RESIST NOT...HAND-IN-HAND WITH OUR ENEMY

I am coming to understand at the end of her life how Mother Teresa could write in her diary that she did not feel that she knew God at all. Not to compare me with a saint, but her experience is a comfort to me...and what else is a saint's experience for?  Against my own remembered experiences, the feeling often floats that I only know the right words, that I know naught of the actual living of those words. 

Comes the double gift and burden...we know, or we hopefully know, that feeling, too, is ego. 

As I have often read and written, it is interestingly pathetic how long we will cling to the belief that reason is our safety net...that "victory can be ours for the thinking."  When it is detachment from reliance on our reasoning mind that sets us on the path to freedom. Another, oh please, I know that.

But that's it...that's our mare's nest. Simply knowing...and agreeing...that it is detachment that heads us in the right direction toward freedom, is ego's hook permitting our falsely believing we've got it. What we've got is understanding from our eyebrows up...ego's home plate...which too often we take for bragging rights. 

To live the turned-over life we seek, we find we must metaphorically hold our nose and take a leap of faith...in other words, and yet again, Just Do It. Our awakening is experiencing the difference in saying Just Do It and the time, the effort, the trudging we must do to just do it. 

In the end, all that essential time, effort and trudging lifts us up deeper to detachment, to letting go, to forgiveness. There. That is nonresistance.

This is where we find God's hand in the hand of our enemy...and we are graced with gratitude.   

Resist not evil. -- Matthew 5:39

Thank you.

EGO...GOD'S BFF

Blinding flash of the obvious: Never fear losing...that's where God stands, ready to catch us when (not if) we fall.

More and more I am seeing that our shortsightedness lies in our trust in winning. We have been taught and, against our own experience, continue to believe that winning is The Answer...our solution...our brass ring...our happy ever after.   

Again I am called to Rohr's "We get to God by doing it wrong not by doing it right." Or, my point, we get to God by losing not by winning. To the reasoning mind, that is hogwash, not to put too fine a point on it. We must go beyond reason to love.

We can be grateful for the grace of God, good mentorship and loyal friends that our mind has a crack in it...or, more appealing, is ajar. We rely on still more spiritual growth to stay it there since our own ego will ever be legislating for "a better way"-- its way. 

The danger with winning is it has such a fabulous material-world reputation. Face it, its reputed potential is hard to hate. But the very want to win, anything, can at some point become a self-determined objective which quick, fast and in a hurry becomes our singular focus...transmuted into the God of our understanding.

The spiritual reality is that it takes losing to discover "that winning feeling" within us...already there  awaiting our awakening. 

In losing we find God...and the many unmet-yet friends to welcome us. In the momentary feel-good of winning, we stand alone. It is a solitary trip...but isn't that what ego is? 

A word about ego. I choose to believe that we need neither hate nor fear ego, but freely love it. Who's kidding whom, it is ego that keeps still more spiritual growth our forever goal. I kinda think of ego as God's BFF...a good reminder to me when I get short with it...or when the possibility of winning pops up, singing my song.

 Thank you.

REALIZE ANEW...EACH DAY

All our unknown answers are held for us within our unconsciousness. And, per today's "Daily Meditation" of Fr Richard Rohr, We can’t get to the unconscious logically, literally, or mechanically. We have to fall into it...usually by suffering....Until our certitudes and our own little self-written success stories begin to fall apart, we usually won’t touch upon any form of deeper wisdom.

Ah, this uncertainty I am in is the process of realization. Realization is not a one-shot deal. We see Truth, we understand it, we get it...but it is useless until we prove Truth through realization. The proving is our every day welcoming of our unknown, unplanned, unexpected life. With or without anxiety. 

It's akin to walking through a briar patch...we get that walking through it is going to hurt, so we think about it, talk about it, ponder, analyze, teach!...but until we step out into it, until we are showing not telling, realization is just a word.   

Apparently, this is my path today...the path of unknowing, the scary-to-the-reasoning-mind path, where we prove anew daily that which we have realized before, only it is deeper today. This feels very like my early years when I was told to not talk about my anxiety but I did anyway because I had to. It was that that drew to me others who were silently suffering anxiety. 

Oh my..."God Calling" today:  ...remember that the varied path does not always mean that you need the varied training. We are seeking lost sheep--we are bringing the Kingdom [to others].

There it is. We think of suffering as being for our ego-deflation-in-depth...which it is, but it is also for the benefit of others. When God's hand is in it, all of us come out the winner. 

I pray my thank you because I suffer today for the benefit of others, knowing others suffered for me to bring me to my sacred briar patch...to walk me through my sacred briar patch. 

We are blessed beyond knowing.

Thank you. 

DON'T DO FOR TO GET...DO FOR TO GIVE

Throughout the Sermon, we are told to do in secret what we need do, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (I'm convinced that is the quiet word re anonymity...in anonymity, the ego is quieted and the true Self is freed.)  

We are warned against doing our business in public (donating money, praying, even lending a helping hand) when the purpose is for looking good, getting admiration or praise  The looking good we seek is our reward, negating your Father who is in secret, sees in secret, and will reward you.

I wonder if that same doesn't apply for when we share. We do not share to educate, or to enlighten, or to 'show and tell'...no, we  share to be educated, enlightened, told by our Father within. Actually, I'm thinking the same applies to all we do...even when "pitching in" is to feel good about ourself, that is our reward. 

