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

[The following is a slightly refocused 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 retire neither quickly nor quietly. It is interestingly pathetic, or pathetically interesting, how long we will cling to the belief that reason is our safety net...that "victory can be ours for the thinking." All the while we have had it proved to us...even proved by our own self...that it is  detachment from reliance on our reasoning mind that sets us on the path to real freedom, the freedom from self.

Reason is essential to us as we walk the the rough and rutted road toward still more spiritual growth. It is our thinking that opens us to recognize reason as another tool of God's but not our safety net and not our security. 

Reason, if used properly (probably meaning overused), clears the channel for God's thoughts to pour through. Reason is God's Roto-Rooter, if you will. 

Our mistake is putting our trust in the Roto-Rooter instead of in God.  

Thank you.

FORGIVENESS...OR GET OVER YOURSELF

We seek to turn our will and our life over to the care of God...first, because that's the footsteps we're following, then because we find our peace there. A very hard-to-find peace it is...or hard-to-believe we've found it, more like.

Looking back, we recognize the act of forgiveness is of God. We know we have turned our will and our life over to the care of God when the grace of forgiveness flows from us detached entirely from our will. We recognize unto realization unto acceptance: This is not a one-shot deal, this is our gift upon which we begin to build.

More and more we understand forgiveness as the base of the Sermon on the Mount. There be the origin, the motivator, the reason for its existence to this day. 

We come to see forgiveness as another word for love. For acceptance. For nonresistance. For get over yourself.

Interesting fact about forgiveness...it cannot be self-willed. It can only be wrapped by a Power greater than ourself...by almighty God to me or by whatever name It announces Itself to you. 

Another interesting fact...we can only be certain sure that we have forgiven or that we have been forgiven by the peace we receive from within...the lack of inner resistance we now have to whomever or whatever, including ourself, we've been holding to account for our feelings. 

Yet another: Lack of inner resistance, nonresistance, is also known as love...or God. 

Thank you.

ON FINDING OUR CORE...AND LOVING IT

The following, by Joan Didion, is from her essay, On Keeping a Notebook, at p 126. This, more than anything I've ever read or heard, describes me and my being in my world as I live it: 

"....I tell what some would call lies. 'That's simply not true,' the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event. 'The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn't that way at all.' Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters. The cracked crab that I recall having for lunch the day my father came home from Detroit in 1945 must certainly be embroidery, worked into the day's pattern to lend verisimilitude; I was ten years old and would not now remember the cracked crab. The day's events did not turn on cracked crab. And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again, a home movie run all too often, the father bearing gifts, the child weeping, an exercise in family love and guilt. Or that is what it was to me. Similarly, perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow. 

"I tell what some would call lies," Didion wrote. "How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth...."

As I read that, from my toenails up, I felt accepted, partnered...twinned, dimdammit! And I heard my innards laughing for I could freely admit that is me...I tell how it looked, felt, was...looks, feels, is...to me. 

And here's the nut as Didion wrote it: "I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters." [My emphasis added.]

It seems likely...to me at any rate...that it is our way of communicating that won Didion Pulitzers and has won me friends, each of them my Pulitzer and the pearl beyond price.

Finding our freedom within through the freedom of a like Soul proves true self-acceptance is the acceptance of Self.

Thank you.

GOD'S GIFTS IN MASQUERADE

Here is my proof that God's gifts can and will masquerade as our screw-ups: As I meditated on the Sermon this morning, I more deeply realized the gift of the Christmas Day meeting when I screwed up and laughed which gave everybody else permission to laugh...which we did and loved into the bargain. 

To remember: That was proof for that moment in time, that Now.

We begin again, this time we begin to build on it. The plus is that opened my unaware consciousness; I can stop trying and just let it be. Whatever my nemesis of the moment, by laughing and loving, I and others are freed from self-centered fear...for that moment in time, that Now.

We are opened to further God-gifts masquerading as incomprehensible...or just wrong. With still more spiritual growth, our eyes are opened. We realize that is God's perfect way, not through the reasoning mind but at a higher level deeper. And available to us...always and ever available to our seeking self according to our need not our want.

God's got our work cut out for him. The Sermon on the Mount is a whole platter-full of incomprehensibles, starting and ending with resist not evil. Face it, that one covers the territory. The territory being our refusal to believe it means what it says. 

According to me, that is all living the Sermon is...accepting with love and laughter every apparent Oh No for each is a God-gift in masquerade. They each require a demolition of our own ego that's for certain sure...which can only be done by a higher consciousness deeper. 

Or God.

Thank you.

UNPLAN. DETACH. LET GO

We do not need to believe in God for him to have our back. We do not need to believe in God for him to intervene in our life in our behalf. 

We do need to believe in God to trust God...to trust that he has our back, to trust that he can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. Without that trust, there is no peace.

Without trust in God, peace of mind is a wish with no hope in it...unattainable in a word. That is living  in our reasoning mind, making it up as we go...living on the edge of anxiety, denying ourself the peace we seek.

This is a fact we learn...then relearn a time or two, to quote my beloved Chet.

In truth, God's will is simple...not easy, simple. Ah, the reasoning mind's impossible dream...thinking, pondering, analyzing...trying for simple. It cannot be explained...there is no planned quick, fast and in a hurry...there is only unplanned quick, fast and in a hurry. 

Going for peace of mind...talk about a headache...is to continue self-determining our way. I'm convinced peace of mind lives in our rearview mirror...there where grace shines her light for us to see by...and accept.

The message, of course, is exactly what it has ever been: Let go and let God. To which our reasoning mind wails...how? That is how...let go and let God.

Thank you.

WORST FEAR MADE GOLD

The secret about acceptance: The minute we accept the truth about that which we are resisting, that changes it. We seldom know it in that minute which is why our inside work is essential. 

That which we are resisting is not changed, of course. It is our resistance that lays down its sword and shield...thus forming the layers of consciousness we are walked through from resistance to nonresistance to acceptance.

As a light-hearted example, I experienced an unrealized changed me just yesterday, and I am still feeling all tingly about it. I was at a morning meeting which was ending ten minutes early so I quick shared a second time...the leader then said that second shares are not allowed at this meeting. Uhhh.

In the ensuing silence, with me blushing right out loud...and here's the unrealized changed me...laughing all the while, I admitted my mistake. 

There was my worst fear, and here it is made gold...the others, laughing and whooping, leapt to my defense. All of which ended the meeting on a high note. 

Ah, my mentor's advice on parade: Showing your ass in public is also spiritual.

Thank you.

THE FOURTH DIMENSION...AND US

We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. -- Anonymous

I am a believer that it was the gift of grace that moved us out of relying on our reasoning mind, that being rocketed into the 4th dimension gave us God's tools to use in rebuilding our life...that our life today depends on our not relying on our reasoning mind. That was once all we knew, and, a-hem, 'twas a tish less than reliable.

A solid spiritual foundation is never finished, explaining the insistence on still more spiritual growth. For that we detach from our reliance on our reasoning mind which can only be done by building our trust in God...which can only be done by detaching from our reliance on our reasoning mind. There it is...the circle completing itself. 

When my goal in life became to trust God rather than my reasoning mind, my inner life began to determine my walking around world. I can rely on my reasoning mind for the ho-hums of life...do I want to go here or go there, do this or do that? For the curve-ball, deeper problems of life, I seek the here-and-now God of my understanding...the one who shows up as my mentor, my friends...ah, my blinding flashes of the obvious. 

I listen, I pray, I rely on my hard-earned spiritual acumen, and when (not if) wrong, I promptly admit it...the majority of the time (when pinched is 51 percent).

Love and laugh...don't take yourself too seriously. The fourth dimension in a wrap.

Thank you.

FREEDOM FROM THE BONDAGE OF SELF

I am a believer that the greatest change we will ever experience is when our mind is exchanged from self to Self. That is when we become willing to Suffer little children to come unto Me. The exchange is our change in consciousness...when we realize Me is the God of our own understanding. 

Our thinking is upgraded from reliance on self to trust in God, and we realize that it is only and ever our trust that needs improvement. 

We cannot come to believe utterly until we can come to trust utterly the God of our own understanding. To trust that very God can, will and does intervene in our life in our behalf.

For this, still more spiritual growth prepares us: Whether we seek him or not, whether we even know it or not, calling it coincidence or luck of the draw, in this life or the one light-years ahead, at some point self will suffer self-will enough, will crash and burn, and our consciousness will be lifted up deeper into God consciousness. 

Then, my friends, we will know freedom from the bondage of self

Thank you.

I SEE ME...A BOON, NOT A BANE

Let the wise guard their thoughts, which are difficult to perceive, which are extremely subtle, which wander at will. Thought which is well guarded is the bearer of happiness. - The Buddha

I have been praying my thank you for my thoughts for a time now...how long I do not know nor does it matter...I pray for them even Now is what matters. 

