REASON...JUST ONE MORE OF GOD'S TOOLS

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 28,2012.]

We cannot solve the problems of the mind with the mind. -- The Buddha

Whenever I come across that quote, I know it for true...then I spend the next ten minutes pondering how it is true, why it is true....

Our reasoning mind will not retire quickly, nor quietly. It is interestingly pathetic how long we will cling to the belief that reason is our safety net...that "victory can be ours for the thinking." When it is the detachment from reliance on our reasoning mind that sets us on the path to freedom.

Reason is essential on the long and winding road to the realization that reason is just one more tool of God's, not our safety net, not our security. Reason, if used properly, clears the channel for God's thoughts to pour through. Reason is God's Roto-Rooter, if you will.

Our mistake is relying on the Roto-Rooter instead of God.

Thank You.

OUR EGO IS NOT OUR AMIGO

 We are asked not only to tolerate the other, but also to actively engage the love that transmutes the lead of ignorance and hatred into the gold of authentic connection. This is the 'narrow gate'..... Don’t come this way unless you’re willing to stretch, bend, and transform for the sake of love.-- Mirabai Starr

Ah, doesn't that sound inviting...to transform for the sake of love? Comforting...simple on its face. 

In fact, this is but another crossing where the road gets narrower. We make our mental commitment and believe we've moved on up. We may have, but the up is infinitesimal; and when we fail to "tolerate the other and...," we slide back times two to two hundred plus.

But we've made our commitment, we trust our God, we try again until...oh, great gettin' up morning, we succeed! We not only succeed in getting over ourself, we make a new friend and know ourself to be a new friend to the other! It is a wonderful thing. We rest.

Then still more spiritual growth smiles upon us, and we are face-to-face with yet another intolerable! Even more intolerable than the other one(s). Reason resists, mouth flaps, want-to is riding herd...and hard.  

As Rohr says, "As soon as people are comfortably enjoying the fruits of the established system, they don’t normally want any truth beyond their comfort zone." 

There it is...again. Our comfort zone is our ego's hang-out...which reminds me of my friend James who says, "Our ego is not our amigo."

The uncomfortable fact is that all our slide-backs are our ego on parade, and there it is, our U-bie: ego's failures are God's gifts for what else so clearly brings us to Him? 

Here's a hard truth: We don't enjoy the grace of gratitude until gratitude exchanges itself within us from "oh, crap!" to "thank you." 

Don’t come this way unless you’re willing to stretch, bend, and transform for the sake of love.-- Mirabai Starr

Thank you.

ON RECOGNIZING THE LEADER

All the perfect thoughts and words in the world will not make a dime's difference in our life until they are walking with us, alive, without thought or effort on our part. It's like breathing, we don't think about it, we breathe. 

Until we do not, say, admonish others or even silently remind ourself not to talk about or judge or pity without empathy, we are not breathing our spiritual life, we're talking it. 

There it is, the birth of a self-determined objective, a want-to. Which is not all bad, no doubt begun by heading us in the right direction, but as a want-to, it is a don't-have-yet...an objective, and we are stuck up in our head. 

Just because we know truth doesn't mean we own truth. It must make its journey from our head, detour around our mouth, and slowly make its way into our heart where it is transmuted from words into actions, and our Soul is a tish freer from self.

It's a slow process, this learning how to follow the Leader. Just remembering that we are not the Leader is the essential and at the same time bare beginning. That's probably why all our thoughts and words that don't make a dime's difference are priceless when our thoughts and words come from the Leader within. 

Thank you.

ON DOING OUR FATHER'S PERFECT WILL

An ego-deflated person living by spiritual principles sees first the spiritual nature of everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail you, always demand more of you, and give you no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone. * * *  The point of such a ... life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything. -- Anonymous

There it is...my long-held, albeit seldom-remembered, guide to living a nonresistant life. Today it is clear to me that it defines radical humility...that for which I have been seeking the meaning. There it is at Matthew 7:7-8: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find..., 

The radical humility is in trusting by asking, trusting by seeking, our Father's will, not our want...and trusting His knowing our need that we receive.