Our life lesson is all about doing for others without thought of self. The hidden message then is that what we do for others is what we do for ourself...ah, is what is done for us by our Father within. 

The hidden, very hidden, message: If we are doing for to get anything...praise, money, peace of mind, a reward of any kind...we are doing for our ego, and yikes!, there is no enough to our ego. We will ever feel unrewarded...lacking, in fact.

In the end all that matters is what we have done for others. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

ON DEEPENING OUR TRUST IN GOD

Anything that upsets our normalcy is a threat to the ego but in the Big Picture, it really isn’t.....Falling apart is for the sake of renewal, not punishment....Our best response is to end our fight with reality-as-it-is. We will benefit from anything that approaches a welcoming prayer [e.g., thank you] - Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 26, 2021 (My emphasis added and bolded.)

NOTE: Here's my assurance that God has me headed in the right direction: Almost the entirety of Rohr's "Meditation" today, is about building trust in God and moving out in that. Except for this Note and my BFO, all the italicized parts of this blog are quotes from Rohr today.

Blinding flash of the obvious: This is my time of building trust in my Father within.

Reasoning mind balks: Isn't that what I've been doing all these years...building trust in God???

Comes the light: Indeed, that has ever been my hope, my intention, but now: suddenly you’re placed in an utterly different world, where what you used to call 'normal' doesn’t apply anymore. 

The unsettled feelings, the anxiety that sits on my shoulder moving from left to right at will, are the reasonable response to the  "new pair of glasses" my old "normal" has received. I can fear it not for it is heading me in the right direction...toward a deeper trust in God.

I had an interesting experience yesterday afternoon...I knew it might be a risk, but I felt a strong urge to speak about "in the instant of realizing our defect, it is lifted" which is not often heard in the rooms. It is, however, written about in spiritual literature, and, interestingly, my blog yesterday morning was all about that.

Immediately after I spoke, I felt the old familiar regrets, the "coulda, woulda, shoulda." It took a couple minutes of wallowing to bring me to my "thank you," then to the realization that I had just taken a step up deeper in building trust in my Father.

This is what building trust in God feels like: ....what it feels like when everything falls apart. It’s not a threat. It’s an invitation to depth. It’s what it takes to wake people up to the real, to the lasting, to what matters.

I sometimes think of God's love as akin to the love of Ari, the first love of my life, my seven-pound Maltese. Ari would see me, wag all over from tail to nose-tip, and pee. Proof positive: It is impossible to hate love no matter how it comes to us.

Thank you.

SIMPLIFY...DETACH...SUBTRACT...LET GO

We want so much to change...to change for the better...for our idea of the better.

We get the quiet word: In the instant of our desire, the change is made. I believe that to be true. The me-problem being the change is made not as we wish it to be, not according to our idea of the better, but as the Father knows our need to be.

In not recognizing God's change, all our rues, regrets and remorses follow in the wake of our attempts to make the change...uh-oh...according to our self-determined objective, our own idea or what we want.

Spiritual growth is in its roots, not in its blossom. Our roots are our growth, there is neither need nor room for thinking, talking, "venting." Still more spiritual growth only grows deeper. 

Howsomever, never knock the blossom...the blossom is visible proof that God is growing us. (Lest we forget, the blossom has a very, I'm talking very, short shelf-life.) Our major error though is in taking credit, even silently, for the beauty of the blossom. We can gratefully appreciate our God-growth within our soul...but humbly bragging that we had nothing to do with it is ego on parade.

Maybe it is true...life is all about simplifying. We start with learning, with education; we move upward putting to use what we learned, including a lot of falls, bumps and bruises which birth our need for spirituality in some form or fashion. We start the divine trudge with a changing of our mind about what we've learned and lived; we slowly exchange our mind from earthly to heavenly...and we know peace.

We let go of self and gratefully accept of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works. 

Thank you. 

ON THE REALIZATION OF GOD

Supply is the realization of God. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Letters" @ p 631

Realization does not come by the activity of our natural mind...as in thinking, pondering, analyzing. No. We prepare our self for still more spiritual growth...and realization...through spiritual discipline. 

That will include thinking, pondering, analyzing, but the discipline is in learning and accepting when to stop all our mental activity. The discipline results in sitting and waiting on the Lord...meditating in a word.

From our eyebrows up, we can know God is already here within us/without us, but until we realize that for truth, we work on our trust...and wait. According to me, that is mini-realization...without the bells and whistles but heading in the right direction.

Our full realization may not come in this lifetime...I'm convinced it pleases God that still we trust and wait.

Thank you.

TO LOVE THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Passing thought: Others...life is all about Others...about loving Others. 

From that passing thought, a flash: Others is not just other people...not just learning to give over to other people. Others includes other people but, in fact, others is an Other way of thinking, feeling, doing, being...and loving that, those and them. 

There. That's moving on up.

A side stream we know naught of until we experience it spiritually: Our primary lesson in life is learning to respond with love, not react in fear, to all those others. 

Our day-to-day life is all about growing our realization of love...love is active, as current as our breathing. Love is forgiveness...love is nonresistance... also active, as current as our breathing. 

