ACCEPT GOD'S WILL vs. RESIGNING TO OUR WILL

All that we see as fearful is, in truth, God. Welcome it and be set free. -- My note to myself from 2017. 

Knowing that from my eyebrows up in 2017 was no doubt a great comfort to me. It's a comfort to me today, but I recognize it today as a comfort to my reasoning...fearful...mind and it is momentary. It is living it that is a whole 'nother matter...being not of self but of God.

There lives the difference between material truth and spiritual truth, the forever paradox. 

If it be a walking around truth, we must live it...yet it is willfully living it that takes its toll. The more we try, the harder we crash...if we are doing it right. Paraphrasing Fr Richard, we've got to do it wrong to get it right.

We know we must try with a will or fall by the wayside...unknowing, we learn that trying unto falling by the wayside is the way to crash and burn. There's our ah-ha moment. Crash and burn is the rough and rutted road leading us to God and the difference between resignation and acceptance.

Yes, we must try...to not try is to quit, to resign ourself to feeling ever alone...no hope, no peace, no God. It is that belief in our will that must crash and burn...our belief in our fiercely trying will blocks acceptance of God and his will for  us.

God's will...which reasoning mind cannot decipher, cannot translate, cannot fathom and which we pray to accept. Here's grace: The spiritual gift, full realization, of our acceptance comes after the fact when we are living it...in gratitude and wonder.

It is I: be not afraid, - John 6:20

Thank you.

WITHOUT CONSCIOUS THOUGHT

How seek the way which leadeth to our wishes? By renouncing our wishes. The crown of excellence is renunciation. -- Hafiz Divan

My use of that quote came as: To extinguish our dreads, go toward them in welcome.

I have had a persistent dread for years. Without pre-planning, without a thought, on a short walk recently, that fear began transmuting...becoming welcome to me...and this was way before I read Divan with my response to it.

Looking back, I see that all the spiritual necessaries were silently flowing through me: Let it be...welcome...resist not, without thought. 

Without thought...there's God, loving and laughing. 

Plus and again: No spiritual or otherwise thought was conscious to me. I didn't even have my usual thank you flowing...I was without conscious thought, just a smiling heart. I remember it this morning and rejoice in the memory of God walking me. 

My daily prayer, Be it done to me according to Thy will, has become Thank you that it is being done to me according to Thy will.

God loves us so much.

Thank you.  

LOVE AND LAUGH...AND PRAY THANK YOU

However, as a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 4, 2014

My thought on awakening this morning was that I need to shuck the shields of what I know before I can ever walk in trust of what I don't know...that which is already here but blocked by my egoic mind. Why else would a quote from 2014 drop in?

Here it is...my morning's need being fulfilled: I am even now in the process of being detached from the safety of "learned," while unproven new-borns flow forth...with self-doubt, the feeling of trepidation, stalking every step back I take. 

My new mantra: God protects me not, sustains me ever. Which I'll not remember...oh, wait...that's the good news. I do not need to remember, God is without thought.

I'm getting a glimmer that this is the way we build trust...do the dirty and trust God to use us for the clean-up. It is to laugh...and to love.

Thank you.

LOVE, GOD'S HELPMATE WITH FEAR

In my never-ending search for the meaning of love, I pretty much discounted my previously held and honest belief in "charity" as the answer. It came up a tish short.

Comes now, "non-resistance." On resist not evil I have based thank you as my go-to for comfort in not resisting the frets and foibles of my...and my interpretation of your...egoic self.     

In Fr Richard's "Meditation" today is this quote by Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber: ,,,,maybe the opposite of fear isn’t bravery.  Maybe the opposite of fear is love. So...in response to the very real dangers of this world we have an invitation as people of faith: which is to respond by loving.

For whatever reason, spiritual or selfish or plain ignorance, I feel conflicted by the very word "love" when all the rest of that feels right on target.

 

It's not the meaning of the quote I quibble with, it's just the word love that is my thorn. I'm thinking that maybe the opposite of fear is non-resistance. 

Then: "So, in response to the very real dangers of this world we have an invitation as people of faith to respond by 'not resisting' that which is appearing." 

Our ongoing spiritual growth has brought us to the mustard seed of understanding that what we see out there is of self, what we realize within is of God. 

Our inner sight now is our dependable but only by our trust in it can we depend on it. In the material world, charity and non-resistance, et al., are acceptable as we learn to not resist what our eye sees but to welcome the unseen Presence there. 

Blinding flash of the obvious:  Love is our deeper answer higher for there we welcome fear as love's helpmate...nothing turns us to God faster than fear. Resist not.

Thank you.

THE FATHER MEETS OUR NEEDS...SO TRUST

As we forgive others, we are teaching the mind to respond with forgiveness everywhere, even to the misdeeds and mistakes of our own past. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," February 20

Forgiveness. The very word is unforgiving...it has no give to it. So insists my "me first" mind.