My today's Sermon lesson was at Matthew 7:21-23 Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven....

Our actions are ever more important than our thoughts, our words...no matter how spiritually dressed-up we've made our thoughts, our words.

Thank you.

ON GRATITUDE, A DEEPER DEPTH HIGHER

I'm back mind-wrestling with radical humility. 

I could all but see my road narrowing ever so slightly just reading the words radical humility. My gutbucket response was what does that even mean? Then came a silent clue, ego deflation in depth...daily. 

There I go again...my immediate belief that I know the answer when I've barely formed the question. Who's kidding whom, ego deflation in depth, has never not been the answer. It is our path leading us there that we must find, then follow. 

Considering my age and how long it took me to accept that I take myself too seriously, getting over myself is probably on my next life's agenda. Love and laugh, Nimrod, love and laugh.

For today, humility plain and simple is radical enough for my comprehension, and sometimes we need to comprehend before we can do. 

I can be grateful that the concept of radical humility has entered my consciousness, and there's my tell...gratitude will ever move us to a deeper depth higher. 

Thank you.

2020, THE YEAR OF DIVINE INTERVENTION?

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. -- Matthew 7:13-14

In today's world we are advised...repeatedly...to not watch the news, to steer clear of political talk...or religious talk for that matter. Truth to tell that is probably never a bad idea, or ever a good idea, but the how-to is the magic trick. 

I've never been a reader of the Bible so it needs not be said that includes the Koran, and I don't even know the names of the other religions' sacred texts. I do know that when I crashed and burned and came into my life-saving fellowship, I was told the founders had used the Sermon on the Mount for their original guidebook. 

So I stumbled and bumbled along searching the Bible until I found the Sermon. Well. First thought on first reading: What. A. Crock. 

That was going on fifty years ago, and I am still stumbling and bumbling, but I've followed in the founders' steps, pretty much all based on the Sermon, to guide me. Miracles happen when our mind is opened, and my mind has been opened...exchanged if you will.

This year 2020 has proved my new way of thinking to be a very good thing for I can sometimes recognize divine intervention when it appears. Based on the flat fact that I know if my disease can be a good thing, and it is to me today, then so can this year be a good year. 

Follow me if you will: We are given free will, our life's work is to regift God with that free will. The Sermon is the how-to manual for regifting. Entering by the wide gate, we rely on self and self-will, ego directed. Entering by the narrow gate, we choose to leave behind our ego-directed way, to sit and wait on the Lord, who can and will guide us from within. And that way is narrow indeed.

We who choose to hear are being called to enter by the ever narrower gate. Loose our own opinion...of anything...and let it go.  

With a sincere heart and an opened mind, I choose to know 2020 as the year of Divine Intervention, and I am graced with gratitude for my egoic mind cannot imagine how that can be possible.

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF SELF-CHOSEN PAIN

Most people are like electric wires: what comes in is what goes out. Someone calls us a name, and we call them a name back. That is, most people pass on the same energy that is given to them. Now compare an electric wire to those big, grey transformers that you see on utility poles. Dangerous current or voltage comes in, but something happens inside that grey box and what comes out is, in fact, now helpful and productive. That is exactly what [spiritual growth teaches] with suffering. - Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," September 18, 2020

In short, we do not return negative energy directed at us but hold it inside where it is made into something better. (And our reasoning mind rises up in righteous indignation quick, fast and without further thought...also known as contempt prior to investigation.) 

The fact is, if we are sincere in our desire to grow spiritually, we must refuse to pass the negative on. Face it, that is the entire instructions for how to get over ourself.

We pray our thank you for our everything just at it is right this very instant, for every mistake, miscue or honest error that has led us to this time and place...accepting that we must be utterly broken to fully realize our powerlessness. Then we can rest knowing the hand of God is guiding us by His will and His way. 

I pray thank you  and trust God to lift my understanding deeper

Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. -- Kahlil Gibran 

Thank you.

TRUST GOD TO MAKE IT SO

The sacred scriptures of all faiths call us to love as we have never loved before. This requires effort, vigilance, and radical humility. -- spiritual teacher Mirabai Starr

My beloved friend Linda fell and hit her head. A blood clot formed on her brain, and the doctors were unable to save her. She passed at 1:39 PM. I am, and I'm certain sure that all who knew her are, devastated. 

