GO BEYOND REASON...RESIST NOT EVIL

The Sermon on the Mount warns us to beware of false prophets...and as I studied that this morning, I flashed that my false prophet is a self-determined objective. Those objectives, driven by ego, have an underneath-it-all reason for being which, face it, is to get over on, get back at, set 'em straight. In a word...resist.

No wonder my Father showed me early on that resist not evil was to be my life's guideline...and for sure it has been. How else could my unfair, unjust, not right IRS experience become my thank you, Father, spiritual experience? Which it is today.

According to me, the purpose of the Sermon is for us to seek for the underlying message beneath the strictures laid out. To narrow our search considerably, here's a hint...the underlying message is I am the source of all my woes which necessarily includes any current problem. In short, start digging...within.

The Sermon itself is fairly short, not sweet, seemingly rigid, righteous and right...as in, among others, if someone slaps you upside the head, turn the other cheek and if someone steals your cloak, run after them and give them your coat and, of course, resist not evil.

Does any of those make a lick of sense to our reasoning mind? No!...which is spiritual growth's soft assurance that we need to change our mind. In preparation for the essential exchange of our mind which at the start of our study we know naught of.

The exchange comes slowly and is entirely dependent on our reliance on our Father. It is our Father within who relieves us of our reasoning mind's rigid surety...i.e., fear...in exchange for our spiritual mind's trust in an unseeable, untouchable...unprovable!...God. 

That God which is present by our presence when we go beyond reason to love. Or, resist not evil.

Thank you.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES AND GOD'S WILL

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: Fear not our snarky thoughts for they are leading us to God...that's their purpose. [I note in my "God Calling" that I've been purposefully watching my thoughts since 2003 yet just yesterday I wrote that I have just begun...this kiddygarten dark night of my soul is paying off...if I pay attention.]

Which thoughts cause me to ponder: When we humbling ask to be relieved of a defect of character, doesn't it often feel as if that very defect grows larger, comes on stronger? 

What if that's not a feeling, but a fact? 

I suspect that is the nut of still more spiritual growth...the stay-the-course core. The road becomes narrower, the way harder when we seek to be stripped of our egoic mind, the home of our self-determined objectives.

To realize the limits to our reasoning mind, we must experience those limits. The imaginable effects of praying for a defect to be lifted lies in the word lifted. That's as far as ego finds it necessary to go...lift it and be done is ego's prayer. 

Ah, but our spiritual growth is on the job. First, it clarifies how our self-driven defect harms not only ourself but unintentionally hurts innocent others; and second, it proves how often the opposite of our want and our will is our need or God's will.

How else but by fully experiencing can we realize the unintended consequences that our defect causes? How else can we be entirely ready to have it lifted by grace and by God?

With complete trust in our spiritual growth, we fear not the ego-pain the lifting of our defects of character seems to bring. That is leading us to God, thus fulfilling its sole purpose. 

God loves us so much.

Thank you.

WE WILL KNOW PAIN...IF WE'RE DOING IT RIGHT

The gift awaiting us in [Keating's] poems is their powerful reaffirmation that the access route to all new beginning comes by leaning into the diminishment, stripping, and emptiness. Not by trying to distract ourselves, anesthetize ourselves, or use our spiritual tool kit to re-establish the status quo. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 29, 2020 

Everyday is a new beginning. We are seldom aware of it as such, more often than not only when our spiritual equilibrium has been shaken. Which seems to be my path now. Thomas Keating's words bring me comfort bordering on solace...especially the reaffirmation that the route out is not by avoidance but by leaning in. 

For no known reason, sometime back I started blessing my thoughts by consciously turning them over to God to do with them and build of them as he willed. Interestingly, they have recently begun coming at warp speed, and they are dark...all thought-memories of me back in the day, my long-ago rues, regrets and remorses now strutting their stuff across my mind.

I am beyond grateful that I have the gift of gratitude, and although I am not swift on the uptake, the lag time is shorter, so when I get to my thank you, I can move on. Sometimes simply relieved, often  grateful if only to be moving on, more often with a teeny-tiny glimmer of light leading me forward.

Here are two facts, the truth of which I can and do attest to based on my own personal experience: 

It is a spiritual axiom that whenever we are upset, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. Then, my favorite:  When our toes get stepped on, seemingly without provocation, invariably we find that we have made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt.

The surprising gift in realizing the truth in those facts and Keating's words is they all lead to the same source of our upset...our own self. I am the source of all my woes.

With that inner-knowing, we accept our way now is going to offer up pain...but only if we're doing it right.

Thank you.

STILL MORE SPIRITUAL GROWTH LEADS

Blinding flash of the obvious: The wonder of still more spiritual growth: It is not ours to grow, it grows us. 

That BFO clears my cluttered thinking...I realize  that once we have made the decision and committed ourself to still more spiritual growth, we change within. Our want for our self-determined justice is upended, and seemingly on their own our thoughts no longer feel resisting, but welcoming...from closed to opened.

We are now seeking to understand rather than to be understood.

But wait, there's more! After my quiet time, I'm reading Rohr's "Daily Meditation," and there spelled out is my spiritual growth bringing home the bacon: If we try to move without being attuned to the music of God and our True Self, what we do will not be beautiful, helpful, or possibly even worth doing. 