It is often said...or preached...that when we come to forgiveness, we must put ourself first...reasoning that if we have not forgiven ourself we cannot forgive others. Ah, egoic mind at its finest, and a flat denial of trust that God has our back. 

I learned, if we are living a turned-over life, that we will already have another in first place, namely, the God of our own understanding. That one has the care and comfort of us personally, leaving our job to be extending care and comfort to others...especially the "other" currently ticking us off.

We will come to learn that other is our angel in disguise. We will learn this by our act of forgiveness toward them...which boils down to when we change our mind; or when we quit with the talk only and start to rely more and more on the decision we made to turn our will and our life over to the care of God.

In short, we never put our name at the head of the list of those who need our forgiveness. We do for others because our need has become our want...we want to do for others. Forgiveness of self is no longer a self-determined objection, it is of God, ours without thought or planning. 

There...the rely-on-it result of our needs being met and our wants not counting. 

The Father knows our needs...count on it.

Thank you.

EGO DEFLATION IS SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Loving means to love that which is unlovable,

Or it is no virtue at all.

Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable,

Faith means believing the unbelievable,

And hoping means to hope when things are hopeless.

-- G. K. Chesterton

I admire the deep meaning of that every time I come across it, and ponder the rightness of it. For there it is, plain and simple, how to get right within our self. 

This is beautifully worded poetry which also serves as the how-to for ego deflation in depth...or for still more spiritual growth.

Thank you.

ON SHUCKING OUR PROTECTIVE EGO

We can read elsewise, and we can think we realize, but we cannot avoid the truth; namely, we come to God, to our inner I, through suffering. This is the way of surrender...self's protective shell of ego is being cracked open, shattered and shucked.

Surrender has been called the unfathomable ecstasy of the crucifixion of self...I call it crash and burn, but surrender of self by any name is essential for a peaced self. It cannot be understood by the reasoning mind, only by the heart or maybe the Soul or maybe...God alone knows, so we open to God.

Neither that unfathomable ecstasy nor the crash and burn are attainable by self-will...not by sincere want-to not by honest effort. It is not explainable...by me at any rate. I am still at the place where I go to God for God and that is all. What I get is for my benefit no matter my reasoning mind's take on it, and I am grateful...or I quick get grateful by grace and by God.

While sitting and waiting on the Lord, I often take flights of wonder. In a recent one, the ego regarded  itself as the I's Fort Knox...I am the gold, ego the guardian of the Fort...none enter without pain and suffering. Clearly, it is the fear of that perilous pain that maintains ego's hold; but ego's hold is broken with the realization: I feel fear, God is here. I love my flights of wonder.

We experience resurrection...embedded in travail itself.... Author and professor Julia Gatta 

Thank you.

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR LOVE

For whatever reasons, love, or the meaning of love, has ever been an enigma to me. A beloved friend and I did a study of love for our own education nearly fifty years ago. I doubt we came out any smarter, but we bragged as if we had, I laugh to admit.  

This morning, I'm wrestling with love as compared to charity...the act of love v. the act of charity. I  use 1 Corinthians 13:13 for comparison purposes.

As it is written today, And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love, vs. the King James Version, And now faith, hope, and charity abide, these three; and the greatest of these is charity. 

I have always preferred the charity version, because the word love has become all but meaningless...from overuse probably. Charity gives without expectations of a return, love wants...expects...a return. 

I do charitably give. I do not recall ever, with an expectation of getting back, charitably giving anything to anybody. Love, now...a warm and wonderful feeling that flows from within, is not charity. 

If met with nada, with simple indifference or no interest, love's warm and wonderful is stopped in a heartbeat. Depending on the intensity, our warm feeling can turn judgmental faster than a heartbeat.  

Testing that, or my interpretation of it, I have had the devil's own time, so to speak, in getting a feeling of love for God. Or of God's love for me. Likely because I don't know what that is supposed to feel like. 

I know this, every time I come here, I wind up taking myself too seriously. I'm just going to think of God and I as being in charity with each other...that fits.

Charity and laugh. Uh-oh.

Thank you.

ON GETTING A SPIRITUAL LEG UP...DEEPER

To start with one's ego identity and to try to bring that identity to terms with external reality by thinking, and then, having worked out practical principles, to act on reality from one privileged autonomous  position--in order to bring it into line with  an absolute good we have arrived at  by thought: this is the way we become irresponsible. -- Thomas Merton  

This is truth. I know that it is true from my own experience. My ah-ha moment was when I recognized it as Merton's experience, too. I'm guessing. 

Knowing little about the man Merton other than he is today acknowledged as an authentic mystic, I suspect he had to walk through all the human-mind experiences that we are needing and walking through to get to God revealed. 