I had been mentally wrestling with "radical humility" and had most of my post written with that as the subject. 

I am reminded yet again that God knows our needs. 

Instantly, I faced the unwanted humility of accepting my dear friend's death as is, best course of action, God's will, and...harder still...that, specifically, God's will is better than my will.

Radical humility must come when I can welcome that by believing it. I'm not there yet. I trust God to make it so, and I pray my thank you.

Thank you. 

RADICAL HUMILITY...SAY WHAT?

My mentor often reminds me that the path gets ever narrower for those of us who commit to the disciplined practice of still more spiritual growth. And it does. 

I'm convinced it narrows commensurate with our need and our reasoning mind's inability to shuck our shields...to strip the very idea that we know or that we should know what we need do, think, say, be...beforehand. Before the need arises...before we have to go another human being for help, not to put too fine a point on it. 

We do not and cannot know what the spiritual asks of us individually, personally and, specifically,  beforehand. A big clue is the quote my friend Linda gave me, What's in the way is the way.

All the good words we have read, have come to agree with and pass on to others, are precisely what we must do. Love your enemy...be kind to those who hurt/anger you...go beyond reason to love...judge not...and the biggie, the meek shall inherit the earth.

We think we got it when we finally grasp why each is the good news. No. Those are but words, the barest beginning, albeit the essential first step. 

The answer, my friends, is written...within. Within our heart, our soul, our body, our brains. Our willingness to seek help opens the door to radical humility...I'm guessing, she humbly admits.

Thank you.

MAKE WAY FOR SPIRITUAL LIGHT

Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" today, September 21, 2020, has it that authentic God experience always expands your seeing and never constricts it. 

How does this compare to Meister Eckart's the spiritual life is more about subtraction than it is addition. 

Is this another paradox? 

My understanding today, subject to revision tomorrow: Authentic God experience is to realize God is everything. We resist not...anything. 

We must withdraw, subtract, our material mind's desire to cast out its perception of evil, i.e., all it disagrees with, to allow the entry, expansion, of spiritual understanding that there is and can be naught to disagree with. 

Rohr's expansion of spiritual sight constricts material sight; Eckhart's subtraction of material sight renders needless the addition of still more material sight...and spiritual light enters.  

According to me. 

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY

Thank you for this moment in time, ah, for every second that has led us to this time and place, Here and Now. 

Thank you for our experiencing unto realization that we must be utterly broken before we can realize our powerlessness. Only then have we ever sought the hand of God, our guide through life itself...His will, His way. 

Our deepest thank you to the God of our own understanding for ever lifting our understanding deeper.
  
Thank you.

LET GO AND LET GOD

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead. I bow my head. Thank you for her life, thank you that her Soul rests in peace.

This I know from my toenails up: If my self-determined worst fear can be a good thing, and it has so proven itself to be for me today, then this, too, can so be. 

Let it.

Thank you.  

ON TAKING NOTHING PERSONALLY

We must get over the idea, when fear comes niggling, that our overcoming it is the right thing to do, that  repeating the mantra by rote, we overcome it. Ah, but our need is to resist it not, to love it, to welcome it because we realize in that moment that this very fear is God in camouflage, and we can safely run toward Him. 

Making peace with our reasoning mind's fears does not remove fear...for which we become grateful. If it weren't for fear, dread, pain and suffering, who amongst us would grow spiritually? Would grow anything but fat, in all probability.

I first read it in a Rohr meditation, and I have come to believe it by experiencing it:  If we do not transform our pain, we will always transmit it.

I am often amazed when I look back at how long it takes to internalize (make our own) the wonderful spiritual gems of our Connectors. I suspect that's because I lived from my eyebrows up...by agreeing with what I read, I believed I got it! Comes our awakening...it takes as long as it takes after "getting it" to own it. Or, more to the point, for it to own us. 

Another reasoning mind awakening: Our inner pain and suffering is way too often caused by our relationships with others...with our most near and dear or just friendly acquaintances. 

