INADVERTENT EGO-ERRORS...GOD AT WORK

I felt an immediate inner connection with both of the following statements from Fr Richard's "Daily Meditation" today (2/28/22):

Unless we’ve had a conscious connection with the deepest ground of our being, we will continue to live as though we are separate from God. 

The final, stupendous gift is that our 'separate' self becomes the raw material for our unique version of True Self. Our ordinary lives and temperaments are not destroyed or rejected. They are transformed.

I know both of those statements to be true...it is how they are proving themselves to be true in my life today that is my gobsmacker. 

I love, and too often quote, my mentor's saying, "Showing your [bum] in public is also spiritual." 

Hoo-boy...I love to quote that, but walking it ain't all that much snuggle-up fun. 

I am conscious that I have been unconsciously walking it for a while now. It is usually in my quiet time that it comes to me that what I said or did one of my yesterdays must have looked, sounded like I am a "rank beginner." 

I note that is what I have prayed for...more than a few times...i.e., to have the mind of a rank beginner. The big uh-oh note...there is a significant difference between having the mind of a rank beginner and actually appearing to be a rank beginner.

Showing my bum in public may be spiritual purely because it puts "love and laugh" to the ultimate test. Once shown...inadvertently (which is God at work)...the self gets its test: Trust God, love it and grin within, or stay with "commonsense" and explain/justify to others, meaning, showing the bum further which is no longer spiritual but now a self-determined objective.

God loves me so much that he's given me a special place where I take no thought of what words may come from my mouth, I just trust and speak...giving me a lot to silently love and laugh about later. 

Truth to tell, I kinda miss having someone to agree as I justify myself...human approval is hard to hate. (God's approval, of course, is better...speaking from my eyebrows up).

Lastly, re that stupendous gift of our ordinary lives and temperaments not being destroyed but transformed, that transformation takes place in our soul, a.k.a., our True Self.  Our soul does not strut its stuff; it comes "disguised as our life," leaving eyebrows up naturally and spiritually the last to know.

Thank you.

ON BECOMING A FOOL...ON PURPOSE

The surprise for most of us is that this place of relationship with God is really not about being perfect. The self in God will still make mistakes, but it lives from a center other than its own. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," February 16, 2022

Just as I was about to write that I never read the Bible, I realized that earlier I had done just that...I had read the Bible! And, as proof of Rohr's quote, it had opened to the needed place: If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. (Corinthians 3:18, KJV)

Immediately upon reading that, I knew why I'd picked up the Bible this particular morning. 

Lately, I find myself living the wondrous realization that mistakes, errors in judgment and the like are paving my spiritual way...and daily. Those facts and acts that fall within the human condition are the egoic mind's building blocks for our rues, regrets and remorses. The fact is, this is not new news.  

Meaning that I haven't just caught this...I have been preaching this to myself and others for years. One of my first spiritual realizations was "When wrong, promptly admit it" gives us permission to be wrong, to make mistakes, to shuck rigid, righteous and right as our life-shield. 

There it is...the teachable case of recognizing truth, knowing it for truth, memorizing it, repeating it by rote...until one fine day we realize we may be walking that a little, but we are talking it more. By the way, this applies to each spiritual lesson we learn in life..."getting" it does not happen with "getting" it. 

My today's piece of wonder: Get as smart as we can, as spiritually educated as possible, on the way to being as fit as Saint Francis of Assisi at his fittest...we cannot avoid being the fool. In order to become spiritually wise, we need to become the fool we so resist being. 

If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. (Corinthians 3:18, KJV)

If the reasoning mind resists this, rest easy...we are on the right track. We are taking our turn at becoming the fool...which is not a lot of fun but it is the inner path to peace. If the reasoning mind does not resist this, we are on the right track...same goes only doubled. 

The rough and rutted road back to God is paved with our rues, regrets and remorses. This is the road we need to trudge, not to lose those regrets, but for those regrets to be transmuted into our slivers of gold.

Blinding flash of the obvious: That which we think is wrong with us, finally we realize is and has ever been God's will for us...that which makes us whole as our own self.

The sliver of gold becomes our gold ring, and we are freed to love and laugh.

Thank you.

WHY NOT BELIEVE? WHY NOT TRUST?

The Eternal Birth must take place in you. -- Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart lived at a way higher level than you and me. His "Eternal Birth" isn't a concept that would come to me after careful thought...but I want it to.   

I know it is God's grace that I make myself available every morning, seeking still more spiritual awareness of the dailies in my life. I do not seek to learn by rote all the holy words and phrases...I seek to walk that which I'm receiving in order to actively live there...in that higher consciousness deeper.

I'm at the place where "the Eternal Birth" is our own spiritual consciousness, plain and simple. But I wouldn't be making myself available every morning if I weren't aiming within for a higher realization. 