Love always flows outward from our inner spring of love.

Love is. 

All of that being true...blinding flash...our life's lesson becomes learning to love the unlovable. 

It takes no time and less effort to learn to love the diamonds, the incoming dollars, the friends who want to believe we walk on water. Ah, but actively loving the rhinestones, the dollars owed, the people who know, and say so, that we don't walk on water? We're talking loving the unlovable for sure.

Face it, to seek to love the unlovable is not of us. It is of God in all the holy names of God...nothing else can lift our heart, soul, body and brains there. 

Since our only hope of Heaven is loving all...the haves and the have nots, the beauties and the beasts...get grateful for there is God's opened hand. There for us to grasp and lift us up.  

Thank you.

As an aside, we're getting two posts today. I neglected to post yesterday...wrote it, got it all set, interrupted myself for whatever reason and found it unpublished this morning. Started running my litany of regrets and cut myself short because it may have been God who interrupted me yesterday...thank you. There's a better chance I simply forgot...thank you. 

HERE COMES THE SUN!

Blinding flash of the obvious: Hate and all its baggage are the egoic mind banging at God's door for entry...there is no "God's door"...all are welcome into God. That's how hate, et al., are transformed.

Hate is fear with an AK-47. Fear's useful idiot, hate, bangs at God's door for entry, wanting to win. Plain and simple. To beat love. To gain control. 

Fear to love is like black paint to white paint...let enough in, and black obscures white every time. Ah, but black cannot last, it cannot endure...it fades. It fades because God's got the sun, and the sun always rises...and black fades away. 

Given God's time, black fades into gray into white. Given God's grace, hate mellows into dislike into like into love. 

All this without our needing to lift a hand. All we need do is change our mind. Which ignores the reasoning mind's want-to...I mean, what's a hand for if not for lifting, doing, getting the job done? 

It takes as long as it takes for us to realize that all that so-called doing is just adding to our darkness. Our need is to take from, not to add to...getting to God is about subtraction not addition, per Meister Eckhart. Or, according to Rohr, all spirituality is about letting go.

Apparently, all our doing is our believing that we can lend a hand to the sun...for what? To help it shine brighter? 

We quote, We came to believe that God could and would intervene in our life in our behalf. Until we trust that by letting it be true in our lives, those are just so many pretty words.

Loose it and let it go.

Thank you.

STAY OUR TRUST IN GOD

Blinding flash of the obvious: No matter the wrong we are feeling, know, know, God has perfected it for the benefit of all.  

My take: Every time we're wallowing in regrets, we must needs sit in the quiet until we know. The knowing is our fear transmuted. That we're on a rough and rocky road may be us going in the wrong direction, but, by our trust in God, we are being moved to the turn-around now. Resist it not:

• do not fight it
• do not try to correct it
• do not try to gather allies to counter it for us
• do not tell our side of the story...especially to ourself
• mainly, do not give up our trust in God

No matter how long we feel we are doing nothing, that feeling is dictated by our reasoning mind. All the while, God's hand is in it, moving things and people for our benefit. Most important, we remember with God, if it is for our benefit, it is for the benefit of all.

We must needs stick with God. knowing the answer is never not God. We will be turned in the right direction by the very wrong turn we took. Thus, our thank you prayer.

Staying our trust in God, of course, is the key...and not beating ourself when (not if) we do doubt. The reasoning mind dies an extremely slow death, and the ego lives till three days after we're dead.

Stay with God, and we can let the whirling dervishes whirl, while we love and laugh.   

Thank you

BE THE FIRST TO GIVE OVER

[The following  is a reprint of my post of December 30, 2016.]

Be the first to give over. That was a long-ago blinding flash of the obvious, and I've never forgotten it. Which is not to say that I always remember it...it just means I come back to it, sometimes p.d.q. sometimes a day late when my hair's on fire. But come back I must, and there's the pearl.

I had lunch with a friend yesterday, and in our chatting we came to the conclusion that the answer to most hurts and/or peeves is laughter, which almost always needs must be at our own self. I have become convinced, and this is from my own perspective so you won't find a lot of followers, that the most important spiritual direction ever given is: We have ceased fighting everything and everybody.

The importance probably is in the fact that it does not make reasoning-mind sense. Reasoning-mind sense lives in the belief that there is ever a reason to fight...to stand against wrong is right, dim-dam it. But, again and again and yet again: We must go beyond reason to love.

Going beyond reason is where "be the first to give over" lives. Neither "be the first" nor "we have ceased" can even be considered without the deflation of our ego...ego-deflation in depth, a.k.a., still more spiritual growth.

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 agree with the person we are in disagreement with right this very minute...even if the disagreement is only in our own head, which, after all, is the origin of all discontent...in our own head.

Interestingly, our own head is also God's hidey-hole. We can get all esoteric and think of God as living in our left elbow or our right earlobe, but who's kidding whom? He's in everything, and, in general, he makes himself known through our thinking. It is our ego, God's roommate in that hidey-hole, that we must be willing to get over in order to free God to do our thinking for us.