I have found for us in our walking-around world, we must learn to take nothing personally. There. That's the short form to resist not, love and welcome when suffering the pain of an obsessive mind game of our own making.

It seems naught else will bring us to that hole in the wall where entry is based entirely on our willingness to forgive. 

Our hard lesson learning in taking nothing personally begins with our decision to be a forgiving person...to forgive in the first instance of resistance. That instance is another hidey-hole of God. 

It comes through grace when we realize our powerlessness over our own self-interest. Through our brokenness we accept that to continue responding in kind is simply interchanging negative energy...there is no God in that, only ego.

For me the hard part of the hard lesson is the many times I have hit that wall...turned around, gone back and taken another run at it all on my own. Accepting that wrong way as our right way goes against common sense. Hey! Grab the golden ring, we're heading in the right direction! 

We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong.  -- Fr Richard Rohr

Thank you.

OUR CERTITUDE IS IN UNCERTAINTY

This is the way. The way of uncertain future and faltering footsteps. It is My Way. . . .  "God Calling," September 17

It is an assurance such as that that gives us comfort today, that caused us pause on first read. If left unattended, our reasoning mind may still feel a tish nervous...fortunately our reasoning mind is not our  go-to today. 

Think about it...isn't it comforting to know that the way of uncertain future and faltering footsteps is the right way, spiritually? Because, face it, who amongst us isn't more than a little uncertain about the future? Who doesn't falter in our steps occasionally...and then more so? 

The great gettin' up morning is when we realize that uncertainty and faltering are just fear, and what turns us to God quicker than fear? Nothing! When we are blinded by that light, we know love as the only answer no matter what question or quandary the reasoning mind hunts down just to shy away from.

We will ever be stuck in our reasoning mind as long as we feel we need certitude. Consider this: Certitude, too, is the way of the Lord...ah, but only for the Lord.

Our certitude is in uncertainty...it is that uncertainty that jogs our self-centered memory. We recall our trust in our Father and are calmed that He has our back. We see that right this very minute God is taking care of our business, we need fret no more forever. 

We let the uncertainty roll and meet it with our Thank You prayer, loving and laughing.

Thank you.

OUT OF SELF INTO GOD

The fear of making a mistake is our major mistake. 

I believe the mystics and the spiritual leaders when they say that there is a "spark of the divine" within each of us, that we must make contact with that divine spark.

Here's the thing...I don't think we can make contact with anything in the divine realm by shear force of will or want to. Want to helps, will doesn't. 

Another paradox alert: It is our reasoning mind that steers us away from making a mistake...it is our reasoning mind that steers us toward making a mistake on purpose. The self-determined objective of both being to "get" that divine spark...never acknowledging, never recognizing that it is not up to us. 

Spiritually, our self-determined objectives always oppose the will of God. If it is self-determined, it is not the perfect objective which is of God even when it is a good and right objective. Mainly because self-determined is our will, our way; God's will and way we can't even conjure up on our own. 

When we pray to get, we are into self; when we pray Thank You, we are into Self. Which would explain Meister Eckhart's If the only prayer you pray in your life is thank you, that would suffice. 

Thank you.

RESISTANCE...LOOSE IT AND LET IT GO

Despite the countless and diverse ways we live our lives, every life is a spiritual path, and all life has a spiritual agenda. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation"

We must make a decision to be a spiritual seeker, and it matters not if it is a conscious or unconscious decision. It is very often only in looking back that we recognize the time and the circumstances...the when and why...of making our decision. 

When we make that decision, we surrender. That is, over time, over time, over time, we give up all our good ideas of how our being a spiritual seeker will and must look. 

We are never adequately prepared for the bumpy road ahead. The bumpy road is a puzzlement...telling our reasoning mind to turn back, we've made a wrong turn, while our Father within, our spiritual need, moves us forward.

According to me, resistance becomes our tell. Resistance is born, bred, raised and persistently lives in the reasoning mind. Trying not to resist is resistance. Paradoxically, within our spiritual growth, quite often the more resistant we are, the nearer we are to our breakthrough. 

