LOOSE HATE AND LET IT GO...LOVE

Others judge us by our actions; we judge us by our thoughts.

Most of those self-judgments come not because we are not doing that which we have learned, that which we agree to be true, and that which we are teaching preaching to others. No. They come because we do not love our missteps, errors, fools' errands, etc, et al. Hate begets hateful, and we will stay mired in our judgmental mind, praying for God to forgive us until we loose hate and let it go.

The key to loosing hate, to letting it go, is the suspicious truth that God knows naught of forgiveness...God is Love. There is no forgiveness in love, there is only love.

Forgiveness, however, is essential for us in our walking, talking, breathing self-world...that's one step on the road we walk going to God for God. The egoic mind judges, the spiritual mind loves. We live in the egoic world, ergo we must needs seek the spiritual.

To be united to God we must 'break through' the sensible world and pass beyond the human condition to move beyond knowing to unknowing, from knowledge to love....The wise person knows more deeply by way of love than by way of argument because the eye of the heart can see the truth of reality. Hence the wise person is one who knows and sees God shining through everything, even what seems ugly or despised.-- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 31, 2020 quoting Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio

Thank you.

SPIRITUALITY IS IN THE QUIETED MIND

No evil can befall you, if I am with you....You have to see your inner lives are all they should be, and then the work is accomplished. --  "God Calling," January 30

Personally, I believe that 100% of spiritual growth comes from our inner work which work is all about detaching from one's self...from our wants masquerading as our needs.

No doubt there's a gazillion deterrents to spiritual growth, but my three favorites are: One, the thought that money will fix it; another, being acknowledged publicly as right; and third, keeping a count of our so-called followers. None of these require a quieted mind...indeed, they activate our mind with worry on how to get and/or keep each of them.

Our need (rarely, very rarely, our want) is to become willing to enter the narrow gate, and the reasoning mind will never get us there...it can be taught to aid us, but love and love alone is the key. Love defies the reasoning mind, like when it asks that we open our heart and mind to our enemies while not forgetting our friends. Or to agree with our adversary quickly (when reason says for a certain-sure fact that we are right).

This is where a taught-to-aid-us reasoning mind proves its worth...it is that which reminds us: We're going to God for God. Spiritually, being right is wrong. Shut up and agree. God can and will explain later. That's called doing nonresistance.

The human condition, I'm convinced, is that we complicate the next thing...something like, whatever is before us, get an opinion and stick with it. If, however, we sincerely want still more spiritual growth, all we need remember is loose it and let it go.

All spiritual disciplines are done with a view to still the mind. -- Swami Ramdas

Thank you.

UNSAYABLE...THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

When someone is diagnosed with Stage 4 Anything, or worse, when someone ticks us off for any reason, those of us on the spiritual path usually shoot a prayer for the person. Which, we slowly learn, is an immediate, albeit unknown, denial of God's will.

God's will is what is. Deal with it is our path to walk.

In dealing with it, we find it best not to pray for another but to pray for our thoughts about the other...whether the other is suffering from a dread disease or it's simply that s/he represents a personal resentment aborning. That's a resentment walking around in our own head, watching for an opportunity to speak.

We pray for our own thoughts because that's the only thing that we can change...and then only with the grace of God and our willingness.

It's the human condition to meet a self-perceived "unacceptable" condition and promptly pray it be made acceptable...according to our lights. The hard lesson learning: It's our human condition that needs be changed. And change begins with our thoughts, most often dictated by our feeling of unease, our sense of self arising to protect us.

Here's the story of my (to date) spiritual growth in the proverbial nutshell: Soul knowledge is more important than head knowledge; study less to learn, un-study and accept; unsayable is born in soul knowledge; sayable is valuable, precious even, as long as we are saying thank you...and that's pretty much it.

My spiritual growth is based on my sincerely trying to practice it, spiritual growth, the majority of the time...that's 51%. Still more comes with my acceptance of what is.

Thank you.