Only then do we know the peace, love and joy of giving over in order to cease fighting.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT, FORGIVE...GRACE ON ANGEL WINGS

I am in your midst as your forgiving victim. This is how I prove my love to you: by taking you at your very lowest and worst point and saying 'Yes, you do this to me, but I’m not concerned about that, let’s see whether we can’t learn a new way of being together.' - René Girard (from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," April 2, 2021)

Girard's few sentences provide the How-To Manual For Welcoming our Fears. His insight tells us how not to fear but welcome being the victim, which benefits both the victimizer and the victim...proof God's hand is in it. The key to forgiveness, held in God's hand, is nonresistance which unlocks the door to our hardened heart. 

We talk "let go and let God," but when presented with ways in which to do just that, we balk...because letting go requires that we lose. Plain and simple. Our reasoning mind says we're the loser even while spiritual growth wins by seeking deeper for the Father within. 

Until we have an exchange of mind, we will feel like we're doing it wrong...it's hard to love that losing feeling. Hard but not impossible...we remember God's mirror vision and are enwrapped in gratitude. 

Gratitude is grace on angel wings, always hovering over us whether we know it or not.

Thank you.

FEAR NOT...OUR FATHER KNOWS OUR NEEDS

The true and essential work of all [spiritual growth] is to help us recognize and recover the divine image in everything. It is to mirror things correctly, deeply, and fully until all things know who they are.  -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 18, 2021 

 

Blinding flash of the obvious (May 2001):  God vision is mirror vision, reflecting the reverse of what the natural eye sees.

That was a ponderable when first I got it. Then, one fine day in my meditation time with my mind opened to Yes, I saw the word "ambulance," printed in reverse on the front of one such. That, of course, is to aid those who see it in their rearview mirror, alerting them to clear the way...now. That ponderable has since become the pearl beyond price to me. 

I felt great gratitude that I am a simple person and God knows it...that even yet simplifies that BFO for me.

It is through God's mirror vision that we experience our seemingly worst thing in life becoming our great gift. What we fear as dreadful, and pray it does not happen, happens, and turns out good and for our benefit. That satisfies me that the Father knows our wants are not our needs...and he always fulfills our needs.

Pray not for our idea of good, pray thank you for whatever comes or for whatever it is we fear is coming.

It is all good for it is all of God. Be not afraid...trust. Or, be afraid and trust anyway. Be not afraid of being afraid...for fear is our consciousness' clarion call that God is here.

Another bennie: We can release any regrets over our fears of perceived problems and accept them as the natural mind's way of building trust in our unseen God...then rest knowing that any feared future problems have already been perfected...and for our benefit.

The Father knows our needs. -- Matthew 6:8

Thank you.

NOT BY WILL BUT BY GRACE

Blinding flash of the obvious: I am Gertrude's angel/thorn...I fulfill her ego's need for a living thorn to feel martyred by. Reason not, love and laugh.

Well, now. We can hope...plan...to walk this new path to acceptance: When someone seems to dislike us, for what to us is no apparent reason, we need to remember that we are their angel/thorn. 

We fulfill their egoic need for a thorn-in-the-flesh to feel martyred by thus inviting into their life care and concern from others. 

We furnish that not by will but by grace. 

When followers of God walk beside him, he leads them in directions they would rather not go....  GO.

Thank you.

FAILURE...LETTING GO, MASKED

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. --  Meister Eckhart

I am coming to believe that Eckhart's claim about subtraction ranks in importance right up there with his saying that thank you is the one prayer sufficient in life.

Then there is my long-time favorite: Loose it and let it go. 

Not to mention, If at first you don't succeed, quit...don't be an ass about it.

True, we must try with a will or fall by the wayside, but spiritual growth teaches us also to quit trying and to start listening within for the quiet word...when to stop trying and when to start listening are a tish dicey, but that's what trust is for.

Spiritual growth also teaches us that going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous, so before we make any decision, we'd best be chatting up mentors, friends and fellow travelers...another risky venture, admitting we don't know and asking for help.  

Then we turn within to listen for the Word. Even with all our prior proper planning,  making our decision usually feels like holding our nose and taking a leap of faith...leading to a quibble or a paradox: Why does fear of failure so often keep us immobile, inactive, mute? We know (from experience) that failure can, often does, result in personal gold for us.

Ah, trying and failing is our letting go. That it is that masquerades as failure. In reality it is letting go that opens the door to the Father within.

There. Why "try, try again" can qualify as staying stuck in the reasoning mind or Einstein's definition of insanity. 

Maybe Life really is all about others...friends. enemies, mentors, et al. (Which leads to the belief that we learn more from our enemies than from our friends...and the learning is in what we learn about ourself from our reaction to our enemies.)

Face it, it is others that help us know when to stay and when to go, when to do Yes and when to do No. Maybe Life depends on our sharing our I-don't-know with others, on our risking failure which is nothing more nor less than letting go...letting go of the nattering self so the Father's voice may be heard.

Letting go...definitely subtraction rather than addition.

Thank you.

SELF-DETERMINED OBJECTIVES TRANSMUTED

Today, right now, I'm convinced the two most important words I need to live by are nonresistance and forgiveness. Wanting to live there and being willing to trudge there is my test.

The main block to what we think and what we do is our incomprehension of how it is we do what we are wanting to do. Like, how do I carry off nonresistance? Forgiveness? On the face of it, to me both look pretty much like the Buddha...doing nothing, just sitting there all fat and happy.