My mouth no longer spouts judgments (as much), but my thoughts are as noted from The Buddha, extremely subtle and wander at will. I take heart that I have experienced his a well guarded thought is the bearer of happiness...not yet the majority of the time, but that be my aim, my goal.

I do believe my scrupulosity began another U-bie this morning, began another turn away from rigid, righteous and right toward the calming peace of impersonal love. The God-gift thought returned that all of my 3:00 AM I See Me rues, regrets and remorses are the gold paving my once rough and rutted road back Home. 

This confirms my long-ago BFO that I See Me is not to be resisted but welcomed, not to be entertained but kissed on the lips and sent on its way. Against reasoning mind at its sharpest, God has proved I See Me to be a boon not a bane. 

Welcome it with thank you, tarry not nor flee in fear...trust God and be at peace.

Thank you.

OUR TRUST IS OUR PROTECTION

Practice protection. That is the heading for "God Calling" today, practice protection. Then the reading ends with, But practice it in the quite small things....

There. That is the quiet word for most everything when we're learning new behavior such as taking Steps leading us to trust the God of our own understanding. 

Practice it in the little ways to start, as in, obey the speed limit (whaaa? But nobody else does, and, and...);  do the zipper routine (let the other go first) not only with traffic (whaaa? But nobody else does, and, and...); get over yourself (whaaa? But nobody.... Oh.).

I am reminded of how often I think...actually say..."God has my back." Interestingly, when my perception of the moment is fearful, I feel fear. What a surprise to learn that does not mean a lack of faith, not at all...in the BFO, I feel fear, God is here, I understood that nothing turns me to God faster than fear. Good news aborning!

The lessons learned came with practicing that flash. At first, when I felt fear, I welcomed it with a quivering thank you, shaking all over, palms wet, throat seeming to close, but I spoke the words...not for a minute believing, but I spoke the words. That's how I came to believe.

We practice, and we practice for as long as it takes, and then in one fine instant we find we have come to believe that a Power greater than ourself has our back. Our wants are sometimes gifted, sometimes not, but always our needs are met. 

It is in the practice of protection that protection is proved. 

Thank you.

OUR FEET, OUR RIGHTEOUS TOOLS. WHO KNEW?

We make our plans...we determine what we need do to achieve our goals. This is where our intellect is good and necessary. We take heart in St. Symeon's words, Search inside yourself with your intellect....

There...we start out heading in the right direction. We can expect to get off the path, get righted, get off and back on often and oftener...if we're doing it right. It is our reasoning mind with its enticing siren of More!, Better!, Bingo!, from which we must detach.

Our detachment comes when we realize that God does not lift our burden so we can rest in the glory of his work. No. God transmutes our hopelessness into willingness...the willingness to work with God to get to the place already prepared for us. 

To quote my beloved "God Calling," And when things do not fall out according to your plan, then smile...knowing that My loving response will be to make the way as easy for your feet as it can be.

I half-blushingly admit that today is the first day ever that I noticed...realized...that the words are: as easy for your feet. Full stop. Feet. Easy for our feet. 

Not a word about our feelings...our want-to...our "perfect world." When we're working with God, our feet are going to get some corns and calluses. Which, oh rats! and thank you, is the on-going and end  result of all our still more spiritual growth-ing. 

Seems I hear an echo from my past: If you want what we have, you'll do what we do. If we want what God has, we'll do God's will. And smile.

God loves us so much!

Thank you.

TO REALIZE THE LOVE WITHIN

Once we are awakened to love as the lifelong purpose of our hearts, then feeling love for all the world becomes the meaning—and greatest joy—of living. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 17, 2021 

Free-floating thought: To love is to move forward, toward those from whom we feel resistance...to detach from our own resistance, to open our own resisting heart.

That is one fine free-floating thought...it is the want-to that makes the doing so difficult. 

Right off the top of my head, I can think of  a couple people I want no truck with. The fear of extending...even mentally...love to them sends dread hot-footing across my egoic mind. Both of those I resist are good and decent people, or close enough to cause no fear of burning in hell's fires. Simply put, they're just not "my people."  

Ah, here's me, all set to write about the glories of love and loving...impersonal love, universal love, love not of the egoic mind. I've got the words and oh so many more...it should put me to the blush. But, face it, I don't wanna, so it ain't gonna happen.

That is flatfoot thumbing my nose at fate. "It ain't gonna happen" is code inviting karma to deal me one of life's "blessings." The  couple I am resisting aren't necessarily going to be in my life by this time tomorrow, but I have planted the seed...my own, i.e., my resisters or someone even more so, will come to me. I can count on it.

And that is the good news. It's like fear being a good thing...nothing turns us to God faster than fear, so get grateful for it. Knowing that I have sent the invitation for my personal hairballs to visit, I need only pray my thank you.

The door has been opened for me to experience still more spiritual growth...and then resist not that which comes flowing to me for it is from Me and for my own benefit. We cannot know the time, the place, the how, and we need not know...when we stay ourself in gratitude.

This I know: I will fail. This I trust: My failure is God intervening in my life in my behalf.

Thank you.

GO WITH GOD...GIVE THE MIND A REST

Joy is the result of faithful trusting acceptance of My Will, when It seems not joyous. -- "God Calling," January 8 

There. That is learning to smile even on the grey days...that is what is known as an "attitude adjustment." The basic learning tool we were given as we were being lifted out of our crash and burn state was: This, too, can be loved.

Ah, but who's kidding whom? We did not learn that in "real time" as we natter about today...we only realize we learned it when we look back and see us then in comparison to us today. And know love has no boundaries, no limits, no this line cannot be crossed. 

Any line fear draws, love can and does cross...and fear loves it, looking back.

It is important to recognize the two sides of awareness, one of the material mind and the other, the spiritual mind.

For instance, with "looking back,"a good example is the line from the song, "Loving Arms," Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains and lying in your loving arms again. That is the material mind at its finest...also the side we need to detach from. 

We realize and seek to live in the spiritual side: Looking back and praying thank you for the freedom of my chains....

Those are our two sides of looking back...one side leads to a life of rues, regrets and remorses (resentment!), and the other side leads to faithful trusting acceptance of My Will, when It seems not joyous (love and laughter!).

My key to an open mind, a.k.a, spiritual consciousness, is whatever thought, word or deed comes to my aid, use it but do not attach to it...that aid must grow, too. Else it becomes the God of our understanding and stultifies itself and us into the bargain.

An aid in keeping an open mind is the statement, the Father knows our needs. The words never change but its meaning, being entirely dependent on our need of the moment, changes with our need. 

According to me, God's got it all worked out. Why not go with God and give the mind a rest?

Thank you. 

CAN I GET AN AMEN!

When I was ten years old and my brother was twelve, he became ill...and died three months later. That day he became ill the two of us spent together. The happenings of that day, or my impression of the happenings, became imprinted in me and have dictated my life's patterns.

It has taken fifty years of digging, realizing, getting free, remembering more, digging, realizing...there is no cheap spiritual growth for which I have become grateful. 

One of the pearls in digging to get free of my self-determined objective, i.e., what I saw as my problem, is that I was freed of a gazillion little parts of me I did not even know were there, much less a problem for me. The Father knows our needs. 

This morning's blinding flash of the obvious: My 1948 imprint was already lifted by its need to be. The Father knows our needs. 

My realization of that now frees me to live that, forget that, remember that, live that, forget, remember, live, forget, remember...and that is when I am doing it right. 

Researcher and therapist Dr. Alane Daugherty suggests: The force of deep love, compassion and other heartfelt emotions unite our brain, our heart, and all of the cells in our body....Devotional practices have opened believers’ hearts for millennia, and we now understand the mind-body-heart connection within us in a deeper way.. (From Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," December 18, 2021)

When I read we now understand the mind-body-heart connection within us in a deeper way, I wanted to jump up and shout...but it's early and my coffee hasn't taken hold yet. Oh, but my heart is happy.

Our Father not only knows our needs, he gets them done...with us within us and perfectly!

Thank you.

GOODNESS HAS NO BOUNDARIES

Take nothing personally. 

That has been my inner goal for my last thirty even forty years...it has taken me the last twenty-five  years to even get a fix on what that really means.

I was talking with a friend yesterday who was telling me about the generic Gertrude, this one a childhood friend with whom I have had no contact since high school. 

It seems Gertrude married a gorgeous guy who has money up the gumpstump; they live in a fabulous old mansion on the Upper Side of Downtown and have a couple of beautiful and successful children. 

The gorgeous guy, as it turns out, is a serial wife-cheater...liar and thief therefore also applying. To put the period to it...Gertrude adores her husband, she is known as goodness itself, loved by all and is just as happy as if she had good sense.

Well.