According to me, that is the how-to for shucking our shields. Knowing no other way, we live what we know...until what we know is that our thinking isn't working for us anymore. 

In effect, we crash and burn in the trying to think ourself clear. Finally, we are at the start-gate of raised consciousness...we are about to begin our climb deeper. 

This is when all the give over, give up, give in of the Sermon becomes reality...as in, agree with your adversary quickly and turn the other cheek and resist not evil...all the ethereal (too perfect for this world) becomes literal. We realize if thinking along with talking got us free from self, we'd long since be there...it is trudging the road that sets us free. 

In today's world, that is known as when the rubber meets the road. In our world, it is known as, we must try with a will or fall by the wayside. With still more spiritual growth, we realize, i cannot do this alone...thank you.

OK, maybe now we are at the start-gate of raised consciousness...maybe now we are about to begin our climb deeper. 

God loves and laughs while offering a leg up...deeper.

Thank you.

TIME TAKES TIME...LOVE AND LAUGH

We learn early on, and take God's own time to believe, that God is not on our time line. A minute to me may be a year to God...a year to me may be less than a minute to God. We love saying...usually to another in need of hearing it...that time takes time. 

It is a whole different story when we're sitting and waiting on the Lord...that's when impatience becomes ego's go-to. 

Clearly...or clearly after we get it...it doesn't take long for God to do, it takes "forever" for us to realize he's done it. The imponderable is that all our problems have been solved already...were solved even as we were inviting them out. 

My own experience has taught me that we are the source of all our woes...also, that we must prove Truth. The fruit-bearing realization is that all our problems as invited by us are spiritual lessons. We invite our problems to learn to live by those spiritual lessons. 

Ah, we now rest in the once-denied spiritual axiom, every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. 

Believe it or believe it. 

Thank you.

ON LIVING IN TRUST...IN GOD CONSCIOUSNESS

Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems. -- Anonymous

When one is rocketed into the fourth dimension, believe it.

It is through our belief unto acceptance unto walking forward toward the invisible unknown that our spiritual search turns...without conscious effort, we are moved deeper higher.

We are moved not through our mental efforts (trying to figure it out) but through our nonresistance to what we is given us...not to be too whoo-whoo, but it just kinda shows up within us. 

Again...believe it. 

Probably the hard part is not running our mouth about it...not from fear, but from the fact that we do not know what we are talking about. 

There...the birth of trust. In silence we are using the trust we seek...our trust that the next thing we do is the right thing even when (not if) it turns out to be wrong to our reasoning mind. We can trust that is when it is right-est. 

That is living in the fourth dimension. Figuring it out cannot get us there. We realize that we have been moved to the place where our rational, material, reasoning, egoic mind is as useless as teats on a bull. 

We are beginning to believe it...to trust it.

Comes the dawn...we have barely got a foot in the door of the fourth dimension, and that is enough. 

Once the conflict has been overcome in you, you realize you are a living paradox and so is everyone else. You begin to see life in a truly spiritual way. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," March 21, 2022

Thank you.

GOD'S LAUGHTER IS OUR LOVE

In our fear of not doing enough, we compare ourself to others doing a lot and doing it well. Comes the realization that it is not how much we do, it is what flows unimpeded, unplanned, unselfed through us that is the benefit for all. 

It is the flow-through, not self, that shows forth God and lifts others up...kinda like the "floats all boats" theory.  

We fail when we attempt to control what flows from us. We're for the benefit of self only when we attempt to memorize a gifted BFO so as to quote it for our glory. 

We fail, too, when we consciously quote another without attribution...but we fail hardest when we hold in contempt those who quote us without attribution.

There are no short-cuts to a raised consciousness. There is no punishment for failing same except for that which our reasoning mind demands by holding us to egoic standards. We'd do well to think of our own ego-demands as God in camouflage...for they turn us to God faster than "knowing better," "should" or "blame and shame" ever will.

Paradox alert! We know it is God at work when we step in our own mess...again...and we feel love and laughter flowing out...freely. 

God loves us so much...face it, we're his great source of laughter that brings us all together in love.

Thank you.

ON DOING GOD'S WILL

We do not agree with everything and everybody, we cease fighting everything and everybody. 

Thank you.

ON TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY...NOT

According to me, taking one's self too seriously is the birthing character defect of the overwhelming majority of humans, maybe hidden in the pretty gift of free will. 

For me, it is taking myself too seriously that births all my other character defects...being an entire focus on self, it can hardly bring otherwise. When we are taking ourself too seriously, in that thought-bubble, we are our own God...by whatever name we choose to call God. 

I suspect it is taking ourself too seriously that's the wedge that begins to put others off even though they are not certain what it is that is doing the dirty. That is the word unspoken that sends others away and gives self-pity another leg up. Others sense something ain't right while we're sadly smiling through...close enough to succeeding at seeming "just fine, thank you very much." 

