FINDING GOOD IN THE DREADED EGO

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 am slowly...I'm talking s-l-o-w-l-y...coming to accept my ego as a necessary adjunct to still more spiritual growth. This may be a blinding flash of the reasoning mind, but I suspect that without ego, there'd be less excuse for fear; however, nothing turns us to God faster than fear...ergo, God bless our ego. 

Looking for the sliver of gold, we see that ego can serve a good purpose. When to our reasoning mind God is traveling way too slowly, it is ego that comes to our aid...usually when we embarrass our own self which is why it has such a poor rep, but whatever it takes.... 

• Whatever it takes for us to recognize that we're on the wrong road heading in the wrong direction...that we'd best turn around and not drown in our own self-induced pathos.
• Whatever it takes for us to hear ego beating the drum slowly that awakens us to the fact that God is never late, lives within us, acts always for our benefit...whether we know it or not. 
• Whatever it takes for us to trust that God is on our side, has our back, can and will intervene in our life in our behalf.
• Whatever it takes for us to give love and laughter a chance. 

Then that is God's will and gift for us.

Thank you.

EGO WANTS MORE...GOD NEEDS LESS

Blinding flash of the obvious: Our rues, regrets and remorses become our strength through 'thy rod and thy staff they comfort me'...thy rod and thy staff being love and laughter.

I have experienced the turning point in my 80/50...proven by my realization that my non-participation at Jay's luncheon is not cause to regret but to rejoice. The gift of that realization came just as my thoughts started to blame the others, and I saw...really saw...me as the source of my woe fear. 

There it is...proof that nothing turns me to God faster than fear...ergo, when I feel fear, God is near.

It was the morning of the luncheon that Daniel came to me...Daniel whom I could not place so had to Google...with which came the Lion's den, the pearl. 

To make that U-bie in midair without thought? God ever with me, knows my needs, and there's Daniel with me in the lion's den. The lion's den is God's hidey-hole is the pearl beyond price is mine.

All of this brings to mind the gift of the white buffalo...my talisman today. As I meditated with her in my folded palms, I knew less is my road to walk; more is going down that wrong road still...want is more, need is less; lean into less. 

Thank you.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know. 

There...God's cheat-sheet for us and also the reasoning mind's worst case scenario. Uh-oh. 

When faced with an I-don't-know question, our need (rarely  our want) is simple...without self-censorship, we accept that not knowing is not a character defect. There's the hook though...without self-censorship.

For whatever self-protective reason we feel fear...fear that we are in a hopeless, helpless, powerless situation, and we're going to look dumb into the bargain. 

That fear is God going before us to make the crooked places straight. We stop trying to think and are raised into deeper consciousness...or put more simply, we change our mind.

We go beyond reason to love, to God...and we find green pastures, still waters, peace. 

When we can become little enough, naked enough, and honest enough, then we will ironically find that we are more than enough...  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," May 1, 2022 

Thank you.

SURRENDER UNTO ACCEPTANCE

I often read that we must resist the negative, fight to hold on to the positive. No we don't. If we have to fight, or to live in resistance to anything, to be happy, we're going down that wrong road again.

Who feels reduced to surrender and feels good about it? Then we get to the overlooked truth about acceptance...getting to it is as painful as surrender if we do it right. The dilemma is the cohabitation of surrender and acceptance. We've got to marry those two up if we're ever going to be at peace, and there it is. The painful act of surrender-unto-acceptance is the crucible.

This is not the acceptance of the reasoning mind, i.e., financial security, friends and loves, winning. No. We're talking spiritually earned acceptance...our own Pointe du Hoc, the holy cliffs we must climb in consciousness to effortlessly...unconsciously?...surrender our wants for our needs. 

The drag-foot truth is, it is for the benefit of others and our own peace of mind that we seek now to give over, give up, give in. There...full circle, back to God's hidey-hole where, we are told, all those things are added unto us.   

Resist not...thank God...love and laugh.

Thank you.

JUST DO IT, DARLIN'...SAYS THE LORD

More free-floating thoughts...or as God whispers, I take notes:

A peacemaker makes peace within himself or herself. -- The Sermon on the Mount - an Introduction to the Secret Teachings of Jesus by David Capps  [Ah, to make peace within oneself...the highest mountain, the impossible dream, the Cross.]

