SEEK LESS...ON THIS NOTHING WE NOW LIVE

You have come to that point in consciousness where you are seeking for what the world calls the intangible. When you came to a spiritual teaching, you knew in advance, or soon learned, that you were going to obtain nothing in the external realm. What you were seeking was the Invisible, that which cannot be seen, heard, or known. And yet you were seeking to be able to see, hear, and know just that. Through that seeking, you are coming to know that which is unknowable, see that which is invisible, hear that which is inaudible. And on this Nothing you now live. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Leave Your Nets"

We go to God for God...and that is All.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE...GOD'S HIDEY HOLE

Whatever we are resisting with all our heart, soul, body and brains is kept alive by those obsessive attempts to make it not true. Resistance is non-acceptance plain and simple.

Yet, the secret about acceptance is the minute we accept the truth of that which we are resisting, that changes it.

We may not like it, but we are no longer resisting it. Which, by grit and by grace, leads us to crash and burn, also known as surrender made holy...purely because we find there in the ashes of self-will the place where God lives.    

We surrender to the fact that we do not know, we do not know what we do not know, we are helpless in the face of that fact, and we need help. We turn to that unseen power greater than our self to find a way to live without our today's heart's desire.

That is acceptance. 

Thank you.

[NOTE: This is pieced together from my blog of December 30, 2015.]

WE GIVE OVER UNCONDITIONALLY...WITH LOVE

We learn early on that we are the source of all our woes, and that resentment is the trigger for our woes. Best we learn early and not forget that justified resentment...can there be any other?!...is purely willful ignorance. A get-out-of-jail-free delusion.  

The good news is that there are tools to use to head off a resentment completely. The bad news is to own those tools, we must be willing to give over to whatever/whomever we are resenting. To give over unconditionally. With love.

All of which brings us back to the God news...our mind is being changed. Our consciousness is being raised...we are being focused on better than our egoic feelings, and only good can come from that.

It's a given that ego is ever available to us and has but one goal...to legislate for itself. But we know this: When we made our decision to throw in with God and God alone, we began to receive still more spiritual growth daily...away from ego to a higher level deeper.

We must go beyond reason to love.

Thank you.

OUR LACK OF OPENNESS IS OUR OPENING

I have felt for a time now that I am on the verge of a breakthrough. Of what, to what, I know not, so I may well be...or not...on the verge of a breakthrough. Of a major change, I'm guessing.

Recently, I've been reading about the need for communion, for connection, for unity...and agreeing by not thinking about it.

Then I read in Fr Richard's Daily Meditation this morning: Jesus’ radical unity with the Holy One defined his life, and his prayer indicates that he wants that same radical unity to define those who follow. . . .Our lack of openness to all may very well mean our demise.

I immediately flashed that I talk Oneness but the idea of having a full-time other in my life is anathema to me...which I am very well aware of, even joke about it. 

It was that closer, Our lack of openness to all may very well mean our demise, that got my attention. And not the idea of our demise in the usual sense of personal death, but in the sense of that change I have been sensing...an idea, a way of being, changing my mind without knowing my mind has been changed? Just slowing becoming aware that I'm living in a different place? 

I suspect that has already happened, and I'm just getting the word. 

Old saying, still true: More will be revealed.

Thank you.    

WE CAN WALK FREE, II

[The following is a reprint, slightly reworked, of my post of December 2, 2012.]

There's a story in the Old Testament that I've made my own...mine likely bears small resemblance to what was written, but it works for me. I use it today to help me become willing to divorce myself from my own opinions.

Long/short: It's the story of Joseph who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. He was imprisoned, came under the protection of the Pharaoh, and rose to be the Pharaoh's right-hand man. The brothers come into some rough sledding, go bankrupt and, near starving, go to Joseph and, knowing they need to get on his good side, admit their jealous behavior and beg forgiveness. 

In response to their admission, he says, in effect, "You meant it for ill, but God meant it for good."

That's all we need remember to let go of our attachment to our resentments of others. Now, instead of wallowing in resentment, we meditate on God's meaning this for our good...and are given permission to find our gold in it.

Find our gold, and we've found our gratitude...we've upgraded our problem. We can say a sincere "thank you" to God and to whomever we've been resenting. We can walk free.

Thank you.

THE WAY DIVINE...FORGIVE, RESIST NOT

The True Self still must be awakened and chosen....The Presence needs to be recognized, honored, and drawn upon to become a living Presence within us. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, December 25, 2022

To me, the True Self is realized through our exchanged mind. The egoic mind, or the reasoning mind, is necessary in our day-to-day living...but more and more we come to the realization that we must deny our egoic mind its say. 

Just yesterday I experienced Gertrude in a less-than-wonderful light...meaning she got over on me. Well. I have not been obsessing about it, but I have not forgotten it. Who's kidding whom? Obsession is about three steps behind and coming on fast.

In my quiet time this morning I saw my way clear of Gertrude...agree with  her. Resist her not. Forgive her. I recalled my BFO that forgiveness is simply nonresistance. 

For the True Self to be awakened and chosen we must awaken and choose to do the opposite of what our ego is nattering about...namely, stop her and top her, don't let her win!   

Until we actually live give over, give up, give in, those are just pretty words to some, anathema to others. To us, from our own experience, they are the rough and rutted road, the Way divine, to the Father within.

It is comforting that our consciousness is raised so slowly due to the many self-selected detours all along the way...if we're doing it right. How else do we loose them and let them go?

The pearl beyond price: We are realizing the Father with us every misstep along the way...becoming a living Presence within us.

Thank you.

THE THIEF WAITING BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, 2

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 25, 2014.]

The thief waiting by the side of the road in order to steal all our worldly goods? That thief is ego. The worldly goods? Those are self-determined add-ons. They begin with fear...namely, fear of losing all our worldly goods.

I am reminded: My gifts are not of this world...be of good cheer I have overcome this world.

I want to remember that it seems every time I hear of or read about a better or deeper or easier or harder Way, I immediately KNOW I am (and have been all along) doing it wrong, and I need to try this other Way.

What I really need to remember is that that is the thief waiting by the side of the road.

Thank you.

SEEK HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS--EGO-B-GONE

Where is this God being revealed? Not in the safe world, but at the edge, at the bottom, among those where we don’t want to find God, where we don’t look for God, where we don’t expect God. — Richard Rohr

There it is, plain and simple, our idea of good and God's will are two different things entirely. The good news: God's will is aborning; our idea of good is receding.

Basically, our idea of good has been whatever we believe will benefit us personally. We dress it up as "for the good of humankind" or, even better, for the way holy, "for the good of my enemy."  Unquestioning, we bask in the warm ego glow, knowing that is of God.

God's will is where we don’t want to find God. Face it...where we don't think to look...where egoic mind cannot accept God could be found.

True story: In the early '90s, a dear friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. A lotta, lotta begging went into "take it away, God, please, please, please." 

He did not. 

However, in the medical prep, her entire body needed to be X-rayed and lo! A just-forming cancer was found in her lung. If not for the first finding of cancer, the second would not have been found early. According to her doctors, the 99 out of 100 percent chance would be of her dying from lung cancer  later. Lung cancer was at that time, and maybe still is, the primary cancer killer. 

God's will, God's way...both cancers were successfully removed, she is cancer-free today thirty some years later. Who, being prepped for breast cancer surgery, would think finding lung cancer, too, might be a fine reason for gratitude?   

My hardest lesson a-learning? Accepting the truth that praying for God's will to be done regarding a self-perceived need is still a self-determined objective...not necessarily of God. Then trusting thank you unto living it is sufficient.

Thank you.

WANT A PEACED MIND? GET OVER YOURSELF

It has long been a realized truth for me that I have but one defect of character: I take myself too seriously. 

The rest of the story: When (not if) I find myself in the middle of that defect, taking myself too seriously, already innumerable defects had birthed themselves, each one resisting me, my life, you, them, God...what is, in short.

Depending on the state of my spiritual condition, I quickly or not quickly enough recall the lifeline:  As important was the discovery that all our problems could be solved by spiritual principles.

Keeping it simple, I've found that the spiritual principle that upgrades our thinking, feeling, doing, being is whatever personally works for us. It is not overly important what we turn our mind to as long as we turn it away from our self...away from our perceived problem which is...always...self disquised as An Other.

Personally, I try to go to thoughts of lilies of the valley. A peace follows, and fairly soon thereafter a grin is working its way free as I say, "Oh, get over yourself!" 

Who's kidding whom? It is self alone that is the block to God. So there, my go-to spiritual principle...Get Over Yourself.

Thank you. 

RESISTANCE NURTURES RESISTANCE

Blinding flash of the obvious:  My spiritual principles today are based on a new way of thinking; namely, for the benefit of the other. 

"The other" is our own mental picture of what or whom we are resisting at the moment....could be a person or a habit or even a memory.

New way of thinking: No matter the perceived problem, the solution begins with thank you. 

Recalling the spiritual lesson what you see is always yourself, we slowly learn for the benefit of the other can only come through gutbucket acceptance...of our own self. Which is a whole new trip. 

Many of us seek self-acceptance through self-flagellation. That's akin to trying to stay out of trouble with our creditors by robbing banks...uh-oh. 

Self-acceptance comes by way of the very warts we try so hard to erase, delete...hide. 