The way out of taking oneself too seriously...or to begin at any rate...is to face it, own it inside, then release it by admitting it openly with neither guile nor subterfuge. There it is...the balm of acceptance, the healer of self-born pain.

The upside of taking oneself seriously...but not too...is our need to take responsibility...to be personally accountable...for our own emotional welfare. We begin by leaning in trust on God...that is, we pray thank you. Therein lies the exchange of our egoic wants for our spiritual need, and we are free...whether we know it or not in the moment. 

The downside of taking oneself too seriously is that it can only birth self-pity, self-protective anger, self-denying coverups, self unto our infinity. Lest we resist, that is our reason for its being. 

The double downside: This is where don't get mad, get even got its start, and festering resentment took root. Whoa...don't even get started...we'd best hold our breath as we're praying thank you and quick-trot on by.

My great and glorious lesson learned by taking myself too seriously is that it beat me like a drum until I admitted complete defeat...purely by my laughter even as I owned it. The freedom is in the fact that I still take myself too seriously but I love it and laugh when I catch myself back there again. Admittedly, it is a tish harder to love and laugh when you catch me at it first, but I get there...we get there.

Thank you.  

THE GRACE OF GOD'S LOVE

It was an important waking-up. My familiar default was to rely on old voices and experiences—on the mind’s many concepts and ideas. Yet the force of love that sustains life is not a concept, and there are not a set of holy conditions to attain. As I opened my heart, love moved through the pain and slowly changed my sight. Things that once seemed fixed and defining were unmasked. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," March 1, 2022 

That quote so accurately describes what I have just trudged through...with more to come no doubt...that I need write nothing further. But, as we know, need and want are two different things, and I want to get clearer for when, not if, I am looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains...to quote from a favorite song, "Loving Arms."  

Today, March 17, is my brother's 86th birthdate. The past few weeks memories of him have come to me...of him becoming ill in 1948, of his death three months after his first headache...and have come so unexpectedly as to have God's hand clearly on them. 

I have touched on this in my writing, and with every word written the new memories have clarified...just a tish but a tish each time. 

More enlightening to me has been the hesitancy of friends to listen much less talk about this time-trip. I would have expected and I allowed that to hurt which, I am convinced, is how I realized the love in their hesitancy...and I am righted. 

In that realization was an important waking-up...and therein is the truth in the above quote. As I opened my heart, love moved through the pain and slowly changed my sight.

My familiar default was to rely on old voices and experiences—on the mind’s many concepts and ideas. If others had endlessly listened, talked, encouraged me toward the same, my old familiar default would still be in place.

I expect...actually know from my own experience...there will be more insights and enlightenments to come. Purely by the grace of God along with hard-earned willingness, it is my response that will have changed.

Oh, to feel the grace of God's love is beyond imagining.

Thank you.

SHAME...GRATITUDE ABORNING

Blinding flash of the obvious: Shame is God's grace to me...more than any other me-feeling, shame brings me to my God...naught else releases me so surely from that fear-god. Shame...that which I invite to meet my need, faith...forged from my fears. 

Neither money nor power is or ever has been my ego-driver...glory, it is glory, being admired, appreciated, that drives my ego. It is shame, therefore, shame brought by my self-seeking, shame that I invite and i need, and by my own self-seeking actions, get. 

It is said that what we fear, we cause to happen. As we rely more on God and less on self, we find the spiritual truth that allows that to be true...not to punish but to free.  

It is by meeting our fear even as we fear it, greeting it with thank you, and walking forward through that fear that we are freed in that moment. 

We will feel fear again...repeatedly and a lot...before we fully realize that freedom from fear is faith. That which we have read and wanted to believe becomes our real: God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf...not to shelter us from, but to expose us to! How else can we experience God's power...and fear's powerlessness?   

Word of warning to our egoic mind...we tell no one this before its time, before it has been fully born within us. We will know its time has come when others are seeing it in us, telling us what they see, asking us how. 

Until asked, we stand on thank you...we let go and let God. There...the grace of gratitude aborning.

Thank you.

KNOWING vs. DOING

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: The more self shucked, the more God bared.

There it is...lose my wants, win My will. Coming to know that for true is like lighting a match in a cavern, a teeny step up but any upward step counts. What we are realizing is that knowing and doing are as self going up against Self...unwinnable to self, unknowable to Self.

The end result of knowing alone, i.e., being content in our knowing, invariably leads to preaching what we think we know...in short, staying stuck in self.

The beginning of doing...the birth of our raised consciousness...is our (a) answering the door at which God knocks, (b) being handed our personal 2-Do List, (c) holding our nose and taking a leap of faith, (d) doing it wrong, promptly admitting it, (e) trying again and again and again, (f) crying, (g) crashing and burning, (h) admitting complete defeat, (i) realizing God's love through laughter, (j) telling no one...for they are telling us and asking how? 

