PERCEIVED ENEMIES - FRIENDS IN DISGUISE

In truth, to attain to interior peace, one must be willing to pass through the contrary to  peace. Such is the teaching of the Sages.--Swami Brahmananda (from Easwaran's "Words to Live By," November 26)

My blinding flash of the obvious: Fear not that "newbie" feeling. Fear them not, those familiar feelings of so long ago, for they now, as then, are leading you free.

Loosing the reasoning mind and letting it go is not doable by the reasoning mind. Even when the reasoning mind declares itself in agreement...our feelings count! That they count means they cannot be denied, even as we deny them. 

It "feels" not right. It "feels" scary. It "feels" uh-oh, wrong way, turn around...stop! 

And the early lesson that "feelings are not facts" comes to our aid...doesn't stop the doubts, but does give us a glimpse of humor...going down that wrong road again when we don't even want to! Will this still more spiritual growth ever stop with the ineffable? (There's a word I never in my walking-around life have ever used.)

Just as there is no cheap sobriety, there is no cheap spiritual growth...all we learn from our eyebrows up, we must participate with in its journey through our own self. From the brain down to the heart to the gut to our toes...and back up, spreading itself throughout our Soul to rest in God's hidey hole within. 

This may be akin to the necessary "path of descent" about which Rohr teaches...that the spiritual life will eventually require us to descend into a dark tunnel, to descend into unknowing and doubt, to descend into a loss of certainty, to descend through a process that feels like dying. 

Don't tell me that doesn't sound scary...and there it is...the reasonable reason that loosing the reasoning mind and letting it go is not doable by the reasoning mind. Having come to agreement with myself, I can turn to what I have learned from books that has proved true by my own experiencing. 

There's Saint Augustine's Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt. 

Another: 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 of Assisi

Love your enemies...they are friends in disguise. Which justifies my possible favorite: We have ceased fighting everything and everybody. - Anonymous

Again, there is no cheap spiritual growth, that's why it is the pearl beyond price.

Thank you.