ACCEPTANCE IS THE TRANSMUTER

Fr Richard Rohr has written, "Throughout the New Testament, Jesus’s parables and stories paint a picture of a reign in which the poor and marginalized are lifted up and their needs are met."

It was a new day a-dawning when I realized that our needs are met not by money, power or prizes, but by our lifted up consciousness...namely, God consciousness.

I suspect many are now flocking to a Jesus they have monetized...we hear it said that Jesus wants us to have money or that Jesus is offended by poverty. They may be right, and if so, I'm wrong...but happily wrong which is close enough to perfect for me.

I do live in a raised consciousness today which doesn't mean by a long shot that I live free of self-centered fear, wants and judgments. It's that I've found an attitude of gratitude for them.

Through a blinding flash of the obvious, I saw fear as God in camouflage. The longer I pondered that, the deeper came the understanding of that for true, namely because nothing turns many of us to God faster than fear. Ah, and nothing else lifts that fear as quickly.

That BFO opened my inner door to a new slant on my wants and judgments...for the acceptance of those wants and judgments...and to finally understand acceptance as the transmuter.

My self-centered fears, wants and judgments no longer mentally define me as less-than...they cause me pause to laugh at myself, often when I'm brought up short by the very want or judgment I am in the midst of parading.

God's cute, to quote my friend Natalie.

Thank you.

GOD IS ALWAYS RIGHT 2

[This is a reprint of my post of January 22, 2013, slightly reworked.]   

Truth is within ourselves and we must open out a way for the imprisoned splendour to escape. -- Robert Browning

I tend to believe Truth is interchangeable with kindness, caring, patience, love, understanding...that they are all inside us right this very minute. If not, where would we go to get them? To pray for any one or all, it seems to me, is to doubt God's perfect work to begin with.

The minute we recognize a need to be kind, be kind...a need to be understanding, be understanding...a need to be patient, be patient. Loose it, and let it flow forth.

It follows that the highest form of prayer...thank You...is not a request but an acknowledgment of what already is for which we give praise. That very praise brings the realization that what is is just as it needs be for our benefit right this minute.

We have been looking at life from the wrong perspective (i.e., our own). It is not that we are always wrong, it is that God is always right.

Our purpose now is to accept that we already have all we need, freeing us to focus on the how of it, the why of it...which is quite simply going to God for God, and that is all.

Word of warning: Going to God for God is a serious dig...be prepared to pray thank you a lot.

Thank You.

OUR LADDER TO CLIMB OUT OF SELF

Beginning again the study of the Sermon on the Mount, and it is clearer still that the Beatitudes are the primer for changing our mind.

The Beatitudes hammer home the early realization that the hardest thing spiritual growth will ever ask of us is that we change our mind. According to me, nobody ever grew an inch spiritually using the reasoning mind as their "get there" tool. It's an aid...an aid that must needs be used sparingly, but not relied on.

The value of the reasoning mind lies in its leading us not merely to change our mind but to exchange our mind...to upgrade deeper. And the upgrade comes from our apparent downfall...our inability to logically "figure it out." "It" being the vagaries of life itself.

That very crash-and-burn brings us the ladder we need to climb...away from self to Self. We who are weak, miserable, without a clue, discover the Sermon, the first rung of which is the Beatitudes where we read blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek...whoa! There's the proof that the hardest thing spiritual growth asks of us is that we change our mind because neither "poor in spirit" nor "meek" is what the reasoning mind is looking for.

Then comes the pearl pf great price...we realize that the Beatitudes are the base, the origin, of learning "mirror vision," as in, if it looks bad, get grateful, this is God's gift and our need. The poor in spirit, the meek, etc., all lead to the freeing of self and the grace of gratitude.

We have ceased fighting anything and anyone is proving its worth. Its worth being in faith that God has our back, we need fight no more forever.

Thank you.

ON APPLYING THANK YOU TO THE PANDEMIC

I heard a respected person once say that infections are toxins that our mind, body and soul are releasing...fear them not, let them go. We can bless them as they pass out of our body for they are freeing us inside.

With my thank you prayer, I'm choosing to apply that principle to the pandemic. Having accepted that neither fear nor hate can cure or even aid anything, I turn again to the grace of gratitude.

And if my incurable, progressive disease can be a good thing...and it is to me today...then so can this pandemic be.

Trump is a tish harder.

Thank you.

MISTAKES TRANSMUTED INTO GOLD

I'm guessing ego is the source of the majority of our mistakes. But it is our mistakes that lead us to God so we need thank our ego not curse it.