When we hear and follow the subconscious answer, "Leave your nets and your knitting, and follow Me," we are doing.

It takes as long as it takes and is seldom accomplished in this lifetime...or so I am told. That, too, is of God.

Thank you.

ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD

Joy is the result of faithful trusting acceptance of My Will, when It seems not joyous. -- "God Calling," January 8

In my favorite Zoom meeting yesterday morning, I was cut off...I assumed for talking too long. The first time in my fifty years that has happened to me. I was mortified, and, ego leading the way, almost started to wallow in it. But these little "giftees" started almost right on my 50th anniversary...they are happening a lot and from the first I have gut-bucket known that they are happening for me, for my personal and spiritual benefit. And that's when God flashed the fact that this latest, getting cut off, is the answer to what I had been sharing. 

These God gifts may not be pretty, but they are for my good, and each one is leading me free of my egoic mind's siren-song. My only need is to trust God. They are each one specific to me...as with this one, I have NO patience for anyone who I judge is talking too long. 

While I was thanking God, I got the word that I needed to call the Chair who had cut me off and thank her for just that...for her good judgment and courage. Trust me, I was less than delighted with that word, but for my own self, I knew: If I want to feel it, mean it, use it for the benefit of the next person in line, this is the way.

I sat with my God until I was completely sure I could call her and thank her from the bottom of a grateful heart for moving the meeting forward. I did, and she had no idea what I was talking about. Seriously.

She did not cut me off...the Zoom connection went silent so she finally just said 'thank you for your share' because nothing was being heard! My faulty connection was my God bringing me to consciously do that which I preach...pray thank you and give over, give up, give in. Then love and laugh. 

God is so good. 

Thank you.

THIS IS OUR JOURNEY OF YES

Passing thought this morning: Figuring it out is not a Step...but it's not wrong. 

For many of us...me...we start on this spiritual path trying to figure it out. I have advanced...I no longer start crying when I can't figure it out...and p.d.q.

Also, I don't consider it "figuring it out" now...I accept this is how I ponder. With, 100 times out of 100, me being led to the Spirit within...usually in my morning quiet time, and more often than not by something I read in "God Calling" or what Fr Richard's "Daily Meditation" has for me or any number of other readings. 

I am informed not by my thinking but by my connection with the Spirit's lead.

That can't be wrong.

 For instance, just this morning I read: Jung believed that humans produce in art the inner images the soul needs in order to see itself and to allow its own transformation.  

 Well...and wow. As I read that, I hopefully realized that the divine I produces within myself the inner images my soul needs for its own transformation. 

I began today's morning quiet time with: I doubt not that the BFOs are my ladder up to my raised consciousness deeper...where my mustard seed of faith hunkers down in God...and all resistance is dispelled for my good.  (I read Jung's quote and added "and transformed"... all resistance is dispelled and transformed for my good.)  

As Fr Richard wrote in this morning's "Meditation," we are being invited to offer our own yes. This is my journey of yes.

I am transformed not by my thinking but by my connection with the Father's lead.

Thank you.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOOD

A blinding flash or a passing insight: There is a consciousness of good in the Universe. Maybe the Universe is the consciousness of good, maybe God is the consciousness of good...maybe it is our free will that brings "otherwise" into our egoic mind, and we believe, because self created it, that "otherwise" is the real.

 

In re a Top Ten male tennis player's recent tantrum, trashing a tennis court, the referee, et al., another Top Ten female said if she had done that, she'd be in jail. Which is no doubt true based quite literally on the facts of her life's experience. 

Therein lies the invisible consciousness of good in the Universe; namely, the downgrading of his reputation and the upgrading of hers. 

Neither of these two individuals likely will realize in the Now the life effects on them. The invisible consciousness of good pervades and prevails whether we know it or not...whether we believe it or not. Its payback is not willful, plays no favorites...it simply returns to sender their own. 

Pure speculation: His life will experience gut-punches, her life will experience atta-girls, and, in this world, consciously, neither will be aware...until the Spirit moves them. Then...when/if...they will be changed and love and laugh. 

Like shingles, the consciousness of good doesn't care. Unlike shingles, it brings love and laughter, and that is all. 

Thank you.

THE JOURNEY IS ONE'D BY LOVE & LAUGHTER

I am realizing Now...literally, Now, even as I write...the infinitesimal upward leaps that are ever occurring within me...as in, my "faith of a mustard seed" revelation is my raised consciousness, the creativity brought forth by longing. 

Those leaps may appear to outside eyes as bumbling, dumb, unlearned, and i want to "explain" how very elevated i am and "you, too" must become. I pray my thank you that Now I know, and I know I know by my mustard seed of faith that I am being moved...'nuff said.  