There it is...a self-determined objective defined with no justifier, qualifier or fancy-schmancy...and a self-determined objective was the furthest thought from my reasoning mind. Ah, but clearly spiritual growth knew my need. 

Trust our Father within...He needs no prayer but thank you for our needs are already met. 

Thank you.

ASK NOT, GIVE THANKS, BE AT PEACE

The ways of still more spiritual growth are many, varied to the point of contradictory, inevitably requiring our reliance on the patience within us. That patience which we would rather pray for than actually use already.

It is a puzzlement...every person, every book, every play, every happening...good and not so much...that is drawn to us, to whom we are drawn...often we wonder why? The for sure thing...each is for our benefit. 

Thus begins not just the changing of our mind, but the exchanging of our mind. From the material view of life up deeper to the spiritual view.

One lesson that will never cease to grow us deeper: That which or whom we are resisting is here for our benefit. Welcome them...but with love or nonresistance as our guide. To welcome is to resist not, and that simply requires an open mind. 

An open mind is the open Sesame to the love which is in our heart, our Soul, and is the Higher Power for Good within. When only love is flowing out, the invitation to enter is irresistible to the seeker be it animate or inanimate. There. We are well along our journey of going beyond reason to love.

Ask not, give thanks, be at peace. Which, according to me, can only be achieved through total reliance on a Higher Power, our Father within.

Thank you. 

TO WALK THROUGH, RESIST NOT

Blinding flash of the obvious:  He prepares a place before me in the presence of my enemies...He prepares the place, it is he who is fully responsible. Mine is to let him walk me through whatever comes...and in the presence of my enemies. To walk through is to resist not. 

My Vow of Poverty -  to give up my egoic want to be the 'breach mender' for that is the want for glory in disguise.

I'll say this, God does not mess around. I got a whole new take on my vow this weekend. First, God probably does not give us a to-do list and watch us flounder and flail in our attempts to do it. Which has been my experience since the vow came to me...trying with a will to make it work.

We know from our own experience based on the words of spiritual teachers, mystics and saints, that God completes that which is given us to do...that He goes before us to make the crooked places straight. Since our egoic mind is ever with us, knowing that and doing that are two entirely different things. Which, face it, is the nature of still more spiritual growth.

I am grateful that I have learned the gift in when (not if) wrong, promptly admit it. Without that as my go-to, no doubt I would be continuing to natter about everybody but me being wrong. 

I See Me and realize that the whole lot of us are heading down that wrong road again; that, personally, I needed to make a U-bie p.d.q. I also needed to find the sliver of gold here...and there is was: My vow showed itself as a self-determined objective. 

Yet without that vow I doubt I would have so immediately recognized the eye-opener of my reaction as the most important part to me. The others I now know to be angels in my life for they surely helped dispel my vow as useful to me.  

So to button it down: My vow of poverty...ego on the hoof. Conceived, born and bred by my self-determined objective which sounded too pretty to just let go of. But aren't they all? 

God loves me so much...you, too, and all my Gertrudes!

Thank you.

PERSONAL THOUGHTS AND GO-TO QUOTES

Some personal thoughts and go-to quotes of others, including the Bible (which I have no real experience with so I only quote what I've heard and agree with):

When a proud man hears another praised, he thinks himself injured. -- English proverb

If it is true, as Rohr says, that we get to God by doing it wrong rather than by doing it right, then Trump in a hundred years may well be remembered as a saint. 

Where people differ from you and aren't shy about letting you know it, don't run away. Move closer to them.-- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," October 1

You do not need to believe in God to be a good and decent person...but until I did, I wasn't. 

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. -- Meister Eckhart

According to me, attack thinking is nothing more nor less than self-pity weaponized. 

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

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. -- Gloria Steinem 

Loose it and let it go. -- John 11:44

Go beyond reason to love. --  "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment," by Thaddeus Golas

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. -- William James

A man had not yet given up everything for God as long as he held on to the moneybag of his own opinions. -- St Francis

Thank you.

EVERYTHING SHOWS ITSELF IN DISGUISE

Once our reasoning mind has been exchanged  for the spiritual, it is interesting to note how often we are given the opportunity to do the new.  

My opportunity to trust the new: I go to the funeral of a beloved friend today. I go with trepidation for I am a crier, and it is hard to mentally thank God for his will being done while my fear is saying just don't let it be me making like a banshee. 

In the meantime, I prepare: I have long believed in the spiritual power of paradox where everything shows itself to be a disguise: weakness is really strength, wisdom is really foolishness, death is really life, matter is really spirit, religion is often slavery, and sin itself is actually the trapdoor into salvation. (Description from Fr Richard Rohr's 12/14/13 lesson on the mirror vision of Saint Paul.)

Admittedly, that is light years from my walking-around world today, but there it is...my spiritual goal. 

When it came to me that the Sermon on the Mount can be lived comfortably (without conscious will or gritted teeth) only by knowing everything shows itself to be a disguise, was I opened to its truth. 

Probably everyone has experienced the phenomenon of the proverbial blessing in disguise...as in, something we feared happening, happens and turns out to be our pearl beyond price. We tend to think of that as a one-shot deal...a coincidence. 

The question is: Why is a coincidence easier to hold to than is a Power for Good intervening in our life in our benefit? 

The answer is not easily assessible since it is not our reasoning mind's question. We must go beyond reason...to love. 