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. -- The 23rd Psalm  [There...I shall not want, our guarantee that I have enough, I am enough.]

Whether I know it or not -- my fail-safe. [When such as I shall not want seems too good to be true, we add whether I know it or not and be at peace.] 

To draw closer to others, you have to rebel against yourself. -- Eknath Easwaran, May 25

According to Fr Richard: All self-sufficient people remain outsiders to the mystery of divine love because they will always misuse it. [A reminder for when I am self-sufficiently figuring it out for myself.]

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt. -- Saint Augustine [That is my "Use me, Father, to do your will...then will whatever." To live in that permissive state is to live worry-free...hey, the Father really does do the work.]

Now comes the part that makes the 'belly bitter'...the living of these truths. -- Joel Goldsmith [This qualifies as the Amen to all my spiritual wants, desires, dreams...the just do it, darlin' of God.]

Thank you.

CATCALLS vs. HUGS...GOD vs. REASON

Naked vulnerability means that we are going to let otherness influence and change us. When we don’t give other people any power over our lives, when we block them by thinking we can stand alone, or that otherness can’t change us or teach us anything, we are spiritually dead. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 2, 2022 

I find I need to stay very focused when I read that first sentence, or I unconsciously slip "not" in between "we are" and "going to." Egoic mind on the sneak.

"Naked vulnerability" is one of those phrases from which we instinctively recoil. On first hearing before thought connects, it has the sound of "caught with our pants down," and when has that ever been welcome to our ears?

The big ah-ha is the difference in the meanings of the two. With the first, naked vulnerability is an introduction to still more spiritual growth; with the second, the most important words are not pants down, but caught with...the definition of ego caught in its own snare. 

Spontaneous vulnerability is the most attractive yet dreaded emotional attribute we have, according to me. Fear wants to block those words from forming, specifically, fear of the response such vulnerability will get...catcalls or hugs. 

I'm almost convinced the human response depends on the spiritual nature of the listener, the participant actually, in our vulnerability. At any rate, stripped down human response either leans toward reliance on the hearer's spiritual bent or toward reliance on their own reasoning.

Slow lesson learned: Catcalls are the sliver of gold for the aware seeker, hugs are for those not "there" yet. There it is...the upside-down, inside out, who'd-a-thunk it? world of the Father...ever away from the reasoning mind to be lifted deeper within, higher.

Proof of the slow lesson not learned: When we don’t give other people any power over our lives, when we block them by thinking we can stand alone, or that otherness can’t change us or teach us anything, we are spiritually dead.

Thank you. 

TRUST GOD...FORGIVENESS FOLLOWS

Free-floating thoughts that fly by as needed, assuring me of the Presence within:

Trust God before we have eyeball evidence.

Free will is ego's go-cart...it is seldom-to-never free.

Love is an out-of-self project. 

Guilt is ism's white horse...ride it not.

Not by my words but by my doing am I best serving the Lord. 

My life is lived according to God's will...whether I know it or not. 

 

Those who have experienced great fear and/or great suffering often make the truest leaders...they know hopeless and doing it anyhow...e.g.,  "the boys of Pointe du Hoc," Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., my Mom.

With trust in God as our goal, even when we are wrong, we are right. That's what inner U-turns are for...how else do we get forgiveness? 

Thank you.

THE GREAT PEACE IS A GIFT NOT A PUZZLE

A peacemaker makes peace within himself or herself. -- The Sermon on the Mount as edited by David Capp

There is a measure of good in everything whether we know it or not. If we are honest about seeking to be free of self, we must find that truth...that truth that is the sliver of gold whenever less-than looms large.

Even better, when good comes our way, we go beneath the Wow, I Just Got Mine in order to find not mine, but God's. Which often appears less-than for us, but a giftee for others.

The great peace comes with our realizing our good coming from within for the benefit of those whom we have looked down upon, those whom in an instant have become our pearl.  

Nobody is left out...not by us, our trying, our figuring it out...always by the grace of God.

Thank you.