Appalled, I was. Only I couldn't decide if I was more appalled at Gertrude's obvious oblivity or her husband's perfidy. My tongue was like hung in the middle and clacking at both ends.

Comes now God to the rescue...my morning blinding flash of the obvious: Gertrude is wide open to the love for her husband...my egoic mind calls it "blinded by" but she's happy. There. That is the essence of taking nothing personally. She takes not personally his behavior or the judgments of others about his behavior...she does not see it, or recognize it to personalize it. That which I judge as his perfidy is on me, not him or her, but on me. It is not wrong for me to not want that behavior in my life...my wrong is judging it and them. My wrong is judging.

The good news is, that BFO relieved me, set my mind free to experience depersonalized thoughts for Gertrude and her husband. On the material level, I have not seen her since high school and only saw him a couple times during that period...I know them not. It is no great feat to fuggedaboutit. 

Looking deeper, I see that spiritually God is ever on the field. To be released from a self-generated resentment aborning is my inner evidence that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf, as in, has my back. 

Clearly, Gertrude is blessed. Goodness has no boundaries...grows where it goes and goes where it is needed. Gertrude's goodness has come back to bless all of us. And her husband's  business is her husband's business.

Thank you.

P.S.  "Her husband's business" reminds me of the story of the man desperate to learn how to love. Long/short: He dropped acid, a hideous monster came to him, he freaked and tried to get away, and the monster said, "What was it you thought needed to be loved?" Lessons learned. 

THE DEATH OF DISRESPECT BIRTHS RESPECT

It is no surprise that fear births disrespect, but that disrespect is the driver of most disagreements is an ever-deepening newbie to me. To respond to disrespect with no response is even newer, ever deeper. Example being the spiritual advice for what to do when we're not being heard or are feeling heckled and jeered...shake the dust off your feet and move on. 

Oh, yeah...it's not what happens to us, it's our reaction to it. 

My long-held belief is that all disagreements, all arguments, all wars start with self-centered fear, and face it, what other kind is there? 

Self-centered fear, the mother of disrespect, breeds in what Goldsmith calls the part that makes the 'belly bitter.'  That is our refusal to believe that we are wrong or, worse, our unconscious suspicion that the other is right. 

The answer is right there in front of us, find something here to agree with. Until we know this personally, realize it from our toenails up, we will wait for the other side to be the first to "come to the table" lest we be seen as the loser.

The spiritual secret? To be unafraid of being seen as a loser is the peace we seek...unfathomable to the reasoning mind. 

The death of disrespect is the birth of respect...and/or love and laughter.

Thank you.

CLOSE ENOUGH TO PERFECT

Blinding flash of the obvious: Not to get but to give.

It is always still more spiritual growth that brings the inner answers we seek...the answer ever being seek not to get but to give, which to me is God's Will 101. 

Eventually we are able to bring our reasoning mind into agreement with that "concept," but, bottom-line, we usually see how it is true for others, specifically the one who is nattering at the edges of our mind right now, but true for ourself? That's a toughie...we hold out with we haven't been able to break the code on that yet.

 

Here's my  Grandma Moses-spiritual-level thinking: To get respect we must give respect...to the person we feel is disrespecting us. There's the bad news and the good news both together...panic in realizing that material mind effort is useless here, peace in realizing that we are God's job...every jot and tittle which includes this. 

The kicker: God is not available on demand. 

That God is not available on demand is precisely why we learned from the get-go that we go to God for God and that is all...not to get anything from God but to give ourself to God...to build of me and to do with me as You will. 

When we've got that, and if only by a hair, our mind is changed...we now seek to give, not get anything. We effortlessly continue to go to God for God and that is all, and whatever comes to us, looking like dross or looking like gold, we say thank you, and we know peace.

Full disclosure...that last sentence, the "effortlessly continue" part, is my work in progress. That is how I am building trust...through faith and hope. Proof that God has me heading in the right direction which is close enough to perfect for me.

Thank you.

EXTEND FORGIVENESS...BE RELEASED

I see my light come shining/From the west down to the east/Any day now, any day now/I shall be released. -- Bob Dylan 

Forgiveness. I have come to believe that an unselfed life comes down to the living of that one word, forgiveness. 

At one time, the very thought of that word and I immediately envisioned Hitler and all the mini-Hitlers in my limited world. It is both embarrassing and enlightening to me now how many qualified as a "mini" to my unshucked (or shackled) world.

My personal world has never known a Hitler, in literal fact...but that is the nature of a material mind. Without a higher Guide, the material mind is driven by self...specifically, self-protection, ego's throne. 

There is no heart-guided forgiveness to the egoic mind. In the dailies of life, there is "No problem" to another's "I'm sorry" which we then unconsciously file away for use as needed later. We learn, we learn...don't live there, it'll just come back later and bite you in the butt. 

We're looking now at the serial hurts, actual harms and soul-searing losses we have experienced over our lifetime. Forgiveness for those...forgiveness from the head, down to the toes, up to the heart via the gut, back to the head...is impossible all on ourself alone. Even finding ourself deserted on an island in the Pacific or slogging through the sands of the Sahara...alone, all alone...we cannot find forgiveness by willing it. 

Comes now the good news...we are never alone, all alone. Then we find that fact is useless until we come to believe it. And guess what gets us there...forgiveness! 

Letting go of the one we say got us on that isle, slogging the sands, behind the bars, up the creek...not by thinking about it, but by the despairing realization of so what, who cares, what's the use, I'm lost, there is no  hope. 

There...our head surrenders and the sealed door of our heart opens if just a crack. Unbeknownst to us, forgiveness has just taken root, bloomed and is spreading within us. Our  seemingly rough and rutted road has just been paved with slivers of the gold of detachment...forgiveness in disguise.

Forgiveness comes in the release of blame...blame for the poor, misguided killer, for all our mini-Hitlers, for our own self-shame...we release all. Else what's forgiveness for?    

Thank you.

THE INNER ROAD TO FREEDOM

I wonder if the inner road to freedom isn't forgiveness, plain and simple. 

Here it is...forgiveness of you, of me, of us...forgiveness of all and everything. Forgiveness of my BFF for slighting me even if s/he wasn't aware of it...or because s/he wasn't aware of it! Forgiveness of Donald Trump and his ilk for attempting to destroy America and...uh-oh...of the Lord for allowing him, them and that to happen. 

The hard lesson to learn unto acceptance is we cannot self-will forgiveness...we can want to, which is probably a must, but we can't pull it off all on our own. 

Forgiveness is of God in the quiet of our Soul...God doesn't come with bells and whistles.

I often think true forgiveness happens after-the-fact...when we remember our occasion for forgiveness, and the memory is held in tender thoughts. 

Word of warning...we do not dwell there. God's work is as gossamer to the steel-toed egoic mind. When we remember, best we smile, say thank you, move on.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, 'Let it be, oh, let it be.' -- "Let It Be," The Beatles

Thank you.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.... - Matthew 5:44 

Logically that makes no sense. Yet soulfully it makes absolute sense, because in terms of the soul, it really is all or nothing. Either we see the divine image in all created things, or we end up not seeing it very well at all. There is a first epiphany, and gradually the circle keeps moving outward, widening its embrace. It is almost the core meaning of a whole and holy life! -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation, " December 3, 2012 

It is a balm to my soul and my mind that the truth of love your enemies was an early realization of mine. I take it as God's guidance when later I learn that my early gifts had been written years before by spiritual leaders. I take that as my inner spiritual GPR leading me in the right direction.

Best believe that I first mind-wrestled with Matthew 5:44...until I took it back to my crash and burn. It was my enemy, it cursed me...until I did good by it, as in, quit fighting, found the God of my own understanding right in the midst of it and, without lying, could call its name blessed. 

My crash and burn started out as a sliver of gold and because it was all I had to cling to, I held on until I came to know it as my proof of God within me.

There is a sliver of gold in everything that comes to us...just as there is a touch of Divine in every one of us...whether we believe it or not. So why not believe it? 

Guaranteed, it makes life easier to take...not necessarily easier...life is not meant to be easy. It's meant to walk us back to from whence we came...to the before-conception God consciousness pool. According to me.

I am reminded of the quote I once found of six-year-old Nikka: If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate.

The first time I read that, my face, neck and ears burned bright red...a six-year old! Saying what never occurred to me all on my own...much less at six! Bless you, Nikka, bless you.

Thank you.

OUR NEMESIS IS OUR ANGEL

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 28, 2018.]

The forever lesson to learn: To our reasoning mind, the one arousing our negative side is our nemesis...ah, but spiritually, that one is our angel.

There it is...the key to changing our mind. Then we must needs stay our focus on the power within which is ever on hand to further the opening, as needed.