The warts we try so hard to hide is the trick pony...that keeps them mentally front and center. Resistance nurtures that which we resist.

Warts...hug them and kiss them and let them go. And no, there's not a chance we will ever fully understand the exact how of it...that's how faith is born and trust grows. 

It is the very welcoming, not resisting, that opens us to God's will, God's way. 

Thank you.

SPIRITUAL LACK SAVES US BY BREAKING US

According to Fr Richard, what human beings want is resurrection without death, answers without doubt, the conclusion without the process. 

There it is, truth on the hoof. 

Especially appealing to the egoic mind is the wish for answers without doubt. But, who's kidding whom? All three parts get an emphatic, albeit rueful, Yes!  

Interestingly, resurrection without death gets the least mental time...probably because we have little  consciously vested interest there. "Answers without doubt" is a daily as is "conclusion without the process." Death, I suspect, falls under the safety net of denial so we seldom visit there.

Our material world is all about self, self-interest. But isn't life itself? We beat ourself for being so self-centered but, be it by sex, society and/or security, what has more claim to our head and heart than a  satisfied self? There's a paradox...it is spiritual lack that saves us by breaking us. 

Our own quagmire...built by self, felled by self...holds the key for our redemption: Utter and complete powerlessness. It is only when the egoic mind is running on empty, and in defeat owns that, that we are freed...unknowingly freed...to begin our spiritual growth.

Fr Richard puts the cap on it with this truth that we must needs experience: Our love affair with God is always going on inside of us, almost in spite of us, and all we can do is start saying 'yes' and start recognizing and honoring it. 

Unless and until we experience the power of "yes," a.k.a., "resist not," and recognize/honor a Power greater than ourself, we will stay stuck in self living in fear of not having enough...not enough food, friends, money.

Leave your [safety] nets and follow Me.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE...A HIGHER REALITY

Today my definition of Love is nonresistance to what is.

My deepening sense is Love comes in a single dot of Divine within...within each and all, everyone and everything. I understand it not at all, but I do believe that none...human, animal, plant, water, stone...is without that minute dot of Divine.

I believe our dot of Divine is nourished by Love, nonresistance to what is, and it grows us by our missteps, mistakes and errors in judgment.

Slowly comes the dawn, that which our reasoning mind resists, any mistake, is that which God adores for those are the slivers of gold that paves our way back to him.

Our resistance to what is...our resistance to Love in a word...is fed by our continuing reliance on our egoic mind.

The inevitable crash and burn for us is God's hand up, up to the higher consciousness of Love...nonresistance to what is. Which, in God's good time and our willingness to be open, we realize is acceptance.

We are lifted out of resignation, stuck in self, up to a higher reality, acceptance.

According to me, resignation is self-centered fear, stuck in self not daring to trust a power greater than our puny self. Acceptance is unquestioned reliance on a Higher Power, that single dot of Divine which lives in us solely for our benefit.

We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. -- Fr Richard Rohr

Thank you.

YET STILL MORE SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Blinding flash of the obvious: God is not only in this world, this universe, but in all the galaxies. God is all good, therefore good is primary in all there is, seen and unseen, known and unknown, discovered and to be discovered...good is primary, paramount. Resist not. 

It is not that which our eye can see, that our reasoning mind can understand, that proves God...it is that which cannot be seen, cannot be reasoned. This, too, we meet with love. Life is not for us to manage or to control for our advantage, life is for us to welcome as is with the love of God we hold within. 

Our mind has long since been changed from believing that proof of God is in the material good in our life...lifted higher...up to the bane of life being our boon. We are ever awakening...our eyes are ever opening. 

This is the same journey today only higher still...away from either gathering or giving God's good to living it. Now we see our good is gathered and/or given by grace and by God.

It is not an easy adjustment...words alone no longer have heft, our thoughts are still hauling too much weight. Slowly, we are adjusting to this, the same inward journey it has ever been since recognizable time began...always deeper, to a higher consciousness. 

Our trust is in God's will, God's way already perfected life as we live it.

Thank you.

LET IT BE...LOVE AND LAUGH

My blinding flash of the obvious aborning: I need to 'find' God deeper, my own God, the God I inner know is with me within me.

Later, I came across a quote of Fr Richard's: You cannot not live in the presence of God. This is not soft or sentimental spirituality; ironically, it demands confidence that must be chosen many times, and surrender that is always hard won. 

To me, the most important part of that message is, ...it demands confidence that must be chosen many times, and surrender that is always hard won. Like I don't eyebrows-up know that? Like I don't preach that on the street corners of my mind! 

OH...the great stand-up-and-shout word: That means I'm doing it right. 

That's the message...it demands confidence that must be chosen many times. With surrender digging in its heels behind. 

God's will, God's way is becoming one of my most important flashes. Looking back, I recognize God's will had become pretty much rote to me.

God's way is my new flash that seems to deepen daily. Its message is not new...cannot be new...it is the meaning that deepens, that expands my own consciousness, that gives fear a hand up to unfear...to the simplistically holy whatever will be, will be.

Again, the Father knows our needs...and, again, Yes! 

Thank you.

LEARNING BY LOOKING BACK

Keep it simple. Utter simplicity lies in the two vows that sustain our still more spiritual growth: (1) Let go of the idea that we have an alternative, and (2) love and laugh.

Here's me today: Remembering many of the mistakes I made ten, twenty, thirty years ago...for which I have found peace in my apologies and amends...and today am learning from them at a way deeper level. 

The punchline seems to be heading me toward my long-since forgiven mistakes, missteps and errors in judgment, my slivers of gold, as my now learning board. 

When others, friends and unfriends, are doing now that which I did then, my need is to silently with a loving attitude surrender my thoughts, detach from any judgment...good or not good...and trust me to give over, give up, give in by grace and by God. 

New to me is that I do not need to overthink it, I inner know.  There...me actively experiencing my trust in the Father within. 

When, not if, I am wrong, I will be turned in the right direction...with love and laughter. The same love and laughter I'm learning how to now extend to others which is different from my love and laughter of yesterday...there's no self in it, only awe and a certainty that only I can screw this up. Ah, and when I do, I get to love and laugh.

God loves me so much. You, me, us...God loves.

Thank you.

ON TRUST...AND GIVING GOD A GRIN

The spiritual experience is about trusting that when we stop holding ourselves, Inherent Goodness will still uphold us. Many of us call that God, but it isn’t necessary. It is the trusting that is important. -- Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, December 16, 2022

I often say that the hardest thing life will ever ask of us is that we change our mind. Fairly often I will  receive the quiet word: We cannot change our mind, but God can and will...whether we seek it or not.

I hesitantly admit that I wrote in my journal just this morning that I am having my mind changed...which was news to me even as I wrote: 

I am becoming willing to be the first to give over, give up, give in...not by self-will but by grace and by God. My egoic mind is not stupid...it is trying to insert itself for the glory. So far I have been brought back...to let God peace my mind and my heart toward another.

Further, it is in today's God Calling that it is written: Stop thinking your lives are all wrong if you do not feel it. According to me, that is one of the most important sentences in the entire book. I suspect many of us doubt purely because we do not feel it enough, 

Ah, I am brought into the fullness of trust, and I am realizing that trusting God is not a seamless feeling of peace, love and joy. 

Trusting God is often realizing the love I have within me, whether I feel it or  not, is held within me at the ready for the unforeseen need of another. The other being the one arriving in my consciousness at the moment and, face it, the one who is often. and for real, a reasoning-mind rejectable. 

Trust can never be self-generated; it is, however, generated from within. We hug it and kiss it and never let it go even...especially...when we do not feel it. 

According to me, that's called, giving God a grin.

Thank you. 

LIFE REALLY IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES, 2

[The following is a slightly reworked rewrite of my post of October 22, 2015.]

Life is a conundrum, a paradox, an enigma:

How do we get love? We give love away.

How do we get a vibrant, alive and spirit-filled mind? Through silence.

How do we overcome our enemies? Embrace them.

How do we win an argument? Agree...quickly.

How do we know for certain sure there is a God? We don't.

How do we accept not knowing? We laugh.

How do we laugh when reliance on God is seriously essential in our life? We love and laugh.

Where do we learn how to love and laugh? From the Father within.

Thank you.

GOD IS PRESENT NOW...ONLY NOW

Blinding flash of the obvious: My God, why hast thou forsaken me? There...the ultimate death of ego. 

Again, the paradox...again counterintuitive. 

With still more spiritual growth, this is subject to change, but right now I submit that spiritual growth demands the end of our reliance on "common sense."  Paradoxically, our answers now seem to question our utmost trust in the God of our own understanding: Against our want-to, will we out loud admit our doubts, fears, trepidations? 

When the answer is of God, as all spiritual answers are, it seems it must needs be counterintuitive. Thus, we must admit our doubts out loud for anyone to hear...or not. Ah, the crash and burn of ego. God arises in our consciousness from the ashes of our ego's flameout...and we are reborn as Love.

That may be the real test of our understanding of our chosen God. Looking back, I realize that until I passed my own test, the God of my understanding was just so many pretty words.

A comfort to me is knowing that there is no God in yesterday, there is no God in tomorrow, there is only God Now. 

Thank you.