In my experience, though, and my experience is limited to my trying to carry either off, I find there is no sitting there, no doing nothing, fat maybe but not necessarily happy. Actually, neither happy nor unhappy about it...straining may be the right word.

Nonresistance is easier on the surface...we can look nonresistant by actually doing nothing, but we know, our innards know. If we are not thinking, feeling, doing and being love, our nonresistance is just another self-determined objective. Which, never forget, is better than being as nasty as we want to be.

By simply conceding, we know we are showing nonresistance, but outside showing and inside knowing are two different things entirely. I'm guessing the test of spiritual nonresistance is how forgiving we are feeling, how forgiving we are showing forth.

Forgiveness seems a tougher slog, mainly because we don't know if we've even done it until after the fact. In the end, doesn't the same go for nonresistance? Face it, spiritual actions per se are a tough slog for the human condition...they all go against the egoic mind.

Paradox alert: When does a self-determined objective become God's will? When we realize we must try with a will or fall by the wayside.

We pray thank you each morning that for this day we are willing to be nonresistant and forgiving.

Want to counts, willing is necessary, trusting God is essential.

Thank you.

IT'S NEITHER COMPLICATED NOR EASY

 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser.... Matthew 5: 23-25

Like most all of the Sermon, this is all about detaching from our own self...specifically, from our own wants and fears. Face it, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you...first be reconciled to your brother and Make friends quickly with your accuser are all about giving over, giving up, giving in.

I submit that Mathew 5:23-25 summarizes most all basic spiritual messages. First in importance being remembering that your brother has something against you. There's the core.

More and more I am believing that a spiritually happy and productive life depends on giving over, giving up, giving in.  All I have is yours it says somewhere in the Bible so our giving over, up and in is our spiritual extension of his gift to us.

Ah, but here's the kicker: We can't get there by simply "understanding the concept" or even knowing that is best for us. Again and yet again, the way to that place, without resistance, is to go beyond reason to love...that exchange of our mind from self, reasoning, to spiritual, higher.

To give over, give up, give in is the essential road to peace for mind, body and soul, but it is just another path to resentment-through-doormat if our mind has not been exchanged...if we have not entered, and do not maintain, a higher consciousness.

The road begins by humbly asking by way of our thank you prayer...it continues the same way. It's neither complicated nor easy; it is, however, the only way.

Thank you.

FORGIVENESS CANNOT BE IMAGINED

I once heard that we must make a decision to be a forgiving person. That has stayed within me, but I have never activated it so to speak. 

For some time now, however, I have had flashes that forgiveness is my answer...no matter the question, the problem, the stuck place, whether it be you, me or them...forgive.

I think of forgiveness as the word of my heart for it is all about giving to as opposed to gathering from. The many other soul-comforting words, such as love, peace, joy, kindness, goodness, compassion, etc., we can hold within and/or pass along as the Spirit moves us. 

Forgiveness, though...forgiveness is not forgiveness if we just hold it within. Who's kidding whom? Holding forgiveness within cannot be done except on the never-ending magical, mystery tour of our egoic mind.  

Forgiveness must be extended, is for giving...and to whomever we are resisting. There. That explains why it is so difficult. Think about it...nothing goes against the ego like the simple idea of letting a personal offender off the hook, neither judging her nor punishing him.

Personally, I can't even conjure up forgiveness feeling good to me after the fact...a pre-warm and fuzzy like love, peace and joy offer. Trying to imagine forgiving a real-to-me offender mostly invites justifying not forgiving.

Clearly...albeit ever so slowly...all of this spells out the fact that forgiveness cannot be done by self alone. Can't even be imagined. Can only be done through the spiritual activity of God in our heart, our soul, our body and our brain. (Probably could have left it at "through God.")

Thank you.

JESUS UNINTERPRETED....LISTEN

There was a time, and not all that long ago, that I could or would not even say the word Jesus. All the holy crapola I was fed...whoever thought that would be attractive, inviting, to anyone?  According to me, a bunch of old white men is who...not to put too fine a point on it. But who else were the Popes and the High Holy Preachers and Teachers back then, and mostly are today? 

When I got permission to have a God of my own understanding, I also got the Sermon on the Mount as our original textbook. Personally, I take the Sermon to be as close as we're going to get to what the Man actually put out there. 

When I found that I needed to study the Sermon, it didn't take long for me to realize I needed to get Jesus. Not a welcome thought, until my blinding flash of the obvious introduced Jesus Uninterpreted. I could have the Jesus of my own understanding. 

That has led me...comfortably...to believing that I could quit trying to be a good, honest and true, sweet, kind, considerate and loveable person. Clearly, the more I tried for it, the less I believed I had  it...so I tried harder, failed, tried, ad nauseum.  Notice the many times "I" shows up...there is no spiritual even peeking through...just I want all decked out as I need.

I quit trying for goodness in all its pretty forms (face it, we have only our own idea of goodness to begin with); pray thank you that we have it. Then we use that which we already have...like, BE IT. Improbably, Just Try Not To Be As Nasty As You Want To Be is the short form of all the holy writ. 

Believe me, and I speak from experience, that requires pulling up all the good, honest and true, etc., etc. etc., that I was given at conception and carry with me to this day...largely... embarrassingly largely...unused.