So I go to pay my respects for my beloved friend's life. I mentally hug her and kiss her and let her go...with love and possibly tears. Your call, God, knock yourself out. 

Thank you.

FROM SELF-DIRECTED TO GOD-DIRECTED

There will be times when we have something we consider important, and we say it...and it is not only not heard, it is misheard, quoted incorrectly and dismissed as bunk. 

There it is,  our golden opportunity to use what is to me the most important sentence in the Prayer of Saint Francis: Grant that I may seek to understand rather than seek to be understood. 

We pray our thank you, and we turn our mind away from its natural inclination to repeat what we said, louder. Face it, this will get neither their attention nor their agreement. 

We must needs learn as quickly as our ego allows to loose it and let it go for our need is to go directly to our exchanged mind, that is, away from self-determined into God-directed. 

We gentle our thoughts and refocus on the other, on understanding that they are hearing what they want to hear...the reason why makes no nevermind to us. We cannot change another much less their wants; we can, however, with our gentled thoughts, hug them and kiss them, and let them go.

Whosoever shall not hear your words, shake the dust off your feet and move on. -- Matthew 10:14

Thank you.

TO SHOW CIVILITY IS GOD AT WORK

Civility. My thoughts keep coming back to civility.

Mentally righting all the "sins of the world" is where all wars start, according to me...mentally being the key word. It was a wake-up to me when I recognized that my attack mind would go for the kill before the problem was ever clearly present.

With that passing thought came the word "civility."  Civility, politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech. 

Civility, natural civility in thought, word and deed, cannot not be the answer, but, face it, individually we have a whole lot of rough, albeit self-willed, road to get over before we're walking that answer. 

To get over our own self must needs be the priority in living the still more spiritual growth we seek so diligently...and fail at fairly consistently. 

Paradox alert! It is our failures that prove our diligence...to quote "God Calling," That is in itself a sign of progress. What else would humble us enough to turn us to God...repeatedly.

Boiled right down to the bone, the essence of spiritual growth is to get over ourself. The baby step toward getting over ourself is civility. Exhibiting courtesy. Showing care and concern for others. I maintain that cannot be done by self-will alone...showing care and concern maybe we can, but not consistently. And showing it is not living it. 

It can be done, and happily, by living a turned-over life. A life turned over to the care and concern of God, that Force for naught but good within us all. 

Flash: Use it or lose it. Live that which we believe we believe, or,,,quitcherbitchin and trust Lucy With the Football. 

Shortcomings you had hardly recognized or at least for which you had had no sense of sorrow, now cause you trouble and dismay. Courage. That is in itself a sign of progress. -- "God Calling," June 4

Thank you.

GIVE IT UP FOR LAUGHTER

Meditation. Contemplation. Detachment. Silence.  

It seems so many things are coming at us now...things we need to learn, relearn, do, be. For instance, the art of silence...not just keeping the lips together no matter what, Super Glue could do that, and not holding the "good" thought for X amount of time, that's still self-directed. It's the whole of it, all shucked down to Being...In Silence.

It is self-acceptance that saves me when I feel overwhelmed by the spiritual search...or, I am on the verge of going into my poor, pitiful, put-upon me mode. When meditation, contemplation, detachment and silence are just a bunch of pretty words to me, I hear the God of my understanding whisper, And there's nothing wrong with that.

There. That's the art of self-acceptance. We cannot deal it to ourself, we can only be grateful when we're dealt it. 

We feel the inner security, the gutbucket knowing, that love and laughter are ours, always there, our safety net, our golden gifts of grace...and we realize, once again, we're taking ourself too seriously. 

Give it up for laughter. And love.

Thank you.

DETACHMENT EQUATES TO FREEDOM

In my continuing study for my personal "vow of poverty," I'm coming to understand that detachment...learning the art of detachment...is the invaluable and never-ending lesson of a spiritually based life. Face it, what other reason would there by for a voluntary vow of poverty than for still more spiritual growth? 

The following paraphrases several different sources whose names, unfortunately, I've lost: Our journey begins with our believing it is money or material goods that we must deny ourself. Ah, but we come to understand that what possesses us is greater than the touchables we own. It is that which owns us, all that possesses our minds and hearts, our attachments and compulsions, that we must hug and kiss and let go. 

Desert ascetics called this process of moving toward inner freedom detachment. Detachment allows for greater direct experience of the Divine Presence as the seeker is attached to fewer distractions.

Detachment is nonresistance...just as impersonal love is nonresistance. Resist not evil simplified: Everything we resist is evil to the egoic mind...same as, when you're a hammer, everything is a nail.

It is a wake-up call to my innards just how many attachments I mentally own. The ribbon running through them seems to lead to my attack mind. 

The good news is that I rarely follow the dictates of my attack mind...whether it is spiritual growth or old age makes no nevermind, Since I've learned restraint of tongue and pen, I do better...I am not as nasty as I want to be. 

However, my vow of poverty, giving up an attachment to an involuntary want disguised as a need, is going to take God, all my angels, and my hands off...or my mind stilled more like. 

God can and will when, not if, sought.

Thank you.

OUR WAY INTO THE NEW BEGINNING

Interesting times. Interesting coming from the unknowns of this pandemic. I find myself being turned back to my earliest lessons...from whence came my spiritual primer.