Fr Richard's "Daily Meditation" this morning had a definition I want for mine: ....we all take steps to free [self], find our way, again and again, to an expansive tolerance and a high reverence for paradox.

A dear friend told me yesterday that he has been diagnosed with colon cancer. I expressed my care and concern while my mustard seed of faith enwrapped him and his journey with thank you. My worry-prone self rests knowing that thank you is sufficient for his needs.

Fr Richard's same "Meditation" threw more light on my and my friend's separate journeys as entwined:  The disciples didn’t leave...with a fully memorized set of beliefs. Rather, theirs was a loving way of life that had become the air they breathed, anchored in contemplation and fully dedicated to kinship as its goal.

 

I cannot doubt that my settling into my touch-the-hem journey of faith and my friend's journey settling into a diagnosis of colon cancer and the journey of others settling into winning the billion dollar lottery and/or a diagnosis of dementia are one and the same... intertwined in a loving way of life that is the air we breath, anchored in contemplation and fully dedicated to kinship as its goal. 

Or, in short, our journey is The Journey...One'd by way of Love and Laughter.

Thank you.

THE PARADOX OF AWAKENINGS

But the mind could not bring me where I needed to go. It was a long while before I turned in a different direction and began to look within. Eventually I saw that the seeds of a greater journey are waiting in everything and I understood that, when the time is right—when we are finally willing to meet “what is” and stop insisting on our own version of life real change and transformation become possible. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," March 1, 2022

The morning that I read that I got warm chills...I inner-knew I was reading my own journal, that this was God intervening in my life in my behalf...assuring me I was heading in the right direction through my flash awakenings.

It was but a day or so later that I touched the hem. My mustard seed of faith shutter-flashed...and It was enough. Consciously, I search no more...spiritually, life is a search. 

In the next few days, to the outer ear my shares have been weak, bumbling...green! Whoa...a whole new level of conscious thought and raised consciousness arm-wrestling, or, better, seeking to kiss and make up. 

From my eyebrows up, high gear is revving, looking to take command, but my heart and my Soul are  peaced...I let it be. My mustard seed is guided, I trust and follow. 

What a journey!...and that flips me back to the day when it was, "What a trip!"  A whole 'nother meaning. That, too, got me where I need to be. Here. Right here. Right Now. 

I know what I know with all else available within me as I become ready...whether I know it or not. I love a paradox. 

Thank you.

Blinding Flash just now: Consciousness if not personal, it is Universal. These new levels of consciousness are not personal to me but are from God, necessary to bring it back Home, One-d, to flow on for others. Thank you.

INVITE THE UNKNOWN...WITH FAITH

Now my lesson is not to do that which I fear just to prove I can; it is to do what my inner Self calls me to do...because I can.

Big reveal...when we are living the lessons we have learned, we are in the rightful position of making a misstep, or, to the reasoning mind, of getting it wrong again. When our needs and our wants meld, surrender becomes acceptance, and getting it wrong births getting it right. The egoic "should" dies and is reborn as faith.

I have needed to do my shoulds daily, and the majority (that's at minimum 51%)  of the time I have. I have held my nose and taken a leap of faith more than a few times, and the best results often started out looking wrong all over. 

We do "should" no more. Now we are free to do as we are called to do. Here is where self's freewill reigns...and our still more spiritual growth holds the power.

In yesterday's mustard seed BFO it was revealed that, without plot or plan, thought now comes from outside the lines...power lies in faith, outside the limits of reason. We are comforted in unproven knowing...in unknowing, or living by faith. 

As so often is the case, the "Daily Meditation" of Fr Richard is on point today: We have an opportunity in this moment of our great transformation. We can approach this time as survivors, desperately clinging to our structures and ways of being. Or, we can see ourselves as pioneers, setting out in the face of the unknown to discover new ways to live faith-filled lives.

My actual life-experiences this past year are just that: Me setting out in the face of the unknown to discover new ways to live a faith-filled life.

Often this year I have felt like a rank newcomer, and of necessity I have shared my outside-the-lines experiences without fear or embarrassment...or maybe a tish. The getting-over-myself miracle is I have shared as a newbie shares...without my reasoning mind knowing what words are coming next, but, just as back then, share I must or die I will was my unreasoned guide.

God loves and laughs. Let's, too!

Thank you.

TO LIVE UNGUARDED...VULNERABLE YET FREE

I don't want to be a walking-around copy of my or anybody's "bible." I don't want to live with all the commas in the right place, all the paragraphs lined up rigid, righteous and right. I want to live this life...mistakes and all. Especially the mistakes...as Fr Richard has written, "I don’t think getting it right teaches us vulnerability. It’s when we’re wrong that we are taught to be vulnerable."