This is an ongoing spiritual process...an opened mind releases the power for good within. Our detachment frees our thoughts from building self-determined results. That which we are resisting is freely transmuted in our mind...and we are graced with another angel in our midst.

Now comes the part that makes the "belly bitter"...the living of these truths. -- Joel Goldsmith

Thank you.

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS

I am knowing more fully my BFO, I tried, I trusted, is the capstone on my ever seeking to trust God...which capstone will continue to grow higher deeper. From my own experience, I realize and fully accept as my own: God, grace and self-forgiveness...I tried, I trusted.

I realize and fully accept (and will no doubt forget) that I will need to re-experience that same BFO at even deeper realizations as I continue to seek still more spiritual growth.

  

Along those lines, as I read about Jung's conviction that doing God's will gave him the strength to go his own way, I knew that my trust in God is happily rooted in my own experience of God's will in my life, i.e., in my crash and burn and all that followed therefrom. 

I am grateful that my doing what God wants and not what I want requires me to get a little help from my mentor and my friends. I rest in that even as I know...more like, because I know...I have found what Jung described as an inner authority that we can trust that is bigger than our own.

The hard-earned realization that trusting God, that inner authority of our own, does not preclude incoming hurts, scrapes, humiliations...no! It invites those things! Along with receiving lovingkindness, sweet charity, giving more than getting and loving it...all that life offers we now accept knowing it comes by our invitation only. Ah, and God guided.    

Children of God are supremely safe in his love (but not protected in the world). -- Beatrice Bruteau, interspiritual pioneer.

Thank you.

GOD LOVES...AIN'T THAT GOOD NEWS!

When there are several people...friends or friendly acquaintances...who are at odds with us, and we sincerely know not why...as in, What brought this on?...it is very difficult to remember our long-ago BFO, be the first to give over, which we have experienced does bring peace of mind.

I am at the I-know-not-why stage this morning. And what is wandering around loose in my brain is: WTF? I didn't say, think, do anything to get their back up...this is on them to get over.

Hard-earned experience has taught us that these are the times to turn our focus away from wants (self) toward needs (spiritual). Lilies of the valley, puppy dogs and rainbows work for me. Staying my focus there is kinda like learning to drive a car...keeping headed in the safest direction requires total focus. 

It is our ego, God's wannabe roommate in his hidey-hole, that we must be willing to get over in order to free God to do our thinking for us. Only then can we experience the out-of-self peace of giving over in order to cease fighting. 

I just lifted (and slightly reworked) that from a previous post of mine...proof yet again that what I know and what I do are often in conflict...delicately put.

Ah, but it is that conflict for which gratitude is easing in...it is that conflict pointing me toward God, assuring me that my thinking is not "best product" right now. There it is, the balm entering my mind, my Soul. 

Never trust our thinking when it is rigid, righteous and right...especially when it is reasoning-mind true. Count on it, its solution is nevernevernever "best product" of God.  

Now I get to take this out into my life...knowing, shouting my silent Hallelujah, that my reasoning mind and my spiritual mind are linked: I want God's will done in my life more than I want my will done in my life. 

God loves me so much...and all my tedious friends, too.

Thank you. 

LOVING AGING...IT TAKES GOD, GRACE & GRIT

It is interesting that we seldom hear, The sun rises on the evil and on the good...it is mostly, It rains on the just and on the unjust. 

Living in the material world, I suspect we learn early to lean our expectations toward the less-than-wonderful, the rain, and only dare hope for the occasional wonderful, the sun. 

Comes now the joy of aging...the joy, that is, when we chose to upgrade our attitude, as in love, laugh and welcome the sun and the rain. 

The many changes that life brings as we age, as we grow into our own philosophy of life, into our spiritual nature, can be viewed through welcoming eyes, spiritually, or through eyes of dread, egoically. 

It is a certainty that aging will lead us through layers, planes, levels of consciousness...all bring sun and all bring rain. Occasionally both at the same time...God's gift, rainbows! 

About the sun...fear of being wrong and laughed at, we hesitate to openly seek the sun, i.e., try for an uplifted outlook, or we're too afraid to seek a God of our own understanding, for what does that even mean? Again, we're held back by our own fear of being wrong.

Then there's the rain. It's less dicey to expect less-than-wonderful, the worst case, Murphy's Law. Whatever or whenever less-than happens, we can blame it on our rotten luck...or you. We won't be laughed at...more likely, held in contempt...but ego is served.     

I've come to experience my aging as a fairly constant choice of laughter or anxiety. Anxiety first actually, but with grace, God and grit, I find the laughter. Sharing it with a same-age friend does the trick. There. Love. Plain and simple.   

Many changes are too infinitesimal to notice, others, of course, are huge...all just need to be loved. And here comes the sun! 

Without a sunny perspective, rain is the downside to the egoic mind. Having sought still more spiritual growth through the years, age is now our advantage. We know to look through the eyes of God and feel the calm of Oneness.

The sun and the rain, like the Father and I, are One.

Thank you.

JUST GET OUT OF OUR OWN WAY

In the midst of my meditation on the 23rd Psalm, at Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil comes a blinding flash of the obvious:  I need to walk toward my deep-held fear to be freed of that fear...not guard against it, welcome it. 

Again I am reminded that our path is not to resist evil, but to allow it. It is in allowing that it is transmuted it seems. Our self-determined objective, i.e., resistance, is the block to God's perfect work. 

We must accept...realize...that it is not about evil. It is about the power over evil held for our use by the Father within. It is our choice...we must choose to use it. That is my "hold your nose and take a leap of faith."

The forever message seems to be that all we need...trust, patience, love, peace, et al.,...is already within us waiting to be used. The only way to build the trust in God that we  pray for is to use it. We do not realize we have it until we use it...then, only then, do we find more than enough. 

The Father knows our needs. Our undisciplined egoic mind will ever call our wants our needs, leave us feeling fear and naming it evil...scaring us more, growing our resistance. Hey! That too can be loved...follow it to crash and burn and there, left with no alternative, we find safety, the God of our own understanding. 

OR...we can seek still more spiritual growth where we find a kinder, gentler...shorter...way to the God of our own understanding. It is not easy, but it is true...sure, pure, selfless and available within us right this very minute: We come to believe that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. 

Then we get out of our way and let him.

Thank you. 

ON SHARING SPIRITUAL GROWTH

So here's me recently:  I'm sharing my personal "golden rule," I just try not to be as nasty as I want to be, which is a Henry Mitchell quote from his column in an early '80s "Washington Post."

The generic Gertrude, sitting near me, is clearly anxious to share next. 

Her share, "I had to talk with a jerk yesterday and believe me, I was as nasty as I wanted to be." 

Pondering that, my first thoughts were: She has over 30 years seeking still more inner growth, her share was virtually purple-tinged with contempt, her mentor was there listening, and she showed not an ounce of regret. Plus, her pride-in-self was all aglow. 

My very delayed second thoughts: I am smack-dab in the middle of mentally doing to Gertrude just what I'm judging Gertrude for doing. Here's me, with a lot more than 30 years of seeking still more spiritual growth, my thoughts all wrapped in contempt, pride snidely grinning, Himself here listening...and I'm just beginning to feel regret waiting in the wings.

My old standby plays: Hard ain't it hard, Lord, loving you. To which, commonsense responds, It wouldn't be so hard if I'd do it like I talk it. 

This morning, I consciously give my friend Gertrude a mental hug. Then I remind me with my thank you that this, too, is to be loved...not to be forgotten or hidden but to be sown. How-not-to must be shared as well as how-to...it is all spiritual growth. 

This I believe: Most importantly, whether or not we know it, throughout this mini-mental-quagmire, God sees it all with love and laughter. 

Thank you.

SEEING OUR SELF THROUGH THE GAZE OF GOD

My first thought upon awakening recently was that rising to great heights in the seeable world cannot be our goal, ours is to rest deeper in the unseeable world. 

As I sipped my coffee this morning, I pondered that and wondered if it wasn't the human condition to desire to rise to great heights. I had to smile as I admitted that I long ago knew my "human condition," more often than not, to be my ego in a pretty dress, covering up...obliterating...my hard-won spiritual growth.  

Clearly, the problem with seeking to rise to great heights is the invariability of the ego which attaches and sinks us like a stone in fetid water. Not to put too fine a point on it. 

As I read a "Daily Meditation" of Fr Richard Rohr's, I was comforted to read about seeing with love...about seeing the less-than and the great with the same gaze, through the eyes of God.

There is an absolute connection between how we see God and how we see ourselves and the universe. Either we see the divine image in all created things, or we end up not seeing it very well at all.

Rising to great heights or resting in the deep makes no never-mind...there is no difference to our Now  consciousness. We kid ourself when we say we seek to trust God...it is our own self we seek to trust. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, self-trust is the essence of heroism, but I need add for me self-trust is captured through the gaze of the God of my own understanding. 