In my spiritual primer everything shows itself to be a disguise: weakness is really strength, wisdom is really foolishness, death is really life, matter is really spirit, religion is often slavery, and sin itself is actually the trapdoor into salvation. [From a description of Saint Paul's teachings of mirror vision.] 

My spiritual primer is based entirely on my crash-and-burn experience, i.e., the worst thing that could ever happen to me has shown itself to be my gift of God and grace, and I can never be grateful enough.

For a short while now, I have been more or less observing the birth of interesting mental gyrations in me...coming as rues, regrets and remorses.  Remorses are often the invite to my mental gyrations but since they are the primer that taught me the grace of gratitude, I resist them not today. 

In these times that are so trying to the reasoning mind, I'm mentally finding overlooked defects, little offshoots of the biggies that were healed long ago. I choose to believe (and who's to say me nay?) the twinges I'm feeling are from God's tweezers  plucking out those teeny-tinys, and my ego, Lucy With the Football, is determined to fix by plucking them out with pliers. And there it is, the birth of still more rues, regrets and remorses, i.e., the pain. 

I find my peace in a segment from Rohr's "Daily Meditation" today by Cynthia Bourgeault: However far any one of us is destined to travel on this wilderness journey, learning to lean into the diminishment, to live with paradox and unknowing, and to celebrate the creativity without dissociating from the pain are all vital survival skills as we humans collectively feel our way into the new beginning.

Thank you.

IT CANNOT GET BETTER THAN THAT

You do not need to believe in God to be a good and decent person. Those words were spoken to me by a friendly atheist I met nearly 50 years ago; he opened my mind to the nature of spirituality, i.e., it fits all.

Again this morning I recall those words that one does not need to believe in God to be a good and decent person, and I know again that until I did, I wasn't. 

I'm toying with the idea that that may be the source of our country's ills and woes today. Few there be  who from their hearts are singularly good and decent persons or know the need to be.

Our country is us...U.S. It is our individual need to be good and decent persons, not just for ourself but for our country. Then the individual I and our country again can and will know walking-around grace.

According to me, until we individuals believe in a Higher Power...indeed, until we are living for the benefit of others being as primary to us as our own benefit already is, we are living for me, myself and i. There is no lasting peace in a self-driven life for it does not allow for the realization of impersonal love...only self or personal love.

In looking back, we see the simplicity: We make the decision to in effect quit trying to be a good and decent person all on our own...because we fail so consistently...and begin our search for spiritual growth. That's called turning our will and our life over to the care of God. 

There. We have found our impersonal love, God, who knows naught but Love. And Laughter.

Thank you. 

THE REMORSES...GOD'S SLIVER OF GOLD

As long as we are preoccupied with the sins of 'the flesh,' those things we’ve done, said, and gotten wrong over the course of our lives, we will never find the courage to face the larger problems of 'the world.' -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 17, 2020

To paraphrase Rohr, before we try to think we can repair the world with love and laughter, we must fully recognize and surrender to this foundational reality: There is the darkness of evil in this world. 

Further, humans often end up doing evil by thinking they can and must eliminate all evil, instead of holding it, suffering it themselves, and learning from it. 

And there it is, the nut of the matter...there is evil in my own world, and instead of trying to wish it away, I am to hold it, suffer it and learn from it. 

To strip that evil down to its bare bones, evil to me is the remorses I suffer over my own misdeeds. For it is the remorses that stoke my belief that I am separate from God. 

I am grateful from my toenails up that I was blessed early on with the need to recognize my defects, then admit and atone for them...the essentials if we want and expect to live a life happy, joyous and free of me. All of which prepares me daily for the ongoing "rest of the story."

Holding and suffering unto learning from the pain of my remorses is the dreaded and the blessed next step. 

And here comes the pandemic to aid my still more spiritual growth. Within the isolation of this pandemic, I am experiencing both rues, regrets and remorses for the same-old-same-old and a feeling of comfort in going-nowhere-doing-nothing that is alarming...or, worse, should be.

Blinding flash of the obvious: My rues, regrets and remorses that I've prayed for God to lift up, out and away from me have ever been necessary...they built the bridge to surrender. From holding them, to suffering them, to learning from them, to forgiving love.

This ongoing discomfort that I've been feeling is my sliver of gold, a.k.a., God's process lifting my remorses up and out into the light for me to see. To hold. To suffer unto surrender. Into the forgiving love that passes on to others in their own darkness. 

Thank you.

THE PURITY OF GOD'S WILL AND WAY

As all reform is from within out, you will always find the outward has improved too. To do this is to release the imprisoned God-Power within you. That Power, once operative, will immediately perform miracles. -- "God Calling," October 16

Trying to be a better person by showing better, by doing the pretty, is the old lipstick on a pig routine. It changes nothing but the appearance which is easily seen through and resisted all the more for the phoniness of it. Which breeds new self-destroying behaviors.

One of our earliest lessons, the forever-true-but-easily-forgotten lesson, is: We are the source of all our woes...without fail. As we act, we receive; as we give, we get. 

When we are relying on our own sense of time, God and/or justice may ever move forward, resisting naught, but the overcoming takes way too long. What we ignore is that living for "them to get theirs," is living in the self-inflicted wounds of our own judgments...anger, self-pity, hate and worse.

We have learned that spiritual principles can solve all of our problems. Relying on our reasoning mind, we see the trouble with spiritual principles as taking too long to get to the solution...and then it's seldom the right one. So we must reach higher, beyond reason.