Life's hard lesson: We want to live this life, we want to be vulnerable...until we live this life and get  caught by one who "sees" us before we do. That's when vulnerable does not feel like a warm blanket...it feels like another horse, another color.

Blinding flash of the obvious: Vulnerability is ego's hemlock. 

It is our deepening sense of the spiritual nature of life itself that reveals God in vulnerability.

I read recently that it is vulnerability that gifts us with true emotional freedom...that means no longer needing confirmation, agreement, or validation from another to know our basic goodness (from therapists Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons). And isn't that beautiful?

It is God in all his glory, all of our spiritual growth, and leaning hard into future spiritual growth that dusts ego off and out. Once ego has had its say, we realize that getting caught by one who sees before we see is the essence of vulnerability...how else are we vulnerable but by unplanned bare-butt exposure to another's eyes? 

Resist not evil is clear...thank you is sufficient for all our needs...love and laugh is the open door to acceptance...acceptance is God's ever answer. 

All our thinking has been done for us, now we live it...en garde no more.

Thank you. 

I SEE ME...AND GOD WINS AGAIN

Sitting in judgment is not acceptable to anyone we know...except our ego. We do not want that to be, but, caught unaware, it is still too often our go-to. 

We need to loose it and let it go...and the "it" is just this: Our judgments most often are gossip, plain and simple. Ego's go-cart carries the want, disguised as need, to unload not on but about whomever ego is threatened by. 

It is the gift of desperation that breaks the unreined ego. Having for a long time sought still more spiritual growth, still the egoic mind lives. Lives and on occasion remains a tish wobbly about fully trusting our answer to something we cannot see, touch, know beforehand is present on our side and has already saved us in a present fix. 

Again...and this is true unto three days after we are dead: We look to our spiritual code and accept that any perceived glitch comes from our original defect, i.e., we take ourself too seriously. We know this when hurt and/or anger are on the field for they are synonymous with taking ourself too seriously. 

Spiritual fact: It is not others, though they be throwing brickbats at us, it is our resistance that is our bane. 

Of special note, if money, property or prestige are on the wobbly table, God gets shuffled to the end of the line...the very serious Me is out in front, fighting for our rights...or on the cell to our lawyer, more like. Which is a whole 'nother level of Uh-Oh,

Finding the gold in gossip...this is just another opportunity, when I See Me does our thinking for us, to accept our powerlessness. We go to God for God and get our higher power back.

Thank you.

THE GRACE OF A CHANGED MIND

The Father and I are One...that realization is sufficient to meet all our needs…but until we realize it for true, it is just so many words. 

No amount of self-will can cause that realization to happen; it is blocked by the expectation of what good we will get. Which is not a whit more than the good we are already getting, we just haven't realized it...haven't given over, given up, given in...yet.

No matter what the conditions are in our life right this very minute, God is here...with us, within us.

All the love, blinding flashes of the obvious, insights and God gifts are as true this very minute as they are when first we receive them no matter how hard we fight God's ensuing interventions...which invariably appear as the opposite of our wishes. 

In the end it is God intervening in our behalf that upgrades our perspective. ("Upgrades our perspective" is putting on airs for "changes our mind .") 

The  pearl beyond price, our changed mind, is grace expressing as happy, joyous and free. 

Thank you.

JOY IN THE CAMP, II

[This is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of August 30, 2014.]

When I meet a really rigid person (whether on the street or in my bathroom mirror), I often think that their core must be a ball of insecurity right now because their surface is rigid, righteous and right. If I don't remind myself of that asap, I become rigid with my race-race, run-run mind actively and obsessively sitting there...in judgment. Another paradox. 

That reminds me of Fr. Richard's definition of paradox, which is "order within disorder, redemption through tragedy, resurrection through death, divinity through humanity."

My definition is nowhere near as good, as complete, just a lot simpler. To me, paradox is complete opposites getting the desired result. A simple example being, "You've got to give it away to keep it." Another (referring to character defects), "You've got to accept it as your own in order to let it go." And "You've got to kiss the unkissable right on the lips."

I was reminded of all that this morning when I read a Sufi epigram: When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has found.

Realizing that this is exactly the gift we get once we get over ourself, my heart grins, sings, dances, laughs, shouts, hugs the moon, and wants to share it with my world.

In the words of a gospel song: There's joy in the camp!

Thank you.

MENTAL JUDGMENTS...SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Remember that Truth is many sided. Have much tender Love and Patience for all who do not see as you do. -- "God Calling," March 4

I suspect our mental judgments are the bane of our spiritual growth. 

We learn to judge not lest we be judged, and the reasoning mind slaps tape across our mouth so we do not "gossip" or "take inventories." Then take unearned feel-good for being nonjudgmental. 