This is our sliver of gold, and per Fr Richard, we have to keep re-choosing it, being reminded of it, allowing it [for] this is the beginning of the inner journey of transformation.

Thank you.

OUR JOURNEY AWAY FROM SELF BEGINS

Matthew 5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

Matthew 5:38, 39, 40 are my "forever" verses that I love, but oh the doing of them...there's my mare's nest.

We are told that God loves a seeker, so we can know we are loved; but, face it, God loves a non-seeker too. Wait...what's the "but" about that? God loves. We just need to accept that without any "buts." 

 

The wonder is that it is easier to accept God's love by doing God's will, as in, resist not evil, turn the other cheek, etc., than by staying with the reasoning mind birthing our analytical mind trips.  

Blinding flash of the obvious: It is our not doing that which God wills, specifically, resist not evil, turn the other cheek, etc., that keeps us from accepting (trusting!) God's love. 

This acceptance is our turning point. This is where our transcendent journey, our journey away from self, begins.

Thank you.

P.S. Our mare's nest, too, is love.

ON HAVING FULL SIGHT

Once I was given this blinding flash of the obvious that comforts me today: God's will is for us to experience love, to live life and all life offers through love. 

The big Uh-Oh is our egoic mind's fears, doubts, dark edges that are a part of life...and really need love. 

Our wants rarely conform with God's will, meaning we often get our needs met through our reasoning mind's declaration of utter defeat, a.k.a., crash and burn. In short, we're dumped into the middle of our own impossible haps where, for the spiritually open, God sees the possible, picks up the pieces and makes us whole.

All paths lead to God, and here us one path to seeing through the eyes of God. We fall down, he lifts us up...until our eyes are lifted, we see our wants as our needs. They are not, but only seeing through God's eyes can prove that for us.   

As Fr Richard Rohr put it, ....true seeing doesn’t stop with human beings and enemies and the “least of these.” It moves to frogs and water and weeds. Everything becomes enchanting once we have full sight.

Thank you.

VULNERABILITY IS GOD'S WILL

Free-floating ideas this morning:

• This is the quote that I love best: "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate." -- Nikka, age 6 -- Saying it, loving it...ah, but DOING it, there's the hook!
• For Thy will to be done we must DO then accept that. To accept with grace and humor is what transmutes ego's want into God's will...I hope.
• When I pray to God for his help, come to my aid, I already have his help, his aid, but it is up to me to USE IT...to put it to use by moving my hands and feet, or any of my faculties that he gave me to use in the first place.
• This morning I read: [Winning, getting over on another] these are aspects of ourselves that make us feel powerful and protected, rather than vulnerable. First thought: We are supposed to feel vulnerable? Comes the dawn: Yes...recall spiritual growth comes in the reverse-image of God's will. Vulnerable = God's will; self-protected = self will. 
• To be vulnerable without conscious thought is to be open to God, the love of God, Love. If that be so, the journey from head to heart to Soul begins anew on daily awakening. 
• We have a problem, we panic; it gets fixed, we are happy. The reality is that the fix is the unimportant part. It's why we lose our peace in the instant of travail that needs our attention. 
• Blinding flash...my deepest fear is that my mind, through anxiety, can and will overpower God. I can welcome that fear for the truth is when I feel fear, God is here. Thank you is the welcomer.
• Live thank you...love and laughter follow. 

Thank you.

HOLY CONUNDRUM...UNKNOWING IS TO KNOW

We study, we seek, we search, we pray...we want to know God's will in order to do God's will. 

We can study, seek, search, pray till our face falls off...we are still headed down that rough and rutted road of self-determined objectives, and we will be until we realize the truth in the quiet word we got way long ago: Unknowing. 

The road to God is the Way of Unknowing. 

We once heard and, if only from our eyebrows up, accepted that as true. Like most of God's stuff, it doesn't start out making a lick of sense so it slips away fairly quickly. But today I appreciate that this is where I have been brought to...again.  Having come through my dark and stormy fifteen minutes of arm-wrestling with the devil...or my I See Me/ego...I am peaced in not knowing.

Who knew? Knowing I know naught, I feel the peace I sought through the storm. 

It is true, I've got opinions up the gump-stump and even more facts to back them up, but I know nothing...and I know I am a long way from Unknowing, the taproot of spiritual growth. All on the spiritual plane, unfathomable to the reasoning mind, is unseeable, untouchable...unprovable standing alone. It requires a Higher Power to transmit it. According to me. 

To compound the senselessness of reason in spiritual growth, we come to realize that all of that studying and praying is essential. It is that rough and rutted wrong road that brings us to the U-bie that turns us back to God...proving Fr Richard right again: We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong.

Now we're at the conundrum: How do we get to Unknowing by not thinking on it? That may be the inner message staying ourself in Now and Trust. The God we trust we believe in is only in the Now, meaning there are more rough and rutted roads ahead. We will walk them if we're doing it right...or wrong for that matter.

Yes! Maybe better, I don't know.

Thank you.   

TO MOVE ON, FIRST BELIEVE OUR THANK YOU

In a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized this morning my deepest fear. It is that my mind, through anxiety, might overpower God.

I was gobsmacked that my fear, as I'd always believed, was not that I might lose my mind, but that it would take the reins and run right over God.  

That insight came as I was thinking back on yesterday's borderline anxiety when the feeling was upon me that my mind might be about to do the dirty any minute now.

My personal eye-opener came with my recollections this morning when I felt more meh than Oh No! 

Letting that filter through, I sensed my old Velvet Comforter had enwrapped me, and I knew: My inner Self holds me safe and secure no matter what, is not dependent on my mind, sane or not so much. 

There's my peace of mind back and shouting Hallelujah! I've not been lying to myself all this time! It is true, God has my back!

All that puts the period on my wonderings of what God's will is for me with regard to my personal mishaps and missteps of the day: Pray thank you, feel it, praise God and move on. 

OBTW, we must in truth believe our thank you to move on.

Thank you.

SEEK THE DIVINE WITHIN

I wonder if there is a decision to be made that is greater than ours to throw in completely, totally, one hundred percent with God...albeit the decision being God-born. If it's not, it's a self-determined objective...still self leading our parade. 

The hard lesson to learn is that the decision fully made takes time...happens in God's good time. In ego's thrall, I have often figured the God of my understanding for a drag-foot which he may be, but he's never late. 

Our self solutions are rarely if ever the perfect solutions of God. Face it, our need is to go through the crucible of ego-deflation in depth to find the divine, God's solution...and we are inwardly changed. Outwardly we're the same old self, but we feel new, welcoming our Now solution. Our new best-dress is within and, interestingly, if we flaunt it, we ain't got it.

All on our own, trying to change ourself or our attitude, we begin trying to upgrade the less-than-wonderful about us into something "good." That is just exchanging one judgment for another. We are still into ego victories underlying which will always be self...face it, we're heading down that wrong road again. 

We learn...again...that we cannot upgrade our attitude by self-will alone. We need to bring in the Peacemaker (and not a Colt 45). 

We are building our inner connection with a power greater than ourselves. This is the cornerstone of meditation...being led higher into the silence...turning our reasoning mind over to the divine secret hidden deep within.

Teresa of Ávila envisioned God telling her, 'If you wish to find Me / In yourself seek Me.'

Thank you.

HAPPINESS...ENJOYMENT OF SELF & FRIENDS

I relate completely to the following quote of Joseph Addison whose name I had to Google for I knew naught of him. Just FYI, he was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician, born 1 May 1672, died 17 June 1719.

 True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; 

it arises in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, 

and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions. 

-- Joseph Addison

I suspect I could rest happy with that as my inner guide. To complete my true guide, reality encourages me to admit that I need my other favorite quote:  I just try not to be as nasty as I want to be. As lifted from Henry Mitchell, a columnist in the 1980s with "The Washington Post."

It really is the simpler things that make me comfortable, i.e., put my mind at ease. A mind at ease is peace of mind...except when I'm trying for peace of mind, my mind is not at ease. 

The quiet word is still, give over, give up, give in. Doing it is still, resist not evil,  and evil is still self-determined objectives...not giving over, not giving up, not giving in. 

Thank you.

TO TRY IS TO TRUST, II

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of December 10, 2017.]

I was mentally beating myself up this morning for having tried something and came out looking like a doofus. My apparently favorite line, "When will I ever learn?" raced in my mind.

Then, thank you, Lord, my blinding flash of the obvious: I tried, I trusted.

There it is, when still more spiritual growth is our sole goal, we can know I tried, I trusted as God, grace and self-forgiveness.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

LOVE, LAUGH, GET OVER YOURSELF

Life as we live it requires our reliance at times on our material mindset, at other times on the spiritual.

