I am reminded of a recent blinding flash of the obvious: Until my attack mind is tamed, I am a talker not a walker of the Word. With that, came the memory of my mentor's admonition about the dangers of scrupulosity...to me, a fancy word for black-and-white thinking.
Black-and-white, either-or, thinking is a trap for those of us afraid of being wrong. It takes an adventurous soul to form our own opinions and put them out there, a necessary step in building our personal standards, actually.
In the process of building, we speak our own ideas formed by our own experience, find agreement and disagreement, discuss them, ponder them, throw away a few, hold tight to others, sit in wonderment that several are right on target and a help to others...ah, but the same goes when we find some of our beloved ideas not only unhelpful but self-centered in the extreme. Those are the ideas we come to know as our angels for they bring laughter at how perfect they once seemed to our reasoning mind.
I am a believer that those of us seeking still more spiritual growth need our personal standards. It is in the forming of those standards that we realize the proven truths of those who have gone before. We learn early enough that going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous...or, if we keep an open mind, is laughable.
Trusting in keep it simple, I rely on my Trinity...the Sermon, my mentor and my friends.
Thank you.
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