ON THE GIFT OF SILENT PRAISE

Intuiting something that sounds good and true, then promptly setting out to teach it to others, is using God's gift for ego building.

I found a note I'd written to me some years back: When our need is greatest, our Father is nearest.  This has proved to be true to me. However, I had no idea at first how or if it would prove itself, and I found that the proof gets borne out by our living, breathing, walking but not talking it...until it matures within us.

It seems my understanding is becoming clearer and deeper that silent acceptance is the way to ownership of God's secrets.

When we talk too soon, before we own it, the reasoning mind is the self-appointed interpreter which invariably waters down the meaning. The reasoning mind will hone it to reflect the security in self...then only the words remain. There is very little...if any...of God in the spoken word alone.

To remember: God knows how to make himself clear. Our life lesson is to move back...to let go. Ah, to silently praise his holy Being.

Thank you.

ON LIVING A RESURRECTED LIFE

[This passage about trees growing above the timberline is from Howard Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart that I found in Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," January 25, 2020. To me, it describes a falling-down drunk coming into an anonymous life of spirituality and her glorious day-by-day resurrected life thereafter.]

For, hugging the ground, following the shape of the terrain, were trees that could not grow upright, following the pattern of their kind. Instead, they were growing as vines grow along the ground, and what seemed to be patches of stunted shrubs were rows of branches of growing, developing trees. What must have been the torturous frustration and the stubborn battle that had finally resulted in this strange phenomenon! It is as if the tree had said, “I am destined to reach for the skies and embrace in my arms the wind, the rain, the snow and the sun, singing my song of joy to all the heavens. But this I cannot do. I have taken root beyond the timber line, and yet I do not want to die; I must not die. I shall make a careful survey of my situation and work out a method, a way of life, that will yield growth and development for me despite the contradictions under which I must eke out my days.

Thank you.

ON EGO WRESTLING WITH GOD

Many years ago we had a cool saying that I'm told was lifted from a New York City street-dig sign. It was true then, it is true today: Change we must or die we will.

Then...who knew?...I found out all I needed to change was my mind. Talk about a mountain masquerading as a molehill!

Today, I'm virtually arm wrestling with my ego Lucy. I'm knowing...from my eyebrows up...what is best for me, i.e., what I need do, but Lucy has her football out and I know I know I know she'll let me kick it this time. 

But all I really need do is Change My Mind.

Here's the real promise fulfilled: I actually know I will not follow Lucy...the uh-oh is my not knowing how that will turn out. What path God already has me on...where all the parties come out the winner.

Oooh...I will not learn that outcome until I'm willing to forego my want to win in order for all parties to come out the winner.

God is not an enabler.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT FEAR AND LET GO

Matthew 6:7-24: 'No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.'

That, of course, is from the Sermon on the Mount which has been my morning study for sometime now...in fact, ever since I read that Mohandas Gandhi studied the Sermon daily for forty years. This is the non-Christian Gandhi who helped India to gain independence from the British Empire through nonviolence, through passive resistance. 

The Sermon has been a positive in my consciousness for nearly fifty years, meaning, I've read it on occasion, and, whenever I found myself in dire straits, even tried to follow its instructions. I remember once back in the '80s literally going into my walk-in closet, tearfully kneeling amongst the bedroom slippers and dog's toys, and begging God To Do Something Already. 

Go into your closet was as close as I could get to following the directions, but, on my honor, I believe that was satisfactory, even pleasing, to the God of my understanding.

Back to you cannot serve God and mammon: To me, mammon refers to fear. Fear itself boils down to a sense of separation from God. However, it is our daily self-centered fear that is the cross we bear for our ego...in particular fear of financial insecurity, fear of being wrong in plain sight, fear of being thought less-than, the whole raft of egoic fears, none more than fear of spiritual insecurity. 

We cannot serve God and fear is my authority to go to God for God and that is all. We are told, taught, assured that what the Father has for us holds joy beyond imagining. The problem being, naturally, our reasoning mind. Face it, God's will is seldom, on first look, what we want; it is only in the living that we find it exactly what we need. 