It gives me peace to trust that is where Meister Eckhart, Francis of Assisi, my mentor, et al., were at some point on their way to ever-growing spiritual consciousness. Why not?  

Why not believe?

Thank you.

TO SURRENDER IS TO TRADE UP

I am of the opinion that acceptance is likely the most wanted-while-dreaded word in our little world. Even as we are begging God to be able to accept an unwanted condition in our life, our egoic mind is in charge. 

The road to the place where God lives begins with complete surrender. Simply put, resistance keeps our wants before our need...me before he. We want acceptance, we need surrender. The secret about acceptance is when we accept the truth about that which we are resisting, that changes it. 

Surrender has the justified rep of losing when, against all reason, it is by losing that we win. In losing our self-determined objective, our want, we accept God's perfect objective, our need. 

Blinding flash...surrender is just another word for trading up.

It is by surrendering our wants, that we receive our need, God's will...before we can know what that is. There. Surrender's sliver of gold, or acceptance aborning.    

 

Here's grace: All of this happens within us in a heartbeat...it just takes the reasoning mind longer to get the message. 

Go beyond reason to love.

   

Thank you. 

I BELIEVE...NOW TRUST

I suspect a major source of our woes is our mistaking our wants for our needs. Wants are of self, needs are of God. The Father knows our needs.

I believe I have made a freeing discovery going back to my ten-year-old self, a discovery, if correct, that can change the whole pattern of my life. I want to nail that down, be not just assured but ensured that it is right, and I am now free, see me fly!

Comes now the hard part for self...for God is in this moment...here Now, not a moment before or a moment from, but Now. When fully realized, that pretty much puts the period to "want." Face it, want is just another word for future, or more specifically, not Now. 

It is only recently when I had my blinding flash, yet I want to have irrefutable proof Now. Proof that it is all I want it to be, i.e., the solvent to the poison of the memories of my childhood trauma...setting egoic wheels in motion. Who can I turn to? Who can help me figure this out? Why can't my mentor of thirty years be here for me Now? Should I go to a therapist? Which one? 

God loves me so much. None of my self-generated fix-it wants are apparent or even exist to God...leaving me free to love and laugh at those same fix-its. Today...mostly...I freely accept my egoic mind, as in, taking  myself too seriously, because...mostly...I do my God-guided actions. 

Then I do what I do: Go into my quiet time, lay my perceived problem before God, tell me and he that I'm good with whatever he's got, pray thank you, and then trust him to keep me informed. I repeat if and as necessary for my own imperfect self.

When we’re doing life right, it means nothing more than it is right now, because God is in this moment in a non-blaming way. When we are able to experience that, taste and enjoy it, we don’t need to hold on to it. The next moment will have its own taste and enjoyment. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," February 13, 2022

Believe that, believe that, and walk worry free...for Now. 

Thank you.

ON WELCOMING THE DREADED VULNERABILITY

We cannot go to God self-protected. It is our vulnerability that opens the door upon which He knocks.

Vulnerability...that which the reasoning mind dreads, hides from, resists at all costs. Vulnerability it is that exposes us to self-contempt which we often...and fearfully...assign to our peers. Most important, and likely the least understood, it is vulnerability that lifts us deeper into God consciousness. 

As Father Richard wrote in his "Daily Meditation" today, I don’t think getting it right teaches us vulnerability. It’s when we’re wrong that we are taught to be vulnerable.

There it is...the big risk...being willing to trust the unseen God has our back all the while fear is breathing down our neck. That is vulnerable...and the pearl beyond price.   

Apropos of nothing but the date, here's a favorite quote lifted by me from the February 23, 2019, comic strip, "Candorville":  I agree with Cicero. He said, 'I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all...but glory.'  

Yes! Stand up and shout Hallelujah! Amen! Bring it, Brother! Sing it, Sister! And thank you into the bargain. 

Thank you.

GO BEYOND REASON...BENEFIT THE OTHER

Our initial sense of connection with our mother, and hopefully with our father, is the beginning of the unitive consciousness to which we ultimately want to return.* * * Those who know and live with a sense of secure connection to special loved ones have been shown to be more able to tune in to and be compassionate toward others, deal with anger constructively, cope with distress, stay open to and forgive others, show more generosity and tolerance, and shape a positive sense of self as one who is worthy of love and care.  --  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation." February 22, 2022

Although many of us as a babe missed out on the vaunted mother-love connection, and have spent way too much time carping about it, God, grace and the sliver of gold in our "rotten luck" found the way for us. 

The way is our fellowship which is spiritual in nature. Among other things, it teaches us to cease fighting everything and everybody which turns out that means we can trust God. From our own experience, we now know that God can and will intervene in our lives for our benefit...we are freed from self to live for the benefit of another.