Spiritually, we must go beyond resistance to the love of our resistance...when we can hug it and kiss it and let it go.

There are no guarantees...if there could be a guarantee, I'm guessing it would be that we can never know beforehand the outcome of our Father's perfect will for us. 

We can only be sure that on awakening, we will love and laugh.

Thank you.

THANK YOU WILL EVER SUFFICE

I Zoomed with a group of friends yesterday, and we were discussing spiritual matters, prayer in particular. I was impressed at how many of us over the years have composed our own prayers...almost all of which were bits and pieces, phrases, etc., from other prayers.  

Interesting to me was that most of the prayers were longer and more convoluted than the original prayer. I pondered that and saw it as only right as we strive for still more spiritual growth. We add on until we make our U-bie and then begin subtracting. 

The touch-my-heart part, however, was that the prayer of each person had the goal, albeit unspoken, of our being a good and decent person, particularly a better person than we saw ourself to be. Ah, and for the single purpose of staying the course and helping another. 

My prayer  was gifted me some years ago when I read Meister Eckart who said, If the only prayer you ever say is 'Thank You' that will suffice. 

This morning's "Daily Meditation" of Fr Richard Rohr explains the completed truth of that Thank You prayer: [Spiritual growth] always comes through the wounding. What we do when faced with our deepest wounds determines whether there is authentic spirituality at work or not. If we seek to blame other people, accuse, attack, or even explain and make perfect, logical sense out of our wounds, there will be no further spiritual journey.

There. Just pray Thank You, that will suffice.

Thank you.

FREE TO DO IT WRONG...LOVING AND LAUGHING

The actual and ordinary life journey becomes itself the godly journey. We trust God to be in all things, even in sin and suffering. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," September 13, 2020

Comes the day when we make the decision that we want God's will done in our life more than we want our will done in our life. Willingly we begin to trudge, to crawl, to claw...to demand to know God's will. Until we see that our decision completed our commitment...that all our seeking is natural to release us from the binds of our reasoning mind. 

Only then can come the realization, which is acceptance, that all our answers are within. There it is...we have the key that opens the windows of our mind, the door to our heart, removes the bars to our Soul. 

As we seek deeper, we know the key for the bare beginning...the bare beginning to the rest of our life journey heading in a new direction: The Way forward seeking God's will rather than our own. And failing. And making our U-bie. And moving forward. And failing. 

The grace of gratitude reveals that with each step forward, with each fall, etc., we choose to love and laugh. For we know we are heading in the right direction, doing what we need to do...God's will. 

We have become that living, loving, laughing proof that we don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. Hallelujah! We're free at last.  

Just for today.

Thank you.

THE KEEPER OF THE GATES AJAR

Blinding flash of the obvious: To go to God for God is still a self-determined objective.

To seek God even for our best, most spiritual, reasons, remains a self-determined objective. We cannot not have God; we pray our thank you that we remember we already have God...then we focus on trusting that, on trusting God as we understand Him. 

It is by focusing on God as we understand Him right this very minute that we are opened to go to a  higher consciousness deeper. Our focus on God Now...not the security of God in the future...is the Keeper of the gates ajar.

Thank you.

MY JUDGMENTS ARE ON ME

I come again to my nemesis Gertrude. This one, this Gertrude, just irritates me on sight...I feel my Lucy With the Football tightening up when he walks into the room. 

I want to judge/snicker at his whining about his children not understanding him and the hard, hard life he has had...and I immediately think that his children have had a harder life just living with him. 

From my eyebrows up, I know that judgment is on my judgment. This, of course, is not new news to me...it's not pretty, but it's not new. 

In looking deeper within, I recognize this is part of the pattern I've been feeling, touching on in my journal...some of my "old" feelings making themselves felt again. (As has been said, they're not old if we're still using them.)

With that recognition, comes the solution to my problem thoughts: Most important was the discovery that all of my problems could be solved by spiritual principles. -- Anonymous

My primary principle, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, seeps into my mind, and I am comforted. I recall that this decision is not "made," then we get up and walk away, never to think of it again. We recommit to it as needed, sometimes daily, but we set no time limits...we trust our Father within and follow suit.