We are lifted into the spiritual taught by the Sermon; i.e., to agree with our adversary quickly, to turn the other cheek, to resist not evil.  To do this is to release the imprisoned God-Power within you. 

Our lifetime message is that we must go against our own wants which to the egoic mind will always appear as needs. The difference between the egoic mind and the spiritual is the difference between a self-determined objective and the perfect objective which is of God.

The perfect objective which is of God is all about mentally, physically, spiritually giving over, giving up and giving in...for the purity of God's will and way, love and laughter.

Thank you.

ON LOOKING BACK...POSITIVELY

Here's the positive side of looking back. It is in looking back that we can see more clearly our life's journey. I recognize that my life began when I was in my 30s when I made the radical decision to return my free will to my Father within in exchange for His will. 

Today, I see life as the proverbial long and winding road, and that we do come to the also proverbial fork in life's road. I see one branch of the fork as spiritually formed with the other all about self-will. 

Since all roads lead to God, neither branch is wrong...in the long run, so to speak. Ah, but the long run is our life, the choice we make here forms the peace or lack thereof we get and then give in our life. That is, if we are ever to know God aright. [To be clean, I did not for a minute realize that at the time. It is in looking back....]

The good news is the choice we make, the branch we take, being right for us in the moment, gives us many opportunities on our journey to change our mind. With that, we realized we were put on the spiritual path to willingly seek still more spiritual growth to pass on to others. 

Slowly our minds changed, upgraded actually...and one day we saw our mistakes...our rues, regrets and remorses...were in truth our pearl beyond price. Each priceless for it is the point of identity we share with others as we walk together on our co-journey of life.

Our minds have not just been changed, but exchanged...relying on our reasoning mind no longer, trusting a higher dimension now, daily we are taken deeper to our Father within.

We go beyond reason to love.

Thank you.

GUTBUCKET GRATITUDE

See, My children, that even in distress, the first step is Praise. Before you cry in your distress, bless the Lord, even when troubles seem to overwhelm you. -- "God Calling," October 11

Praise...my comfort...my "amazing grace" if you will...praise, i.e., thank you.

It seems we begin our rocky road to belief wanting magic. We go to God looking out there...seeking something magical to take away that which we are reasonably fearing in the moment or dreading for the future...and we say "Please." 

Thus begins our journey of learning the art of detachment...of loose it and let it go, of go beyond reason to love. Of the necessity for spiritual insight versus personal outlook.

To go beyond reason (our reasoning mind) to love (nonresistance) is to go beyond please to thank you...from believing we have a need that our Father knows naught of, to acknowledging that we have no need that our Father has not already met. We can comfortably feel grateful.

Once we experience the power of thank you, our entire belief system upgrades. Our rational vision sees lack, our grateful eye sees plenty...or a sliver of gold at any rate. Then slowly through the grace of gratitude, our circumstances change, and we are living in the peace of plenty, a.k.a., enough. 

If the only prayer you ever say is 'Thank You,' that will suffice.  -- Meister Eckart  

Thank you.

Sidebar: Lest anyone thinks this is all "pie in the sky"...or I read it somewhere so I'm guessing it's true...No. This is entirely from my own experience. My actual IRS involvement is now my spiritual experience for which I am gutbucket grateful...top that, reasoning mind!

TO BELIEVE, BEGIN TO BELIEVE

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences. -- William James 

And there it is. God. The evidence for which, the proof of the puddin', is comfortably parked right there within us, waiting for the quiet word to flow free.  

The quiet word, apparently, is Believe. 

To get there, to get to belief, is the Mount Everest of spirituality for we must get over our own self...our Mount Everest. And we can't do that by thinking, pondering, trying...that just wraps us tighter within our own grip. 

To get over our own self, we must go beyond our reasoning mind which is not a personal capability, or talent if you will. To get over our own self, we must get over our own self. 

That sentence alone is enough to make an atheist out of an impatient person. 

Relying on my own experience, I came to believe in God out of nothing but necessity...no where else to go no one else to turn to broken helpless hopeless all alone and out of ideas, a.k.a., Gifted By Grace. 

Ah, but never knowing in the moment, incapable of realizing right then...that I'd just been given the pearl of great price, the gold ring, the secret word...Believe. And it came from within...my answer, which felt like mud in my face, came from within. Having no other choice, I went with it, and have lived without rues, regrets and remorses ever since. An oh, rats! every once in a while but no true remorses. 

James Williams' "evidence" reminds me of Paula D'Arcy's statement, God comes to you disguised as your life. 

All we must needs do is believe...or, get over our own self.

Thank you.

GRANT WHAT THOU WILL

We must move to the laboratory where all such radical change can occur—inside of our very mind, heart, and the cells of our body....It gives us an inner sense of divine union so we can do the needed works of justice with peace, enduring passion, and insofar as possible, personal invisibility.  -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation"

I am fascinated with the ancient people, the desert ascetics, the saints who knew...and lived...detachment as the way to the Divine Spark, the Father within. In my early years, and utterly un-God-consciously, detachment was my personal path...which I returned to almost without realizing it. 

In studying the life of Saint Francis, I learned how he lived a vow of poverty. Who's kidding whom,  living without a penny to bless myself with held less than no appeal to me...so I made myself available to any idea my Father or any of my angels might choose to impart for me to have such a vow that I could live by.