We go with the Sermon which boils down to: Love the other, the one we are resisting. Love the one we envy, fear, hate. Brick wall! To just try to love the one we hate is the epitome of a self-determined objective...and we know how far that'll get us. 

We must needs back ourself up further...opening to what Love even is, not to how it feels to us but to how the Father within speaks to us. And he can...and he will...and he does. Ours is to listen...to trust and listen...to sit and wait on the Lord...and listen.

But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint ... Isaiah 40:31

Thank you.

TO LEARN THE ART OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER

This is 'radical grace'...it is crucial to allow God, and at least one other trusted person to see us in our imperfection and even our nakedness, as we are—rather than as we would ideally wish to be. -- Fr  Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 11, 2021

There it is. To me, that is the foundational secret to living happy, joyous and free...or, living "free of me" in a me-first world.

As I look back,  it seems to me we begin through despair unconsciously allowing God to know us by  our barefaced imperfection...face it, our imperfection is why we so desperately seek him in the first place, ofttimes why we so desperately seek him today. 

It is through the inward movement of our heart and Soul that, comforted, we realize the God of our own understanding already lives within us. That realization opens us to our need for another person with whom to share that "radical grace." 

Comes the birthing revolution: In trusting one other person, our trust grows, and we know we can find another person to trust. And we do...and s/he does...and they do...and faith is born. 

I am convinced that only by willingly (or unwillingly but honestly) allowing another to see us in our imperfection and even our nakedness, as we are do we shed the self-centered fear of showing our self, our vulnerability. We begin to learn the art of laughter.

Only then can we welcome a thousand others knowing our insides. Ah, but it must be recognized, while we may welcome that recognition of others, we also must allow for their rejection...without our  personalizing either. We begin to learn the art of love and laughter.

There. There's the proof that God lives within us/without us.

Thank you.

THANK YOU...PRICELESS

Blinding flash of the obvious: All my rues, regrets and remorses are my ego complaining that God is getting the glory.

Admittedly, that BFO did not make a lick of sense to me until I sat with it a while. I think I got it!  

Ego, which always legislates for itself, rarely if ever benefits its patron, self. All rues, regrets and remorses then are ego's plaint that God is stealing its glory. God, which makes the crooked places straight, blesses the poor in spirit and strengthens the weak, accepts our rues, regrets and remorses and returns them to us as our sliver of gold. 

Our sliver of gold is the motherboard of gratitude. An attitude of gratitude is the foundation of our thank you prayer. And our thank you prayer is the whittler down of all that is of ego...me, my, mine. 

Lesson learned: Never rue our rues; they, too, are of God.

If the only prayer you pray in your life is thank you, that would suffice. -- Meister Eckhart       

Thank you.

GOD, COUNTRY AND CHOCOLATE

Julian of Norwich wrote: We are all one in love. . . . When I look at myself as an individual, I see that I am nothing. It is only in unity with my fellow spiritual seekers that I am anything at all. It is this foundation of unity that will save humanity. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 9, 2021

For whatever reason, the truth of that statement hit me in the heart and the head this morning. Especially the last sentence:  It is this foundation of unity that will save humanity. 

Now, more than ever in my lifetime, there seems to be serious concern for democracy...for the very survival of the United States of America as a free and open country as envisioned by our forebears. I take this concern of our coming undone back to the daily trashing of the word "united."

Picture it: The radical dissention in America could have started with the idle thought-judgment by one person about another. Idle thought-judgments are condensed gossip, meaning they cannot remain idle. They swirl in our head, gathering  dirt and debris to sling at the judged one, who invariably responds in kind. There. The beginnings of any so-called Civil War. 

The nearly impossible lesson to learn is mental resistance is rarely if ever stopped by will or by want. We can each sit in our room willing and wanting, and what we get is unspoken gossip in the form of idle thought-judgments...which usually break out in resentment, blaming and shaming the judged one. Since both sides are blaming and shaming for the exact same reason, we've shot unity in the butt, each of us judgers cementing and paving over our egoic need to be right.

Please note, in all of this, there is no mention of spirituality, of help from a Higher Power, of the need for Providence to step in...which, who's kidding whom, is the very guts and glue of unity. 

Without the binder of a Power greater than the reasoning mind, there will be no lasting peace between humans. The reason being, according to me, is the binder comes dressed as humility. 

The scary fact is that the block to this foundation of unity that will save humanity is not just our lack of humility but our fear of wanting humility. Of wanting a power greater than ourself. Of wanting God. 

Even as we profess our love for God, Country, Mom and apple pie...or, today, make that God by many different names, my own idea of Country, and Chocolate. 

Thank you.

THE EXCHANGE

Blinding flash of the obvious: There is no 'should' in God's world...there is only 'is.'  

For this we change our mind, more to the point, we exchange our reasoning mind...for the non-dual mind that is open to everything. It begins with a radical yes to each moment. (Fr Richard Rohr. 11/21/17)

Imagine...living in a world without should and all the variations of should that our mind lays on us. Remembering, reminding ourself repeatedly, that what our mind lays on us is our personal invitation for what comes to us. It is not "my rotten luck," "God punishing me," "him, her, them." No. It is my own thoughts run amok.

Mini BFO: Any thought of protecting self is our thoughts run amok. 

