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.

THE MUSTARD SEED AND OUR INNER KNOWING

Early on we want to talk spiritual before we own our spirituality. We learn to sit in the silence until we are called upon to talk. This "called upon" is a Now thing...we cannot think it, plan for it, study how to...even as we come to recognize that is what our spiritual preparation is about. 

This I know from my own experience...we will know when to be silent, when to break silence. This I  also know from experience: Just because we know doesn't mean we do...that's why "when wrong, not if wrong" is our fail-safe. 

We will be wrong, and often...quite often...we will learn more from being wrong than if we had kept self-willed silent. 

There...a telling difference in spiritually enlightened and highly educated...sometimes it is necessary to do it wrong to get it right. This is counterintuitive...or in plain speak, doesn't make a lick of sense...but it is exactly where still more spiritual growth awaits...not in our mental acuity, but in our Soul.

I'm convinced the hardest part in living by spiritual principles is trusting spiritual principles...having faith in their reliability. We can't see, touch, smell, taste, feel a spiritual principle...all we have is our own faith, our willingness to trust it. 

Comes the dawning, that is all we have in the God of our own understanding. And there it is, the greatest gift...our inexplicable, inner knowing. 

When first we come to believe in a Power greater than ourself, we realize we're going to need to build our trust in that. That first understanding is the same understanding we will take with us when we go to our Great Reward, as my beloved grandma called death. 

We build our trust...but is it enough? It is never enough if we are still relying on our reasoning mind. Then the parable of the mustard seed comes to mind, and gratefully we pray our thank you.

Thank you.

TRUST GOD...AND RELAX

The only purpose of the gospel, and even religion, is to communicate that one and eternal truth —You are beloved children of God! -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 28, 2021 

OK...if that quote of Fr Richard's is truth, what does it mean to you, to me, to us to be beloved children of God? 

What or who is God to each one of us? 

We say we believe in the God of our own understanding...well, what, who is that in our daily walking around world? Or is it just so many words? 

How does the God of my own understanding manifest itself to me right Now? Or does it? And if it doesn't, what good is it? 

Is it really just so many words or is it real? Does it have meat on its bones, hair on its head, breath in its body...in another dimension? 

Is it personally meaningful or is it I-hope-I'm-not-kidding-myself?

I have wrestled with each of these thoughts and questions and found my answers to each...and then had to wrestle and find it again...and yet again. The great and glorious news is: If we will seek, we will find. 

We will find answers not of our own thinking. We will come to know them to be true which leads to the hard part...living, breathing, walking our proven truth. In other words, trusting. 

Our trust in God is our proof of God...ah, which is not ours to do. It is God's to grant. 

Let go and let God.  

Thank you.

WHERE ELSE WOULD WE GET SO INSPIRED?

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.... -- Matthew 5:43-48  

 

Long ago, a blinding flash of the obvious gifted me with those two sentences as my inside personal goal. Admittedly, doing it has been more than difficult, and that's doing it imperfectly at best. 

To me to "pray for those who persecute you" means to pray for those to whom I have assigned the role of persecutor, relatives, friends and some who are just passersby in my life. I don't have to work on not thinking of them as persecutors, that's the wrong end of the learning curve...I need to upgrade my perception of them to being angels in my life for, like fear, they turn me to God p.d.q. 

Truth to tell, the biggest block to doing this has been the name of the person who first said it, namely, "Jesus."  That name in itself is toxic to many in my world today. I avoid using the name and usually use "J" when I'm quoting him even in my journal! 

My peeps do not use the name when talking about spiritual matters...and literally talking about things he taught. I know, and I quote a lot, that loving our enemies is the essence of nonresistance and nonresistance is love and God is love. Ah, but who first gave us the quiet word, resist not evil? J.

A short time ago, for no known-to-me reason, this "new" understanding came to me: Invite Jesus, as just plain folk, into my thinking...Jesus as a walking around good and decent person...kinda like I believe my dad, my friend Judy's dad Ed and Sandy B. were. 

In short, strip him of the fancy-schmancy religious symbolism and let him be, just like I am...and you are. I've been letting that be...I chew him out on occasion, kiss him on the lips when I'm at sixes and sevens, high-five him when life's going my way. I may change his name to "Jay" until I get to where I'm going.

Best part...I know my God approves. Face it, where would I get such an idea except from my God? 

Thank you.