It has taken as long as it has taken, but whoa! Here came an incident that opened the door: Recently, I shared with my group about a personal experience but I did not share some face-saving parts of the story...so I gave the impression that I'd just weaseled a lot. Later, I found myself regretting that omission...as in, nattering to myself about how dumb I was. Came the 3:00 AM blinding flash, and I said right out loud, but I can take that as my 'vow of poverty.' 

There...the fruits of going to "the laboratory within our very mind, heart, and cells of our body...so we can do the needed work ...to gain insofar as possible, personal invisibility."

I know my vow of poverty now...personal invisibility. Now, the works of the Father can flow through without a hint of my fingerprints, echo of my voice, or desire for an "atta girl."

Lord, You have Your work cut out for me...thank You. 

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt.  -- Saint Augustine

Thank you.

PRAISE THE THORN THAT PIERCES EGO

The paradox, the conundrum, the puzzler: There is ever some irritating person(s) who becomes our angel in disguise. Apparently, that irritating person must become not just an irritant but a veritable poisoner of our reasoning mind before we can loose him and let her go. 

I have found that it matters not who represents the thorn that pierces our resistance and begins our inner turn around...all of our Gertrudes are it. 

We stay stuck in our reasoning mind when we try to fix it...trying to ignore her which of course cannot happen, or by trying to curry his favor calling it "agreeing with our adversary quickly." Who's kidding whom...we lost that with the "quickly." 

We cannot blunt the thorn and call it friend...it served its Now purpose...we pray our thank you which is to loose it and let it go...from the Father within outward carrying a smidgen of peace for us to follow up on daily. 

We sing let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me and hope that we've done our part. No. We are the peace in the world...every smidgen, dot and iota of peace we release from within counts toward world peace. Know it and show it. 

There we have our foundation. Now, we build on it daily...forgetting, stumbling, bumbling, admitting our wrong, giving forgiveness (our sliver of gold), praying thank you, and moving on up a tish deeper. 

The thorn to our ego is the angel to our Soul. 

Thank you.

RESIST NOT, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you....  Matthew 5:44

Love your enemies, your persecutors, is laid down more than once in the Sermon. To the reasoning mind, that does not make a lick of sense. 

Ah, but we are exchanging our mind...we are seeking now for spiritual understanding where resist not evil is one of our truths. 

The door to understanding opens...since we know that resistance is fear, we recognize hate as fear weaponized. 

Here's the down and dirty or kiddie lit version of the path to living resistance free: 

• To love our enemies is to have no enemies of the mind. 
• Without mental enemies, our heart and soul are clean and clear. 
• To love all is to live detachment for love does not attach, it flows out; hate attaches and grows in. 
• The more we love, the smaller our little i; the more we hate, the stronger the little i. 

Now, to allow that to move from our head to our gut to our heart...then our Soul owns it. 

Thank you.

THE EVIL IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

All that owns us, all that possesses our minds and hearts, our attachments and compulsions, must be healed and reconciled...from within.  

I am coming to  believe that the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety is the entry exam for moving on up deeper into spiritual thinking. On first reading the Sermon, we follow our reasoning mind which is to say, we ignore it...or Just Say No. 

It takes time and willingness...brought on mainly by our ongoing rues, regrets and remorses...to make a decision to give any part of the Sermon a try. (My first want-to was to believe that the meek shall inherit the earth was not a curse but a personal gift for me. I'd finally let it be true that far from being Wonder Woman, I was Wonder Wuss.)  

When we make that decision, the Sermon begins to  fulfill our need to look beneath the words and find the inner meaning, i.e., God's purpose. We read do not resist one who is evil and know for the evil is in the eye of the beholder. 

Our need is not to understand the other according to our lights for that is still self-driven; the need is to look in our heart not our head for God's vision of the one we are perceiving as evil or wrong. This happens in a nanosecond, and three days after we're dead, we still have more to learn.

When we understand the purpose of the Sermon, we realize how Gandhi could study it daily for forty years...and no doubt die knowing he had more to learn from it. 

As for me, the more I study the Sermon, the more I love the study...trust me, that's another first-class miracle.

Thank you.

ON THE MONEYBAG OF OUR OWN OPINIONS

We are called to give over, give up, give in.  What we must give up, give away, cede, is our own security...that is, our idea of our security. 

Since our journey begins with our knowing little of our spiritual self, our core, the most resistance comes with changing our mind...from our outlook to our insight.

Until we accept that all our answers are within, we are stayed in our reasoning mind. When we accept, we begin our U-bie heading in the right direction, open to seeing exactly what our own idea of our security really is. Comes the dawning...our security is mentally based in our own opinions. 

The Sermon tells us to swear to nothing at all...to let what we say be simply "Yes" or "No" for more than that is all ego. And there's our big Ah-Ha! This is the way to agree with your adversary quickly and to give up fighting anything and anybody.

To the reasoning mind, both of those have been "pie in the sky," either unwanted to begin with or impossible to attain. It is finally no surprise when, here it comes again: We must go beyond reason to love. 

We remember Eckhart's saying that the spiritual life is all about subtraction, not addition. Blinding flash, it's all about detachment but the detaching is from our own opinion...our mental opinion. Ideally before it ever reaches our mouth.

A man had not yet given up everything for God as long as he held on to the moneybag of his own opinions. -- St Francis 

Thank you.