Knowing when to rely on which, I follow my own decoder such as it is: My material mind's rule of thumb is, self is the benefactor, profit (as we so choose it) is the motivator; the spiritual accepts God's plain and simple word as, Get over yourself, Beloved.

We have learned that "great love and great suffering" are the keys to still more spiritual growth, and, face it, great suffering is a lot more common to us than great love (until we learn the peace of universal love, a whole 'nother post).

In making our transition from comfortable reliance on our material mind to trusting our search for the Divine within, we accept the risk of showing our rear in public...not to put too fine a point on it.

Or, as Jung more elegantly put it, we accept the importance of inner experience as the only pathway to transformation.

We experience (and repeatedly), as Fr Richard Rohr clearly puts it, that we absolutely need conflicts, moral failures, defeats to our grandiosity, even seeming enemies. These are necessary mirrors, or we will have no way to ever spot our shadow self.  

Only then is our heart truly opened to Meister Eckhart's If the only prayer you pray in your life is thank you, that would suffice...putting the period to love, laugh and get over yourself.

Thank you.

FORGIVENESS IS WINNING

According to Fr Richard Rohr, "If we can truly love this, whatever this is, it becomes the gateway to everything....We have to find our capacity to see, to love, to accept, to forgive, and to delight in one thing."

Well now. Finding our capacity to see, to love, to accept, and to delight in one thing is an enticing prospect...but I home in on focusing on our capacity to forgive. A frisson of dread runs down my spine. Who's kidding whom? If we have to find our capacity to forgive, something we find not right...wrong, and personally wrong into the bargain...usually has us in its clutches. 

I often recall my friend who made a decision to be a forgiving person...and certainly appeared to be able to live there. I finally accepted that when I try to be a forgiving person, invariably in my failure I wind up making myself miserable...and must needs turn to God for help. I try to remember to start with God now.

It is interesting, apparently a human condition, that the more we focus on A, Z is in our face nattering...when we seriously try to be a forgiving person, unforgivable comes begging for attention. Try for loving...hateful blooms.

I take that as the egoic mind going up against the spiritual...and winning. Winning every time until we give up the fight. Until whatever our self-determined objective is has been loosed and let go, we will be in a losing position...and blaming and shaming others, or God.

When, without thought, we strive for the perfect objective which is of God, we know peace, we love, we find joy...and  forgiveness is winning.

Thank you.

ON LIVING THE GREAT GOOD NEWS

Upfront, I need to admit that I have never read William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" in toto. However, the quoted part below is the basis of my still more spiritual growth, the path I walk toward all I hold near and dear, the perfection of which is beyond my reach. For which I am grateful...my ever-necessary attempts keep me heading in the right direction...away from self.  

For to ponder:

Since victory and defeat there must be, the victory to be philosophically prayed for is that of the more inclusive side, - of the side which even in the hour of triumph will to some degree do justice to the ideal in which the vanquished party’s interests lay.

The course of history is nothing but the story of men’s struggles from generation to generation to find the more and more inclusive order.

Invent some manner of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands, - that and that only is the path of peace! -- From "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James (1842-1910)

If God did not love me so much, that originally would not have made a lick of sense to me. I simply  would have forgotten it until it came to me again, no doubt much later, and probably in a different form. This I know: My need was such, and God does love me so much, the message would have come to me. 

I've read it off and on for years now, and I admit it makes broader sense to me every time I read it. 

The great good news is there is no end to inventing some manner of realizing our own ideals which will also satisfy the alien [his/her/their] demands. 

God loves us so much. 

Thank you.

FOREGO REASONING, SEEK SPIRITUALITY

The secret garden of God, God's hidey hole, fits on the point of a pin, is within, and is nearly always accessible only through our crash-and-burn....sometimes a misstep, more often a face-plant.

That secret garden is our center and boundaryless is hidden within each of us; finding it becomes our singular search. All else is self on parade.

By our decision to throw in with spiritual, consciously accepting the forego-ance of our reliance on reason, we are opened to those missteps and face plants...with lovingkindness underlying all. 

Most importantly and unknowingly, we have turned the key unlocking us from the bondage of self. We have entered God's secret garden...full realization of which seldom comes quickly, but an unfamiliar "rightness" settles within us. We begin to honestly trust that God has our back.

Now we begin. We begin to step out in trust...to step out of self-interest in trust...trust that the first misstep, face plant, uh-oh is covered by our thank you. We find that it is! We hug our Velveteen Rabbit and lovingly let it go...God's got our back. 

Thank you.

GOD'S MYSTERIOUS WAYS...OUR WONDROUS

When you've stumbled--and the guilt, loneliness, and fear come to assault you--if you don't have at least one good friend, or if you have not developed a prayer life where you know how to find yourself in God instead of in your own feelings, you will simply retrench and reassert your correctness. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 13, 2016

I love to note and note again: "When you've stumbled...." When, not if.

We only parade our victim-self when we stumble and call ourself all manner of ugly...or find someone to blame and shame for our ugly. There is no God there. There is only self, glorified in our own feelings of less-than...unloved, unwanted, unneeded, unappreciated...and loving our hurt of it. Why would we ever let that go?

I'm a believer that it is the stumbling that is the root of thank you. 

When, not if, we stumble, trip, fall, make a blithering fool of ourself, thank you is the Velveteen Rabbit that hugs us, kisses us, calls us Beloved. Ah, and opens us to God's love and laughter...now ours.

God works in mysterious ways to make our life wondrous. 

Thank you.

IF NOT NOW...WHEN? GET CRACKING!

Per Jung: ....we all must find an inner authority that we can trust that is bigger than our own....When we are able to trust God directly, it balances out the almost exclusive reliance on external authority....He wanted people to recognize those numinous voices already in our deepest depths. Without deep contact with one's in-depth self, Jung believed one could not know God. -- Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," November 21, 2021 

I take heart in reading what Jung believed and lived...in particular, "He wanted people to recognize those numinous voices already in our deepest depths." I know "those numinous voices" are my BFOs...even if I did have to Google "numinous" just now.  

My inner authority has found me, I am coming to trust it...and I do not doubt I will be "coming to" till three days after I'm dead. Ah, but I am heading in the right direction, and I am grateful.

My blinding flash of the obvious of a few days ago is growing clearer: My prayer that I learned from my mentor, "Lord, Come to my aid," can only be effected by my using that aid already awaiting within me. 

It feels like I am knowing more deeply each minute that his aid has ever been with me/within me, just waiting for me, for my hands, for my feet, for my head and heart to start the process of using that aid...without will, with a peaceable heart.

This is not new news, it just feels truer as it moves deeper within me.

This is the life-lesson we all must walk through, if not in this lifetime, the next, or the next...the time is ours to choose. 

But if not now, why not?   

Thank you.

GOD IS LOVE

[The following is a reprint of my blog of November 22, 2014.]

You know when God is with you utterly, completely, endlessly, without fail? When you feel it least. When you feel you're really out there in the ether without a tether and all the slings and arrows are coming right at you directly, and it is personal, and it is not fair, and where's the great vaunted God now? That's when God loves you best.

But, should you forget...he also loves you best when you know it and you show it. Without trying to. Just by breathing in and out.

That's God for you.

Thank you.

WE ARE ONE

The issue of our suffering is we think we are what’s wrong with us. It’s the idolatry of our shame. Reflected in our Lord's eyes, we see our true face before we were born, hidden in God forever.  [Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," November 18, 2021 (my paraphrase)] 

I read Fr Richard's statement and felt utterly gobsmacked for it spelled out exactly what I had come to believe all those years ago...and that still daily proves to me to be true.

Stripped down to its bare knuckles, my "B.C." is "before conception," where free will lives and enables us to make our life's personal choices as we are prepared for life. 

Back in the day, God ever with me, within me, saw me through where my choices took me, even unto crash and burn, that being the self-evident turning point of my life where I was reborn into God consciousness.

This very day, God ever with me, within me, sees me through the dailies where the less than self-evident happens where our walking around attitude about life itself is determined. Without a Higher Power to follow, we will either suffer and assume all blame and shame as ours, or we will suffer and assume all blame and shame as yours. Our life without a higher purpose becomes a search to prove whichever we chose as true...and we do mix and match.  

With regard to personal relationships especially, when we find ourself in resistance unto disagreement with another, we are in conflict with our Source within, our own Self. Until we get right with our Source, either we will project our failings onto another, call him responsible and obsess on ways to make her pay, or we will activate our victim-self and wallow in the sweet agony of self-pity.  

Even declaring our ownership...or "our side of the street" ownership...does not heal our conflict. We find...repeatedly...that declaring is a long way from owning. We only own it by letting it go with the love that comes from our Source...our inner core, God's hidey-hole. 

This is a long and lonely journey, with no shadowing from our thoughts, until a blinding flash of the obvious opens us to God's reality: We are not now nor were we ever alone; there is not now nor was there ever disagreement; we are not now nor were we ever wrong...or right.