To live for the benefit of the other goes against the reasoning mind, against ego's I See Me, against the stand-up-for-self psychology prevalent in today's world. Who's kidding whom, to the egoic mind, that is hard to love. Gratefully, today we rely on the spiritual principle, Go beyond reason to love. 

There's the birth of our unitive consciousness to which we ultimately want to return. 

Through still more spiritual growth, we have become able to tune in to and be compassionate toward others, deal with anger constructively, cope with distress, stay open to and forgive others, show more generosity and tolerance, and shape a positive sense of self as one who is worthy of love and care.

It all started with our "rotten luck," grew through our changing our mind, and continues through the sliver of gold in our continuing "rotten luck" which requires us to change our mind and give over, give up, give in for the benefit of the other. Who knew? 

God...God who loves us so much knew.

Thank you.

TRUST'S ONLY ASK...RESIST NOT

We seek...or say that we seek..."the perfect objective which is of God." To give over, give up, give in with qualifiers following...as in "to God," "to good," "to light," etc., is holding to our own self-determined objectives. 

We have found, and repeatedly, that God's perfect objective more often than not comes wrapped in skunk-skin...not at all wantable to the reasoning mind. 

According to me, we give over, give up, give in to whatever we are resisting at this moment...Now. 

That is trust. That is trust's only ask. That is God's perfect objective. Again, according to me. 

Be assured that is a mixture of Soul experience with head knowledge hanging tough. I believe that is as it needs be...to agree but to have no Soul understanding is trying to curry God's favor...or, ego on parade. Ego debates Soul until reasoning mind sees the light and gives in.

Looking good...sounding righteous...doing right, just to get an ego fix is not for the glory of God but for the glory of self. 

All of which ego fixes we have done (will no doubt do again). Regret not. The failure of the ego is God turning us around...welcome it with thank you. 

Love and laugh.

Thank you.

SURRENDER...THE PATH TO ACCEPTANCE

Recently I wrote "though I cannot actually see the love in my heart, the fear in my belly, the pain I am in, the joy I experience, I know they live in me because I feel them."  

This morning I realize that it is not the feeling of love, fear, pain, joy that proves themselves...it is the presence of pain, love, aches, joy that does the proving. 

Presence is the blinding light...it is the presence of God in our life, not the feeling, that proves God in our life. Our spiritual eye sees and transmits...transforms...transmutes, and we have our proof. 

Our need now is for both a good rememberer and the discipline to use it. It is our remembering that builds our trust. True remembrance requires our daily attention...else a day, a week, any time lapse, and likely we forget it altogether or remember it glorified to egoic mind's specs...where looking good rules. 

God's presence is always with us. Lest we missed the quiet word: Our acceptance of that fact began with our surrender of our self-determined idea of how God's presence should feel.

Voila! The dreaded surrender is acceptance aborning. That may well be a spiritually immutable law.

Thank you.

TO LIVE IN GOD'S LIGHT...LOVE AND LAUGH

I just stumbled on this ode to my grandma that I wrote in 2013:

 
....her one inner desire was to please God, and she knew that we only please God by, her words, 'doing right by others.' She did not seek to be comforted...she was as comfortable as she needed to be; she did not seek to be understood...that'd be a concept totally unfamiliar to her; she did not seek to love or to be loved, she just loved and was loved, no seeking about it. * * * Materially, she did not have two extra pennies to bless herself with; spiritually she lived in God's light. There. That is the pearl of great price.

Blinding flash: "Stumbling" on this particular piece describes the how, when, why God works in my life. 

"How?" He reveals his answers to me through me. "When?" As needed. "Why?" To lift my thoughts away from self up to Self.

Every word I wrote about my grandma in November of 2013 is exactly what I need to read, recall and joy in today. I remember her, the lessons learned from her and apply them to my life today. 

Now, love and laugh.

Thank you.

OUR SPIRITUAL GOOD...FOR OTHERS

God's will...knowing it and doing it. Sometimes trying to do God's will feels like a crapshoot. 

Though my deepest desire be for God's will to be done in my life, it cannot be done by my will...it comes from God whose way is wholly unknowable beforehand. We know it as we do it. 

Occasionally we are right when we follow our reasoning mind, thinking we know God's will. Other times, though we ponder, analyze, debate, get others agreement, we wind up with another regret to make amends for. 

Back to our crapshoot...I suspect our dilemma is found in our want not in our need. We want to be right...right in our mind and right in the eyes of our peers. Uh-oh. Our idea of being right has no leeway for not being right for the benefit of another. 

Just because our conclusion is just, right and good does not make it God's will for us at this particular time for this particular need.

I'm good with the idea that there are no mistakes. Everything happens for our good if only for the benefit of another...as in, deeper/higher, for our spiritual good. 