SHAKE THE DUST OFF YOUR FEET, MOVE ON

As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that greater peace is in your hearts. . . . For we have been called to heal wounds, to bind up the broken, and to call home any who have lost their way. —Francis of Assisi

Often what we say and what we do are two entirely different things which, as we come to learn, is often as it needs be. More than a few times we've caught ourself...or been caught!...doing the opposite of what we've preached. Our initial reaction is usually embarrassed denial...a reasonable reasoning mind response. 

What a surprise to find that this could be a point in our inner turnaround...from reasoning mind to spiritual understanding. Over time and with ever deeper spiritual growth, we come to recognize a higher meaning in everyday living...in our life itself. 

We are beginning a reconciled life which is more than just a change of mind, it is the exchange of mind...which lets us be totally present in the moment while holding to our Soul standards.

It's a hard thing to give up, our first understanding of that which we knew in the moment was of God. We must beware not to cling to the Truth as we first perceived it, to the literal message, i.e., the letter of the law. It is our clinging to our own understanding that causes it to transmute into a self-determined objective.   

What we don't then fully understand is this exchange of our mind is taking place within us...from our reasoning mind's viewpoint deeper into the raised consciousness of the spiritual. 

There is always a deeper meaning to the Truth, a.k.a., Love, than we see in the moment. Just as we have learned that we can never fully know or explain God and the ways of God, so too with Truth or Love for it expands, grows, encompasses all. 

There will ever be disagreements and/or misunderstandings. Our continuing education need only be that we can stand firm on our Soul's inner standards without an outward argument. We mentally hug her, kiss him, let them go...and move on. 

And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. -- Matthew 10:14  

Thank you.

A NEW REALITY INTERPRETED

According to me, this new sight promised us with our exchanged mind is like unto Saint Francis' new way of seeing and interpreting reality.

To live and breathe and walk in our new way is to be present without resistance...without hesitating or looking to preserve our egoic self. The confounding experience of our new walkaround is we are utterly unaware in the moment that we are living from a new place.  This is unselfconsciousness. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: Unselfconsciousness...Saint Francis' vow of poverty perfected. 

Unselfconsciousness allows the vow of poverty...we loose all attachments and let them go. When we have enough, that is enough. 

When our idea of that which represents security is our focus, we are seeking out there. It takes our God-inspired eye (the third eye) to be open to poverty or simply enough. A test of our willingness to be open to poverty is to begin giving away our perceived security. Ouch.

Interestingly, I suspect we have all experienced giving away more than we thought we "could afford." We all have that ability  within us...it was given us before conception. It is our free will that enters to say nay to detaching our self from our wants which always come disguised as our needs. 

We must needs learn to live in this new way of seeing and interpreting reality for our reasoning mind is resistant to the unexplainable, therefore our want-to and our willingness are fleeting.

To reiterate, the confounding experience of our new walkaround is we are utterly unaware in the moment that we are living from a new place. And there is the danger. Because we are unaware in the moment...unselfconscious...we consciously decide to make that our self-determined objective for the future. 

Detour! There's a muddy road ahead! Or, do not pass "Go," etc., etc., etc. 

We cannot make future changes. God is not in the future. God is here, now...and so am I. Be.

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGH...GOD'S WILL

To live without self-centered expectations is the secret of freedom in personal relationships, e.g., I get irritated not at you but at my idea of you. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," October 4

According to me, attack thinking is nothing more nor less than self-pity mentally weaponized.

It takes a while to see that self-pity is weaponized against our own self. We cling to our inner victim's hair shirt...feeling unloved, unwanted, unneeded and unappreciated. Justified!

That weapon is the blindfold that refuses entry to our new way of seeing. From our eyebrows up, we can recognize it for its poison but to loose it and let it go?...ah, there is our life's work. 

The first Step on this journey is willingness. Willing to be nonresistant to being thought wrong, less-than, the fool...and to know in our heart that those are the words that are opening us to our Father who stands at the door and knocks.

Here's where our reasoning mind and our spiritual mind meet and meld...where our (reasoning) attack mind meets the peace of (spiritual) self-acceptance.  

Self-pity comes calling when we invite in our interpretation of others' thoughts, feelings, motives in relation to us. Invariably, we're taking ourself too seriously which is also known as the reasoning mind's playground, 

There it is...self-acceptance, wrapped in taking ourself too seriously, wrapped in love and laugh. 

Love and laugh...God's will.  

Thank you.

ON HAVING GREAT DETACHMENT

 Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. -- Saint John of the Cross (from Eknath Easwaran's "Words to Live By," October 4) 

To see through our new eyes is to walk in the Steps of the Beloved...with a mind not set on getting but on giving...for others. That doesn't sound easy, but it is a lot harder than it sounds. If we're doing it right, we will experience how unready and unwilling we are to have great detachment. To suffer!...in a word.  

Just as we think we're closing in on it, we experience another truth...how few people we meet in our life who think this is a good idea. And those are our friends. 

That usually comes as a surprise but really it shouldn't...after all, we've read more than once or twice that St Francis called it “perfect joy” when he was reviled or treated with contempt. Face it, when first we feel "reviled and treated with contempt," we resist...strongly. It takes shock and horror to turn us toward the underneath meaning, and we get that feeling of "perfect joy." 