GOD IS EXPERIENCED THROUGH LOVE ALONE

God refuses to be known intellectually. God can only be loved and known in the act of love; God can only be experienced in communion. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, December 8, 2022 

God can only be known in the act of love. Hmmm. I ponder that each time I reread it. It grows deeper with each reading.

Today the thought flits by...an act of love is having a two-sided discussion (me on one side, s/he on the other), and it ending with hugs...nobody's mind changed but no quarreling either. 

I experienced that yesterday. At the end of our discussion, I knew as we parted with hugs that God's hand was in that. He had guided us through because I doubt not in the egoic mind of each of us was the unspoken certainty: I am right.

Why wouldn't it be? Instead of beating the bejesus out of our self about such a self-centered thought, open our mind to the reality of human nature. I started the conversation with my opinion in the form a a question...she responded with her opinion which was the opposite of mine. We discussed the whys and wherefores, and ended with a silent agreement that neither of us was going to change our mind, so pish-tosh. 

Now to watch how God grows the seed that was planted. God's will, God's way...meaning, the seed that grows will likely have not a whit to do with our discussion. The discussion may well have been the fertilizer needed to grow the something better that can now come.

My plan is the hardest for me, as in, to sit and wait on the Lord...I'll need God's help there for sure. 

This I know:  I am in charge only insofar as i let Me be.  

Thank you.

TRUST AND BE FREED TO LOVE AND LAUGH

Blinding flash of the obvious: To come to truly trust myself, I must openly meet my fear...anxiety, suspicion, et al...whenever it makes itself felt within me. 

I tend to think of openly meeting fear as a surreal "meet and greet." Spiritual growth has taught us we can neither top fear, nor stop fear, and as long as we are trying to, it owns us...we are powerless in its grip.   

So to openly meet fear, we must walk through it, God's will, God's way...shaking and quaking if that be the way, and before friend, foe, or unknown passerby. 

Here's the lesson...to walk through fear openly does not give us ownership, it gives us the peace that passes understanding. To resist it by affirmations and the like is still resistance  and gives it ownership...there is no peace there. 

This I know, fear will come to call whenever a mental, physical or spiritual opening appears to it. The egoic mind's hard bar to cross is that it cannot banish, manage or control fear. 

Oh wait, here's a BFO to ponder...looking to end fear is to deny God his perfect work. 

Spiritual growth is still teaching us that in our time of trouble, on God's timetable, we can and will hear the Word: Be at peace....I have perfected this. In trust, we are freed to love and laugh.

Thank you.

GRACE DISGUISED = RAISED CONSCIOUSNESS

Coming In On a Wing and a Prayer...one of my favorite World War II songs...describes how I am feeling this morning.

Here's my personal paradox:  I am realizing...in wonder!...that ego deflation in depth is the birth of raised consciousness. Lest we forget: Ego Reduction In Depth (ERD) is personally, thus excruciatingly, painful, and it is such because it is reasoning-mind embarrassing...humiliating if we're doing it right.

When, not if, we try to make an end-run around the pain, know this: ERD cannot be sought-after, prayed for, "welcomed" in a word. No matter how we imagine ERD, it never shows up there. Plain and simple: It is not of this world. If it were of this world, we would go for control, try to get on top of the situation, stay stuck in ego paradise in fact. 

My mentor used to say...and I lovelovelove the phrase...Showing your ass in public is also spiritual.  

I'm coming from experience when I share that showing our bum in public can be as spiritual as it needs be, but actually doing it is pure pain. 

But here it is...the birth of the wondrous news. After my honest-and-true doing the deed...given the necessary deflation time for God to usher in his spiritual principles (or for a good friend who calls to talk about it), I am peaced. The peace that passes understanding. 

The fact of the egoic humiliation still stands...but it is weeping now for it has lost its power, its meaning, its reason for living.

This, then, is the spiritual necessity for ego reduction in depth: To raise our consciousness.

To raise our consciousness another inch or another mile, makes no nevermind...we are in God's territory again. 

Fear not the pain of ego deflation. After the fact, never before, we realize that was grace disguised as  humliation and trailing peace behind her...ah, another Angel Unaware.

Until we meet a benevolent God and a benevolent universe, until we realize that the foundation of all is love, we will not be at home in this world. That meeting of God, that understanding experience, cannot be communicated by words. It is a gift given through encounter with Spirit. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, December 11, 2022

Thank you.

GOD IS NOT AVAILABLE ON DEMAND

The spiritual question is this: Does one’s life give any evidence of an encounter with God? Does this encounter bring about through us....the “fruits” of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control”? -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, December 12, 2022 (slightly edited)

I'm about half convinced that any evidence of an encounter with God that we recognize is as like to be ego talking as God. Which is as it needs be...ego is reduced just as God is enhanced by our recognition of them. We resist not ego, we hug it and kiss it and let it go...we resist not God, we pray our thank you and know gratitude.  

The hard-to-accept reality, according to me, is that we do have moments of love, joy, etc., every day...moments, fleeting Angel Unaware moments. I suspect God ensures our unawareness, knowing full well that a consciously aware ego would snatch and run with it as its own.

The tripwire is that God's fruits, love, joy, peace, patience, etc., are not available on demand. They are gifts,  present in a heartbeat, leaving a glow in our heart. We are on the road to an unfailing faith that works when these fleeting moments, coming without our knowledge or control, send us to bed smiling because "something touched me today." There...each time, we doubt less that it was God.

To me, in the end, our true test is realizing God-encounters for the benefit of another.  A God encounter brings change, an elevated consciousness...that is free wonder and glory. The change is proven when, not if, we freely pass it on without censure or selection...see a soul in need, silently love them consciously and freely.    

Blinding flash of the obvious: God's will, God's way =  the other's will, the other's way...with love. 

Thank you.

IT IS IN DOING, NOT JUST KNOWING....

I am blessed beyond knowing. My material life has been feeling...let's be kind and call it "unsettled." Or, to speak my me language, "FUBAR." 

What I learned way back then, and it seems to be holding, is: I must go to a meeting and, without explanation, justification, or apology, share my embarrassing...humiliating!...fear. 

The very thought invites ego to do my thinking for me, as in, Don't do it...you just know everybody will snicker at me and think I deserve it and will tell everybody their suspicions are true, that I am a phony and a fool.

With thoughts akin to those, I did the dirty yesterday. I shared my "unsettled" me at a meeting, felt not a whit better, ate dinner, got out of me enough to cheer WNBA star Brittney Griner's homecoming....and here comes God calling in the form of a friend from the meeting. 

She heard me, she lent me her lift, we laughed and scratched, and I went to bed knowing I done good. I did what I'd learned way back then, which, before the fact, feels no better now than it did then. 

The fact to cling to: It is in the DOing...the showing our bum in public...that it becomes spiritual, the pearl beyond price.

God is so good to me...to us. He does not, he cannot, he has never deserted any one of us...even when, never if, we fall into that trap of egoic fear for self image. I'm convinced that the fault is our believing that falling into the egoic-fear trap is wrong. 

That which we think is wrong with us we finally realize is and has ever been God's will for us...that which makes us whole as our own self. -- BFO from July 15, 2021

Thank you.

JUST MAKE OURSELVES AVAILABLE, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of  October 31, 2016.]

Making ourselves available to God in the early morning before our world awakes, peeved and petulant, is the single most important thing we will do each, every and any day.

Get quiet. Be still. Smile. For no reason (and don't go trying for a reason).

It is the stillness that enables us to hear God...the thoughts of God. And if we imagine for a second that any thought of ours can be better than that...please.

Thank you.

FREED FROM ME IS FREE

Judgment is the currency of ego; mercy is the currency of the Spirit. --  David Capps, "Sermon on the Mount"

I have read Capps' "Sermon" several times (and I'm still a tish ambivalent about it), yet just this morning, my ear heard the words I read, and I ponder them now.

I find it fairly easy to see judgment as ego's go-to; mercy still sits up above my learnin'...not above my want-to, just above my got-it. Let's just say I feel slightly resistant to the word "mercy"...it gives off a holier-than-thou whiff. Which says more than I want others to know since I don't quite get it yet myself.

Judgment, now...I know judgment. 

I can easily get why and how it is ego's go-to...and I get it because my thoughts can so immediately go to how Generic Gertrude does life wrong, sits in judgment, thinks s/he's better than, etc. The best I've got there is I laugh at myself when I catch me at it.

I read another lift-me-up line this morning...author Debie Thomas wrote, To know God is to unknow God. 

My ain't that the truth? whipped through my mind almost before I finished reading her sentence. 

So, I've got "mercy" and "to unknow God" on my plate this morning. I suspect finding mercy within us is the first step toward unknowing God to know God. 

It is my idea of mercy that I need redress...in both senses of the word. Redress, to set right, and re-dress, to get her a new dress. Who's kidding whom? Any time a word seems too holy, I See Me is doing my thinking again. Redress! Go to God to change my mind, and I'm set right in new thoughts.

There..."mercy" and "to unknow God" are right this minute perking happily, and I need ponder them no further. They'll lead me free when we're ready.

Let go and let God.

Thank you.

I TRY NOT TO BE AS NASTY AS I WANT TO BE

Looking back, I can see that being 80 and then some has opened me to what my still more spiritual growth has been building within me these last 51+ years. 