We may not see our spiritual good in another benefitting from our screwup, but we trust...and there's our God-hug. Which opens us to the realization that though I cannot actually see the love in my heart, the fear in my belly, the pain I am in, the joy I experience, I know they live in me because I feel them. 

Though I cannot see God, I can feel my need for God...my yearning to feel God. Thus, I trust. 

Thank you.

THIS, TOO, IS FOR OUR SPIRITUAL GOOD

Last week's blinding flash of the obvious: Guilt is I See Me's white horse.

Original reaction: Huh? 

Then: Oh! The white horse equates to the Trojan horse, a chosen disguise. 

Ending with: If regret is I See Me's white horse, then all of our rues, regrets and remorses qualify equally.

In the quiet the inner view opens deeper for us to see from a higher place. Turned from our reasoning mind, we know our rues, regrets and remorses as My gifts for the good of others. Their need could have only been met by our un-good, i.e., self-centered, words or actions. And to forget not, vice versa...same goes...and the horse you rode in on is not a horse of another color. 

It follows that others' un-good actions that affect us are for our good and cannot be met by self-determined objectives or our judgments. Our thank you is the key that opens the door at which I stand and knock.

In short, grace resists not free will, the originator of our regrets, so as to meet the spiritual growth needs of another...which then blossoms as our spiritual good. 

Resist not evil. Trust. Whoa...maybe everything is for our spiritual good. Trust. Resist not evil. Trust. 

Thank you.

UNDEFENDED...THE ULTIMATE TRUST

I want to say as strongly as I can that our morning quiet time is to help us experience this essential and united self. Pure and simple. That’s all. If our spiritual growth doesn’t help us experience this undefended and beloved self, then change it, get rid of it, or do something very different. --  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," February 16, 2022 (paraphrased)   

In that quote, Father Richard was writing about religion and the tools and jewels of religion which translate to me to mean spiritual growth. The word "religion" has become anathema to many. Instead of seeking a personal substitute, too many of us shuck the words and the Source...namely, God...and think ourself agnostic or, dependent on our ire, even atheist. 

When first I heard, "I don't do religion, I lean toward spiritual," I knew I'd found a home for my heart and my Soul. My spiritual growth began and continues to this day with all the doubts, the certainties, the snarks and the glories that still more spiritual growth ensures us. Just as religion does, or so I'm told. 

About that quote, what captured my attention was the word "undefended" in the sentence, If our spiritual growth doesn’t help us experience this undefended and beloved self....

Undefended. Unconsciously...unknown to me...undefended is the Me I've been searching for. To know, to show, to welcome the feeling of undefended is more even than the pearl beyond price...it is my personal Holy Grail. 

To experience this undefended self is trust within me breathing God's air. Trust in God is that which I've ever been seeking but by the seeking held it off...denied by continuing the search, not daring to believe I am the trust I seek.

We don't have trust until we trust the trust we have. That comes when we are undefended, we know it, welcome it, kiss it on the lips, and realize it is being passed on...through me, not by me.

I am not yet wholly there, but I am heading in the right direction. This possibly is as good as I get in this lifetime, and that is close enough to perfect for me right Now...which I trust.

Thank you.  

GOD HAS US IN THE PALM OF HIS HAND

Just yesterday I out loud asked God if I was getting too whoo-whoo. This morning's "God Calling" gave the answer: The world does not need super-humans, but super-natural humans. Those who will persistently turn the self out of their lives and let Divine Power work through them. *** Let inspiration take the place of aspiration. 

Blinding flash of the obvious:  Do not change the daily post's message to meet others' understanding...its purpose is for others' understanding to be changed to meet its message.

I asked, I got my answer. Which brings the reminder that when questions bubble up from within, there maybe and often are more than one answer. 

I suspect another level of my answer came to me long before I asked yesterday's question; namely, wait, as in, sit and wait on the Lord. Sometime later came listen, speak less and listen more...cultivate a listening ear.

There. Further lessons in learning that all of our questions have already been answered, all of our problems have already been solved. 

Worrit not, God has us in hand.

Thank you.  

ON BEING HAPPY AND ACTIVE

Recently, I read in the Health section of my paper that they are finding that regrets are yet another cause of dementia. I willfully wonder if dementia primarily isn't today's ghost rider for Big Pharma.

There is a TV program, I think "Sixty Minutes," that is doing a long-term study (showing maybe once a year) on residents in an elder-care home in California. One segment told of a male who had been previously featured...in his 90s, happy and active...who since had passed away. 

His autopsy revealed his brain had Alzheimer's-causing plagues, but he had evidenced little, maybe no, dementia. 

That is the news we all need to hear...or I believe it is the news that all of us "elderly" folk need to hear anyway. It has ever been the case that as we age, our hair gets gray or thins or balds-out completely. Memory has its own like tendencies. 