This is the direction we must needs turn toward in reaching ego deflation in depth...which is the exact opposite direction our reasoning mind has ever led us. We have learned, of course, that the way of God's will is most often the opposite way of our will.

Trying to make sense of spiritual truths, reason diminishes it to make it understandable. Yet, Rohr speaks true when he says, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. How reasonable is that?

I had an experience yesterday that was just another sharing of an event in my life that was of grace. Then, at 3:00 this morning, I awoke in deep distress with the rues, regrets and remorses about my sharing.

I recalled the Sermon's warning about bragging on oneself and calling it spiritual growth: In the bragging we get our reward, we get naught from the Father who rewards in secret.

Then...here came God to save my day! I was reminded that studying the Sermon is all well and good, but until I do what the Sermon says, it's just so many words. It was in doing, making my mistake, realizing my mistake, seeking God's love and laughter, that my mistake brought the Sermon up from just words to realization within me. My mistake was transmuted into spiritual understaanding.

That's called building one's house on rock. According to me...or I'm hoping.

Thank you.

OR LOVE AND LAUGH

Our literature tells us that we must cease fighting anything and anybody. We may believe the words, but it's the doing that's brings us up short. In fact, our first reflexive response to that sentence is a refusal to believe it means what it says...we figure it must be a misprint.

Even when we finally come to accept that it means exactly what it says, we unconsciously, sometimes consciously, hold a part of ourself "above" it. We know from personal experience that stuffed anger is a resentment aborning, a certain-sure soul slayer; ergo, we're for leaving it to the wannabe saints amongst us.

That is living in the reasoning mind, letting our ego determine our life. We have done that before. Face it, we lived there once, rarely with a positive outcome...meaning when everybody came out a winner.

Staying ourself in the spiritual search, we turn away from justifying resistance and double-down on seeking to understand nonresistance. There...we are opened to the mother lode. It is when we seek to understand unto acceptance that the spiritual axiom comes alive in our heart, our soul, our body and our brain. It is a spiritual axiom that whenever we are upset, no matter the cause, there is something wrong with us. 

Now we can receive with an open mind how to cease fighting anything and anybody...we surrender our egoic need to always be right...or, more to the point, to never be wrong. Surrender is acceptance in disguise, the hairshirt of acceptance probably. When we get by our belief that surrender means loser, we begin to move on up, to a deeper life within.

That deeper life, I truly believe, is the place Chief Joseph spoke from when he declared, I will fight no more forever. Yes.

Thank you.

ON MOVING BEYOND...TO LOVE

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. -- Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio (from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" of January 31, 2020)

I take comfort when I read such as the above quote, particularly we must 'break through' the sensible world and pass beyond the human condition to move beyond knowing to unknowing.

That confirms what I've been believing for so many years now...believing but failing in the doing...no, I think faltering is the better word. I try and  falter fairly regularly, then try and succeed, then try again...which means I'm heading in the right direction.

I admit that my successes are usually met with enough scepticism by me to keep me trying again. I give my reasoning mind credit though for pitching in to help...questioning my motives usually.

Fortunately, there are successes that cannot be questioned they are so obviously of God...but some I must needs run by my mentor and maybe a confidant to get another take for in case my ego Lucy is gathering glory for her own.

The best part about inner successes is they are not for public display. They just give off an inner peace, kinda like a sigh of relief. Talking about them brings them into the known which dispels them for they are the unknowable.

I've seldom had to worry about not talking about them...I rarely remember what has been imparted. That may be God but it could be age...although it has ever been that way, and I haven't always been 80.

The gold is my behavior begins to change...my thoughts that dictate my behavior have been upgraded not by my will but by grace and by God.

Thank you.

ON ARM-WRESTLING WITH GOD

I wrestled with God on my bed of pain as I do still today . . . I argue and shout and listen and pray and question and doubt and finally acquiesce, only to move further down the path to another fork in the road where the struggle begins yet anew. - modern mystic, Dr. Diana L. Hayes as quoted in Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," December 5, 2019 

When first I read that, I felt like I was reading my own diary. Reading it again this morning...same goes. But what a stand-up-and-shout blessing...this confirms that doing what the reasoning mind whispers in my ear as wrong is very much right for my spiritual growth.

To have an ongoing, set-Him-straight, get-set-straight argument disguised as my meditation pretty much describes the school my spiritual growth is growing up in. 