I recognize profound changes that at the time of their birth seemed small irritations or merely interesting. As they accumulate, I recall reading Goldsmith, Rohr, Easwaran, Watts, the Sermon, and others that describe the markers I am seeing in my spiritual growth. 

I freely own me today, looking nothing like I envisioned me as I read Goldsmith, et al. Specifically, I am nothing like I pictured me when I achieved all I read and aimed to become. I'm still me, same-old-same-old, only with enough sober living to not be the insecure rabble-rouser I was then.  

I'm still me...only knowing that I have God at my back makes a world of upside difference in me today. 

No doubt about it, my greatest change is inner which must needs affect my outer...less mouthy so less insecure, more concerned for other than me, still immensly grateful for my own golden rule, I just try not to be as nasty as I want to be, lifted from a Henry Mitchell column in The Washington Post  in the early '80s.  

To paraphrase Fr Richard, At 80+, I often feel that I can and do leave the full field of the future in God’s hands and whether I know it or not agree to humbly hold the present with what can only tentatively be known for sure.

Or, love and laugh. No one needs be 80 to get that.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT GOD'S HIDDEN WILL, REDUX

[The following, slightly reworked, is a reprint of my post of December 17, 2020.]

I saw years ago that learning about death for the first time...my grandfather's death when I was two years old...set the course of my life. The unconscious long/short of that news: Death meant being left all alone; ergo, never let anyone in, guaranteeing never being left all alone.

A blinding flash has redirected my thinking. What if my living alone has ever been God's will for me? What if my being alone was my before-conception invitation to God into my life?

Knowing me, if I'd not lived alone, spiritual growth may have made it to my bucket list, but it never would have headed my To-Do-Today List.

If I hadn't been alone, free to choose for my better self, would I have spent years studying the Sermon? Seeking still more spiritual growth as my primary mover in life? "Doubtful" is being overly kind to me.

Looking back at my life through my new perspective re God's will, there is nothing about living alone that I have been unhappy with...for long. I've had all the "agony and the ecstasy" that life offers, and if I do say so myself, I've done a good job of it. But, who's kidding whom? The good job has been purely through the grace of God and a lotta, lotta help from friends, lovers, nonfriends and "glassbowls."

Still looking back, where it seems my deeper learning is blossoming today, I recognize that my nonfriends and, face it, glassbowls did more for my spiritual growth than most anything or anybody else. Both require us to get over our own self...which is pretty much all there is to still more spiritual growth, isn't it?

Is it the nonfriend who stands between God and us? No. It is our resistance to the nonfriend...and all else for that matter. Resistance is the block.

According to me, the secret to living happy, joyous and free is plain and simple: Resist not, love and laugh, get over one's self...God's will, God's way. 

Thank you.

THE GRACE OF GRATITUDE IS IN MOURNING

Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.  -- Matthew 5:4

Well. We learn a whole new and lovely way to look at rues, regrets and remorses...they are mourning. I'm rereading a book on the Sermon, and that finally spoke to me.

For whatever reasons, it seems this is where I am now...in my feelings of being all alone and to blame. I am immediately catapulted back to my dark days which form today's rues, regrets and remorses.

This I know...to continue to pray my thank you for the lost me of yesteryear...for she is still leading me to God. I ask and ask again, what else turns us to God so quickly but the dark days of our own self? Naught but fear, and I am God-peaced by my ask and by my answer.

I remind me that the day-before-yesterday, too, often qualifies as a dark day...when ego did my thinking for me, and I went along as if I never had heard of God or resist not and the like. 

This is where my new-found comfort, mourning, pays its way...instead of butting my head against my wall (my will), I feel blessed knowing that this is mourning, that I am mourning. 

Not being entirely stupid, we know that it is important that we realize the blessing from a different angle. Face it, called by any reasoning-mind name, rues, regrets and remorses will badger us until we are spiritually detached. 

Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. We joy in that promise for it is the gateway to detachment. 

Linger not, walk through, pray thank you. 

Thank you.

OUR INTERNAL AWAKENING...SPIRITUALLY

Blinding flash of the obvious: Don't try to do God's will, by rote...do me, be me, the me that I am, but be me with Love.

I ponder "don't try to do God's will, by rote," and I see that's still a self-determined objective. I need do me, be me, the me that I am, fret-free, while doing love God's way...starting in my thoughts.

This I love: My "God Calling" note that I wrote on this day in 2014 says virtually the same thing as this morning's BFO.

It has taken eight years for me to "get" that I got that...then only by looking back. Looking back, I see the results of my doing that, always imperfectly, rarely to my liking, ever praying to "do it right, not by thought but by love."  

To "do it right" is to go to a deeper level higher...to become spiritually awakened  internally...with no conscious thought involved. It's like our reasoning mind takes a coffee break, sitting back smoking and joking with ego, and Love is on the field, doing its thing. 

Without thought, planning or praying, we do an act of love for the benefit of another...often unaware and surprised if and when we are thanked for it.    

It is on God's timetable that we recognize unto realization our internally awakened  self...even as it is showing up for the benefit of others and our own self. 

Thank you.

TO LOVE, DETACH...FEAR ATTACHES

Blinding flash of the obvious: Take the me out of any resistant thought, and ego is peaced.

"Resistant thought" is fear. That needs to perk in our head; then, as/if/when ready, drip down to our heart. It is a glib thought until realization nudges us, and we get a glimpse of the promise...ego peaced. 

Is there any greater daily-life promise than to have a peaced ego? 

It is the rough and rocky road toward peace that stays us. Well hidden and open for any to see...that road, too, is fear. Long ago lesson: There is only love and fear. All else falls under one of the two. 

To take the me out of our resistant thoughts doesn't even sound simple, but it is so beyond that. Reason dictates the Herculean effort that must be made...and we're not doing it wrong when we do try. That's how we learn. How we learn that we're going down that wrong road again when we set about trying to fix our self. 

Hardest lesson, praying for God to do it is still stuck in self. Our Father knows our needs and has them all ready already. We pray our thank you for God's will, God's way.

It takes courage to trust the faith we have, to hold gratitude close, closer than fear. It never seems enough...enough to banish our fear. And it is not...neither fear nor love can be banished. But we are not in it to win it, we are in it with trust that God has already won. 

There is nothing to fight for, everything to live for...unresisting. Unafraid. Peaced. Loving. 

Thank you.  

TO CHANGE OUR MIND...FROM ME TO THEE

 ....know that I will supply your need, not grungingly, but in full measure. -- God Calling, December 1

Note that the word is need not want and in full measure, not mostly.  To which we add, God's will, God's way:  God will supply our need in full measure, God's will, God's way.  

Our needs are always met. Fret not, ponder not in trying to figure it out, i.e., fix, our self. God has us, and as we are, as our life is right this minute, is as we need be. 

Our daily practice now is to thank God for the very thing (usually person) we are resisting. To make peace there is the entry to our divine center, to Me.

My long ago BFO, I am the source of all my woes, today reveals all my woes matured are God's  slivers of gold. Our first, basic and rarely recognized fear, God has forsaken me, finally is realized as bogus.  

Faster than a heartbeat we see our woes turn us to God...giving legs to "kiss 'em on the lips." Bingo! Entry to God lives in our nonresistance to our woes. Acceptance in a word, acceptance of God's will, God's way. 

Again, and yet again: The hardest thing God will ever ask of us is that we change our mind...from reasoning to spiritual. 

We go to God for God, and that is all. Get grateful.

Thank you.

THE COUNTERINTUITIVE LOVE OF GOD

The turning point into my gutbucket belief in God was when, almost unbeknownst to me, I accepted that God's will, God's way, was counterintuitive to the reasoning mind. The reality being it is only counterintuitive to the egoic mind...it is right-on right to the Spirit.

Realizing that we live spiritual growth not to avoid necessary suffering but to experience necessary suffering was my breakthrough. 

Whoever read the Sermon, not others' interpretations but the one in the KJV, and thought "What great advice!" or "I can't wait to do this!" 

Face it, the Sermon itself is counterintuitive. For instance, "If someone slaps you upside your head, turn the other cheek" is not inviting to the reasoning mind...and a tish dicey to the spiritually inclined.

Comes our dawning. A peaced Soul is a side bennie... and the gates ajar in open invitation for us to go beyond reason. There it is, the Sermon's Open Sesame in the words of Thaddeus Golas, We must go beyond reason to love.

By the by, the rest of the quote explains in full the suggested injunction that we cease fighting everything and everybody: Go beyond reason to love - it is safe. It is the only safety. Love all you can, and when you are ready all will be shown to you. 

Note "when you are ready." We get ready by relying not on our reasoning mind, but by ceasing fighting, by loving the unlovable, by kissing the leper, by loving our self as the fool. Getting ready is the low-key excitement of the spiritual life.

The best part is that when, not if, we go beyond reason to love, we are living God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

TO BE PEACED, LIVE PEACE...RESIST NOT

I talk often, too often probably, about the change that took place in me seemingly the minute I turned 80 and continues now that I am 80+. I'm talking Big Changes...I'm talking infinitesimal changes...I am a changed me.

I got a jolt this morning in reading Fr Richard's Daily Meditation. Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes wrote of the song “God Did It Suddenly," as in,  God changed the way I walk, the way I talk, changed my attitude, and God did it suddenly.