Face it, "protecting self" is code for "attacking you." Hiding behind "in self-defense," of course.

Since we profess as Truth that God has our back, that he goes before us to make the crooked places straight, how can we continue to rely on self-defense as legitimate, as acceptable? I doubt we actually believe we're reacting in self-defense, I suspect it is resistance that is the hook...where's the buzz in nonresistance? All we get from nonresistance is peace...that which we pray for and resist by our very prayers. 

Reminds me of a truth I backed into a while back: The more we pray for something, the less we believe we have it...even with it sitting right there within us. Patience, for instance. 

It all boils down to finding the peace within our own self that is already there...rather than praying for how we "should" be, thank God for how we are right this very minute. Then walk out in that.

I desire not to desire, for my will is without value, since I am ignorant in any case. Therefore choose Thou for me what Thou knowest to be best and do not put my perdition on what my autonomy and free choice prefer. -- Bayazid Al-Bistami (from Eawaran's April 8 "Words to Live By" )

Thank you.

ON REMAINING IN A MUDDLE

From Mirabai Starr’s translation of Julian of Norwich’s Showings: Sometimes, however, [God's] sacred sweetness lies deeply buried, and we fall again into blindness, which leads to all kinds of sorrow and tribulation. *** We need to stand up against evil, even if to do so causes discomfort—even pain—and pray for the time when God will once again reveal himself....And so we remain in this muddle all the days of our lives. 

And so we remain in this muddle all the days of our lives.

There. Even Julian of Norwich tells us that we remain "in this muddle all the days of our lives," i.e., egoic mind taking charge even with our spiritually changed mind. We recall that God is not available on demand, that there are many times our inner knowing of God in our life is missing.

Which explains why we must needs keep a constant guard on our thinking, more precisely on our attitude. We come to know and to know deeply that develop an attitude of gratitude is no throwaway line.

One fine day...or hour or minute...we get a cluster-clue...all the little clues we've received from the start come together, and we get our Ah-Ha moment. Repeat...moment. We know and we know we know, and it is gone, and we wonder...we doubt...we think about it. Ah, there we are, feeling like we're going down that wrong road again.

That is the exact time we learn to pray our thank you prayer...for that very pondering and doubting. That is proving the truth and the value of Julian's And so we remain in this muddle all the days of our lives. 

That is the birth of realization...perfection is  not ours, was never meant to be ours. It is our doubting that keeps us searching, that is God's invitation to God. When he comes, we are  filled with grace and gratitude; when he's a no-show, we slowly, gradually, one teeny-tiny step at a time, feel a smidgen of love...and we laugh.

Who knew?...remaining in a muddle is doing it right! Proving the truth of one of our clues: We must go beyond reason to love.

Thank you.

TO FULLY REALIZE GOD AS LOVE

I was reading this morning again about Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century Catholic anchoress, who spent the majority of her adult life cloistered in a small stone cell attached to a church. She wrote of God: All his actions unfold from this love, and through this love he makes everything that happens of value to us, and in this love we find everlasting life. 

My desire has ever been to fully realize God as love. To realize that the invisible, unexplainable, silent, untouchable God of my understanding is love...invisible, unexplainable, silent, untouchable love. Further, that the Father and I are one, ergo, I too am love....invisible, unexplainable, silent, untouchable love. 

Here's my truth: Living my life daily, making my mistakes daily, my apologies as needed, and my amends as directed, wanting and needing to forgive others their mistakes whether they make their amends or not, leaning on God however I lean on God...in short, happily stumble-bumbling along...is as important, as essential, as living cloistered in a stone cell all alone, contemplating God.

My desire still lives in me, my truth is more honestly me today.  

According to me, we are each God's daily joy...which he works out through each of us individually. I like to think if it weren't for us, God wouldn't have any laughs at all. If that be true, why not go ahead and enjoy being human. I think of it as doing our part to please God

Thank you.

ON PREPARING FOR A NEW WAY

You actually need this purgation and unknowing to prepare you for a new depth of living, knowing, and loving. —Brian McLaren  

Going forward from this pandemic, when and if indeed we do go forward from this pandemic...we can't return to our old normal. That ceased to exist with the election of November 8, 2016. The arrival of the pandemic in mid-March 2020 effectively sealed the deal.

I'm taking this shut-down year as the needed purgation and unknowing that is preparing us for a new depth of living, knowing, and loving.  

I take my comfort in not knowing where I am being led, not knowing what ways are being opened (or shut) to me. It is in not knowing that our trust is built, one anxiety attack at a time, With giggles and grins thrown in to help keep us moving forward.  

I remember being told all those years ago that Truth must be proved...individually and certainly not by thinking or analyzing. Today, I believe this is how we prove our truth...in the face of the unbelievable and the unacceptable, we realize that contrary to our reasoning mind's eye (unbelievable and unacceptable) our Father does know our needs. 

That being true, this is what we need to get over our own self...to let go of the clutter and the clamor we have made or allowed to be made of our world today.

I am brought again to Ralph Waldo Emerson's People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. 

There. It is unsettled that births hope in our heart, and hope it is that causes us to change our mind from reliance on the rational to a search for the spiritual. 

Ah, we change our mind, we change our destiny...and come to believe that God can and will, sought or not. We get to take the first step.

Thank you.