How else when He goes before us to make the crooked places straight?

Thank you.

REASON NOT...WELCOME

Regardless of the cause, the dark night is an opportunity to look for and find God—in new forms and ways....we have to “unknow” a bit every time we want to know in a new way. * * * * * Periods of seemingly fruitless darkness may in fact highlight all the ways we rob ourselves of wisdom by clinging to the light. Who grows by only looking on the bright side of things? -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 2, 2019

I love Rohr's last line above: Who grows by only looking on the bright side of things? 

That was one of my early flashes...when I was practicing "positive thinking" and trying to speak only in "affirmations." I had myself about half scared to speak at all for fear I'd say an un-positive thought or declare an un-affirmation...and cause nothing but ugly to fall on me and follow me forever. I was an all-or-nothing girl. 

That was back in the day when fear was to be feared...hate was to be hated...any negative thought, word or, especially, feeling was verboten.

I must needs be grateful for that period of time, for that's when and how I learned that verboten is pretty much verboten. To fight fear is a call to fear; to hate hate requires hate. Welcome is the quiet word...thank you is the key.

I'm reminded of the cautionary that which we fear we cause to happen. It is ever our resistance that is the invitation, the fear that rings the bell to start the fight.

I do believe that positive...affirming...thoughts are best. It's the fear of not being positive and affirming that twists us like pretzels and leaves us in need of freedom from self. The hook, of course, is the fact that the reasoning mind would never consider as a path to freedom issuing a welcoming thank you.

There it is...reason is not God's road through fear or hate or even doubt.

We must go beyond reason to love. -- "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment," Thaddeus Golas

Thank you.

DANCE IN THE RAIN

I'm convinced that our only problem in getting through the storms of life with our God-belief intact is that we are mentally Velcroed to our own idea of what God needs to do in order for our problem to be fixed.

When we hold to our idea of what fixing our problem means, self-convinced our want must be "God's will," our worst fear will come true...we don't get what we want. So we give up believing in God.

To believe as we breathe in a loving God who can and will intervene in our life on our behalf is to, first, change our mind...from I need to thank you. Which is pretty much the whole package. 

As it says in "God Calling" this very day, January 22: If a grey day is not one of thankfulness, the lesson has to be repeated until it is.

There it is, our gift: Our thank you is the cosmic link to that which goes before us to make the crooked places straight.

Thank you.

HONEST? HUMBLED? SAME DIFFERENCE

Ponderables:

The world is created as a means of God’s self-revelation so that, like a mirror or footprint, it might lead us to love and praise the Creator.  -- Sister Ilia Delio, theologian and scientist

I choose to see my rues, regrets and remorses, the little nits and welts I bring on me, as like nature bringing rain on a dry day...for they too are God's self-revelation.

Engagement with the other is not dissolving ourselves into the other but being true to ourselves—our identity—by finding ourselves in God and God in the other. . . . -- Sister Ilia Delio

There. To me, that explains not only why but how we have ceased fighting anything and anybody is our always solution.

A dynamic interior spirit must be at the heart of change. Change is not what happens outside us; rather, change must first take root within us. *** [We] are to seek the hidden God in our world by seeking the hidden God in our lives—living Christ by doing Christ. -- Sister Ilia Delio

That reminds me of a Sufi maxim: You are the mirror in which God sees himself. 

Whoa and wow! Doesn't that impel a desire to live Christ by doing Christ?

And my ego Lucy inserts, "Desiring and doing are two entirely different things now aren't they?" I think Lucy lives just to keep me honest.

Thank you.

I PRAY MY THANK YOU

I have had a few giggles with my friends and with my God over my desire to learn how to be spontaneous...now, there's a duh. Well, I'm here to shout that I have experienced in this new year that  answered prayer. I have responded (not reacted) spontaneously in several situations...with loving, laughing results. 

In my past, and no doubt in my future if only a tish less, when confronted with a less-than-wonderful situation, I have zipped lip, took it home, and chewed the fool in my bathroom mirror a new one.