Best part...both the God of my understanding and I are comfortable with it. I never need doubt Him as the source of my blinding flashes of the obvious, my pearls beyond price. (I never need to, but of course  I do...else we wouldn't have our disguised meditations that He always wins.)

Neither do I doubt that my crash-and-burn surrender nearly fifty years ago was and is still my essential bond with my Father. The bond that proves me as powerless, Him as the Higher Power.

And I am grateful...I can never be grateful enough to quote my beloved Si.

Thank you.

ON GOING AGAINST THE REASONING MIND

I often get questioned when I say that we have all the patience we will ever need, all we need do is use it. I believe the same goes for love. Since the Father lives within, when we pray for patience, for love, where do we think He goes to get it? And doesn't it follow that humility is right there, too?

I used to pray to be a more loving person and then would go right on being the same self-absorbed soul that I ever was. Until I became aware that I could be of help to others just by listening to them. That's when patience came unbidden...it was needed so I unconsciously used that which was there within. Love, too, of course...that's how love is set free. We are called upon to use it, and without thought, we love.

I'm not so sure about humility. There used to be a saying, If you think you have humility, you don't. Which may be true, and it may be just another clever saying. There have been a few times in life that I truly felt humble which is different from the times I have felt humbled...which is how I came to the belief that humiliation is humility aborning. Which kinda takes the sting out of the memory of being humbled...it was for a good cause.

Then, too, we are ever reminded to love and laugh, though I wonder if that isn't backwards. I feel I need to laugh at the whole megillah before I can love it. Ah, but what are laughter's roots but love? Since God is love and God is all there is...wonder no more.

It is said that we are what we seek. I'm guessing we prove that true in short spurts...the times we use the love stored within by loving an unlovable, by being patient with the trying one. Those flashes are humbling because, mercy, they certainly go against the reasoning mind.

Thank you.

DON'T TELL ME, SHOW ME!

Humility, like patience, isn't something we get by praying for it...we are born with all there is, resting right there in our center from birth. Our journey, our lifelong journey, is loosing it and letting it go...as in, all we need do is use it. Another saying that's easier said than done...but what one isn't?

The hard lesson to learn is that saying doesn't count unless and until we're doing.

That's the stranglehold on much self-described "spiritual growth." It is not all that easy to "get" the inner meaning of the likes of "resist not evil" or "go beyond reason to love." When we do get our understanding, we often believe that in the getting, we are qualified to teach it now. No. We are qualified to live it now.

The proof that the Father within does the works is how well we live those works.

Spiritual growth is not our talking up what we've received, it's others passing on to others what they have received from our spiritual growth...without our ever needing to know about it.

....Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. -- Matt 5:16

Thank you.

WANTS, NEEDS AND GRACE

The gift is the garbage...it's the devil in the diamonds when we get what we want.  -- Blinding flash of the obvious from May 21, 2019, as noted in my "God Calling"

Finding the truth of that BFO, and many of same, requires me to have my chats with God...to question, disagree with my interpretations, sulk, agree with my interpretations, sulk, etc. etc. etc. Clearly, the gift of the unclear BFOs is that they require me to go to God for God, repeatedly and then some.

My today's take on my year-old BFO is that the "garbage" that I perceive is for me to welcome, shoot a thank You for...and then wait, listen and wait, and listen. We never know the day or hour the bridegroom will come...interestingly, or irritatingly, I've never liked that quote from the Bible, and it has been sliding in and out of my consciousness a lot lately.

From my own experience, I know that which appears to be garbage arriving, in my quiet time often shows itself as my gift...that which I needed and never realized till it dropped in my lap. Same goes in reverse for our wants...who hasn't experienced be careful what you ask for, you're liable to get it?

When we realize the underneath and supreme gift of the garbage, we are raised up a tish deeper for we realize it is I. As an aside, when we recognize our want for what it is, we get to love and laugh.

To see with our own inner eye that we are the source of our garbage, the reason for its being, our being is transmuted...just a teeny-tiny bit but that counts. That tiny transformation is another yellow brick in the road leading to our little i becoming one with the I that I AM.

Thank you.

STRETCH...FOR GOD'S HAND

Blinding flash of the obvious: All ego lacks is love.

Searching beneath that BFO, we recognize that is not new...face it, it's the same-old-same-old. That is what we are taught about all that we resist...to love it, then love it more.

That is the primary reason we need to go beyond reason to love for it is a certain-sure fact the reasoning mind cannot get us there even when we have wrestled it into agreement with the concept.

