THE BEST THINGS, THE MOST COMMON

I am not a sophisticate, nor am I an intellectual, but I am smart enough to know I'd best keep my life as simple as possible. Clearly that is how I came to be a seeker of "down home" answers...the common good, according to me.

Somewhere, sometime ago, I read the following by Thomas Traherne and saved it. Whenever I come across it, I feel comforted as I do today:

And what rule do you think I walked by?

Truly a strange one, but the best in the whole

world. I was guided by an implicit faith in 

God's goodness; and therefore led to the

study of the most obvious and common

things. For thus I thought within myself:

God being, as generally believed, infinite in

goodness, it is most consonant and agreeable 

with His nature that the best things

should be most common.

Thank you.

ON LIVING THE ART OF SUBTRACTION

To be spontaneous is the proverbial be here Now.

There is no "prior proper planning prevents poor performance" in spontaneity for there is no way to plan to be one hundred percent spontaneous. Spontaneity is pretty much a blinding flash of the obvious.

We desperately want to learn how to "be a better person," "be more loving...giving...kinder, etc., etc., etc." Being the first to reach out...to give over, give up, give in...is the key to shucking self. The big uh-oh is that first we must free ourself of our wants in order to be in the moment, available for the unplanned. Un-self-conscious.

The hook in being the first to reach out, etc., is to do it without script as it were. That requires dedicated effort and a lot of "prior proper planning" to train ourself, to gain the self-discipline to risk being wrong. As my mentor said, "Showing your ass in public in also spiritual." Speaking of hard lesson a-learning.

It takes hours and hours of effort learning by doing it wrong to let go of the sneaky "what's in it for me?"  Time takes time to even come to want to detach from our egoic wants for the outer stuff of life in order to accept our inner need to give, to serve, to be. 

Once we decide for it, we become willing...after which it takes serious self-discipline and constant vigilance to live the art of letting go...or so I am told. Face it, I'm a rank beginner, but I've got the want-to and am slowly becoming willing.

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. -- Meister Eckhart 

Thank you.