Whoa and Wow! I was gobsmacked. 

Here's the thing. I have been knowing that for years now...knowing that from my eyebrows up, apparently. But to be walking it without any overt action by or from me...to read that there is a song, an old song, about this very happening is...uh, surprising? disconcerting? perturbing? Yeah, you bet...not to mentiion, UN-Mother of God-Believable.  

I can't put it as clearly, as beautifully as Holmes, so I'm going to (mostly) quote her text: ....it is that understanding—that God can enter in, no matter how devious our perceived problem, and suddenly change everything, can change the hearts of our enemies, can make us strong enough to be able to stand, can give us power and can give us strength.

Lest I forget, I See Me is ever with me,  will do my thinking for me whenever and however, and I am powerless over that. No biggie...just get grateful that we have ceased fighting everything and everybody, thank it for sharing, and turn back to God.

All of this I thought I believed. It is to experience it as I live and breathe today that puts the period to my uncertain sure. God can. God will. God does. Without My Input! 

God can, will and does...whether I know it or not.  I am peaced. 

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...PEACE

The way down always teaches us. -- Fr Richard Rohr

A particularly hard lesson for us to learn is to neither fear nor deny our personal defects, errors in judgment, missteps and mistakes...actually, we need to praise them for what else leads us back to God so earnestly? 

Trying to do spiritual growth, relying only on our own understanding is the first Uh-Oh as we begin our spiritual journey. There is a whole lotta unlearning we need before we are unselfed enough to honestly pray for God's will, God's way.

God's will, God's way is the secret to a peaced Soul. 

The promise of ask and ye shall receive comes true...it is God's circuitous route that requires our change of mind. 

True story: Fifty years ago when I started my search for still more spiritual growth, I thought I had to read the Bible. Naturally, I sought no help, I just opened the book and started reading. Ask and ye shall receive caught my eye so I asked. I prayed for an emerald ring. 

Forty years later a lady I less than loved came into my life seeking my help. I spent many an hour on my knees praying to accept her just as she was, warts and all. Then I'd concentrate on her warts and how to fix them.

The gift came when I realized it wasn't her warts that was the problem. The problem was my faulty perception...or more precisely, my problem was me, is me, will never not be me.  

That being true, why not make a perpetual problem a perpetual gift? Kiss it on the lips and get grateful. That's how the lady and I became friends, and later, when she passed, she left me her emerald ring.

Did I mention circuitous? God's circuitous route brought me what I needed...gut-bucket acceptance that I am the source of all my woes. The emerald ring was just a personal gift from a friend. Or my God's wicked sense of humor...which I lean toward.

Personal change, if done right, will feel like "the way down" which we need remember "always teaches us."

Thank you.

THE PROMISE LIVES: GOD FULFILLS OUR NEEDS

We don't have to make ourselves loving, we need only to remove unkindness from our speech and finally from our hearts. -- from "Patience" by Ecknath Easwarn 

Isn't that wonderful? Were you like I was on first read? As in, well, yeah, everybody knows that. Then,  second thought...so why don't I do it? Or why am I still failing?...not as often, not as ugly, but neither life nor God grades on the curve...particularly as defined by our self. 

It is a fine line we walk between setting a self-determined objective and "removing unkindness from our speech." Ponder that as we slide into "and finally from our hearts." There's the touchstone, unkindness removed from our heart. 

Truth is we can pray till our face falls off, God will not remove unkindness from a hateful heart. Why would God remove our apparent treasure (else why are we holding it so dear?) with no effort from us other than pretty words offered up. Even you and I are clear that we would (and have) gone right back to our ego's house of worship, me, to continue doing that which we just prayed to be detached from.

Our need is not to be detached from the problem...the problem is not the problem. I am. You are. We need to detach from our reliance on our egoic mind especially when it is pushing our opinions, judgments and  unkindnesses.

The harder we try to "spiritually fix" us, the harder we are pushing God and God's will away. The always answer is to align ourself with God...with God's will, God's way. 

With our thank you leading, wants are transmuted into needs, and there the promise lives: God fulfills our needs. God cannot not fulfill our needs. 

Thank you.

WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT

We have come to live what has been taught us; namely, that loving service to others is to live happy, joyous and free. 

Loving is the quiet word...too often, service to others is done with an eye toward what we're going to get in return for that service. Since loving can only go forward, outward, we rest in the love of God...whether we know it or not. 

Our gratitude pays that forward through his constantly replenishing love...ego is shuttered, and there's no "what's in it for me?"    

The lesson our egoic mind will resist until death do us part: Gratitude remains a self-determined objective until, without forethought, we feel as grateful for the less-than appearing as we feel for the apparent more-than. It is the grace of gratitude that opens the door and guides us into "the Land of Plenty," where others may slander us, the dollar may fail, our health may be dicey, and without thought we pray thank you...and mean it.

Those words may seem like an impossible dream, but the pure fact is: We are already there whether we know it or not. Those six words, whether we know it or not, are our new blankie. Hold them close...they are our Velveteen Rabbit as we awaken fully and still more fully.

We are to be grateful not just in the good times, but also in the bad times; to be grateful not just in plenty, but also in need; to maintain thankfulness not just in laughter, but also through tears and sorrow. -- From a quote of Brian McLaren

Thank you.

LIFE...GOD'S LOVE WALKABOUT

God Calling today, November 22: Ask for Love. 

After years of reading that and never thinking a thing about it, my first thought this morning was, I am loved...I do not need to ask for love...I am loved. I need to love. I need to ask to love.

The question then pops: What does "to love" mean to me? What is lacking? I feel loved but I all but discount that in my ask to love. 

To take a stab at it, I'm thinking to love is to be able to give love without forethought or preplanning. I receive love freely...no prepping, no machinations. Thinking about it, I'd say in receiving love I just feel gratitude. 

With thanks to Lakota author Doug Good Feather, gratitude is the doorway to divine intuition, which allows us to be guided by our connection with the Creator. Ah, beauty in Truth. 

Clearly, I need to get grateful for my need to love...there's my doorway to divine intuition allowing me to be guided by God. 

God cannot not love us...it is our realizing unto walking his love that peaces us. Until our life is a love walkabout, it's pretty much wishful thinking...albeit heading us in the right direction. 

It is on us to accept God's love, that which is already ours...born there, growing still.  It is God that gets us there. Pray thank you.

Thank you.

EVIL...EGO IN A PRETTY DISGUISE

A dream is about to come true for me: I plan to visit friends in Santa Fe over Thanksgiving. I have set no personal goals for my Santa Fe holiday...I trust the Father within knows my needs.

After I first read my Father knows my needs, I studied it, I tested it...I came to experience it! I now live in the comfort of trust...with a few side trips when ego has its say. That's when love and laughter, mumbling I'm only human, earn their keep.

We grow into trust from our unpolished, unprepared, unlearned self which gets no kudos...yet we are peaced. There. Our real need is nonresistance which brings not praise, but a new kind of  peace.

Unselfed kudos are lovely but, left unaware, they can be the Venus flytrap for ego. Ego is always in thrall to its true love, being envied by others, which is also the slippery slope to justified resentment. Oh wait...there is no unjustified resentment, is there. That's like justified anger...what, I wonder, does unjustified anger feel like?

Resist not evil. (Evil, ego all prettied-up to go dancin'.) 

Thank you.

THE WORST SHALL BE FIRST

The reasoning mind finds it difficult...face it, well-nigh impossible...to accept in our walking-around world, that already we are all that we seek. Mainly because our idea of that which we seek is pretty, polished and perfect...uh-oh, the nesting place for resentments. 

Our difficult-to-perceive is that to God, apparently, the rough, unfinished and tear-soaked self we're trying so hard to hide is his perfect work. It is our mistakes, errors in judgment, occasional downright selfishness that we need to experience in readying us to receive his guidance...Love.

Fr Richard has said that enlightened people know that their life has been given to them as a sacred trust. 

We know we are more enlightened than we ever dreamed for ourself, but knowing it and showing it has a lengthy stretch between them. 

Comes now enlightenment to pay our dues: That lengthy stretch is our pearl beyond price, only we rarely realize it until after the fact...very rarely and long after for most of us. As we look back, we can welcome our rues, regrets and remorses as the slivers of gold that God walked us through and over. 

There it is...the worst shall be first, or the birth of gratitude.

Thank you.

AS I AM, WE ARE...THY WILL, THY WAY

Blinding flash of the obvious:  I am a Christ-realized person...now I let that to be actualized by my walking forward with it. Thy will, Thy way. 

We are a Christ-realized person...now we let that to be actualized by walking forward with it. Thy will, Thy way.

 

Thank you.

THE SPIRIT MOVES YOU...PASS IT ON

Being open...nonresistant...to God and grace, to legimate suffering, growth, is the essence of ego reduction in depth. 

To me, that sounds so inviting...the idea is so rich...ah, but the living of it? A whole 'nother story. 

I'm beginning to understand that we must needs get there before we can become entirely willing to go there. Which is to say, we seldom see a reduced ego until we get to the looking-back stage...to gratitude in a word.

When I am laying-down-the-Word to myself or to others, I know and I know I know: ego reduction in depth is God's will, so, resist not, quit'cher bitchin', and get cracking. Or, so saith the self-determined ego, rigid, righteous and right as usual.