As to ego's only lack is love...all that ego lacks is being loved. Who's kidding whom, ego does not have a good rep, not even a hint of warm and fuzzy, so there's our stretch. We stretch for God's hand...we stretch to get out of self, we stretch to find the love waiting within, we stretch to reach a higher level of consciousness...deeper.

Ah, deeper. That's where we find love of all there is, but, specifically here, for all that is unloveable...ego, ill health, self-will, fear. It is love alone that tames them, that brings them home so they no longer feel the need to rush, rouse and ramble.

There it is...the love of God within waiting to be used. And, again: Loose it and let it go.

Thank you.

REGRETS BE OUR ANGELS...GET GRATEFUL

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: We must make our egoic self (our mental image) smaller, lesser, teeny-tinier...give up the self's wants for glory or for sympathy.

Ah, comes the dawn: Thank You really is the only tool we need to get over our own self.

Thank You for the people, places and things that we resist. By our resistance, they goose us into thank You and thus become our angels. That transformation only happens when, not if, we realize (never  self-determine) it as so.

Plainly, when we realize our crooked places are our  rues, regrets, remorses, we see they come to us by our invitation only...that it be God who perfected them for our benefit. Then we are freed to hunker down with them and make them a home in our heart.

To paraphrase Fr Richard Rohr, enlightenment (inner-realization) comes through great love or great suffering. He also says, "We come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong." (No great wonder that I follow Rohr.)

Love and laugh.

Thank you.

HUMBLY ASK GOD...HUMBLY SEEK

We so often think that we are wrong when we try to do God's will and still  stumble, bumble and fail...when we follow our mentor's suggestions, do what our How-To Manual says, and yet still! here we are, feeling like a dolt.

When the end result of our trying is not what we had in mind at all...or, worse, is what we had in mind yet stinks like a skunk in heat...take heart. That's the natural journey...that's doing it right when our desire is to learn to seek first God's will and way.

Trying, failing, trying, half failing, trying, failing, trying...nobody ever got to Heaven in the first round.

The glory comes in the desire, and there be the hook: our desire. When we change our mind about just what it is we desire...to be precise, when we desire not to Get It Right, but to humbly seek first God's will and way. There. We are on the way toward detaching from our self-determined objectives.

The trouble being we either didn't listen or didn't believe that those who take this road had best settle in for a bumpy ride to Graceland. Ah, but it's the only ride for those who seek still more spiritual growth. We are graced when we accept the bumps and bruises as another reason to love and laugh.

The blinding flash of the obvious is: All our work has been done for us. It is wrapped up in the word humbly. When, not if, we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings, all our troubles, Lord, soon be over.

Thank you.

THE GOD OF MY OWN UNDERSTANDING

When I started on my spiritual journey, I would have nothing to do with Jesus, Mary and Joseph. But then I was given permission to have a God of my own understanding! That set me free to find my God...to even have a God in truth.

It was hearing others whom I respected share their spiritual reality that broke me free of me for I knew by their actions they had hit paydirt...on that I started the building of the God of my understanding.

Looking back, I can see that I picked from Her and chose from Him, mainly via my beloved "God Calling." It was when I learned that the Sermon on the Mount was my people's first How-To Manual that my deal was sealed.

Now...lo!...all these years later, the God of my understanding is a lot Jesus and the Sermon, some Mary, maybe a little Joseph, but primarily the freedom to interpret my Father as my inner self dictates and my mentor guides and my friends don't disagree. I take very seriously the warning that it is dangerous to go it alone in spiritual matters.

Go beyond reason to love and laugh.

Thank you.

UPGRADE YOUR ATTITUDE...AH, FREEDOM

Upgrade your attitude, upgrade your problem. That is not just a clever-sounding slogan...it is a certain-sure fact.

We are each of us living examples of that even when we do not realize it...even resisting it upfront and out loud, in fact. We have had it happen. Say we're feeling lowdown, no hope,  what's the use, and suddenly we remember we got word awhile back that we've won a free trip to Paris, France...it's not till next year, but, just remembering, the load got lighter, the day brighter. And the only thing that has changed in that moment is our attitude...it has been upgraded.

That's an example of the reasoning mind coming to our aid. 

Ah, but who wins free trips to downtown hometown, much less Paris, France? That's precisely why developing our spiritual mind is the motherlode...peace of mind on tap. The reasoning mind may be on our side but we need to accept unto living and breathing, the promise given to us: Most important is the discovery that spiritual principles can solve all our problems. - Anonymous

That is: All...our problems. Spiritual principles. 