Which is why the autopsy that showed the brain with Alzheimer's-causing plagues of a man who showed not a lot of memory loss is important. Most important to me is that he was in his 90s happy and active.  

I choose to believe, because for me it follows, that the man believed in a Higher Power, a Power for good, which opened him to live in grace and gratitude. Happy and active are the clues.

More and more, there are many who are living to be 80, 90, 100...I have not yet heard one of them say, when interviewed, that they were miserable, wish that they had died 20-30 years ago, and the world sucks. I doubt not there are some, but who wants to hear them if we choose to be happy our own self?

God loves us...believe it...trust it...get happy...know it and show it. Why not? 

If we live to be 100, die and find there is no God, never was, and nobody is there to greet us, we will have lived happy. And if there is nothing, and we know nothing...what's to fear? 

Go ahead...get happy...know it and show it. 

Thank you.

REALIZE FROM OUR TOES TO OUR NOSE, II

[This is a reworked reprint of my post of December 17, 2017.]

This morning the niggling thought is again with me that if I'm not proving It, God, by realization, I'm only knowing it, my idea of God. Our need is to realize It...realize that It is the Father within that does the work.

We can think more, analyze further, write on and on, but that is proof of knowing...and that is knowing in the moment, subject to change often.

The unending spiritual ask is for us to listen. We turn away from our want to figure it out, away from our reasoning mind, toward the quiet within and listen...not through our ears do we hear, but by the divine spark within us. 

In the quiet we become available to be moved, maybe just a teensy-tiny step, but moved by It, Providence, the Higher Power, Almighty God...by whatever name. We know It to be on our side, to have our back, as It moves us to complete our work. 

This takes as long as it takes...often, time beyond imagining, other times, in a flash...not ours to determine, ours to stay the course. The course being life itself.

We let It by trusting It from our toes to our nose...from our nose up is God's workshop.

Thank you.

GOD IS LOVE AND LAUGHTER

Here we discovered we were never meant to live alone. -- Anonymous 

Blinding flash of the obvious: We were never meant to live alone does not refer simply to having another person in our lives. 

Our eyes are lifted for us to see deeper, to the Higher Power within which is ever with us. Comes the dawning: We are meant to live in conscious contact with God, thus we are never alone. 

It is that conscious contact with God that invites, allows, lets others into our lives with or without our say-so. 

We welcome all up to the point of our own understanding. To go beyond that point, we are into self-determined objectives where we learn from the burn...of self-will.

Here we discovered we were never meant to live alone. This is a spiritual education all by itself. Specifically, it is an example of the need to always look deeper. Whether it be the written or the spoken word...what we read, what we hear are seldom the whole story. 

We follow the rule to keep it simple: Expect good, get good; expect not good, get not good. Or, expect God, get God; expect baloney, get baloney. Ours to choose.

God is love and laughter. Today, let us choose to love and laugh.

Thank you.  

RESPECT...GIVING, NOT GETTING

Blinding flash of the obvious: Respect...the essence of the Sermon on the Mount.

Respect may be the most important of all our feelings...the God-twist with respect is not getting it bur giving it. No matter what. Give our respect. 

Comes the light: The Sermon on the Mount...the how-to manual for readying ourself to give, not get, respect. Proving the spiritual rule of as we give, we get.

Our lesson then is to give respect not as a self-determined objective but from God...as an outward flow from the Father within me to the Father within thee. 

It is the self-determined objective that keeps it all about self...for the glory or just the comfort of self. 

The way we give respect not from self but from God is through surrender. Ah, surrender, that feeling of hopeless despair because self has run out of answers...and the dread of surrender is transmuted into the peace of acceptance.

Another paradox: We pray for peace from our turmoil, we get surrender as our answer, we resist, we lose, we accept, God wins...we win. 

Our consciousness is lifted deeper...that which caused us turmoil now brings us peace.

Thank you.

SPIRITUALLY ATTUNED BUT NOT CONSUMED

How you treat other human beings is how you treat [the Lord]. That’s nondual thinking. Many would read this statement and firmly say, 'This is the Word of the Lord.' But it isn’t their actual practice. As long as they remain at the dualistic level, they can go to church and worship [the Lord] and be greedy, selfish, and racist an hour later, not seeing any conflict with that at all. -- from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," January 26, 2022, altered. 

This is our "wake me when it's over" call to our conscience. We know, not always but often, that those of whom Rohr wrote is us. Today, we aim for it to be the place we are coming from and take heart that making our U-turn takes as long as it takes...not to get it but to let go of trying to get it.

The good news...and relief...is that we can own that we see us more in the rearview mirror than looming ahead in dread.  The majority of the time, sometimes the scant 51 percent, we are no longer dualistically stuck. 