DO, DOUBT, LOVE AND LAUGH...HOME RUN

I am returned within to that place of awareness where I hear again, Seek not to grow bigger, smarter, better in this world, but to grow smaller, wee-er, lesser in my walking-around world.  

"My walking around world" is that place that allows for spiritual understanding...that place essential for to continue still more spiritual growing. 

With that thought, my today's reading is: ‘Do not worry what your defense will be.’  [We have] no interest in winning the argument, only in making the argument.

Comes the dawn: Since we need have no interest in winning the point, only in making the point, we put such as resist not evil out there and back it up with spiritual reason. With no egoic concern whether others "get" it, our vested interest is in planting the seed...God grows the crop.

We can expect to doubt whether we're doing it right...whether we coulda, woulda, shoulda said more/less, done more/less...to quote my beloved Fr Richard, The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. In short, we doubt and know that, too, is doing it right.

Relying on our green-as-grass trust, we do what we do. With ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  as our guide, we love and laugh, and consider it a home run. 

Thank you.

ON LENDING GOD A HAND...AND GOD LAUGHS

What an awakening time this is for me. I recently got the quiet word for me to seek to go for lesser which, amazingly, feels right and exciting. 

This morning I found a saved clipping, dated Sunday, May 22, 2011, of the following quote:

Return from existence to nonexistence. You are seeking the Lord and you belong to him. Nonexistence is a place of income, flee it not! This existence of more and less is a place of expenditure. -- Jalaluddin Rumi 

Eleven years ago to the day I got the go-lesser word and was clearly touched by it...more importantly, there is no guarantee that was the first time I got that word and was just as touched by it. 

I love that so much! 

What can that be but proof of God in my life? My Father knows my needs, reminds me as, if and when I am ready, condemns me naught for forgetting...else what's a forgetter for?...knowing you are seeking the Lord and you belong to him.

I have people in my life right this minute who I know to be my angels sent to aid me in the doing of that which I write about...namely, become peaced within and without, with me and with thee and vice versa.

I have never been a stay and talk this problem through person...smile and get outta Dodge is my preference. Over the years, I've dressed that up, and today my egoic response is from (ahem) Matthew 10:14, When someone will not hear you, shake the dust off your feet and move on.  There, a favorite Bible verse...it's almost a one-size-fits-all, though. In this case, self is looking for a copout so uses a good motive to cover a bad one.  

I want God's will done in my life more than I want my will, but I've long accepted that I'll know my want long before I know God's will. Obviously, my inside-to-outside work lies in giving over/up/in to the other without currying  favor, or just to make nice-nice, which is doing for self not for the Father.

God's got my work cut out for him...now to keep me from "pitching in," "lending a hand," "helping out."  Or, giving God a laugh...with love.

Thank you.

THE EGO'S NOISY DEATH...A HAPPY GOODBYE

My morning giftee:

I look not ahead, I look not behind, I am here Now.
I seek not to be larger, I seek not to be smaller, I seek not...I am.

When I speak and promptly regret what I said, I am peaced by knowing that is my ego dying a noisy death. Further, that every rue, regret, remorse since my Father came to stay has been and is my ego clinging with sharpened claws, seeking to stay relevant. 

The ego's noisy leave-taking is akin to all the noisemakers tied to the newlyweds' car as they drive on to their new life...a happy goodbye. 

I am gifted with gratitude...I love and laugh. 

Thank you.

MOVING EVER DEEPER, HIGHER

I reflect on my recent dark night experiences, and I am comforted...confounded?...that our inner ear hears and our Soul translates.

Two of my most recent flashes, I trust me and I go to God, spell that out for me. As I was crying for God to come to me, my cry inverted itself, becoming I go to God. My long-ago BFO, God does not see through my eyes, my eyes are lifted to see through His, flashed again. 

That dried my tears and put a smile on my face. I understood the recent gift of I trust me, which came to me in my quiet time as this free and precious gift: I can trust every blinding flash I've ever received...whether I consciously remember them or not. They are not lost, they are not forgotten, they are held by God for me when and as needed.

This, my most recent dark night, left me with the gift of acceptance. Acceptance of my reasoning mind as one of God's tools for my use in shucking my reliance on my reasoning mind.