Who's kidding whom? Spiritual principles aren't going to do jack just spelled out in a book, going nowhere, doing nothing. We must needs use those principles. We have to make them our very own as we live and breath...for the benefit of another, primarily. Ideally for the benefit of another with whom we're less than enchanted...hold a grudge against..do not like, so stop already. Yes, that one...or two...or so. Best start with one.

It is a slow process...and it is not God who sets the pace, that is set by our own self.  God's already got it done. Done, wrapped and ready. All we need do is...upgrade our attitude, our problem will follow suit. 

We have to start sometime...if not in this lifetime, the next. Why wait? Go ahead...pray thank you, then give over, give up, give in. Then pray thank you. 

Repeat. Repeatedly.

Thank you. 

ON BEING THE FIRST TO GIVE OVER

You don't snuff out self-will in one day...especially in your relationships. This world is a place where we learn to return goodwill for ill will and love for hatred, to work harmoniously with others, and to  put other people's welfare before our own. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words To Live By," May 15

I've read my Easwaran daily reader since 1996. I have underlined the above passage more than once with my original underlining of that passage dated 1999. 

Today, it hit home again but especially because I saw how blessed I was the day I realized that nothing is original to me...or to you or to them, for that matter, but I'll stick with me. It has only been in the last maybe four years that be the first to give over came to me...a blinding flash of the obvious that I knew to be an instruction.

Without forcing that as my self-determined objective, i.e., making nice, still feeling ugly, I have sought guidance toward that end whenever I've felt at odds with another.

All the while I've felt that "be the first to give over" was original to me...felt fairly pleased about it, too. No doubt was about to start preaching on its value till I read Easwaran this morning. Talk about a slap upside the head...I finally heard the Main Man's command: Agree with your adversary quickly, which comes straight from the Sermon...which I mention on occasion that I study.

There...proof God loves me...plus, I give Him a good laugh and that counts. 

Thank you.

LOOK TO SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES

[The following is a repost of a blinding flash of the obvious received, written up and posted on February 9, 2017.]

When there is something that is wrong and you know it, and you can see exactly what it is that is wrong and you try to fix it, and it does not fix and you try again, harder, and it stays unfixed...you are looking in the wrong direction.

You are looking out there...at the problem. Look within. To the solution...spiritual principles.

All spiritual principles are within us, have been there since before conception, will be there three days after we are dead.

And 1,000 years after the world as we know it is no more, spiritual principles will be in the ether...waiting to be realized and released once again by a ready soul.

Thank you.

ON BEING RELEASED

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: Each of my rues, regrets and remorses has ever been for my benefit...God's will leading me out of self.

I ponder my BFO, and I see that every stumble, bump and bruise, each rue, regret and/or remorse, has been...is...Thy will being done for my benefit. Each is leading me to where I need be to loosen my egoic hold on fears I unconsciously generated...thinking to protect myself.

Right behind that BFO the old song, Release Me, came to mind. Specifically, the line, Please release me let me go, for I don't love you anymore.

There. That's for those regrets...those fears, my fears...that I unwittingly cling to, then wrestle with, curse and cry over. Ah, nurture in a word.

And a previous BFO pops up: It is in the recognition of our defect that it is wiped clean; it is our failure to accept that that holds us in bondage.

Thank you.

ON STARTING SMALL

When we feel resistant...for whatever apparent reason...we now know to dig deeper. We are learning...slowly...that it is our own self that we are resisting, thus it is ourself we must get over. Fear for ourself, the want to protect ourself and the belief that only we can do that, becomes the Start button for resistance.

To recognize that we must get over our own self is to meet the mountain...the jumping off place. Here's where we hold our nose and take the leap of faith of denying our want-to. Our want to stop her, to top him...our want to win. (Our want-to is ego's need.)

Basic lesson: Start small. We learn fairly quickly that to attempt to give over on a matter we've married ourself to is a self-determined objective aborning, our personal hangman's noose. So our first leap of faith is a teeny-tiny step, albeit in the right direction...we give over to another who seems to be wrong. We simply say, "You may be right." Or, even simpler, "Oh, okay."

Amazingly, the within goodwill generated from uttering so few words is all we need to do it again...and then again...and many more times. We rest there, which is heading us in the right direction, until we find ourself ready to move up deeper.

As we rest, a two-pronged lesson unfolds within us. We're not only learning how to get over ourself, we are building trust in our Father, that He has our back. We cannot have the second without the first...we cannot have faith in our Father while holding fear as our justification for self-protection.