The slowly awakening truth within us is that we are becoming spiritual beings...which, unbeknownst to us is ego reduction in depth. To our reasoning mind's experience, it is painful, lengthy...uh-oh, neverending? 

  

The reasoning mind hook is not realizing that our very trying to be a good and decent person...kind, generous, giving...is a self-determined objective. Which is better than living the opposite of good and decent, but we stall there...there is no spiritual growth in trying only. We decide to be satisfied with being unsatisfied because our objective is so pure that reason knows it is God's objective. Ah, but have we ever asked God if this be his will? No. Because we know, and we know we know. 

Being open...nonresistant...to ego deflation in toto is literally living in the Now...not even loving kindness in our thoughts...unfocused...Present here, now...not even our idea of God floating free. The gotcha, of course, is if that be a goal, we are still living with a self-determined objective. 

"Just do it" is not only a great sales motto, it means, Just. Do. It.

We make a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God...meaning we're going to try and fail or succeed, makes no nevermind...until we realize that already we are blessed by God, right and wrong, good and not good...all blessed by God. 

There it is...peace of mind: Resist not, neither screw-ups nor successes. Do what we do, love and laugh at our efforts, and pray thank you. 

The Father knows our needs...fulfilled them before we knew them. Pray thank you and, as the Spirit moves you, pass it on.

 Thank you.  

OLD AGE...GOD'S AGE OF WONDERMENT

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

Blinding flash of the obvious at 2:00 AM, 10/31/22:  I am not a show pony, I am a plow horse. My glory is in my plodding, that is my comfort and my call. 

From that BFO came the realization that our angels are the fallen down. the redeemed, the self-forgiven through God by grace...and are here for us. 

As has been written, something new has awakened in us so that when we see those on the margins living life in the struggle, we are drawn to their experiences and drink from their wells overflowing with wisdom, about the divine.

This is my ongoing gift, beginning with age 80: Eckhart's process of subtraction is all about lessening the consciousness of Me and growing the We. That process begins minutely and slows down from there. 

Realizing the grinning glory of me as a plow horse is borderline miraculous to my younger self who was all about more, better, bigger, richer...better-than whatever was at hand. Back when, God was the proverbial Who? Today, I can and do laugh out loud, love me and share the story...face it, that's too good a lesson not to pass on.

I'm reminded of everything old is new again...for sure, that is proving true to me since I turned 80. And I am loving it...who knew? 

Oh wait! This is another of God's hidden giftees. Our worst fear is God's gold. Old age is the Age of Wonderment when, not if, we upgrade our attitude. Or keep it stayed in God, and it upgrades itself, as needed.

God loves us sooo much.

Thank you.

WITHOUT ME THERE IS NO RESISTANCE

My thoughts this morning were about Gertrude...specifically, my mentally leveling her for never yet owning her screed to me about me...not the "N-word" remark she made for the group's awe, but when there was just the two of us.

Came the realization: Me is my juggernaut. It is not Gertrude's ego that is doing my thinking, judging...it is my ego about Gertrude's ego. 

I am opened...I realize that Gertrude's language and mine are different but we each are seeking God in whatever our manner, means or language. 

Ego deflation in depth takes the me out of resistant thoughts...there is no resistance without me. I hear again the truth that her path to walk is not my path, but all paths lead to God.

The Spirit still moves when we move past our prejudices and differences. -- Rev. Dr. Yvette Flunder, from Fr Richard's Daily Meditation today, November 16, 2022

Thank you. 

WITHOUT THOUGHT OR EFFORT, WE RESIST NOT

The long journey of transformation leads us to ask new questions about our own goodness, and where goodness really lies; to recognize our own complicity with evil, and where evil really lies. It is humiliating. -- from Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, October 13, 2022

I wonder if humiliation isn't God's gift divine...which to the reasoning mind is unwelcomed, dreaded and divine be gone with ya! 

Humiliation is humility aborning, according to me, which does not make humility any less expensive...just more welcome spiritually. Which explains why the journey of transformation seems so long, so bumpy, so easy to question.

We have realized...often and oftener...that God's timetable and ours are two entirely different tables...God's is Now and ours is now!...meaning yesterday. 

God's Way is "to my mind" upside down, backward, or just wrong. Learning unto accepting that "to my mind" no longer works, that our Now precludes me-thinking, includes receiving...from within. We find our feeling, say of "humiliation," comes in a different guise...ego's is "No, Never" but God's is "Yes, please, and thank you for this opportunity to grow." 

The long journey of transformation that is our life today is all about inner change. The outside remains pretty much the same...a kinda glow may appear as we grow spiritually, or as ego deflates gradually. The Tell is our within is less, ever less, resistant to this invited life.

We will know we are on the right road, heading in the right direction, when we can feel humiliated and laughter bubbles up and we love it without thought or effort. We resist it not. Yes!

Thank you.

SPIRITUAL GROWTH IS ALL ABOUT GIVING

Several years ago I read Deepak Chopra’s “Jesus, A Story of Enlightenment.”  It is a version of Jesus’s unrecorded years in which his buddy is Judas, and the power is in Jesus's nonresistance of Judas's slights and snubs up to the betrayal being the key to Jesus’s enlightenment. 

According to me, Jesus's enlightenment may have begun with his knowing to take nothing personally...to love in the face of hate. To resist not evil.

For me, that was the cracking of self's sealed door letting in the light for a slow turn within...away from  personal interpretations of hurt/anger that justify reactive hurt/anger. I quickly add that I am still learning and expect I will be till the proverbial three days after I'm dead. But I'm heading in the right direction.

The beginning, the pearl, is the recognition, then understanding, then realization that it is not the snarks and snubs that cause us pain...it is our ego-victim's perceptions inviting hurt, wanting that sense of betrayal. Our need for still more spiritual growth opens our mind, and we see the adverse comments or actions belong to and from whomever they came...with or without less-than intent. When we let them remain there, they remain there. 

When I was a little girl, I was afraid of the dark. I remember once seeing a shadow of a tree on a windy night, and I knew it was Not Good And It Was Coming To Take Me Away...away from my safety, security, love. Hysteria followed...it was real to me, and I reacted in kind. That didn't happen often...my folks were good people but they weren't fools.

It's a great gettin' up morning when we realize for fact that one of our most basic spiritual-growth needs is not taking personally real-appearing slights and snubs. They are not personal…they are not real. They only become personal, real, when we personally respond to them. We attach ourself to them by our resistance to them. 

Hard lesson learning: I See Me can and will link arms with our ego and our common sense, and those three can and will fight till our last breath against "letting them walk all over me," "taking what is rightfully mine," "making a fool of me," etc. That hard lesson is the first thing we learn in still more spiritual growth, may be the last thing we release as we lie dying. 

Our spiritual growth in short is give over, give up, give in...with the grace of gratitude in our prayer of thank you. 

Thank you. 

THE GIFT: WE SEEK TO, NOT FOR, LOVE

Blinding flash of the obvious:  Look not for love...seek to love.

Ah, no longer are we looking for love (in all the wrong places to finish the quote of a great country song), now we are seeking to love. There...a revelation of the exchanged mind.

Looking to love is when wrong, promptly admit it and we have ceased fighting everything and everybody, not to mention every other thing our Fellowship suggests...according to me.

Unbeknownst to our reasoning mind, we have been seeking to love all along...or at least since we were plucked out of the consciousness of self-determined objectives and lifted deeper into the consciousness of the perfect objective which is of God. 

The love we seek to give is not of us, not ours to parcel out...it is of God, is God, has ever been within us, without us. It is universal not personal...we hold it dear by giving it away.

That is not ours to understand, that is ours for which we bow our head and pray thank you. 

Thank you. 

TRUDGING THE ROAD OF HAPPY DESTINY

Our appointment with life is in the present moment. -- Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hahn

What we know is held in our brain...our brain, where our ego struts its stuff...it is our Soul that holds Truth. Reasoning mind is the connector...the reasoning mind where our still more spiritual growth began so long ago...resisting unto realizing, resisting unto welcoming. 

We were slow to learn that "slow to learn" is doing it right. We tried too many times to talk the truth we heard but until we could walk it without forethought, i.e., "figuring it out," we were just trying to make an end run around God.

Actually, we were looking to get around God's will for us. Face it, God's will for us personally, just had to be either too harsh or not harsh enough. We had come to accept that God is Love, but our rigid, righteous and right will had to be a surer thing than something as simple as love.

What an awakening, when we flashed that God's will for us...ever and always...is love, nothing but love, and we get there by trudging the road of happy destiny. 

Happy destiny...loving kindness breathed in, peace, love and joy breathed out. With a whole lot of self-will in the mix to be schucked and shed...when we were doing it right.

Thank you.

EGO: TO HUSH IT, HUG IT...AND GOD SMILES

Is there any worse feeling than our mouth speaking forgiveness and our heart beating vengence? 

There is the recurring proof that what we know and what we show are often two different things entirely.

Doing it right turns out to be the slow, painfully powerful...and only...way to maintain our spiritual growth. Always and all ways, the road leads through our reasoning mind to the unavoidable humbling by God's will. 

Again we return to resist not. Our human condition will link with our I See Me without thought and in an instant. Through our spiritual growth we now know to resist it not, welcome it with our thank you, then quick change our reasoning mind...to the grace of gratitude.