With that principle surfacing, comes a blinding flash of the obvious: We are not to overcome Trump and/or Trumpers...we are to welcome them with compassion in our head, heart and soul...for to self will compassion is to patronize. Clearly, the same goes for all my Gertrudes. There it is...problem solved. 

Now, to walk my solved problem, to welcome all with heartfelt compassion, requires me to spend some serious time with the God of my understanding for of myself, that ain't gonna happen. 

I love it...and laugh for I do spend serious time with God daily. I quiet my reasoning mind and listen for the still, small voice within which assures me that God has already solved my problem.

I can only know it by showing it; I can only show it by living it; I can only live it by recommitting to my primary principle as needed.

Thank you.

EXCHANGE THE EGOIC MIND FOR THE SPIRITUAL

Thinking creates the separate self, the ego self, the insecure self. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation, August 31, 2020 

We know thinking is as breathing...needed, in a word. 

I'm convinced it is our reliance on our thinking that forms the foundation for our attack mind. Ah, the attack mind. It gets short shrift in our personal how-to manuals...we're usually focused on getting to the good result rather than how the less-than good was born in us.

It is the denial of self, the egoic self, that is the stairway to Heaven within. When we make a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, the process of inner transition begins. 

It takes a long time...or it takes as long as it takes for each individual...to realize more fully each day the import of our decision. Training begins when we realize the need to tame our attack mind; then moves up when we willingly begin working with spiritual principles toward that end. 

"That end," the taming of our attack mind, we must remember is simply to get over ourself. According to me, attack thinking is nothing more nor less than self-pity mentally weaponized. 

To have traded the reasoning mind for the spiritual is to live comfortably without conscious effort giving over, giving up, giving in. 

That stairway to Heaven within is the Way...the right direction in which to climb each day, remembering always that when we made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, the process of inner transition had only begun. 

Ours is not only to trust but to rely in faith on the care of God doing for us through us the next right thing...in God's eyes. Then we will have a mind that has been exchanged, and we will know the peace that passes understanding. 

Thank you.

PRAISE THE DETOURS WE TAKE

The hardest thing spiritual growth asks of us is that we change our mind...or, more to the point, we exchange our mind. Give back our material mindset in exchange for the spiritual. Loose it and let it go. 

This is especially true in personal relationships...and what else forms our world but personal relationships? It seems there is ever someone who can and will torment us. The gold and the mire both together: Our tormentor is our angel in disguise.  

Without our angel in disguise, how would we learn that a nonviolent response is ever the spiritual way...equally important, how to nonviolently respond. Yet another level to our learning: Keeping our spiritual growth green requires tending daily...the lesson itself grows us. 

When we realize our reasoning mind is our block, our mind has been exchanged. We begin to see through God's eyes. We now understand, say, ask and it shall be given to you. Rarely to our reasoning mind does our ask result in it being given to us. Looking through God's eyes...we see; we come to believe.

There are many paths open to still more spiritual growth. There is agree with your adversary quickly. Or, when (not if) our toes are stepped on, seemingly without provocation, invariably we will  find we have made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. Or, get over yourself. 

All roads lead to God...it is the detours we take that determine our willingness to grow spiritually.

  

Thank you.

TAKE NOTHING PERSONALLY...RESIST NOT

I am coming to see nonresistance as love, simply love. Or, no, I've probably got that backwards. I need to know love as nonresistance. 

In my walking-around world, nonresistance has become my stretch for the golden ring, love. Or, specifically, learning how to stretch for that golden ring.

In general, life is about meeting and greeting...that's how relationships begin to be built. There are those I hear, some I don't; some I am willing to listen more closely to, others, no. And vice versa. The vice versa is the most important part of the stretch, which, after all, is still more spiritual growth.

In that regard, first light brings us to understand our need to depersonalize...to take nothing personally. 

Nonresistance is staying without attachment, no matter our momentary feeling, flattered or offended. How else can we learn how not to take others' words and/or actions personally? It is our personal reaction that attaches us...all the while our reasoning mind insists that a personal reaction is simply the human condition. We must go beyond reason to love.