I'm guessing this is a rest of our lifetime lesson. Further words would be me putting on airs. What I've written is from my experience, and I'll let it stay that way. This I know: More will be revealed.

Thank you.

ON NOT THINKING OF A CAMEL

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There it is, the quiet word: Be The First To Give Over.

Whatever we are resisting, it is really our own self that is the block. We must get over our self is all...a.k.a., change our mind.

When we momentarily get over ourself, we are free only in that moment. Our journey now is all about our building on those moments...ah, and our staircase up to freedom from self becomes our escalator deeper to our Father within.

Until our mind is exchanged, we will be bound by fear for self...fear of freedom actually...the freedom to love and laugh.

We see that it is not God's love, that we have sought, it is the bennies that God's love is purported to deliver that we were after. The Turn is made when we see that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with money, honey...it has to do with righteousness, plain and simple. Uh-oh.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. -- Matthew 6:33

Thank you.

ON GIVING OVER...FROM WITHIN

Never be afraid of any circumstances or difficulties that help you to cultivate this calm. - "God Calling," May 10

To "cultivate" is to own our part in the circumstances or difficulties...to recognize this is not for our reasoning mind to figure out, to fix...no, this is our time to turn to God, inviting his intentions to flow for the benefit of all.

I doubt not that a person with the sole objective to love will ever be like the guy forever pushing the one-ton stone up the hill. (Sisyphus by name, my Google tells me.) Being self-determined to love with no thought attached is akin to being determined to not think...or to have a blank slate for a mind. There's an open invitation for the ego and the ism to couple up and tap-dance endlessly in our head.

It is through spiritual growth that we are turned around...graced, if you will, with a desire to be of benefit for another. We become open to love for all flowing out from within. 

From my own personal experience, it takes a conscious decision each time to from within give over, give up, give in. Which tells me that each time is the beginning...the forever beginning...of my growth. 

I do believe the time will come, though I know not when but unlikely in this lifetime, when my intention to love will flow without thought, without want-to...kinda like breathing. I count myself blessed that I am willing.

Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. -- Matthew 25:13

Thank you.

ST JOHN OF THE CROSS

A deeper enlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary to explain the dark night through which a soul journeys toward that divine light of perfect union with God that is achieved, insofar as possible in this life, through love. The darknesses and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily undergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and profound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them. Only those who suffer them will know what this experience is like, but they won’t be able to describe it. -- Excerpt from the Prologue to the Ascent of Mount Carmel by St. John of the Cross (from Fr. Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," April 23, 2020)

Thank you.

REASONING MIND vs. SPIRITUAL SEEKER

The reasoning mind can be immobilized by spiritual questions...doubting and worried...wanting to find the "right" answer to ensure personal security.

The spiritual seeker, having learned there is no "right" answer, is turned within where questions are resolved (dissolved?)...or maybe just diluted, but the "personal" is taken out of it.

To primarily seek the spiritual is pretty much to be in a state of impersonal love, a consciousness of forgiveness as it were. (I'm about half convinced that taking anything personally is the root of all our woes, but that may be a tish hyperbolic.)

The overwhelming majority of us will not get wholly beyond the reasoning mind stage in this lifetime. (Or any lifetime?) I suspect the Master Plan is just that...for all of us to be seekers. To be a seeker is to ever be headed in the right direction...seeking a Power greater than our own self.

There...we are relieved of our want (masquerading as a need) to have the "right" answer. There are no wrong answers, only answers that need reworked, refocused, rebalanced for the benefit of another...for how else can we go to God for God and that is all?

Thank you.

WHEN OUR NEED BECOMES OUR DESIRE

I had a blinding flash of the obvious once...be the first to give over...and over the years that has become my  comforter. Actually, it's proven to be more like my Velveteen Rabbit...seemingly with a desire to live and breathe but with my ego, Lucy With The Football, resisting it.

Since that first flash entered my consciousness, I know heart-comfort when I actually do it...it solves all "neighborhood" disagreements. I don't think in terms of wars...if we each keep our own nest clean, the neighborhood will shine, the town will be moving in the right direction, the county will be trucking right along, the state, etc., etc., etc.

Doesn't that prove the Truth of we have ceased fighting anything and anybody or for Chief Joseph's I will fight no more forever?

However and apparently, it is the inalienable right of our ego to resist. To, by gum, get over on...to never give up, to Win. It takes a major U-bie within our own self to recognize that the thing we must needs resist is our egoic want to resist.

We make a bare beginning when we see that to our ego, the gift of free will is more like a euphemism for self will...a double-edged sword if ever there was one.