All that I need, all that I seek is within me Now. It is sealed up with God in his hidey hole, and it is already mine to use...when God so wills, and I be willing to loose it and let it go.

That cannot be true for me if it is not true for all. So, know: All that we need, all that we seek is within us Now. It is sealed up with God in his hidey hole, and it is already ours to use...when God so wills, and we be willing to loose it and let it go.

Thank you.

OF GOD, ENOUGH AND ALL

These brave souls [the Desert Fathers and Mothers] were on fire with love for Jesus and sought to become more like him through a disciplined rhythm of life and prayer. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 19, 2020

There. That is my desire, but I am...or AND I am...coming to recognize that, living in the material world, it is mine to adjust me to it with the "love of Jesus" as my silent standard...my within Guide. 

It is my prayer, my silent Thank You, Jesus. that is my sunshine, my water, my bread, my life. I need say, ponder, command naught else...the silent thought is of God, enough and all. 

Thank you.

ANOTHER "JUST FOR TODAY"

For many years now, I have used the mirror as the tool in helping me interpret my understanding of God's will for me in any given situation. Because of that, I have held on to the following which is from Fr Richard Rohr writing in his "Daily Meditation" -- I regret I have lost the date it ran:

If we are to be a continuation of God’s way of seeing, we must first of all be mirrors. We must be no-thing so that we can receive some-thing. To love demands a complete transformation of consciousness. 

The mirror, according to Zen masters, is without ego and without mind. Everything is revealed as it really is. There is no discriminating mind or self-consciousness on the part of the mirror. If something comes, the mirror reflects it; if the object moves on, the mirror lets it move on. The mirror is always empty of itself and therefore able to receive the other. The mirror has no preconditions for entry or acceptance. It receives and reflects back what is there, nothing more and nothing less. The mirror is the perfect lover and the perfect contemplative.

Everytime I read that, I determine to read it daily...a clear case of what I determine and what I do are two separate and unequal things. Let's say, I want to read it daily.

There is usually a sentence that sings to me with each re-reading. This morning's is: The mirror has no preconditions for entry or acceptance. There's my goal for today.

Thank you.

OUR PEACE IS FASHIONED BY OUR ATTITUDE

Abide in My Love. An atmosphere of loving understanding to all men. This is your part to carry out, and then I surround you with a protective screen that keeps all evil from you. It is fashioned by your own attitude of mind, words, and deed, towards others. -- God Calling, 1/17/20

According to me, being surrounded by God's protective screen is the end result of practicing unto living give over, give up, give in, which is my short form of the Sermon on the Mount.

I am grateful that give over, give up, give in was never my idea but My direction...else I'd still be analyzing, looking for the wormhole out. Face it, to give so wholly is to release all egoic wants, clearing our reasoning mind for the full acceptance of God's will.

I am told that when we have fully turned our will and our life over to the care of God, we are freed of our reasoning mind and its egoic wants. It is finished.

I'm guessing there be few in this life who fully turn our will and our life over to the care of God...to not is simply the human condition. Ah, but we have made a decision to throw in with spiritual growth so there is our aim...our mental and spiritual goal...and that is our part to carry out.

Thank you.

ALL THE HOLY NAMES OF GOD

For whatever reason, my first thought this morning was: From before conception, we are commingled with the consciousness of the Christ.

I pondered that, and I'm good with accepting that we are each led by our best-suited spiritual leader. It is better not to get bogged down in "all the holy names of God" for our own will claim us. Some recognize a Power called Buddha, some Allah or Jehovah...Jesus got me.

Each is the Christ power...as are you, as am I. I'm way over my own head now, but it is right comforting to know...to recollect in times of trouble...that it is Jesus's shoulders on which I stand, his umbrella under which I live and breathe. From that source of security, I learn to do as he did...poorly, pitifully, but sincerely. 

Back to the thought, From before conception, we are commingled with the consciousness of the Christ. I pray that is the principle I will lean on in times of want and doubt.