We are One. God is.

Thank you. 

FEAR OF FAILURE...OUR ANGEL WINGS

We waste much mental, physical and spiritual energy trying to fix our own feelings so we can feel good about our self. Unfortunately, we do it by thinking of ways to hurt another...setting her straight, making him pay, spitting in the face of Fate.

What if feeling good about ourself is not God's will for us? That it is a side bennie that comes with our trusting God implicitly. (Uh-oh, I wonder if "implicitly" isn't a reasoning mind stricture looking to get us to return to self-will when (not if) we fail.)

From my life's experience, trusting God even a little bit is a rest of our life exercise. That being true, best hunker down now and make peace with falling and failing...because we will if we're doing it right. That is the part reasoning mind misses: We fall and fail only to be lifted up and set in the right direction...for to trust God. 

Hey! That's how we learn to love and laugh...falling, failing and being lifted up, made right by grace and by God.

Whole new sliver of gold: Fear not failure, it's our angel wings.

Thank you. 

TO LOVE WITHOUT EXCEPTION

...you have to let God reveal your real faults to you, usually by falling many times, and by other people's opinions of you. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," November 29, 2015

I remember when first I read that Rohr quote...in 2015. Since I wrote about it at the time, I know I realized that represents resist not evil in a wrap. God reveals my real faults to me by other people's opinions of me? There...precisely why we mustn't put our trust in the reasoning mind. Therein lies the difference between seeking psychological help and seeking spiritual growth. 

Psychological help is about discovering how to stand up for oneself, how to speak our truth for ourself. In short, the impersonal love of oneself. Spiritual growth is the realization that God's love is All, and we experience it fully by our personal love of giving it away for the benefit of others. In short, to love...without exception. Which is not available through self-will.

Our first need is to love ourself in a healthy manner which opens us to the spiritual realization that giving for the benefit of another is the pearl beyond price...is, in fact, the gold in life's dailies. Until we accept that, we will keep looking in the wrong direction trying to correct what we are egoically seeing, thinking, doing, being.

Whether we know it or not, God's love is All, and we experience it fully by our personal love of giving it away for the benefit of others. We are digging deep within for our realization of that, to then love it unto living and breathing it.

Thank you.

ON FEAR AND HUMILITY ABORNING, II

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of November 28,2016.] 

There was a time, back in the day, when I worried that I was not humble enough. Then I got the quiet word...I would have to get humble before that could be a problem. After which I realized there is no "humble enough." Every waking moment is a realistic chance of our being humbled...and being humbled by our own design. 

What we'd best hope for is enough sense to see our part in it and to take responsibility for it. Ah,  humility aborning.

We need note that believing we are nothing but worms in the dust is not humility...it is ego on parade, dressed up as Less Than Anybody, Thus Worthy of Note.

Fear of financial insecurity, fear of people...fear of any Nervous Nellie mind game...is just another way to stay stuck in the belief that our fear has more pizzazz than God has power.

As we know, it is not money that is the root of all evil but the love of money that does us in. There is nothing wrong with money or of prestige and power...it is our obsessive desire for money, prestige and power that beggars us.

God loves us just exactly as we are right this very minute. On a good day, I love you a tish more than I love me...then humility whispers, "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

Thank you.

SEEK YE FIRST...FOR THE BENEFIT OF OTHERS

We pray love for our enemies, not for our peace, but for theirs...to lift them up, not to change them to our liking but for their peace, security and prosperity. 

We meditate daily to bring ourself into alignment with God which wraps up our search for peace...our alignment with God is our bedrock of peace. 

When, not if, our egoic mind gets a tish noisy, getting us out of our alignment, we pray our thank you. We pray for ourself of course but now mainly for the benefit of whomever got us off track for s/he is our angel, turning us back to God. 

Never doubt that our thank you is the kingdom of heaven...is for the benefit of our enemies' peace, security and prosperity...is our peace, security and prosperity. We cannot fear (disguised as hate) anyone when we are sincerely praying for the benefit of that one...our will is totally uninvolved, cannot have a say, with grace bows its head in gratitude.

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

Thank you.

ON HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

I recall lecturing others: 'Just so you'll not be blind-sided again, it is always you...it is never them.' That is a sentence from my post, entitled The Inner Road To Freedom, of December 14, 2013. I note that because I am still trying to remember to do it. 

Ah, but what we know and what we do are two entirely different things. There. That's the inner road to freedom...honestly seeking to marry those two up. 

I have read and I do not doubt that the minute we feel the inner need for still more spiritual growth, we spiritually know all we need to know. Comes now the crux of all spiritual growth...coming to trust that inner need was met in the instant of realization...to trust there is a Divine Source within us. 

It is that spiritual knowing, reasoning mind unknowing, that is our spiritual seed and our material mind's Cross to bear. 

We have spent long hours trying to believe unto trusting that the Higher Power is within us, is on our side, does have our back, is available to us always and all ways.  

We do not regret those hours spent coming to believe for they were well spent learning life's lessons...like, I am the source of all my woes; when (not if) wrong, promptly admit it; or, the hardest thing life is ever going to ask of us is to change our mind. The solution clarified: Go to God for to change our mind.

All roads lead to God. There is no wrong road, just a good many detours. 

Thank you.

LIFE'S CRIB NOTES

It means nothing if we intellectually accept that there is a God. The only moment that has any effect or revolution for us is when we acknowledge God’s active presence in our lives and the power of unconditional love. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 5, 2021 

The way we acknowledge God's active presence in our lives is by acting on it...by doing impersonal love...by living nonresistance...by thinking Welcome to our every resistant thought, feeling, sight, sound, then following that with Thank you.

Practically, that means when (not if) we awaken in the midst of our judgmental thoughts, our attack mind activated, we acknowledge that this, too, is God...getting our attention. 

Embrace those judgments, forgive them their neediness, kiss them on the lips, let them be. They will dissipate...or not. 

If not, repeat our embrace until understanding comes. Understanding of our obsessive want to justify our judgments by holding others accountable...let love and laughter be our guide for those are God's perfect tools. 

It is important to let the love and laughter be of our own self...to think we are enwrapping the other with love and laughter? Classic egoic mind staking its claim. Plus the fact that love and laughter about our stuff detaches our judgment of the others' perceived guilt. Love and laugh and we all walk free.

It is equally important that we fear not our seemingly backwards slide. We are simply reclaiming unexamined--unforgiven--territory. Welcome it with our thank you. 

Life's crib notes: Think Welcome to our every resistant thought, feeling, sight, sound, then follow that with Thank you.

Thank you.

WHY NOT LOVE FEAR AWAY?

 I believe, help me my unbelief. 

That, or something close to it, is one of my unwanted favorite Bible verses. It is how I'm feeling this morning. I do believe, but fear of dementia is nattering at my innards, where God is supposed to live, causing doubt to hover over my head and pinch at my heart. I feel like I'm running on empty...nothing is singing to me this morning.   

Fear of dementia is my today's infantile paralysis of the 1940s (now upgraded to polio), the Big C of the '60s (now simply cancer). So many of my near-and-dear ones are suffering from this cursed disease, or have already been taken out by it, and I think of them as the lucky ones. Just yesterday I learned of another beloved one being so diagnosed.

Upgrade your attitude, upgrade your problem just doesn't light my little candle right now.

This is when...this is how...this is It...when we prove our belief...we prove the God we claim really is The God We Claim.

As I sat down to write my post, I felt stultified, a word I have never ever used and plan on it being a one-shot deal, but it surely fits this morning. 

And here comes a soothing thought: I need to make peace with my thoughts about dementia...kiss it on the lips...let it be. So I invite the thought that this may be the new path for curing the dread of dementia...love the fear away. 

Following my own past well-trodden path to making peace, i.e., acceptance, I embrace the idea that if dementia be God's will for me and mine, then let it be. Let it sprout wings and fly...let it soar...with me and mine riding its tailwind hugging, kissing and shouting our Amen Chorus: Dementia, Baby, we love you so, take us where we need to go...nearer, my God, to Thee.

Well now. Stultified has taken flight, too...for now. Ah, but my God is on the field. Stultified, dementia, fear, you all sit down, make yourself welcome, there is no resistance here. Just love and laughter, God's guardians.

Thank you.

THAT SLIVER OF GOLD IS GRACE

For those of us given to exaggeration, take heart! 

Fr Richard has given us some fabulous stories to check out, i.e.:  St. Colman’s monastic inhabitants—a rooster, a mouse, and a fly—ministered to him. Otters ministered to Cuthbert when he spent a night in the cold ocean waters praying, by warming his cold feet with their breath, even drying them with their fur. A bear helped Gall build a fire when the saint had twisted his ankle in a fall; a white bird guided Brendan on his voyage to the Promised Land, and the whale, Jasconius, provided his back for Brendan’s boat to rest on. . . . 

