DOING IT WRONG, GETTING IT RIGHT

You must succeed at dualistic clarity about real and unreal before you advance to nondual responses. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation, July 16, 2021 

Paradox alert! Trying to do the right thing, as in going against our own "want to," is a self-determined objective and not of God. It is not of God until we are doing the right thing without trying...without thought, trepidation or hope of glory. 

We find we must try with a will or fall by the wayside, i.e., do the right thing as a self-determined objective, until one fine day we are doing the right thing without thought or notice...just as we breathe.

Doing the right thing is not only a want, it is a need. Knowledge of our needs is born and bred in our still more spiritual growth...knowledge unto reliance is trust in divine Providence...God in a word.

As long as we are dependent upon doing the right thing by not doing what we want to do we are stayed in the reasoning mind. Even, probably especially, when we are going against our wants. We want to set the generic Gertrude straight, but we offer loving kindness to her instead. And there is nothing humanly wrong with that...we feel good about ourself. 

We slowly realize that self is too much in there...it is still a self-determined objective. Take heart, we are being headed in the right direction. We inwardly acknowledge gratitude for another opportunity to learn Thy will, Thy way, and pray our thank you. 

For sure, we will get many more opportunities to learn...as we continue making false starts, hitting egoic walls, but aiming in the right direction. Learning to get over our own self. 

 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

Thank you.