Oh, incoming BFO doubled down: Being commingled with the consciousness of the Christ is plainly my answered prayer and leaves naught else to pray for.

Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer this prayer in all the holy names of God, amen. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation"

Thank you.

WANT NOT...JUST PRAY THANK YOU

Blinding flash of the obvious: Lack is never our problem, want is our problem.

The Father knows our needs. Our wants are our way of keeping our needs from being fulfilled. Let go and let God is not just a pretty phrase...ah, but neither is Just Do It. Ponder that. 

Thank you.

BY GRACE AND BY GOD

We shouldn’t confuse insight-gathering and introspection with contemplative spirituality. Contemplation is about letting go of what is false and incomplete much more than it is about collecting what is new, no matter how true, therapeutic, or helpful it is. In other words, if personal growth is still our focus, I do not think we are contemplative yet. - Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 13, 2020.

That paragraph caused me pause...which was a good thing. It allowed me to think through what being a contemplative means to me, and, if that is what I seek, who I desire to be to my  own self.

So I went to Google, and found: Contemplative spirituality is a way of focusing one's life completely on God, through prayer, living in love, and an awareness of God's presence.

Well now. Comes my shocker...there's nothing to hate there, but all I felt upon reading it was...booooring. Which is precisely what I felt all those years ago when Mom was trying to get me to attend church.

Interestingly, earlier in my quiet time, I had reflected on why we find it relatively easy to believe in the devil and, with the same ease, difficult to believe in God. The straight-up answer seems to be the devil (which I choose to know as "my ego Lucy") is never booooring (no offense meant to God, tee-hee and blush-blush).

That for sure explains my less-than-easy time of living my want-to beliefs...i.e, walking my talk the majority of the time. The Google definition of contemplative spirituality is almost exactly what I say and believe I mean about what spiritual growth is to me, and what I seek on a daily basis. But put into words from the Google machine, and my egoic mind resists...freaks, not to put too fine a point on it.

Hmmm, it just occurs to me that in my memory's teen years, being bored was the absolute worst that this body should have to suffer. There seems to be a fine chance my teen memories, albeit dormant, get active when scratched.

Maybe I need to build on the idea, when my egoic mind gets stuck in Gertrude's mud, that my spiritual growth is getting filtered through my teen thinking. And the answer to that? The s.o.s.o.. Get. Over. Yourself

Even in the face of being called boring, God loves me.

Thank you.

DETACH...OR, LOVE AND LAUGH

Again and yet again, I preach to my bathroom mirror: It is our thoughts that need our prayer, our prayer of gratitude, our thank you prayer. We might take a hint from the Sermon: Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from [ego]. 

However wicked, rancid or judgmental our thoughts may want to be, we must needs remember all they lack is love. Just like you, just like me, just like the Pope and the President, all we need is love. Imagine. (Or, listen to the Beatles and relax.)

To live our life, to learn as we live...neither gets more complicated nor more true than to meet and greet them with love. When we master that, we can't not laugh.

Face it, keeping our life, learning how to live it, as simple as possible is the goal...in other words, detach, detach, detach. As beautifully preached centuries ago by Meister Eckhart: God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.

Thank you.

WALKING THE PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. -- The 23rd Psalm

Ah, there be the diamond...he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Not for my peace of mind, not for my security, safety, glory, etc., etc., etc., but for his name's sake...thereby, restoring my Soul.

Our Soul seeks naught but the righteousness of Almighty God...and that we personally live it out.

I suspect anything we think we are doing for the glory of God, if we look deep, we'll find ego polishing our want-to. Mainly because our actions come from our eyebrows up...we must needs go lower...not to satisfy ourself but to disgruntle ourself, most like.

Denial of self is not a pleasure trip. Not till we get to the other side, and, face it, we don't get to realize that until three days after we're dead. Can't you just hear ego asking, "How sure are you of your glory on the other side? I can give you glory now...why wait?"