And Fr Richard's question is: Whether we read these stories literally or symbolically, the important question is only this: 'What allowed story tellers or writers to think this way?'

Look at the stories told in the Bible that to the material mind are impossible to be true, such as Jonah and the whale, the walls of Jericho, the parting of the Red Sea. All had a purpose, often for the uplifting of the hopeless, those at the edge of fuhgeddaboudit, those in serious need of a better way to view their world.

I freely admit that I talk in exaggeration...after years of shame, denial, pain of my own personal persecution, I can freely admit that. One fine day I was taking incoming snark about it from a friend, and I simply said, "I talk in exaggeration...accept that or get on down the road." 

[Aside: To those who choose to speak only the literal truth because anything less is bald-faced lying...first, literal truth is impossible according to me, and second, bless you, for you are limiting your own mind...clipping its wings to fly.] 

Just reading that question, 'What allowed story tellers or writers to think this way?', opened me to the never before considered gift of my exaggerating. It has allowed me my fantastical stories without fear of being made mock of even when I've been made mock of. 

Feeling down? Got an ugly problem? Find the sliver of gold in that sucker...trust me, there is a sliver of gold in everything. Find the sliver of gold and there is God's gift...that sliver of gold is grace.  

Thank you.

ON COMING TO AGREEMENT

Long ago realization: All that is necessary for us to live free in our own head (meaning, nonresistant) is for us to realize that we will never agree one hundred percent with everybody, but we must come to agreement with the person we are in disagreement with right this very minute. 

The hidden pearl: We must come to agreement. There it is, the key that opens our closed mind. We err when we listen to our ego and speak agreement before its time...peace on our lips, resistance on our mind. 

Offering peace just to get ugly behind us...or with a holy heart led by a self-determined will...simply keeps us stuck in the egoic mind. There is no God there...surface peace may appear but it cannot last for it is self-bred, self-fed, self-led. 

Only by the grace of God can true agreement between disagreeing parties be achieved. Our ongoing mistake is trying to get God's help...we strain for the right words to pray, the most spiritual thoughts to think. That's a useless struggle...think of it as trying to build the Brooklyn Bridge. That's done. It is there. Use it already.

Same goes with God. His hand has already transformed the disagreeing hearts...there is no disagreement. The minute our thoughts turn to God, we are righted...as are everything and everybody else. 

Hey! We have ceased fighting because there is nothing to fight. We don't even have to sweat how to do that...like the Brooklyn Bridge, it is done. 

I will go before you and make the crooked places straight. -- Isaiah 45:2

Thank you.

LOOK BENEATH TO FIND

To understand spiritually, we must look beneath the obviousness of our bare-naked eyeball. The gift is hidden within us...our chore-turned-joy is seeking to find.

We were gifted with the Sermon on the Mount early on. My first read? Did not make a lick of sense. I remember reading if someone slaps you upside your head, turn the other cheek, then if someone steals your cloak, run after them and give them your coat. What I got  was angry. 

I do recall when resist not evil became the one I felt was so blatantly wrong that I was forced to realize this was all about a new way to learn. That my reasoning mind was useless in understanding the message of the Sermon. Which led to my becoming willing to want to understand from a spiritual perspective.

For simplicity's sake, to me spiritual perspective is upside-down and backward from the material mind perspective. I came to this when I realized how often my perceived "worst-case" turned out to be my special blessing...that which I tried to pray away, stayed to bless me. 

This allowed me to see through the layers of judgment and doubt and to discover beneath them clarity, openness, presence, and love. (Author's name not noted.)

Looking beneath our own reality, we are freed to see. Looking beneath our own reality, we are freed. 

Thank you.

CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE

From our first glimpse that our answers are in the realm of the spiritual, we have sought still more spiritual growth. It has not been an easy road to walk, but not seeking spiritual growth is a lot harder...we know from experience.

A word about learning: Here's me in the first grade learning the word "orange," a real puzzler for me. All by myself, sitting in my little chair, staring out the window, I worrited with "orange." Punchline: I remember when I connected the word with the color, then connected the color with the fruit, and "got" they were two different things meaning the same thing, namely, orange...I can still feel my awe from back then that I had just learned how to learn. 

I may need to resurrect that very learning experience with the word "love." Impersonal, universal love. I know I've got it from my eyebrows up, but I keep feeling that something is missing in the breathing it part of my life. It may be I've got it, only it's so simple I can't believe I've got it.

Which leads to the straight-up question...then why not leap to do that? Why linger in that ego-victory land of angry hurt (right's righteous masquerade), where we hurt so justifiably and so futilely? 

Which returns us to another lesson learned...basically, spiritual growth boils down to the need to change our mind. Just one change of our mind can change our life beyond our happiest dreams.

Here comes reasoning mind strutting its stuff...if we know it, why change our mind? To what? And, if we know it, how can we not do it?

Blinding flash of the obvious:  If we will change our mind, we can know God disclosing himself to us as love. With laughter bopping along behind.

Thank you.

TO RISK FOR THE COMMON GOOD

I'm pondering the common good this morning, and I'm thinking in our walking-around world that the common good is us. Period.  

Why am I reminded of Pogo? Oh yeah, We have met the enemy and he is us. Well, if that be true, if we be the enemy and we be the common good, then dig deeper: There...the need for spiritual help aborning. 

The common good does not need us to fancy it up, study spiritual tracts, quote Saint Benefactor or some such. We are the common good just as we are. 

Our need is simple really: To accept that we are the common good our own self and that our acceptance cannot be done without our inner realization of that reality for him, her and them, too.

The common good is simply meeting the need for spiritual help. Not in religious form, not self-ideated, but with an honest, open and willing heart, and mainly for the benefit of others. 

This is a call to love our neighbor [and our enemy] and is the foundation for reestablishing and reclaiming the common good...[to have a] willingness to risk for the common good. -- Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," November 6. 2012.

Thank you.

MEETING OUR NEED

The following is a virtual how-to manual for meeting the need for spiritual help: 

First is calamity. We must meet utter defeat in some vital area of life. All human resources having failed to solve the problems. We are utterly desperate.

The next common point is admission of defeat; we acknowledge our own defeat as utter and absolute.

The third common denominator is an appeal to a Higher Power. This cry for help could take many forms, and it might or might not be in religious terms.

 -- adapted (lifted} from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

It is important...it is vital...to remember that in our walking-around world, meeting the need for spiritual help can come by way of a dreaded medical diagnosis, the death of a relationship, or a broken fingernail...each qualifies as "calamity" to the material mind. 

Equally vital to remember is the bottom-line: the need to appeal to a Higher Power which might or might not be in religious terms. In short, love and laugh.

Thank you.

VARIOUS THOUGHTS, BFOs & REALIZATIONS

Three components of spiritual growth comprise the not-just-for-Sunday Trinity...God, grace and guts. [BFO while watching Simone Biles recently as she exhibited all three...with a few tears and a big smile.]

Stuck in the reasoning mind, we must be aware of the lurking arrogance of faux self-acceptance which  is ego's cover for insecurity. When we are raised deeper into the spiritual mind, self-acceptance encompasses the acceptance of all others, most especially the one(s) to whom we are feeling resistant.

   

In talking to ourself about a feared outcome, we often tell God to let whatever we're fearing happen...and think this is the acceptance God needs from us. God needs neither our acceptance nor our permission, he has already set the wheels in motion for a perfect outcoming. Our mental invitation is to stop our worrying about it since the feared may just be God's perfect outcoming...thus our pearl beyond price.

To find our center, to become Oned, we need upgrade our attitude toward that which we resist...be it people, things or dogma. 

Resist not evil, trust God, love and laugh.

Thank you.

GOD'S HAND IS IN THIS...ALWAYS AND ALL WAYS

I am told, and I choose to believe: Trust of God manifests as trust in our own self.

It is by giving love...plain and simple, no frills, no ifs, ands, or buts...impersonal love given out is how our dealings with life moves us forward in peace...no matter how those dealings appear to us as they come marching in. 

It is our original decision to trust God that we rely on...it is that decision that opens the door upon which God knocks, releasing impersonal, universal love.    

Love released is the making of life going smoothly no matter the appearances. When we only give, show, know love, love is what comes back, regardless of how it looks and/or feels on its return. In today's language, It's not what happens to us, it's how we react to it...in the Now, how we respond to it. 

The material mind is not built to recognize spiritual love, and life's dealings are filtered through our material mind. Thus the need for a spiritual base. Still more spiritual growth having become our go-to, our inner knowing reminds us God's hand is in this. 

As our faith grows and deepens, we rely on those five words, God's hand is in this. We pray our thank you...then we can rest in love.

Thank you.