We tried to stifle our reasoning mind until we recognized our ego's use of it was the culprit. It was our ego that needed a hug...or, to hush it, hug it. Acceptance of our reasoning mind as God's conduit out of self into Self was our answer. 

Now, we waste no time regretting our mouth speaking forgiveness with our heart beating vengence...we kiss it on the lips, detaching from that useless opinion with our thank you. 

And God smiles.

Thank you.

ON THE GIFT OF MAKING A MISTAKE

God uses our mistakes to liberate us, to soften us, to enlighten us, to transform us, and to heal us. (A paraphrase lifted from someone, somewhere...I regret I neglected to note from whom and where.)

That quote reminds me of a favorite tool we have, that being: When wrong, promptly admit it. Lest we forget, the most important word there is "when," not "if."

Being wrong, making a mistake, is not to be stupid, ignorant, laughable, and worthless...as our ego is given to insist. Taking ownership of our errors in judgment, when it shows up in our own less-than wonderful behavior, is our inner Light showing us to regret not, that there is a better path to walk.

To realize that is to accept we were never consciously taught blaming and shaming, we just gravitated...gravitate...to it. It, CYA. is, not was, there in material-mind consciousness, offering a cover...to ego's pea-green-purple scared relief. 

Whether we know it or not, we never cease to learn and to grow spiritually, so we'd best recognize the good in our reasoning mind. It is as essential to us as the air we breathe...detached from ego by our still more spiritual growth, it becomes God's tool to help in shaping our spiritual being. 

Our reasoning mind's mistakes, misunderstandings and misreads underneath are God's slivers of gold...used to get us where we need to be. Proving yet again Fr Richard's, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong.

Thank you.

GOD'S UNFATHOMABLE WILL...RESIST NOT

True contemplatives have changed sides from inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything.  -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, October 17, 2022

That is my understanding of one with a spiritually changed mind...from inside self, all about me, to inside Self, all about we. When we are raised deeper in consciousness to we, we becomes Thee.

The unvarnished truth? Neither I nor anyone I personally know are There. I do believe we've all made a 51 percent transition, meaning that the majority of the time we're sincerely seeking God's will over our own will. 

Seeking. We are willing...getting ready...heading in God's direction. In God's good time, we'll get there...out of self into the higher consciousness of the likes of Chief Joseph who promised, I will fight no more forever. 

There it is, the promise that we renew daily, whether we know it or not: We have ceased fighting anything or anyone. 

Resist not evil...God's will always and all ways. 

Thank you.

THE SERPENT, THE LAMB AND THE LION

Blinding flash of the obvious: Our inner trinity...the serpent, enlightenment; the lamb, our self;  the lion, security...Love.

Well. My reasoning mind is flummoxed...trying, but at a loss as to the meaning and the timing of this BFO. Why me and why now? I just know the serpent came to me in my quiet time a while back, the lion has lived with me for many years, and the lamb is my comfort. 

When...or  as...I have a need to go deeper, the serpent will enlighten me, the lion will protect me, and still more spiritual growth will follow...realized or unbeknownst, makes no nevermind. God is leading the way.

I feel the grace of gratitude.

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGHTER...GOD'S HIDEY HOLE

Resist not evil. -- Matthew 5:39 

I first came across that verse from the Bible sometime in 1972 or '73. My original response, my reasoning mind's response, to that single verse pushed, led, nattered, irritated and agitated...loved...me into seeking still more spiritual growth. 

I have lived that off-and-on, imperfectly, half-assed, just barely and with a vengence, ever since...always and ever for my spiritual benefit whether I knew it or not. 

Some of my flashes, morphed from my meanderings:

We resist not in love, which is not only the home of our inner Source, it is our inner Source.

We resist and know that ego, riding fear, is whispering in our ear. We resist not and welcome God, love, whispering in our ear.

Resistance lives in our reasoning mind, ever thinking, ever analyzing, ever keeping higher help at bay. 

Nonresistance, love, opens the door for our Source to flow forth. (I stand at the door and knock.)

Nonresistance releases from within a power greater than ourself, and that exchanges an apparently less-than-wonderful situation for the better. 

Nonresistance is not of the reasoning mind, it is of higher consciousness, God's hidey hole, or, love and laughter. 

Lest we forget the seldom-remembered truth: If our nonresistance is a self-determined objective, it is resistance.  

Thank you.

ON LOVING OUR EGO...RESIST NOT

We are learning unto accepting that the Sermon's resist not evil means precisely that: Resist not evil. Not to put too fine a point on it, but not resisting resist not evil is a spiritual education on its own.

Resist not evil must needs take us way deeper into higher consciousness...where we breathe in loving kindness and breathe out peace, love and joy. In that, our meditation mantra, evil is transmuted, and loving kindness begins to grow from within out. 

We accept that this is not the place where we live 24/7, yet we recognize our ongoing need for ego-deflation in depth which clarifies our goal...to adjust our self spirtually to the world we live in.

Comes now the turning point: The place where our exchanged mind ceases to fight our ego and commences to love it...or, in truth, to be willing to love it. What else but our own ego would keep us seeking still more spiritual growth so diligently, so urgently? 

Blinding flash of the obvious: Loving our ego is akin to loving an incredibly spoiled child...wanting to gets us nada, and giving in to the child or to ego is not loving it. We need a power greater than ourself to break the code.

There's our key. Our road back to God lies in the inner realization of resist not evil. Loving the rough and rutted road paved by our rues, regrets and remorses, God's slivers of gold, is our way back to God. 

When we can love our ego, then we have ceased fighting everything and everybody. We resist not. 

Thank you.

GOD DISCLOSES HIMSELF TO US AS LOVE

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of November 4, 2013.]

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: Just call His name. That is all.

When we are dealing with personal relationships that at the moment feel tight, opaque, confining...the answer is ever the same: Turn our minds and our motives inward...and wait. 

According to Eknath Easwaran, "Calling on the Lord in our heart by repeating his Name, we find access to our deeper reserves of devotion, firmness, and love."

Every idea, every solution that comes to the reasoning mind, is still a self-determined objective. It may be right, but even when right, by depending on our own self to achieve it, we're going down that wrong road again. Even my favorite spiritual reader, "God Calling," states, "Do not seek to realize this...as the result of effort."

While we're waiting on the Lord, we can take a look at whomever has stepped on our toes, seemingly without provocation. If we look, we will invariably find that we have made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. (That from another spiritual source that is never failing.)

Owning our part is the for-certain-sure way to clear our access for God's "deeper reserves of devotion, firmness, and love" to flow forth.

The eternal question, of course, is, why don't we leap to do that? Why do we linger in that ego-victory land of angry hurt (right's righteous masquerade), where we hurt so justifiably and so futilely? 

When we are ready for God to change our mind, God discloses himself to us as love...whether we know it or not.

Thank you.

EGO...SILENCED BY LOVE AND LAUGHTER

Do not seek to realize this fullness of Joy as the result of effort. This cannot be....  -- God Calling, November 4.

Every day presents an opportunity to love or to resist love...to let God or to stay stuck in self. All roads lead to God so neither way is wrong...one is just better than the other. 

Counterintuitively, self-stuck is the better way for it invariably (slowly, painfully, but invariably) leads us to God. On the other hand, to "let God" is too often eyebrows-up knowledge alone which encourages ego to begin preaching. Believing we've got a lock on spiritual, we seek no deeper.  

Every idea, every solution that is born in the reasoning mind, is still a self-determined objective. Even when right, if we're depending on our own self to carry it out, we're going down ego's rigidly righteous road again.  

Every idea, every thought that comes unbidden and stills our questing heart is almost certainly God calling. We are lifted deeper by grace to continue our search for still more spiritual growth.

From my own recent experience, I know that to inadvertently look the fool humbles us, ah, but our unselfed laughter lets peace, love and joy out. Love of laughter is a healer and passes on as loving kindness to the next one in need.

He goes before us to make the crooked places straight...with love and laughter.

Thank you.

IN PRAISE OF THE HUMAN JOURNEY

Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 9, 2013

Is it life that is counterintuitive? Or is it God, that power greater than ourself that is within us? Or are they, we and the power within, one and the same...counterintuitively?

Necessary suffering, we have learned, is a path to God. Learning and believing is a lot easier when it's "lab" work...when other than the personal me is the subject matter. Comes the day after gradution...when what we've learned is what is before us to live...learning it and living it become two different things entirely.

We don't get to God by talking it, we get to God by walking it...by experiencing the trip-up bumps, hard knocks, snarks and snubs. 

It is the rare and wonderful person (and we are not one) who, first out of the box, experiences those with peace, equanimity and love in their heart. Ah, but that is the goal of still more spiritual growth...whether we know it or not, that is our goal. According to me, that is the counterintuitive essence of God's will.

The path we walk is all about shucking our shields, that which guards our reasoning mind's "Me First" fixation. We no longer want to be the winner, but we're still stuck not wanting to be the loser. 

There is our new goal...loose our ego-based wants and let them go. What's in it for me has become how can this benefit you...and me? 

If we think we're wanting all the benefits for you and none for me, we're still caught in ego. God plays no favorites...he wants the best for you and for me...for all. There. That is a higher Power, a power greater than. Period. 