That's why we must needs pray without ceasing, i.e., make our daily spiritual connection. Ego is ever awake and promising. God neither sleeps nor promises...God is the promise. God is.

Awake and get grateful! The trip is not easy, it is, however, the only one.

Thank you.

LOVE, LAUGH, GET GRATEFUL

From Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," January 11, 2020: In contemplative practice, the Holy Spirit frees us from taking sides and allows us to remain content in the partial darkness of every situation long enough to let it teach, broaden, and enrich us.

Interestingly, I spent the last couple hours plotting and planning ways to resist Gertrude's latest attack on my ego...how to not fight, not lie or worse how not to tell my truth on her...ah, but to Win. I had a blinding flash that I did not need to take my world aside to share My Truth or, for that matter, not even to move to Maryland. I could open my mind...let God suggest...become willing to listen, even to hear her, Gertrude.

Then I went into my quiet time, and the first thing I read was the above quote, and I wrote, "This is what I was just led to through my initial egoic reaction to Gertrude. My resistant thoughts were my gift, and they were broadened, and I know I am enriched."

From there, I saw that it is not just that Gertrude is my angel/emery board because she gives me something with which to file down my I See Me thoughts (plainly put, she peeves me daily), it is more important to me that I realize that I am her angel/emery board for that same reason...I give her something with which to smooth out her I See Me thoughts. We serve each other.

Those, and like, thoughts are the rough road to freedom from self. It is that road that leads us to the recognition and acceptance of our own self. If we had no thoughts resisting the Elmers, the Sylvias, i.e., our Gertrude, how could it be that the Holy Spirit frees us from taking sides and allows us to remain content in the partial darkness of every situation long enough to let it teach, broaden, and enrich us?

Love all, laugh...or at least smile...at self,

Thank you.

HUG, KISS, BLESS...WALK FREE

I have come to believe that in general praying for others is just exercising our ego. Face it, our prayer for another, way down deep, is a prayer for the other to see like we see. And that's even as we're advertising our own unworthiness...advertising by bemoaning our imperfection.

It is our thoughts about them that need our prayer, our prayer of gratitude, our thank you prayer. No matter how wicked, rancid or in need of judgment another appears, it is our thoughts about them that is causing us pain.

It's not so much another hard lesson learning as it is a hard fact to accept: It is never the person or the situation or the place that is needing to be changed...and changed according to our lights. The Father knows the need and the way. It is our thoughts that need to be upgraded unto acceptance.

For today, and maybe just for today, I do believe it is never the one to whom our thoughts have attached, it is our attack thoughts about them that need our love. In short, hug, kiss, bless, release...be set free.

Thank you.

WALK THROUGH OUR FEAR

Here's my early-birthing take on fear: My blinding flash of the obvious re fear was that fear is God in camouflage. I wholly accepted that since I know that nothing turns me to God faster than my fear.

I have mind-wrestled with that...a lot. As in, if that be true, God, whether in camouflage or not, will...must...remove that which I fear. But, no...that is the reasoning mind staking its claim...the trouble is, it makes sense.

It's a slow walk that gets us to acceptance of the pitiful fact that common sense turns us away from spiritual growth (risk) in order to stay stuck in egoic stagnation (security).

I choose to believe that fear is our inside response (our quivering heart) to which God alone is the panacea. What we are fearing outside (from financial ruin to crucifixion) is not removed since our personal world, indeed, must be walked through. Remember the words from the Sermon, every jot and tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.

Our material world is ours to overcome...face it, to make peace with. How else do we get to God? How else can our inside fear be transmuted? God-spirit is ours even as our fear appears, and we walk through the appearance into our Father's arms.

Underneath are the everlasting arms. - Deuteronomy 33:27

Thank you.

FEAR AND SERENITY...MIX WITH GRATITUDE

Blinding flash of the obvious: My nemesis, fear of being left alone, is what draws alone to me...hug it, kiss it, love it. There is no other way to loose it, and let it go but by holding it dear. 