 

ON FINDING PEACE

Blinding flash of the obvious: 'My cup runneth over.' My cup is filled with all my rues, regrets and remorses which in fact are God's open arms to and for me.

It was a great gettin' up morning when I realized all my regrets as my turning point...away from my reasoning mind, which was and had been running on empty for way too long, toward God's will for me. 

God and I chat often and oftener, and I told him at the time that his will for me couldn't be any worse than what my regrets proved my will for me to be. With that, I let down my wall of will and said right out loud and as sincere as I could be, "Knock yourself out, Lord."  

I'm here to shout, lament, testify, brag, complain, marvel...Amen! For he has answered my prayerful words positively (albeit well hidden, mostly). and I am beyond grateful...I know peace.

Thank you.  

GIVE UP ALL WORRIT AND WONDER...TRUST

The thought passed my mind this morning that there is no such thing as hate, there is only fear. 

Then, of course, my mind tootled off to find a justifiable person, place and/or thing to hate...Hitler tops most anybody's list. The Black Hole of Calcutta qualifies. Cancer or Alzheimer's for sure. 

It doesn't take long...or genius...to recognize the fear underlying each of those. 

But...actually, I don't hate, or I don't feel hate, toward anybody. Ticked off at...irritated with...have no patience for, etc., etc., etc.  I'll just bet  each of those qualify. Think about it: What if there is no ticked off, irritated, impatience, there is only fear? What does that say about my security level...my spiritual security level? 

I say that God has my back and that Gertrude irritates me no end almost on the same thought line. How can that be? 

I believe God is love, then love has my back...meaning I am surrounded my love, yet I don't give love. Is it that the love I say I have is not enough to encompass the irritation, fear, I feel toward another? What hidden power does that other have over me that the love I have doesn't touch it? 

Ah, wrong question! There it is...wrong questions invariably lead us to the analyzation of Out There rather than seeking the answer within. And we are taken down the bottomless hole again. 

The right question is what is wrong with me that I say I believe that love has my back yet I do not act on that? To actually believe is to trust and to trust removes choice...to believe the Father and I are one is to know love and I are one, there is no choice left...there is naught but love.

We can give up any and all worrit and wonder about any outside issue...person, place or thing. We stay our eye on growing our trust in that which we already...from our eyebrows up...know for true. Our purpose in life is, as it ever has been, to move that knowing down from the roots of our hair to our toenails, and then back up again. Making pitstops at heart, guts, bones and brains till it's in our Soul...till it is our Soul.

The Father and I are One. God has my back. God is Love...and Laughter. All of which is true, none of which is ours until as we know it, we show it.

Thank you.

FINDING THE GOOD IN DOING IT WRONG

True happiness comes when we don't require the need to feel happy. -- William Saroyan

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking that quote may be true, but achieving it comes by giving up our self-determined objectives. By not so much seeking to know God's will (a self-determined objective in itself) but by opening ourself to God's will without a clue what God's will is in the moment. It kinda boils down to risking the right to be wrong...never willing wrong to happen but, if it is God's will, willing. 

Basically, our mind is changed, and that change comes by not seeking to know what God's specific will is for us personally. (Our own want gets in the way every time.) Ah, there it is: Our inner realization steps out assuring us that God, the Father, lives within...with only our good resulting.

We can make ourself seem to be sweet, kind, considerate, lovable and generous...for a while. We can act as if...for a while. But if our heart isn't in it...if our consciousness has not been raised, our mind exchanged...that fizzles out, and we're left feeling the phony by not being true to ourself or our God. 

Living a turned-over-to-God life is our hope of heaven. It may be our only hope of heaven, and it takes every minute of every day not trying for that. but living that. The egoic mind immediately tries to figure out how to do that. We do that by not being afraid of making a fool of ourself...by risking showing our ass in public (which is also spiritual...who knew?)...by willingly throwing our idea of ourself under the bus, chancing being wrong so God will have a clear path coming to our aid...and all that unintentionally!

We can't get our realization by making end-runs around God and God's will or by our thinking or even by our wanting. It takes being willing, we're talking honestly and sincerely willing, to, among other things, feel unloved, unwanted, unneeded and unappreciated because: I gut-bucket know from my toenails up that God cannot not love me just as I am warts and all. 

I don't expect to get there in this lifetime...but I am willing and I do aim for that. I do walk forward with God as my goal, getting it wrong as often as not, but, according to Fr Richard Rohr, we don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. Hey...I'm on my way!

Thank you.

CIVIL RIGHTS FOR ALL..FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

According to me:  

Not the Courts, not the Congress, not any human-originated law can bring about lasting civil rights for all...specifically, for other than the White man. Experience seems to show that only an upgraded change in the consciousness of Whites has a hope of changing the collective mind of all...and righting it.  

Seeing, recognizing, realizing Whites-only is wrong is heading in the right direction; however, as long as the correction remains a self-determined objective, it brings no lasting change. 

Only the perfect objective which is of God can effect a lasting change.

When civil rights for all ceases to be a search for, a please, and becomes a done deal, a thank you, we will know God's hand is in it. It is through our exchanged mind that civil rights for all can and must be maintained. 

We are God's hands and feet; it benefits all when we know it and show it...for the glory of God. Not for you, not for me, not for them...for God. 

Thank you.