Neither enemy nor savior, the reasoning mind is a complex tool to mindfully use as I slowly march up the Steps deeper...crying, questioning, loving and laughing...but moving ever deeper toward God's higher hidey-hole within.  

Thank you.

SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES...PROBLEM SOLVED

Years ago I recognized my problem...that I was one of the sick, the halt, the lame yet held myself to the same account as the fine, upstanding and well-adjusted ones. Then, the gift of desperation came to me in one sentence: Quite as important is the discovery that spiritual principles can solve all our problems.

I am finding, to my stunned and denying self's surprise, that attaining the age of 80, 50 of them heading in a spiritual direction, has opened my memories to a different but same-old-same-old snaggle. Going to a deeper place higher did not bring me my self-determined new and glorious horizon. 

Circuitously, it came to be better than that. It began by exposing a teeny corner in my mind that held a dust bunny or two that I had missed, or simply discounted as unimportant. 

Lesson learned: Never discount a dust bunny...they will come forth and they will claim their due...and we will remember All Things Are Of God. Thank you.

Here's the blessing and the comfort...being returned to the natural mind, we rediscover that the natural mind stuck in reason cannot unstick itself. Again and yet again: Quite as important is the discovery that spiritual principles can solve all our problems.

We must go  to a Power greater than our self...to seek a mind more expanded and expansive than the egoic mind can even imagine. Face it, if ego could imagine it, it'd try to top it.

Weeping, we see, we recognize, we accept that the new and glorious horizon is our problem in full view, i.e., a self-determined objective, which problem has but one answer, humility. 

Humility comes dressed in love and laughter, decked out in four words, I do not know. 

Thank you.

BY GRACE AND BY GOD...OR LOVE AND LAUGH

Sometimes I say to myself a little prayer in my advancing years, “God, help me to be the kind of old person young people want old people to be. Help me not just to talk like this, but help me to walk around like this and answer the phone like this and talk to my grandchildren like this.” We’re all trying to do our best here to walk the walk. -- James Finley as quoted in Fr Richard's "Daily Meditation,"  May 13, 2022

I recall my recent flash about seeking not to grow bigger, smarter, better in this world, but to grow smaller, wee-er, lesser in the spiritual world, and I am comforted that I feel no itch to improve that...no doubt comforted by James Finley's encompassing permission, We’re all trying to do our best here to walk the walk. 

My first thought on reading that, ain't that the truth!, led right into the next...then why do I still sit in judgment? Of myself and others? 

For it is true...we are all trying to do our best, even the least amongst us. Those "least" being the ones we find so objectionable as viewed through our own cracked lens, or high-seeking standards. Yes, those standards we are seeking diligently to spiritually improve.

Geez, I think I just twisted myself into a brief take on resist not evil. If we follow it to its own conclusion, there is no evil to resist. Or as Golas taught, when we learn to love hell, we will be in heaven.

All these thoughts, words, ramblings are my truth...from my eyebrows up. The rest of my life and however many I need after this one can be spent on proving their truth...to me...by God.

That is precisely why Finley's "we're all doing our best here" is the pearl beyond price. 

Higher truths are necessary for us to aim for, but "walking the walk" is a daily reminder to just get over our own self. Which is more daily necessary than higher truths resting out there in the ether. We'll come to those in God's good time...by grace and by God. 

Get grateful...love and laugh.

Thank you.   

YES, PLEASE, AND THANK YOU

It is written: Ask and ye shall receive. 

What is proving true to me is, if you need and don't even know what it is you need, you shall receive. Or unknowing with faith answers our unspoken prayer. An example, from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" today: 

 

Bonaventure ended his classic text The Soul’s Journey into God with this instruction, which represents the apophatic tradition of unknowing:

If you wish to know how these things come about,
ask [for] grace, not instruction,
desire not understanding,
the groaning of prayer not diligent reading,
the Spouse not the teacher,
God not man,
darkness not clarity,
not light but the fire
that totally inflames and carries us into God . . . . 

Yes.

Thank you.

GOD ON A PINHEAD; EGO WAY LARGER

Blinding flash again: I seek not to grow bigger, smarter, better in this world, but to grow smaller, wee-er, lesser in the spiritual world to make more room for knowing my Father within me.