There it is...our proof we are on the road of spiritual growth. We no longer think black thoughts for our slow progress...we take joy for the proof that we are heading in the right direction.

We have experienced the pain from another's snide or hurtful remark. Dual thinking demands we pay them back...in full plus a side of snark. Nondual thinking prays thank you for how else do we get to learn how to agree with our adversary quickly, how to resist not evil?

The conundrum is that we think, say, preach and teach resist not evil, but trying to do that all on our own is a self-determined objective keeping us tied to self and dualistic thinking. 

Say, Whaa? Say, Let go and let God, and that nails it. 

We love the saying of let go and let God, but the doing of it? That isn’t our actual practice. That is nondual thinking, not of the reasoning mind, thus not for us to figure out. 

What we can do is every day consciously make a promise to be as spiritually available to the day as we can naturally be, trusting God's will to the timing and the telling. Which means our work has just begun! 

We find we must keep our mind spiritually attuned but not consumed...live as we let go and let God. Live, as in, be not afraid of making mistakes, of returning kind for unkind, of trying to give not just get respect. 

We are beginning to live at a nondual level trusting God to go before us to make the crooked places straight.

Thank you.

REGRET IS OF EGO, ACCEPTANCE IS OF GOD

The Divine Voice is not always expressed in words./It is made known as a heart-consciousness. -- "God Calling," February 9 in its entirety

Here's me at 50...experiencing the judgments of those who are not yet 50. Those who believe they know how we should be at 50...how we should share, how we should have it all together, how we should be free of any and all "old" fears, doubts, regrets.

Comes now my blinding flash: That is precisely how I judged back in the day...before I got to 50. The finishing touch, of course, is my now need which is to let "them" off my hook...else I stay hooked by my, not their, judgments.

The God-loves-me wonder...what I am experiencing at 50 is my own answered prayers. 

I have prayed in the past to be able to speak whatever I had to say and be neither embarrassed nor regretful after I spoke...no matter what came out. Fully expecting that would be me sounding profound...or good at least...since it would be from God. Not yet getting it, that God speaking through me is me speaking.  

Oh. God speaking through me is me speaking. 

We can accept our voice as speaking God's Truth or we can regret and go with ego's version. When we trust by choosing Truth, God can and will clarify the situation for the benefit of all...but should we choose regrets, ego can and will keep us stuck in self-flagellation.

Regret, then, is denial, a green light for ego; acceptance shuts that door, opening us to God and his wonder-working will. 

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGHTER...EVERMORE

Continuing with my yesterday's story of my flash when I felt all over softened by the realization that I needed to give over to a friend with whom I had been at loggerheads: I called her, she was delighted, we talked, and the conversation ended when our memories became conflicted. I was left with a budding resentment. 

A budding resentment is a feeling of resistance to what is. 

And we head that off p.d.q. for we know that a feeling of resistance is God's red alert...turn around, change course, seek the good here...right here, find the gold.  

My God news...my gratitude that I recognized the gold as that resentment-wannabe for that will keep me digging to be released from my I See Me response. 

By acknowledging that nothing will change until I am willing to change my egoic mind, the source of all my woes, I sought God's take on my need. Came the realization...our memories are not wrong, they just need to expand...and the spiritual eye opens, seeing all, resisting nothing.

It matters not who is right or wrong, all that matters is what we are willing to do for each others spiritual growth. Love and laughter evermore.

Thank you.

ON REALIZING OUR ONENESS

I recently recalled an experience I had some 45 years ago, back when I was listening to a speaker with a hairy story...with which I did not relate at all. As my brain scrambled for ways to quietly leave, he commenced describing his feelings during his hairy time...I felt as if I had touched a live wire. 

He was describing precisely how my walking around, not good, feelings were at that time, every day. As I listened, a feeling not unlike electricity shot through me...it was the realization that we are one...all of us, all the time, whether we know it or not...we are one, one with each other, one with God. 

I promise that all of that came as a single thought-realization. 

That realization has been the base of my spiritual growth since...I wish I could say 100 percent of the time and not be lying, but my posts prove the truth. That I continue to come back to that realization is my joy. 

Now...this morning...I have been given to see why I had that recent recollection for I experienced a new level of oneness regarding a friend, to wit: I need to call Gertrude, I need to give over. With that thought, I felt me all over softened. 

For a while now, my friend and I have been knowing each other as wrong...and I have felt hardened (which, by the way, explains to me the origin of "rigid, righteous and right"). 

Comes now proof on the hoof, meaning that which we all must experience not just know from our eyebrows up: The gift in giving over is not ours until we actually are using it by doing it. Quit talking, start doing...then keep it up. 

My today's To-Do List: Call Gertrude. Then listen to what God has to offer to and from Gertrude. 