Our long-ago realization that there are two ways to look at all things...through reason or through love...now is a purpose. We know our free will is best used less for reasoning and more spiritually so we look more within than without.

When we find ourself leaning more on our Father and less on our self, we are gifted with acceptance of our life's journey being all about returning that free will to God.

Our need is now our desire...to detach from self will and freely give over, give up, give in.

Thank you.

ON KEEPING IT SIMPLE...AGAIN

In my morning study of the Sermon, I come again to Matthew 5:27-30: You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery' But I say to you everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out * * * * * it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Clearly, that is not meant literally, but since my eye never lusted for a woman and my hand never sought to steal, I've never stayed on that for long, never studied it closely. (Apparently, I tend toward scrupulosity...or lazy...when something doesn't apply to me.)

But this morning it became obvious why we need continuously study the Sermon. This morning brought a blinding glimmer of possibility: It is our thoughts that must needs be plucked out, cut off, turned around...changed in a word.

Obviously, it is not our eye that lusts, that is simply used as a clarifying analogy for change, to pluck it out and throw it away. Same goes with our hand which is not the sinner, it is our thought that directed the hand. Cut it off and throw it away, an analogy to clarify for us that we must change our way of thinking.

Takes me back to an early BFO: Upgrade your thoughts, you upgrade your problems. Who's kidding whom, stripped of airs, that is...change your mind.

K.I.S.S.

Thank you.

SOUL TRUTH AND PROVING IT

God and the human person must know one another center to center, subject to subject, and never subject to object. This is why there is no seeking of power over in the Trinity, but only power with—a giving away, a sharing, a letting go, and thus an infinity of trust and mutuality. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," May 5, 2020

Eureka! Rohr's paragraph clarifies my long-ago BFO...the answer, no matter the question, is give over, give up, give in.

I have accepted that as Truth, have tried to prove it, have had wee successes and have failed a lot. However, I still believe it and still aim toward proving it daily because my Soul knows it for Truth.

It is apparent to me that proving it is dicey because it cannot be done as long as the reasoning or egoic mind is in on it. And denying a voice to that mind births the problem... how to deny when our goal is to give over, give up, give in? Ah...and that is the egoic mind's gotcha/ Its I win, you lose strategy.

The solution? Stop relying on the reasoning mind. Go beyond reason. How often do we hear that whispered in our upper ear? Go beyond reason to love is to go beyond reason to God, to still more spiritual growth, to loose it [i.e., our self-determined objective] and let it go.

I wonder if any of God's Truths can be proved solely by the reasoning mind. Probably not...but I have to suppose we must reach agreement...our reasoning mind with God's Truths. We must if we're ever going to have a faith we can lean on, trust, believe...else what is faith for?

The rub is that we can only come to agreement after we've been led to realization, after Truth has been proved in our own life. Face it, agreeing before is just  words...faith without works is fantasy.

Thank you.

GET OUT OF THE WAY...GOD'S HERE

It is written in the commonly called Good Book that faith without works is dead (James 14-26).

Personally, I like faith without works is fantasy, as I heard in the rooms years ago. But then it is important for me to bring old adages and fancy quotes down to my level of thinking...which has never been mischaracterized as intellectual. I give myself airs when I call it "down-home" thinking, but that clicks for me.

I am reminded of a time back in the day when I considered self-centered fear to be paranoia in fancy dress...until I heard someone ask, "What other kind of fear is there?"  There was my click, my Yes! 

That's one reason I relate to no-frills thinking. Rarely do we walk away from a plain speaker, scratching our head and wondering what was meant. We don't necessarily agree, but we're not in doubt what was meant.

That's my premise for faith without works is fantasy. That clarifies my first spiritual director's instructions that we must prove Truth. We can believe Truth but merely saying it repeatedly is just so many words strung together that sound pretty.

As in, He goes before me to make the crooked places straight. Believe it, when we come to a crooked place in our life and have no quick answer, just repeating that may comfort at first. But if the crooked place doesn't soon get straightened out to our soul's comfort, we're going to feel a lot less than at peace. 

Soul comfort does not mean the problem is lifted...no. We get soul comfort when we go to God for God and that is all. The problem, though still with us, is no longer poking us in the eye...our focus has been turned to our Father within, and we know peace.

That is from my experience...I have had my own hair-on-fire crooked places, and who hasn't? It is coming out the other side, finding ourself bent, battered but unbroken, that proves Truth. I tend to suspect those who speak of coming through the fire with no evidence of scorch marks...period.

