's just sorta unforgettable.

I'm reminded of that story because it is chilling to me today. I mean, why would an adult tell that to a young child? Why not speak of love?

Love is hard enough to grasp after eighty years of living...as a child, we need all the expounding on love our little ears can hear...in order for it to start its journey from ear to brain to heart to its already home in our Soul. Face it, our understanding of love takes long stops at every station. To rest, to consider, to process, turning it over and over and over, to attempt to do and fail, then succeed, then rest, etc., etc., etc.

Learning love is our lifetime journey. Not to love...love is not a things-to-do action as if it were a chore.

We are born in love whether we know it or not. We live in love whether we know it or not. We have all the love there is to have whether we know it or not. What keeps us in ignorance of that is the oh-so-scary part: Giving it away. Not only must we give it away to keep it, we must give it away to even know we have it to give.

We learn love by living love, no matter what arrives in our eyes. No matter the human conflict. The first step in living love begins with just two words: Thank You.

Thank you.

FEAR OF LEFT ALONE OR WELCOME ONENESS

More and more I am understanding that being left alone is a primary fear of many, maybe even most, of the world. And I've always held that as my own, my secret reason if you will for the Why I Am This Way...this way being just plain old me...unique in my ego Lucy's opinion, slightly off and proudly ashamed of that. You see, my beloved brother, my protector, died and left me all alone when I was ten, etc., etc., etc.

To me, the core of spiritual growth is Oneness. Realizing Oneness as our spiritual focus, and finding being left alone as our primary fear, makes it fairly clear why spiritual growth is such a hard climb. That is reasoning mind duking it out with spiritual mind...as in, common sense saying nay (or Yes, but...) to the Unexplainable.

That brings comfort actually. Having accepted fear as God's camouflage, we can let our reasoning mind cease its fight with left alone and welcome the fact of it...left alone becomes camouflage for Oneness.

That will take many a moon to reach full realization within, but what a freeing path to walk.

God is so good to me.

Thank you.

EVER AND ALWAYS...IT IS I

I wonder if we don't really run amok when we try to make spiritual truth out of material mishaps.

I wonder if material mishaps aren't for the purpose of finding spiritual truth.

I don't think it matters how or why or where or when we seek spiritual truth...just seek. Be not afraid, it is I. Everything, everywhere, always and all ways...It is I.

Thank you.

WE KNOW NOT HOW OR WHY...AH, PEACE

It is not having everything in life go smoothly that shows forth good spiritual condition, it is when things go awry and I go smoothly that shows forth good spiritual condition. -- note in my "God Calling"

That was news to me when I wrote it in 1988...up till then I believed that we could tell when God was "in it" when one of our life's hard knots got untangled with little effort on our part.

That became more difficult to hold to when life almost immediately presented a bigger, badder, uglier hard knot. Ah, and here came the slow-moving bolt out of the blue: We realized it was not meant to be untangled, it is to be accepted...repeatedly.

That's the nature of spiritual growth, I'm guessing. If it makes sense to us, we're still on the playground of time and reason. If, however, it is present within us/without us, and we know it but we know not how...that may be God calling.

There. That is a lifetime a-learning realization. According to me.

Thank you.

INVITE COMMON CAUSE

Before 313, the church was on the bottom of society, which is the privileged vantage point for understanding the liberating power of Gospel for both the individual and for society. Within the space of a few decades, the church moved from the bottom to the top, literally from the catacombs to the basilicas.* * * Much of Jesus’ teaching about simple living, nonviolence, inclusivity, and love of enemies became incomprehensible.* * * [Ever remember] the profound power of powerlessness that Jesus revealed. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," September 3, 2018

I feel rested in my continuing realization that all there is is nothing at all...infinity on the point of a pin. That less is more. That fear is God's camouflage, ever bringing our Awareness nearer. The greater our fear, the nearer our Father. That our need is to realize love of the unlovable and to  accept the unacceptable. To love and laugh.

We are heading in the right direction when we learn to respond not in kind, i.e., resist not, but invite common cause if only in our own mind for that is lonely battle enough.

Thank you.

DESIRE NOT TO DESIRE

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of April 1, 2012.]

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

This sounds so good...so right.

I've never heard of the man (or woman?), so I don't know if s/he got there. I know I never expect to get there, but I, too, can desire not to desire. And I can feel good that I know this is good and right purely because, to me, that is living a turned-over to God life.

Thank you.

PEACE IS NOT FOUND IN THE REASONING MIND

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. -- The Gospel According to Saint Matthew

There it is...the reason why reason will ever fail us. That love, bless and do good by your enemies stuff does not make sense.

However, if we learn to follow that directive, we cannot not live at peace within our own self. Which is the only place peace can be found.

Double down on that however...when we begin to follow that directive, we will be the peace we seek.

Go beyond reason to love. - The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment

Thank you.