Interestingly, Fr Richard's meditation today is about oneness: Julian of Norwich used the Old English term 'oneing' to describe what happens between God and the soul. . . . for it is in this oneing that the life of all people consists. She also wrote, 'In the sight of God, all humans are oned, and one person is all people.'

Thank you.

A REMINDER TO USE BEFORE THE NEED

Fear not being thrown into the lion's den for the lion is Aslan. - BFO from 2018

There...an old blinding flash of the obvious that I read in my "God Calling" this morning. What a comfort...the message is the same: God knows our needs. Or, never fear, God is here. 

God knew in 2018 that I was going to need to be reminded of the fact that he, disguised as Aslan, is my protector in the mind-boggles, or lion's den, of life. 

Another lion's den for me is my less-than-beloved new car...or its fancy-schmancy gas tank, even more specifically, the door to the gas tank, that thing I have to open to insert the hose. With my beloved Civic, which only became beloved once I got this car, I just had to press the door, it opened, I inserted the hose, got gas, paid and left. This one has a well-hidden lever inside the car that I had to find then figure out how to push? pull? slide? Then discover that only unlocks the door, I need to press the door and then it opens. There is more...the door opens, and there is yet another lock that I had to get an attendant to open for me because I could not break the code. All this before I could even get the gas flowing into the tank! 

I've only needed to get gas once so far, but the second time is looming, and it has been looking more and more like a lion's den. It is a known fact, according to me, that we seniors, aka old folk, must rely a lot more on our own brain power...the old use it or lose it applies. Which I have been kinda, sorta praying to do.

Finally the good news: I realized God's will was using the door to my car's gas tank to answer my need to trust my own thinking more.

My reasoning mind, never idle, was all for waiting for my friend to come Monday so he could go with me to get gas. 

God, never idle, whispered that I must...and I can...use my brain to think my way through this self-built boondoggle, and he would go before me to make the crooked places straight. 

Which cleared the way for common sense to assure me, when done often enough all on my own, this will become just another same-old-same-old. 

There it is...the adventures of an old woman, or why those who've gone before say that getting old is a bitch. This is my proof that indeed it is when we get stuck in our reasoning mind...but it is fodder for love and laughter when we will recall that God has our back. Even at the filling station.

Thank you.

JUST ANOTHER ME TIME

I just read my blog from some time ago: We are looking out there...at the problem. We need to look within. To the solution...spiritual principles. 

And my had-it-up-to-here answer is...yeah, yeah, yeah, give me a break. 

All spiritual principles are within us, have been there since before conception, will be there three days after we are dead. 

Having someone to blame...who we can rat on to someone else...works, too.

And 1,000 years after the world as we know it is no more, spiritual principles will be in the ether...waiting to be realized and released by a ready soul once again. 

I do not give  a flip about 1,000 or 1,000,000 years after all is said and done. I do give a flip that Jeff Bezos is willing to spend a half a billion dollars to float his billion dollar yacht some 100 yards, and at the very same time his Amazon announces it is upping its Prime rates. 

That to us never-minds is the outside of enough. Or, not to exaggerate overly much, is the outside of enough to this never-mind. 

I am beginning to believe that Bezos (who owns the Washing Post, which apparently needs be included whenever his name is printed) is on this earth just to piss me off. A second Amazon HQ is being built all but next door to me, and guess whose property taxes are already making like a jet plane. Not Bezos' for certain sure.

I regret I thought of that...it would not warrant a ho-hum if I found he pays less personal taxes than I do.

Enough with the rant...but I have proved I need to write first thing in the morning...by mid-afternoon I seem to have forgotten God's name. The good news...finally...that is not vice versa. God knows my name, sees my game, and loves me anyhow. I am grateful beyond imagining,.

Your task is to find the good, the true, and the beautiful in everything, even and most especially the problematic. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 23, 2019 [There...me taking my inventory.]

Thank you.

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE...THE PATH WE CHOOSE

My morning request: "Please open my mind as to how I need handle my betrayed feelings toward both my mentor and my friend due to their clandestine actions concerning a serious matter of mine." 

Immediately after I made my request, I read "God Calling," and there my answer: 'When thy father [mentor] and mother [friend] forsake thee, then the Lord will take thee up.' This is a literal dependence on Me. 

My head and my heart felt the grace of gratitude as I prayed my thank you. 

Surprisingly, two words, spiritual discipline, came immediately to mind...surprising in that they answered a question I had not yet formed: What do I do and how do I do it to release the haunting call of 'Betrayed!'

As I pondered the reality of I See Me at the base of my turmoil, specifically that I should blame and shame them with their own guilt, came the Divine thought: Guilt is the white horse I See Me rides...and spiritual discipline holds the reins.