That blinding flash is re-realized and I suspect will be till three days after I'm dead. One problem being that every time I say it out loud for others' ears to hear, I feel like a fool...or at best a phony. Egoic mind is seldom killed and is denied very slowly.     

I suppose that is the good and the bad news both together...seeking to become lesser does not make sense to our reasoning mind. But there is little purely spiritual that does make the first cut to the reasoning mind...and it takes some serious detaching over time and more time for it to make sense at all. 

Learning unto accepting that God's will is the reverse of reasoning mind opened me to The Way for me. The Sermon on the Mount was my Rosetta stone; "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment" by Thaddeus Golas was my how-to manual...specifically, the sentence, We must go beyond reason to love. 

Interesting to me, I just recognized that I have not before caught that I seek to grow lesser to make more room for knowing my Father within me. For my Father growing within me, more like. Whatever, I take heart that my Father is the most important part of my seeking.  

Also I take heart that I knew from the get-go that the love in We must go beyond reason to love is God. With every step up deeper (especially when resistant) my consciousness is embraced by God, love.

My plain old me in my daily reasoning mind seldom gets it immediately, or even really fast, but I do get it. I'm content trusting God's timing to get me where he needs me whenever.

Thank you.

THE OTHER...THE PEARL BEYOND PRICE

Blinding flash of the obvious: Ever and always my life is lived by God according to His will...whether I know it or not. Thank you.

Oh my. That being true, it follows that ever and always all life is lived by God according to his will...whether we know it or not. 

There it is...our one need: To live for the benefit of the other. The other, the one we'd just as soon put out of our misery, the one we see in ourself...and deny it, the one God loves better...in our egoic mind. 

The other, the one who gives us just cause to love and laugh...the other, the pearl beyond price.  

Thank you.

PROBLEM, SELF...SOLUTION, GOD

I was deeply shaken a while back by the act of a friend. The act was of little significance, it was the secret my friend kept about the act that hurt.

Ah, this is where still more spiritual growth earns its keep. Not by will but by grace I was turned almost immediately to my spiritual failsafe: "If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also." 

Face it, "deeply shaken" is code for personalized, which invariably is ego on parade. 

Again I go to Eckhart Tolle's quote: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. 

Spiritual truth does not change, only our consciousness of it grows deeper at a higher level. 

I tend to believe our ego needs these eyeball upsets. How else will it be loosed and let go?  We learn unto acceptance that nonreaction, i.e., nonresistance, to anything is more important to our spiritual growth than what we are resisting.

Look within...find the problem, self; find the solution, God. 

Thank you.

BECOME LESSER TO GROW

Blinding flash of the obvious:  I am an imperfect instrument of Thy peace; it is in becoming lesser that I grow My wings...we are imperfect instruments of Thy peace...it is in becoming lesser that we grow invisibly stronger...not for self, not for show, but for shared spiritual growth.  Thank you. 

But God rewards me from letting God reward me:

This is the divine two-step that we call grace:
I am doing it, and yet I am not doing it;
It is being done unto me, and yet by me too.
Yet God always takes the lead in the dance, which we only recognize over time. 

                                                                -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," May 8, 2022

Thank you.

WE STAY PEACED...FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL

Blinding flash of the obvious: Our life is lived by God using our free-will choices...which He is ever perfecting for the benefit of all.

I had a recent experience that I suspect...or hope...will mark a turning point for me in awareness.  

Long/short: I shared in a meeting of friends a recent experience that had rattled me. One person suggested that I should have shared my experience first, and maybe only, with my mentor; another suggested that my share was not acceptable. I did not pushback, I let it perc till the end of our get-together. Unplanned, I thanked them both for in the interval my mind was opened. I admitted that they helped me recognize my share was based on my outdated experience, and I appreciated being brought up to date.  

In reading Merton this morning, I realized that I experienced the essence of nonviolence: ...if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that by viewing things from a basically different perspective--that of our adversary--we may discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically.

I suspect while learning to live nonviolence that I will try to duplicate my experience, and there is a self-determined objective aborning. Sometime our efforts are necessary to bring us to the realization that our efforts are unnecessary. 