Ah, but our mind, our free-will mind, is too much the source of our woes...making it is not what happens to us, it is how we react to it the ghost rider of the egoic mind.

The intervening step between what happens to us and judging not is the unreined ego. Untrained, knowing naught of spiritual principles, the ego's goal is self-protection, and it thrives in free will. Free will...the ego's go-cart for ensuing guilt, blame and shame. All of which live only in our mind. 

The answer, therefore, is within our mind, trained in our daily quiet time to seek still more spiritual ways and means. Having found the Father within, we no longer need to adversely judge...want to maybe, need to never. 

Hate is not healed by hate, gossip is not stopped by gossip, love is not passed on by anything other than love. Those words are easy to read, the meaning is easy to understand, but the doing? That is the hard choice, and it is the base of our daily reprieve. Choose you this day....

According to me, the ego is easier to love because it is purely personal, always looking out for No. 1. God, too, is personal but personal to each of us, the same for everybody...we are all No. 1 to God. 

Nobody is more special to God than I Am. Of which ego knows naught.

Thank you. 

TWO WORLDS...ONE REALITY

What we spiritually know and what we "real life" do are often two entirely different things. 

Fact: We spiritually know whenever we are upset, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. However!...s/he just disrespected me in front of my world, and I just know they all loved it! 

Real life: Payback time! 

Spiritually: Be the first to give over. 

Getting right down into the clouds:  Agree with your adversary quickly. 

And there it is, where it all begins. Getting to there, agreeing without thought or plan, is trust fully clothed and crowned. It takes as long as it takes.

On the path to learning, which is a lifetime training of our mind and our memories, it is important to consciously give God a Good On You! when we first give over. Face it, doing it is kinda like the one hand clapping of Zen. Clearly, not of self. 

The secret being that we agree without thought, without trying...with trust leading the way. The deeper secret is that we make a lot of mistakes along the path...we don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong -- possibly my favorite Fr Richard Rohr quote.

It is the mental turmoil of trying-to-because-we-should that turns it into a self-determined objective. The caveat, and according to me, a self-determined objective may be the right way for us to get it wrong...meaning, just another, albeit essential, steppingstone toward God's will for us. 

Paradox time...in learning to live by spiritual principles, we can rely on our reasoning mind. As I read this morning, do not dismiss the reality of this same loving presence being fully alive in our external world. 

The external world, home of the reasoning mind, has its God-given purpose, too, with the same Call: Trust. 

Thank you.

CEASE THE FIGHT TO WIN

In our never-ending need to cease fighting everything and everybody, we continue to learn that taking nothing personally is the tripwire. 

Being aware of that from our eyebrows up alone does nothing to ensure we will not take  "this" personally, because "this" is personal and not right and needs to be corrected and by me and now...in short, when self refuses to concede. 

We win not by "putting up the good fight," it is by surrendering/accepting that that there is no fight.

No fight, no battle, no war for our goal is not to agree with that which we know to be wrong...our goal is to not disagree with it. 

It is disagreement that is the glue that holds ego together...perceives it as our sword and shield as it were. As long as we allow our self to believe that we need a sword and shield, our ego will not only survive but thrive. Our desire for still more spiritual growth will weaken, wilt, wither and appear now to be a personal insult. There...the ego's circle of life.

The secret in turning from our reliance on our reasoning mind to reliance on an invisible Power greater than our self is our spiritual need to cease all fighting...to accept love and laughter as all. Personal insults could grow angel wings and lead a loving chorus in laughter. 

A sincere desire to cease fighting any and all is to give over, give up, give in to that Power greater than ourself, God in a word.   

We no longer need to pray for, seek to, wish for, want to...God's got it. Trust that and let him.

Thank you.

ON TRUSTING THE FATHER WITHIN

Blinding flash of the obvious: i am where i need to be right this very instant because this is where I Am. 

Something I learned way back then: When (not if) we feel rattled, refused, rejected...pause, send up  our thank you, and remember: This is not mine; do not pick it up else I will own it...worse, it will own me.

I have used that, very imperfectly, until one extraordinarily fine instant I realized I had made that my self-determined objective...it was no longer my mantra, it was my fail-safe. When "things" of this life become our fail-safe, we have a new God of our own understanding...beware. 

Beware, meaning, be aware. Beware sounds the horns for fear to come a-running...aware invites our thank you "from which all blessings flow." Not to get all religiousy about it. 

It is awareness that allows our subconscious to pray without ceasing...thank you flows without thought even as we're at the grocery, buying bananas. It keeps the channel open.

For instance, this morning's BFO, i am where i need to be right this very instant because this is where I Am, came to me as, still half asleep, I brushed my teeth. It came in answer to what I need do about/with my recent revelation. I Am the answer...when, where, how, why will be revealed as needed. Trust. 

The Father knows our needs. -- Matthew 6:8

Thank you.