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.
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