God acts through us as needed (just as he did amongst the three of us recently). It is staying calm in the midst of the moment that counts.

 
We stay peaced, knowing God can, will and does always act for the shared benefit of all.

Thank you.

THE INVISIBLE EVER-PRESENT PRESENCE

The soul must content herself with a loving attentiveness toward God, without agitation, without effort, without the desire to taste or feel him. --  from Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, as translated by Mirabai Starr

I read that and felt peaced. Affirmations that we are on the right track, heading in the right direction, toward still more spiritual growth, away from the righteousness of the egoic mind, is my idea of a hug from God. 

Especially affirming to me is without the desire to feel him which is akin to a positive in its negative. By that I mean, it seems I'm forever seeking to feel God in my life, with the corresponding seemingly constant stop that coming by way of "God Calling," Joel Goldsmith, Fr Richard Rohr...all my go-tos. 

Interesting to me is the realization that this may be a classic case of reading, understanding, agreeing with, and continuing to do that which I understand to be a spiritual no-no. Quit with the trying to feel God...I read, I understand from my eyebrows up...but my heart is stayed in its longing to feel God. 

Blinding flash: It's a feeling akin to when the love of my young life was drafted...daily, hourly probably, I longed to feel his presence back in my life. My heart could not stop yearning...my eyes hurt for the sight of him, my ears ached for the sound of his voice. My love was present in the world just not visible to me at that moment.

There it is. God is ever present, just not visible. 

An added giftee: This explains the many references in spiritual literature to God as lover...which, admittedly, I never before got. Thank you.

Thank you.

GO FORWARD WITH AN OPEN MIND, II

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of November 26, 2017.]

Do not fear change. Run toward it. Run forward with open arms...or an open mind more like.

I have been feeling very melancholy of late. There are at least ten people who recently have left or are soon leaving my life...through moves to other states or illness or death...and the one, of course, in high dungeon quoting Jesus in the original Aramaic. (The God of my understanding and I still think that is funny, take it up with Him.)

Then, this morning I'm reading "God Calling," and there on November 26 are my notes I had written in 1975 and again in 1985, referencing major changes in and to my life. 

In 1985 it was my job was being moved to Connecticut, my apartment was being sold, my car was about to go wheels up and various friends were moving on. 

Same day in 1987 I noted, "All those 'outers' have been wiped clean."

There it is...life itself written in one sentence in the margin of a book. Whatever is going on in our life, stay with it, run toward it, learn from it...all those "outers" will be wiped clean. By grace and by God.

Thank you.

GRACE...MY FATHER AND I...ONE

I was awakened last night to my thank you to God that He comes not to me from out there, but from within me from my Soul.

As I lie drowsing, I peacefully wondered that I am becoming less, not more, and by the grace of God's will. Which led to the happy memory that all my defects of character are His slivers of gold paving my path back to Him.

I then recalled my long-ago BFO that doing the next right thing is a self-determined objective...doing the next thing is God's will. It is not judgment but trust that allows God's will free rein. 

I am back to thank you. Thank you that my Father, my Soul, is me, myself and I...and I trust Me.

Thank you.

CLING TO NOTHING...SOAR!

Many say pain is physical discomfort, but suffering comes from our resistance, denial, and sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 4, 2022 

There...more proof to me that resist not evil is the pearl beyond price. Which has a hard time gathering believers, but to me, the word evil is the prankster. We hear the word, and fear shoves its way to the front of our mind. Which, of course, we resist.

I think of resistance as denial of God's will. Face it, whatever is happening...I mean whatever...God is fully aware of it. Doesn't cause it...the Ukraine is not his party...but he is aware of it. How else can it be healed? And it will be healed. 

But that's way above my smarts...I've got my potential Ukraine going on in my head right now. The past few weeks, my life has seemed to be at sixes and sevens. The good news is that I have met each apparent problem not with self-will but with help from mentor, friends and God. 

This is not new...what is new is that I have gone there first, without conscious thought, no self-prodding to do the right thing. The cause to smile is that made me so nervous, I had to check me out...several times...to be sure I wasn't into magical thinking.