Looking back, it is clear that each, every and all my regrets are proof that God has ever had my back. I need now and needed then every self-driven error to bring me to where I am right this very instant. If that be quivering, quaking and fearful, then I can be and I am grateful just knowing that the God of my understanding loves me just that way.

When I am no longer quivering and quaking, he'll love me in my peace for he sees no difference...since there is no difference.

Fear does not change us from acceptable to unacceptable...from good to bad...from to anything. Fear is an everyday happening in one form or the other depending on how seriously we are taking ourself. It signifies nothing except when we're taking ourself way too seriously...then it signifies a need to get over ourself. Which signifies a need to go to God for God and that is all.

It's not that I think that fear is a choice...or that serenity is either. I suspect fear and serenity are just garden tools to God...for  use in bringing us to perfect bloom. Gratitude is God's fertilizer.

Thank you.

ON TAKING THE ACTION OF SILENCE

I am getting a new appreciation for the action of silence...in looking back, I am all but humbled by the positive results I've received from simply keeping my mouth shut. Which, cleaned up, is the action of not responding in kind.

A word here for the value of journaling, of notes made in my "God Calling," etc. For sure, I would have forgotten most if not all the little seeming non-actions if not for my written reminders. All we can see at the time is the action, or silence, we took...it is the results that we see way later that are the proof of the power of silence.

A seed from silence aborning: Just this morning as I brushed my teeth, it flashed through me that I am the source of my nemesis. As I finished brushing, I recalled when I realized that I am the source of all my woes...and more importantly that flash invariably proves true, so I didn't resist over much that,  who's kidding whom, my nemesis lives in me.

It is following that thought...to prove or disprove...that will earn my Lord his keep. He's never not been up to the job, so I'm looking forward to seeing what, which and where my looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains will lead me.

My experience with keeping my silence is that it is very easy to say nothing, it is next-door to impossible to silence my thoughts...and here comes a BFO: We cannot silence our thoughts, we give them to God in exchange for his thoughts. Oh, God, you are so good to me.

Thank you.

LOVE IS THE KEY...LET IT BE

Love is the key. No door is too difficult for it to open. - "God Calling," January 6

That sang to me this morning. I sensed my current mishmash of feelings being calmed...the aloneness, the trepidation at whatever/whenever I do or say. Feelings I now know are the direct result of the new and steeper path I am being led to walk...not by my choosing but my blessing. The path is being straightened even as I walk it whether I choose to walk it or not...the choice being questioned by the current rash of egoic regrets.

Then comes my blinding flash of the obvious: Love them. Do not try to make any corrections by my own thinking...let whatever I personally say or do be known within me as God-directed so if they're hitting as wrong, hold to God, the corrector...and it will prove to be they were necessary for my education in learning yet a deeper meaning of love which may well be trust God is and let it be.

Interesting. There...I just spelled all that out after which I read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" which not only confirmed my understanding but the how and the why of it:

We gradually come to recognize that this thing we call 'thinking' does not enable us to love God and love others. We need a different operating system, and it both begins with and leads to silence....[Per St Paul] 'Pray with gratitude, and the peace of Christ which is beyond knowledge or understanding will guard both your mind and your heart....Then we will discover what is ours to do.'

Love is the key. No door is too difficult for it to open.

Thank you.

ON MOVING TO OUR DEEPER SELF

Blinding flash of the obvious: We come to God like we come to a laundromat with a mountain of dirty clothes.  We put the clothes in the washer, yet we continue to suffer rues, regrets and remorses that we have a mountain of dirty clothes. We put the washed clothes in the dryer yet continue to regret that we have a mountain of dirty clothes. God and the washer/dryer do, have done and will do their work...we are the dragfoot. Our attention...our ego-filtered love...is tied to our dirty clothes. Loose them and let them go.

There was a time when I would say, half joking therefore half serious, that having someone to blame is perfect peace. I have since experienced the fact that having someone to blame is a full-blown resentment. Knowing that is one thing, living that...ah, a whole deeper self-world. Loose it and let it go.