Think about it, we've been studying the Sermon on the Mount for a long time. It is in the Sermon at Matthew 5:11-12 that we first get the quiet word: Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account (my emphasis).  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.  

I am still striving (sometimes succeeding) to do that...with ample opportunities I need add. I consider those, good and not so much, God's "atta girl." 

But until we're not only seeing with new eyes, but willingly walking the new path, it's all still self-determined objectives. We're thinking with our reasoning mind...still learning that we must go beyond reason to love. 

Ah, but trying to go beyond reason to love is doing it right...by doing it wrong. How else do we learn to recognize our turnaround point? 

As Rohr often says, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. 

Thank you.

TO SEE THROUGH NEW EYES NOW

Assurance is that calmness born of a deep certainty of God's strength available to us and in His power to love and guard us from all harm and wrong doing. -- Anonymous

Blinding flash of the obvious: To God all my wrong doings are His gifts to me for they are the lever that turns me to Him...pray thank you, gratitude will follow. 

My wrong doings most often come from my self-determined objectives...even when I believe they are good and right. There's where our thank you saves us...it turns our thinking away from why our way was right and invites gratitude to accept what is just as it is.

Thy will, not mine, be done are just so many words until we are living them. This is so hard to do because the actual doing most often meets with commonsense and reasoning minds, i.e., resistance. Which is ours to understand, not overcome. 

We no longer seek to do the "right" thing according to our lights. We want to do God's will, God's way, whatever, however...brambles, detours, snides, snarks and/or ill will coming at us. For this we have come to believe: Thy will is better than our will no matter how it looks to our eyes arriving. 

This is the new sight promised us with our exchanged mind...we will see through His eyes now. 

Thank you.

WE CAN TRUST OUR FATHER...DEPEND ON IT

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continually return....It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us....Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. --  Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly (from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," October 2, 2020)

This is the divine spark that mystics and religious masters long have written about, have assured us is real...indeed is that upon which we need to depend.

It is in the words "deep within us all there is a creative Life that presses to birth" that reminded me of the lesson years ago inviting me to believe that the God of my understanding stands at the door and knocks, not to be allowed in, but to be allowed out. 

It is that Divine Spark that allows the reasoning mind to transmute into the intuitive. It takes time,  a trusted mentor and friends, and the grace of God to even begin the living from our intuitive place.   

My most recent experience: My plan was to in-person vote absentee on Wednesday this week. I was very anxious about it...since I had done this before with no anxiety, I presumed, and told others, that this was more evidence of the loss of confidence I have experienced ever since I turned 80. So I drove down to the polling place, certain I'd never find parking close by, and found they had several parking spaces reserved "For Voters Only." I had dreaded the blocks-long line I would find for I rely on a cane. Well, I parked at the front door, and with no one in line, walked in, voted, walked out and drove home. 

I laughed at my anxiety over my perfectly reasonable projections...especially my old-age excuse...and thought no more of it. 

This morning I had a blinding flash of the obvious: It was not loss of confidence that comes with aging...this was the exchanging of my mind, from self-assurance (that which was ever my self-determined objective) to Self assurance, the still small voice of the Father within. (I admit I will need to wear this for a while but it came unbidden, my standard for "not mine, Thine.")

The starter dough for my proof was the outcome: All my rational dreads...no parking, long lines, need to walk and wait forever and me with a cane, and I'll be unable blah, blah, blah...were not merely transmuted, they were banished.  

Indeed, He does go before us to make the crooked places straight. What wonderful words! Words we can lean on while our reasoning mind is in the process of letting go...until we intuitively realize that the Father within really does know our needs. 

We can trust, i.e., depend on, His knowing...always and all ways.

Thank you.

WE ARE SLOGGING TOWARD CANAAN

Rejoice. These are your wilderness days. But surely and safely, you are being led to your Canaan of Plenty. -- "God Calling," October 1

Passing thought: Everything in the material world is of the moment, comes and goes in circles and cycles. In the spiritual realm, truth is unchanging...ever here now.

Our wilderness days are of the material world, not permanent, fleeting in fact, but, depending entirely  on how seriously we take ourself, the memory of them can remain in our mental bank for years. 

I'm guessing that's how our attack mind is born, bred and honed...maybe attack thinking is nothing more nor less than self-pity mentally weaponized.

All the passing thoughts and guessing are truly unimportant...a slice of the circle and cycle of the reasoning mind. What needs our full attention is the Rejoice part telling us we are being led out of our wilderness...out of these days that are neither believable nor comprehensible, and the feeling of look out, here come the locusts is heavy over our head.

Being led to our Canaan of Plenty is the result of the crash-and-burn of our interpretation of our  material world. As so many mystics promise and as Rohr says, great love or great suffering is the price of admission deeper into a higher consciousness.

All of the less-than-wonderful happenings of this year 2020, together with each one's own personal tragedies, must needs be realized as our sliver of gold to hold onto. Because this is what we have before us, what we have is to be welcomed, accepted, thus transmuted, or we'll need slog through it again. 

It keeps coming back until we get it right. Here's the kicker...it keeps coming back by invitation only. We are reminded yet again, that the invitation is our resistance. Resist not evil...let it flow right on by.

There's our reason for rejoicing...our resistance had disguised our pearl of great price. The scales have fallen, we can see.

God comes to you disguised as your life. -- Paula D’Arcy 

Thank you.