I came to accept if this is magical thinking, so be it. As long as I stay focused on the Father within, it matters not if it is magical thinking or all my angels toting me, I know I am headed in the right direction.

I am purely grateful that my journey continues on its rough and rutted road...the rougher it gets to my reasoning mind, the deeper my consciousness dives to a higher plane. 

And again, I hear, Cling to nothing, fly.

Thank you.

NOT BY SELF, BY GOD - II

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 3, 2013, with today's postscript.]

We are told the promises of God will always materialize if we work for them.

Why is it so hard to remember that the "working" for them is the "work" of maintaining conscious contact with our God? It is the work of aligning our will with his will, of detaching from our self-centered wants by trusting that our always-of-God needs are already met...are within us waiting to be released.

As we are released from our ego-victory wants, our needs flow forth, materializing as that which we need in that moment. And we think, "What a coincidence! I was just saying...."

The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. -- Anonymous 

Thank you.

P.S. We get no vote in how we are to live the spiritual life...to live God's will. We do the next thing...when wrong, we promptly admit it, then do the next thing. In short, trust God and make the bed.

WE FIND GOD RIGHT HERE...RIGHT NOW

The purest form of spirituality is to find God in what is right in front of you—the ability to accept...the sacrament of the present moment. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 24, 2022

Well, now. What is right in front of me...I've been letting that slip-slide around in my thoughts for the past couple weeks. The part about that being the purest form of spirituality in particular. Because what has been right in front of me for the past few weeks has been causing me pause. I am again in the yoyo phase of spiritual growth...choosing between "irritating, agitating, and less-than" to reason and "thank you for righting me" to Spirit.

Being over 80 I speak from experience...most everything useful (spiritual in particular) that I learned back in the day, and have comfortably lived, is today being presented to me at a different angle, a new level. It feels elementary but without causing blushes...no egoic regrets. 

Recently, a good friend who is some 25 years younger than I, gently corrected me...more than once...on an opinion I was offering. To be clear, it was an opinion to me, it was a judgment to her. She handled it lightly and with humor...correctly, in fact. 

I saw me...me back in the day when I, too, was my friend. I knew and I corrected...lightly and with humor...not offensive and in fact helpful. (Today, just a tish put-offable....😉)

Ah, but that very put-offable lifted my eyes and makes my point: Except for love and love alone, there is no set-in-concrete for God and still more spiritual growth. 

We do not stay at the place of our learning...stuck in self as it were. As we freely choose the direction toward which we want to move...upward deeper...God is already there leading, protecting, guarding and guiding whether we know it or not. 

My journal entry from April 12th: I am seeing me acting jaded, negative, a lot...my responses about my knees are borderline self-pitying...is this, then, God speaking through me, too? Taking me back to the way I was? Ready now to be deep-cleaned by God...the few leftover crumbs and dust bunnies being embraced into oblivion?

Today, the answer to my "me" question is, You betcha...and I am grateful.

Thank you.

GOD'S PAYOFF IS GOD

To heal our relationships, we have to move closer to people we do not like, learn to work with them without friction. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By"

Healing our relationships with people we do not like is one thing, but healing our defects of character...ah, there's the gold mine. That healing requires the same movement...i.e., closer. Closer to the defect. Close enough to look it in the eye, kiss it on the lips, feel our fear of it, and surrender. 

We wave the white flag of peace and give over, give up, give in.

Recall that the quiet word is resist not evil. In our recalling, we remind ourself again that to not resist evil is not to be a doormat to evil for that is still self in control...except there through abasement. 

Resist not evil is a deeply spiritual exercise. It cannot be done by self alone...the act itself requires a Power higher than self. As in, God. We begin to get the reason, the meaning, the payoff for going to God for God and that is all...we know naught of our inner needs.  

We can consider the white flag of surrender as the bandage for our slow-healing defects of character and our daily reminder to turn again to God. 

Making peace with our own defects is the surest and straightest line to peace with others. Once we've made peace within, that peace becomes the attractor to others to join in praying thank you.

Thank you.

JUDGE NOT...ASK QUESTIONS INSTEAD

Here's my experience while slip-sliding along the road of spiritual growth: When spiritual growth is purely a self-determined objective, attempting to "do" it is just another "me" path. 