There. My job with the Spirit as my guide: Loose him and let him go. -- John 11:44

Thank you.

THE PERFECT SOLUTION...LOVE

I am finding it a whole 'nother world to try to practice believing that which never occurred to me as "right" before. As in, to practice believing...simply put, practice mentally agreeing with...love as the only possible mental get-out-of-jail-free pass available to the world or, more to my  point, to me.

Here's a "program" come to me to practice: We need to envision God (by any name we choose to use) as the elevated air we breathe whose source is within our own self...always with us thus always available. Within that air is the perfect solution to any question, problem, conundrum that we may ever perceive. (For convenience, we call that love but obviously it is still God...but, face it, we can't go around thinking "I God nature," "I God the ocean...or my dog." See what I mean?)

That perfect solution, being love, is always for our benefit...ah, but also for the benefit of Gertrude, Elmer, Leo and Lolly. Maybe that's why to us it seems to take so long to show as beneficial to us personally...there are more people than we can imagine who are One with each transaction in our lives.

Here's a thought...when everybody comes out the winner, there are no winners, nor losers for that matter. There are just humans seeking spiritual ways to get over our own self.

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

Thank you.

ONE WITH GOD, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

This morning I find again the January 3, 2009, Agnes cartoon quoting Eckhart Tolle: "Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness." And it flashed that I am not letting God know what I need...God is letting me know what need of mine he has already filled.

So, it is not ours to decide what to pray for to let God know what we need. As we breathe, God is letting us know. We learn with every mistake, wrong turn and correction...every inadvertent miracle....what perceived need of ours that the Father has already fulfilled. 

I choose to believe that we are being moved from the singular concern for self and how we affect others to realizing our Being is for the benefit of others...and that is all. 

If that be so, our Being is for the benefit of others, then their Being is for our benefit. There is no cause for any of us to concern ourself with self. We are One with God...and all things are possible.

Thank you.

GOD IS OUR PURIFIED AIR

I had a free-floating thought flit through my mind yesterday, and I came in a hair of passing it by. The thought was akin to a whisper from afar, barely there. To the best of my ability to spell it out, I heard, God is our purified air,  goodness ever and always available.

Once I true-heard it, I held it in the quiet, hoping to let it speak deeper. Whether it spoke or I just thought, I knew we only need let that be not just in our consciousness, but be our consciousness.

Later, in a phone conversation, a friend suggested we commit to making 2020 a happy year...our best year, she said, since it is the one we have. Her suggestion sang to me, and as I was agreeing to that, my wispy thought revisited...which made me happy.

This morning I built on that commitment. I've been having various allergy attacks...dizzy, cold-like symptoms...which, of course, I've dodged for fear it really is a cold heading in. With my wispy BFO guiding me, I determined that it makes no nevermind whether this be allergy or a cold, I must needs suffer it happy and choose to let this too be God, this too be goodness. 

Welcome...resist not...ah, the sure road to happy. And pass the Kleenex.

Thank you.

LIFT UP OUR EYES TO SEE DEEPER

Remember that you must not see as the world sees.-- "God Calling," January 1

There. Right on the first page of "God Calling" it is spelled out for us. If we are not to see as the world sees, we must change our minds. Then exchange our minds, trade up deeper as it were.

Interestingly, I've underlined that sentence...more than once...meaning that each time I underlined it, I had come to a deeper understanding. And this morning, I am simply coming into a fuller meaning. If experience holds true, it will continue to grow deeper, truer, more mine.

That's a part of what I love about spiritual growth...it always feels, when I have a breakthrough, that This Is It, the all of it. Then weeks, months, even years later I come to a fuller understanding which I had no hint of before.

Ah, here's where my reasoning mind can come to my aid...I can keep reminding me, when a spiritual matter arises and I'm feeling (again!) that I know all there is to know about all there is to know, that I only know up to this minute. More, different, exciting...unbelievable!...are yet to come...are right now heading my way.

Or, I can shut up and listen...but what's the fun in that? Happy new year...all year!

Thank you.