With that, I recalled that my spiritual discipline is all about meditating, until I get my click-click, on the fact that I am powerless over my own self, that only God can restore me to sanity and that I need to turn my will over to God...Now. 

This I know: My need, i.e., God's will, is for my mentor and my friend to walk free in my own thoughts...and my want, i.e., my will, needs to get out of the way if I am ever to be free of me. 

Spiritual discipline begins with thank you.

Thank you. 

WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT

Blinding flash of the obvious (from a while back): Jesus is the generic name for each of us in the universe.  

 

That flash gave me the understanding of the name "Jesus" as one of God's name for us, and my resistance to the word Jesus loosened. Before then, I would hear the word Jesus and know some form of religious jingoism would follow, and just no.

I began to  understand and to be comfortable with the name Jesus when it came to me that it represents the Divine spark of God in each of us in the walking around world. But my comfort lasted just so long as I let it lie fallow in my mind...walking it, not so much.

I knew God had my work laid out for me when I consciously tried to divorce myself from my own opinions...when I consciously tried to give over, give up, give in...when I consciously tried to put you ahead of me. I, the Divine spark of God, spoke...consciously is not going to get us there. Trust is.

Trust God. The generic Jesus trusts the Father within when she holds her nose and takes a leap of faith...sits and waits on the Lord...when, not if, wrong, promptly admits it. Same-old-same-old...unselfed. Else what's being the Divine spark of God for? 

I took heart when I read Fr Richard Rohr's recent posts: 1/26/22 How you treat other human beings is how you treat Jesus. Then, 1/30/22  And how we relate to the world is how we are actively relating to God, whether we know it or not.

I feel seriously blessed by the black-and-white assurance of my trusted Fr Richard that I'm on the right track with Jesus, plus the recognition that I couldn't have connected with the name Jesus without my actively relating to God. 

The unheralded gold ring: The birth of our prayer for peace of mind is wrapped in the words "whether we know it or not." All we need do, when an "I need" springs to mind, is recall that we already have it whether we know it or not. 

Thank you.

ON BEING EASY IN OUR SOUL

Suddenly it occurred to me, I was easy in my soul. -- Livingston Taylor 

I read sentences like that, and I know it to be true for me. An hour later I'm praying for it to be true for me. An hour later, I know...etc. 

I admit that garbled reflection on me defines my personal self-acceptance. I find no fault in that upside/downside thinking...an hour from now, I may. 

There is no roadmap for our brain-thoughts or for our feelings. There is, however, better; namely, when a blinding flash assures us that, plain and simple, life is still more spiritual growth. Acceptance then is the daily application of spiritual truth to our questing mind...that determines our walking around ease in this world.

I came to see the root of my living angst was my want for perfect peace...the problem being that my want for perfect peace did not match up with God's will for the same. 

My idea: I get my want, my way with no harm to self or anybody else...one hundred percent of the time. 

God's idea: Trust God. (Translated for the reasoning mind...trust God before we have the evidence.)

The twisted logic to our material mind is that the worse the haps look to our reason, the more beneficial the gift from God...validation of this lesson is beyond centuries old. Just this morning I read this by Richard of Saint-Victor (whom I confess I never heard of), For the outer sense alone perceives visible things, and the eye of the heart alone sees the invisible. Isn't that comforting? 

Life is spiritual in nature and growing in that is God's ask. There. That is my easy in my soul. 

Thank you.

LOVE & LAUGHTER...GOD'S ANSWERED PRAYER

God’s self-revealing... intends not to give us easy answers and shortcuts to confidence and authority, but rather to reduce us, again and again, to the posture of wonder, humility, rebuke, and smallness in the face of the unknown. --  Brian McLaren, Fr Richard Rohr's School [Statement slightly altered.]

That sets the path to spiritual maturity. Knowing that unto doing that unto breathing that are ego's rough and rutted road to travel. Meaning that I, personally, get to...must...welcome God's self-revealing in the form of my being mocked, disbelieved, laughed at, cheated. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: Picture Joseph upon getting Mary's good news.

Whoa! Picture my reasoning mind gobsmacked. 

I am trying to grasp Joseph upon getting Mary's good news...and believing her. I recall my yesterday's turmoil over my suspicion of the less-than-wonderful behavior of my mentor and a friend toward me. 

Thank you. 

Here comes gratitude with her splinter of gold, proof that God has our back. My BFO lifts me (with a grin yet) out of my hurt self, i.e., ego obsessively justifying ways to shame my betrayers...while not displeasing God. 

Thank you. 

God’s self-revealing intends, with love and laughter, to reduce us, again and again, to the posture of wonder, humility, rebuke, and smallness in the face of the unknown. 

There. We are opened to the realization that, no matter our prayer, love and laughter are God's answer...according to me. 

Thank you.