By hard (way hard) experience, I have learned that judge not lest we be judged is useless just by keeping our mouth closed. We likely will cloak it by thinking prayers for the other, but who's kidding whom?  Keeping our mouth closed so our brain can spin bettering thoughts for the lesser one (the "sinner") is glorified judging.

Switching hard words for soft ones is still judging...pointing out, subtly or directly, that Gertrude is being judgmental is being judgmental. Holding judgmental thoughts with the mouth shut is the most perverse for we allow ourself to believe we are not judging because we haven't spoken the words out loud.

Think about it...sights and behaviors that do not cause us pause, when either touches our own reject button, are judged unacceptable. Worst/best lesson we learn...and way too slowly...is our reject button is a self-held mirror reflecting our own behavior...unseen to us, fairly obvious to others

Judge not lest we be judged must begin within...in our heart where it does not move to our head...it evolves as love by grace.

Radical thought: When our reject button is pushed, we can ask questions: "That sounds interesting, could you fill out what you mean?" Admittedly, this just came to me, I have not tried it...I'll let it perc and see what flows...thank you.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT, ACCEPT, GET GRATEFUL

Again...as ever...the Way out of rues, regrets and remorses is through nonresistance. Acceptance. Gratitude. Thank you.

The hook is that we come to nonresistance, acceptance, gratitude by way of resistance, etc. We tend to reject the idea...no, the need...to accept that which is unacceptable to our own thinking, our  reasoning mind. 

We take a step upward with the realization that our reasoning mind is but a way station on the road to spiritual consciousness, a necessary way station, apparently...there for us to meet the error of our thinking, a.k.a., crash and burn. 

The word without the bark on it: ego-deflation in depth. 

We do not get to that level of ego-deflation without our egoic mind feeling shame, pain, regrets and remorse...in effect, mentally beating our breast and wailing, "Why me?" 

Our gut-bucket desire for still more spiritual growth is the invisible gnawing that brings us to the "Why me?" answer. Namely, personal powerlessness...that place where we are mystically peaced.

We rest in the realization that our Father is our need.  

Thank you.

NOBODY CAN BE LEFT OUT

[This is a reprint of my post of November 24, 2018.]

Unless we can find a meaning for human suffering, that God is somehow in it and can also use it for good, humanity is in major trouble. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 17, 2018

I was gifted very early in my spiritually awakened life with the realization that there is a measure of good in everything. My job, if I ever hoped to be free of me to any degree at all, was to search for that sliver of gold whenever ugly came my way.

Even better, when good came my way, I learned to go beneath the Wow, I Just Got Mine in order to find not mine, but God's. Which, without fail, was inclusive of others.

It's comforting to me to think that any good coming to me, flows through me, and includes all...same goes for you. And them...especially the lessers we are subconsciously looking down on right this very minute. 

Nobody can be left out.

Thank you.

TAKE NOTHING PERSONALLY...LOVE AND LAUGH

We wait in prayer, but we don’t wait for absolutely perfect motivation or we will never act. Radical union with God and neighbor should be our starting place, not private perfection.--  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," May 1, 2022  

Today I consciously hold to my tenuous trust that everything works together for good...everything. 

To solidify that tenuous trust takes time and error...apparently, that's how humility is born and bred. We must be willing to walk that, live that, breathe that...with the dreaded expectation of an Uh-Oh or three sprinkled here and there. 

Know this: The first chance for the train to jump the tracks, it will. To become that open, we must become willing to make our mistakes, or, in truth, willing to get caught in the midst of our mistakes...if we are ever to disown them.

My mentor taught that showing your bum in public is also spiritual. There...that is one of God's slivers of gold wrapped in burlap. 

Our beliefs begin their life as words...inviting words, words so comforting on first hearing that we think we've got them...that they walk unaided upon hearing them. No. It is our willing participation with our imperfect understanding..."showing our bum in public"...that paves the rough and rutted road to trust, the "radical union with God and neighbor" to which Fr Richard refers.

I'm reminded of the old gospel song, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, Nobody Wants to Die." We want humility, but we don't want to feel humbled. The gift of laughter is humbled's angel wings.

Thank you.