Nonresistance allows us to refocus away from our reaction toward our spiritual need...to understand the other as ourself. The other is never the root problem...we are, and we are our only problem. The other is our angel. Ah, there's our greening lesson. Just keeping our lips shut in the face of un-love works, but, face it, Scotch tape would work as well. 

What you see is always yourself. 

That surely requires some fine tuning for there will ever be those we cannot hear just as there are those who cannot hear us. I just put them in the "too soon met" category. Nonresistance can also be walking away. Shake the dust off your feet and move on.

These are the times that prove our only need is for our mind to be centered in God. Deciding who we stay with, who we move on from is not for the reasoning mind, nor for the merely spiritually inclined. To take nothing personally, we go to God for God and that is all.

Thank you. 

ON COMING TO FIRST LIGHT

When making our transition from the primarily material mindset deeper into the spiritual, recognizing unto realizing that making mistakes is the accepted way to learn is a hard, hard lesson. Talk about counterintuitive...which is a hefty word for spitting in the face of reason.

Learning a specific spiritual lesson...we have quit talking it, started walking it...requires an inner (silent) commitment to keep on keeping on. At some point, and we know not when, the burden is lifted, and we are freed from "trying." 

Impatience is the bane, of course. Face it, we can't nail down "at some point," as in when, specifically.

Both the danger and the comfort is that we feel secure resting in the once-new-to-us message of the Sermon...in short, give over, give up, give in. The danger is our spiritual lesson has become rote...which, face it, is also the comfort. It has transmuted into a self-determined objective. We may, but seldom do, loose it and let it go.

Our reasoning mind, now in charge, relies on common sense which is steeped in self-protection so resists change as chancy, and continues to hold to our proven security. Thus we cannot see that we are back to relying on our own dreaded self-determined objectives.

We are born into the material world with the reasoning mind intact...in charge so to speak. The material mind is ever with us; spirituality we must seek. Spiritual growth requires daily discipline so that we may grow deeper...we seek to change, an alien concept to the reasoning mind.

We are given the gift of understanding...we are at first light. We see that the struggle is not ours, it is God's. Our singular focus is centered in believing that. Trusting that. Living that. For it is true.

 ...the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. -- John 14:10

Thank you.

LIVE THE QUESTIONS, 2

[This is a reprint of my post of July 29, 2012.]

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

Thank you.

I SHALL NOT WANT...TODAY

Through meditation [like Centering Prayer] it gradually becomes ingrained in us that “losing one’s life,” regardless of the action that may ultimately be required of us in the outer world, entails first and foremost a passage from our ordinary awareness to our spiritual one, because only at this deeper level of non-fearbased, wholistic perception will we be able to understand what is actually required of us. -- Cynthia Bourgeault

The exchanging of our mind, from material to spiritual, is a process that we walk through seldom with clear, or any, recognition. 

In looking back, we realize a change usually from someone else pointing it out. It's then...and we often feel a tish baffled...that acceptance begins to take root. (However, if we're the only one seeing the change, count on it, ego is strutting its stuff.)   

Our exchanged mind begins with the opening of our heart center: 

• We see those first drawn to us to learn, teaching us today. 
• We see those we were drawn to as our teachers sometimes being taught by us today. 
• We lose, we find...we know them as the same, of God, today,
• We let go a beloved with sadness but no regrets today. 
• We accept an un-beloved with the grace of gratitude today. 
• We shall not want...we seek to give today.

We are left stunned. Befuddled. Enchanted. But not in doubt.  

I'm taking this for my greening process. Later, no doubt, I'll know it for other, but for today...close enough.

Thank you.

ON OUR EVOLVING THOUGHTS...TOWARD LOVE

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.

The word in that sentence that today I focus on is "evolve" since the egoic mind does  not naturally lend itself to learning how to...or working toward...what? ah, get over itself. 

It takes conscious effort to make time each day to meditate...but once we make ourself available, conscious effort is for naught. We cease trying to get out of our mental and into our spiritual...we cease trying. Period.

To the reasoning mind, convincing ourself how we are thinking may be our problem begs analyzing. Which is more evidence that changing our mind is the hardest thing life will ever ask of us.