We with our reasoning mind can only bow when we are graced with recognition and pray an honest, i.e., unselfed, thank you.

We must go beyond reason to love...we must go beyond the human condition to God.

Thank you.

BREATHE IN LOVE, BREATHE OUT PEACE

Blinding flash:  Breathe in loving kindness, breathe out peace, love and joy.

The peace, love and joy we breathe out surrounds us, enwraps us, walks with our feet, talks with our voice, thinks our thoughts, and passes on to whomever receives it...to be passed on. This is not ours to do. This is not ours. This is God consciousness over which there is no control. There is only God.

All of that is truth to me...ah, but so is the human condition, feet on the ground, head in the mundane, that is the me I see in my bathroom mirror. The me that shows forth when I am not meditating.

The great gift of meditation is it points us in the right direction...toward still more spiritual growth. Where we learn by detaching...from our own ideas. If ego deflation in depth is the way to God, then we need to expect to show our bum in public...not beat ourself up when we show it. Oh.

I recently had just such a God-gift...ego deflation out there in my public arena...and, apparently, I have accepted it without regrets. I give no props, just hopeful gratitude.

It is the great exchange of our minds, from reason to spirit, that transmutes our egoic face-saving to our peaced self. Looking good has lost its luster which is not human-effort possible...face-saving is survival instinct to our ego. 

To "get it wrong" with no regret at all is probably conceit...to get it wrong and wallow in regrets is ego...a rueful admission of our wrong is God doing for us. (Rueful...love and laugh sans a me-hook.)

Breathe in loving kindness, breathe out peace, love and joy.

Thank you.

THE PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING

I came across a post of mine from 2015 and was taken by the similarity between then and now that showed in what I wrote about.  As Dylan wrote some years back, the times they are a-changing...but not by much it seems.

Seven short years ago, religion seemed to be our bugaboo. Politics seems to be the main player today, but, face it, with religion ever hovering in the shadows. 

The following is from that 2015 post. Note that the very first word, religion, is the one change needed...with the word politics substituted: 

[Religion] Politics seems to me to be the last holdout of the justified-hate crowd. If we're ever going to face our own ego down, and by that I mean, let God out from within, we need to consider giving our ears freedom. Freedom to hear others speak their truth...neither rejecting it nor buying it whole cloth.

Just because we listen, doesn't mean we must respond, vocally or mentally. We can give a silent shrug or hug and keep on walking. We can do that...but only by disciplining our own mind. Our own attack mind.

We can pray for peace until our face falls off, but peace will not be ours until we give peace away.

Lessons we are slowly learning...the peace we need be seeking is not the egoic peace of "winning" or even of self-determining to "let the other win." No. The peace that heals is the peace that passes understanding. Not of self, of God.

Thank you.

FRET NOT...LOVE ALL...WALK FREER

A spiritual path that does not lead to a living commitment to the coming will of God, to the present Reign of God, to the Kingdom of God within and around us everywhere for everyone, is no path at all. --  Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, October 18, 2022 

I doubt not that is truth...the rest of the story for me is: We walk that spiritual path not by conscious thought but by spiritual discernment. In other words, from within out. 

We do not recognize it as such when we are just putting one foot in front of the other in our material world awareness, but there are times when we have gone against our baser wants utterly unaware that we did the right thing or took the right action. There...our proof that we now live not by thought but by spiritual intuity.

Then again, there are times when we make a less-than-best decision. These are the times when thank you earns its keep. As soon as we realize our error, we out loud admit it, pray thank you, and trust our Self, and counsel with another, to turn us around. 

Paradoxically it is these times, the stumble, trip and fall times, that become our spiritual growth spurts. As Fr Richard says, "We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong."

The lesson we are so slow to learn is that beating ourself for our stumbles is flat-out ego...inviting our ego's happy dance. Praising our error rather than regretting it goes against common sense, or our reasoning mind. But God's will goes against common sense if we're doing it right. Ego masquerades as God's guidance every chance it gets, our regretting is ego's little helper. 

Here's where we learn to pray thank you not only for our misstep but for ego itself. We show it some love and discover yet another paradox...giving ego our thank you peaces it for Now. Ego lives in resistance...with nothing to resist, it is quieted. 

When we can live that, live nonresistant, we breathe freer.

Thank you.

TO HUMBLY LOVE, THE EVER RESOLUTION

Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings..."humbly" is where the exchanged mind is realized.  

We have begun to understand that the ask "to remove" is not "to eradicate" our defects of character, now known as shortcomings, but the ask is to teach us to humbly love everything. To humbly love our defects, shortcomings, ego...all. There are no exceptions...acceptance, a.k.a., humble love, is the solution...the resolution.

We are learning to humbly love all for there rests our answer to how much we need to learn. Acceptance, nonresistance, leads the way. 

With nothing resisting it, ego has no foothold and recedes...to return on call for that is the human condition. We are grateful knowing that the humble love of still more spiritual growth awaits.  

We pray our thank you and walk freer.

Thank you.

EGO DEFLATION IN DEPTH...LOVE IT AND LAUGH

I led a fellowship meeting yesterday on being entirely ready to have God remove all of our defects of character. I looked forward to it, to sharing my experience with my TIA and my resistance to the meds prescribed, and realizing that was all about God removing my self-determined objectives.

That lead went over their heads like a hairnet...as in, I was met with ego deflation in depth. Or, I felt deflated in depth.

I recognize now that the hurting-est part of my feelings during the meeting were all about what the others thought of me, of my lead, of how less-than they were seeing me, of me of me of me. 

Almost immediately after the meeting, the healing began with a knowing that this deflation was for my benefit, and I needed to thank my ego for it...show it some love. And I thought no more of it. (There's God's grace on the hoof, seriously.)

This morning I feel myself welcoming the deflation, the less-than feelings, and by welcoming, I mean, I'm grinning and groaning at the same time...like in relief! That's when I had the BFO:  Love your enemy as yourself...if my ego is my enemy, love it!

That being true, I get to love (forgive? As Fr Richard says, forgiveness is simply the religious word for letting go)...I get to love my ego in my heart not by words so much but more by laughter. Acceptance lives in laughter, and we cannot laugh without love. 

Lessons learned...God lives in ego deflation in depth, too. Welcome it with love and laughter.

Thank you.

EMBARRASSMENT...GOD'S PEARL IN DISGUISE

I seem to be in the process of having my mind changed...not against my will, but without my even being consulted. 

I cannot quote the exact wording, but here's my interpretation of what I heard recently: "We must not hide our spiritual assets...they may be what fulfills anothers' need. This is not permission to preach...it simply allows for our reasoning mind to take a back seat to our raised consciousness."

We recall again that nothing is original to us...with the expanded realization that every word from our mouth must originate in our own consciousness. We learn early, and relearn often, that our raised consciousness is not in our control...It speaks, we blink in wonder, then silently pray our thank you.

Ours is to prime the pump of our consciousness to speak Its own words...risking failure, i.e., a red face. Ah, embarrassment, the well-hidden pearl beyond price...when we can laugh at our own self and love it. 

I'm convinced embarrassment does more work for God than all our sincere efforts. Only God could convince us to laugh at our own self...in public and unself-defended.

Embarrassment rivals fear for sending us to God quick, fast and in a hurry...lifted into raised consciousness, it is of God, changed from a minus to a plus. Ah, egoic mortification exchanged for spiritual love and laughter. 

God's will...always and all ways.

Thank you.

WE BEGIN AGAIN...AND YET AGAIN

Our rough and rutted road becomes our rough and rocky road...the rocks become pebbles, the pebbles become grains of sand. Each rut, rock, pebble, grain being the will of God leading us back to him. Curse them not, praise with thank you, for we cannot move from rut to rock to pebble to sand before we realize God in each, each time. -- A recent blinding flash of the obvious

Reading this morning of Dr. King's consciousness of nonviolence, reminded me of that recent BFO. Nonviolence is nonresistance is living our self, stripped of self. Offering impersonal rather than personal love, understanding, acceptance. 

Personal love seeks to get...impersonal love only gives. 

There it is, the entirety of our thinking that we seek still more spiritual growth. We read Rohr, Goldsmith, et al., we try to practice what we read, we expect spiritual growth...an unrough, unrocky road...which is simply our idea of the good life. 

We discover spiritual growth does not deliver our idea of the good life, i.e., sex, society and security wrapped in sunshine, rainbows and roses. 

Spiritual growth delivers our self, our less-than-wonderful self, that me that so needs to discover within the love we  seek. We are the friend who betrays us, the love who leaves us, the sure-thing investment that goes broke, the stranger who robs us. Each and every time. 

We need to quit kidding ourself that we are seeking still more spiritual growth while we hold to any idea of what that looks like to us personally...no matter what spiritual treatises we follow, including the Sermon on the Mount. We read in order to get the right idea which we attempt to walk....until we crash and burn. 

Even common sense knows that humbly does not come dressed in diamonds and pearls for all the world to see. If we're doing it right, we experience pain, shame, hurt, humiliation...or, the shucking of our shields. That is the way as...if...we humbly seek the God of our own understanding. 

When we realize that God lives within...not just know, but realize...we have kissed our own self on the lips, hugged her and kissed him, and let them go.  

Our search for still more spiritual growth has just begun.

Thank you.