Came to believe that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf.  Now prove it. Ah...better: Now get out of the way, and let God prove it.

Thank you.

EMBRACE OUR UGLY...IT NEEDS IT MOST

Men call the Father the First Cause. Yes! See Him  as the First Cause of every warm ray, every colour in the sunset, every gleam on the water, every beautiful flower, every planned pleasure. -- "God Calling," May 2  [My addition: Also, see Him in every not wonderful thing.]

....[we] need to embrace our tears as well as our triumphs. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," May 1, 2020

I wonder if Meister Eckhart's, if the only prayer you ever pray is thank You, that will suffice, isn't the missing link in religious study.

It seems the religious ones who went before me either never heard of that or just didn't agree with it. More likely, if they heard of it, they figured it needed improving...by that, I mean adding to which invariably changed it beyond recognition.

In their desire to believe in a Perfect Power, our religious forebears seemed unable to accept  anything but bounty and beauty unending, health and wealth forevermore. Anything less was proof of our bad behavior for which we needed to be punished. Of course, that may only be my jaundiced opinion.

But there's my gold! Without such a cynical outlook, in my hour of darkness, in my time of need, I doubt I would have sought something other than what I had received in my early years...religion by rote. The message I got being, You wouldn't be feeling so bad if you weren't so bad...suffer for your sins.

Certainly, knowing naught of spiritual as opposed to religious, it is doubtful I would have independently sought spiritual growth. I for sure wasn't praying thank You at the time. Face it, with not a cogent hope, I wasn't praying at all. I was suffering...ah, there it is. God's gift to me: I was suffering which is how the God of my understanding found me.

That was the beginning of my learning over time, a lot of time, the truth that Eckhart spoke: If the only prayer you ever pray is thank You, that will suffice. There are no qualifiers.

Thank you.

TO LOVE OUR INSTIGATORS

Without standing on the threshold for much longer than we’re comfortable, we won’t be able to see beyond ourselves to the broader and more inclusive world that lies before us. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," May 2, 2020

My most recent nitpick, being deliberately called by the same (wrong) name by more than one person, has proven to be God's lesson learned with my ego's fire.  For certain sure, today I know it as of God to me.

This morning in my quiet time, and apropos of nothing, the thought wandered through: Was my resistance to the misname my ego or was it my Calvary? Right behind came the answer, that I needed to love it whichever it was. Which caused me to wonder, how do we do that? How do we bear the seeming unbearable with love and laughter?

By standing on the threshold for much longer than we’re comfortable.

Then, just as I was feeling completed...whoa! Came this blinding flash of the obvious:  I need love the instigators for they are the needy; they are seeking love and that is all. Who am I to say what is the right way to go about it? 

[Hmmm...interesting. Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains just started playing in my head. Don't tell me Lucy With The Football isn't always on guard. Ah, but then so is God....]

If we don't tame our nitpicks, we're going to feel nibbled to death by ducks. -- my new "old adage"

Thank you.

AN ANGEL UNAWARE...WITH US ALWAYS

Toward the end of last year, 2019, and before the pandemic came calling at the beginning of this year, 2020, I talked to my mirror often about feeling like I was on the verge of change...my inner self almost felt at 6s & 7s. And I unselfconsciously opened up to new and different people, places and ideas. 

At the time, I was agreeable to take from that my willingness to open, to seek new and different. I recall wondering if that might not be the extent of my change...that I could and would unselfconsciously open myself. I would have been satisfied with that for that is an unplanned but  continuing change. 

This morning I read my Rohr "Daily Meditation," about liminal space, and Brandan Robertson wrote: In moments of transition, we are simply to be. 

That gave me another plus for my pre-pandemic trepidation...when I was unsure but not anxious about what I was feeling or why.

In reading further I recognized, not only now going through this pandemic, but at any time, all of us can, and need to, choose to hold a grateful thought for our being just as we are right this very minute.

As Robertson wrote: We are to pause and acknowledge that a transition is taking place. Instead of seeking to abruptly pass through a threshold, we are to tarry. . . . A new reality is emerging, but we cannot see beyond the threshold. All we know is that we exist in this moment, where everything is in transition. We may experience a new way of being, but we cannot yet sense what it will look like.

I take this to heart because it does not name the change, but simply that a transition is taking place. When is that not true? Every minute of our breathing life, a transition is taking place. Unknown to us in specificity...an angel unaware, actually, with us from beginning to end. 

Know it. Bless it. Or love and laugh.

Thank you.