Face it, the reasoning mind is our security blanket. As we begin our journey in discerning the spiritual way as preferable to the material way, we are probably too aware of our necessary next step...to loose it and let it go. The "it" being our reliance on our security blanket.

It is a scary lesson learning that our reasoning thoughts are heading us to our necessary crash-and-burn. But not until we know nothing, and we know we know nothing, do we find there in the ashes our Phoenix rising. 

Our thoughts are evolving. Within us, love is in the process of being depersonalized. In our walking-around world, we know snarks, snubs and sneers no more...we are going beyond reason to love. 

Most especially, we can now think, work and live for a higher purpose...toward being one with those making MLK's prophetic words come true.

Thank you.

FORGIVENESS AS A FIRST CHOICE

Blinding flash of the obvious: 'The kingdom of heaven' is God consciousness.

Our consciousness is raised through meditation or contemplation out of the self-determined objective state, the egoic mind, into an ever higher consciousness. Every day we make ourself available for we never know the day or hour when we are moved up deeper into God consciousness.

It is our raised consciousness that cements the decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God. That decision is not made just by saying, praying, wanting...and they all matter...it is our daily mental exercise of detachment that seals it.

We make our mind available to the God of our own understanding daily and many times daily. God is already perfected within us, He knows our needs. We need to clear our mind of self to hear, to see, to Be. It is through our daily availability that we are awakened.

Now our decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God is ours to live...and with practice we do so live. Practicing every day.

Now we can make a decision to be a forgiving person...and know forgiveness as a first choice. We no longer strain to give over, give up, give in...we forgive.

Now we sing with confidence, All our troubles, Lord, soon be over.

Thank you.

ON LIVING IN THE GIVING STATE OF MIND

A couple flashes came to me this morning. First: To experience our Spark of the Divine we will need to foul up royally...and then came: Our ticket to Heaven is someone else getting credit for our work and getting rewarded for it, leaving us unnoticed...unknown, unrewarded...in this world. 

In other words, to foul up royally in order to experience our Spark of the Divine is to remain ego-centered. That is, we stay in the "get" state of mind...wanting to get rewarded, get noticed...envied!...to be special by being separate. The ego-state of mind is to forget the "give" state of mind where, by grace and by God, we live to give over, give up, give in.

We are told that there is the Spark of Divine in everyone, everywhere. Like God, it is not available on demand, it is wholly gifted to the washed and the unwashed alike. If not in this lifetime, maybe the next, I'm guessing. 

It is worth the wait.

Thank you.

SEEK TO LOVE...THE ONLY SAFETY

Just this morning, in my mental meanderings, I saw what a dear friend needed to do to fix herself, and I immediately started figuring how I could tell her...in a loving and spiritual manner, I need not say.

Comes now a bolt of light: What I am seeing as my friend's problem is exactly mine, and my fix for her fits me to a T...and I know not how to do it. 

Double bolt: I know not how to do it because I have used it for my CYA all my adult life...it justifies my me. Holy moley.  

God loves me so much that He immediately gifted me with these two thoughts: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings, and the Father abiding in me does the work. 

I know from experience that my humble ask is my readiness to detach from my self-determined objective of what needs be done. That is the door opener for my Father's work to move me into the action we need to take. The timetable is His, the willingness is mine.

We often hear that we know it is God's will when it goes smoothly, we know it's our will when it does not. That may be true to the reasoning mind, not so much spiritually. Our interpretation tells the tale...going smoothly may be our denial, our avoidance of the ego-puncturing stuff. Not going smoothly may be the necessary crash-and-burn that hurts as it is happening. 

As Rohr wrote this morning: It [our egoic self] is what we know and all we know. To move beyond it will always feel like losing or dying. 

That is precisely what we are feeling when we are detaching from our shortcomings...when the Father within is doing His work. Face it, detaching from our shortcomings is changing our mind...from reasoning to spiritual...from "mine" to "Thine." 

Until we are entirely ready to exchange our will for God's will, we will feel like we are "doing it wrong."

Go beyond reason to love...it is the only safety. -- Thaddeus Golas, "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment"

Thank you.