CRASH AND BURN...THE ART OF ACCEPTANCE

Apparently, the reasoning mind resists that which it cannot own...as in, win, get over on, shame. Who's kidding whom...that's naught but ego on parade cloaked in self-empowerment. 

The unwelcome fact we so earnestly resist is that our need is to surrender...our want is no, never. Our egoic mind knows to surrender is to lose. To lose is unacceptable. 

We are at the precipice of the rocky cliffs of choice. We can analyze this further, continue to seek reason through analysis...or we can surrender, trust our raised consciousness within, hold our nose and take a leap of faith. Accept in a word.

Interestingly, and according to me, acceptance is a pretty word for surrender. Ego openly resists the very word "surrender"...until reasoning mind opens a tish and renames it "acceptance." 

The hardest part about acceptance is...acceptance. We must give up the egoic idea that we can make an end-round around that which we are resisting, call it acceptance and have spiritual growth. No. But that is how surrender earns its wings...crash and burn births spiritual growth, and we resist no more. 

The sacred art of acceptance: Welcome it, pray thank you, hug it and kiss it and let it go...with love and laughter.

Thank you.

ATTITUDE...OURS FOR THE UPGRADING

It is permissible to take life's blessings with both hands provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly....As long as God is satisfied do thou rest content. If he is pleased to want something else of thee, still rest content. -- Meister Eckhart 

Back in the day, I wanted to believe that God's good for me, as promised by all things work together for good, was a money tree in my back yard, a handsome, horny man in my bed, and me 24/7 beautiful inside and out. I resisted reality even as it came as a blessing.   

Lesson learned: As long as we cling to the idea that all that the Father has for us is wonderful on its face the longer it will take us to shuck our self-shield to welcome not-wonderful, i.e., life. 

Life comes to us by invitation only...bringing exactly what we need to break free from me. God knows our needs...reads our invitation perfectly...opens us to our self-hidden "Oh No" gift. There it is: Trust trotting up on a recalcitrant pony for us to ride...bareback...purely for our benefit and on our behalf.

The Father knows our needs...we know our wants. 

When our wants are loosed and let go, they transmute, and we realize there is only good in God's world. It is our perception, our attitude if you will, that is ours for the upgrading. 

Upgrade our attitude, diminish our problem...true then, true now, forever true.

Thank you.

TO PRAISE THE SCARY IS TO FIND GOD'S WILL

Blinding flash of the obvious:  All that our natural eye fears, sees as less-than, is of God...upon our realizing that, our spirit-Soul gift is born within. 

When our current life situation, invariably our sense of separation, is scary, we need to praise it...this is the pearl beyond price. We will, say, seek more Zoom contacts while needing more personal, face to face, contact. In our apprehension we mentally scurry to glom onto a self-determined objective to peace us...while our Soul seeks God's will.

In our mental scurrying, the reasoning mind gets shucked down to the nub, finally accepting that there are but two emotions...one is love and the other is fear... with all other emotions flowing from those two. 

The get-up-and-shout-hallelujah news is that the Driver of all life is not emotions, but a far higher Power, namely, God.

One or the other of those two basic emotions, however, will be our life's driver until we make conscious contact with God...at which time they become life's ushers. With God driving, they usher us to our rightful place, that place intellect knows naught of. 

This, once learned, we must remember: Always and all ways God is in contact with us whether we know it or not...we make conscious contact with God through still more spiritual growth. Daily. No exceptions.

Most important is the discovery that all of life's problems can be solved by spiritual principles. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

THE MARRIAGE OF SELF-WILL TO GOD'S WILL

In the carriages of the past you can't go anywhere. -- Maxim Gorky, Russian writer 

I recently found myself doing that which I first learned fifty years ago and being reminded by my own actions that consciousness had raised...that there's a different way today. The brain-buster was whether I believed it was better or not was immaterial...life had changed, my mind needed to change with it.

I love when I stumble on an explanation, a validation actually, of a previous flash. The Gorky quote above is a good "for instance," as in, our spiritual mind begins as a gift and is raised deeper daily...or there is no spiritual in it. 

Our life now is fully in the care of a Power greater than ourselves, and we live for the benefit of others...whether we know it or not.

That is raised consciousness. To hold to our first understanding of, say, the Sermon is good as a building block to raise us deeper, but to stay rigidly at the place of first understanding is to pervert the Sermon to a self-determined objective and is not of God. 

Same goes with our first Steps toward a better way of life, i.e., spiritually based, no longer living for me, myself and i. We learn to go with the changes, but we never forget our first lessons on awakening...that is called "gratitude." 

We are being headed in the right direction...with missteps along the way to bless us into humbly seeking still more spiritual growth.

Paradoxically, none of this is done by self-will, none of this is done without self-will. That is the marriage of our will to God's will. 

Thank you.

TO UNDERSTAND IS TO EXPERIENCE IS TO PROVE

Much learning does not teach understanding. -- Heraclitus

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it. -- John Keats 

Keats explains Heraclitus. 

The same thing was explained to me at my first spiritual retreat when an unknown retreatant said to me, "Truth must be proved." 

Until I heard that, I thought repeating affirmations made them come true...it doesn't. I was blessed that I knew exactly what she meant, and I have never forgotten it. 

When I realize Truth personally proved to me, I do my best to walk it. Talk it over if I feel the need, but the proof is in the walking, the living, the breathing...there is the transformation. From a busy mind to a silent self. 

 

The times I still feel apprehensive, I think it through. I remind me that I don't do or want to do things that are hurtful to myself or others today. I can, in effect, kiss that fear on the lips...and do what I need do.

How else can I experience Him going before me, making my fearful place peaceful?

Feel the fear and do it anyway...unknown to me who first said that but that is a pearl beyond price.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE IS NONRESISTANCE IS LOVE

The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow. -- Eknath Easwaran

The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow, and also sometimes comes in the form of personal pain. In the form of crash and burn as often...or seldom...as necessary for us to break our ego's hold. Actually, as often as necessary for us to break. To break from the unbeknownst to us fear that has been our ego's sword and shield.  

I do not believe we have a choice in the matter for unless and until we go through the pain, the panic, the dark night of the soul, we reasonably believe our own image, i.e., that we are in control of our life. It is the reason in reasonably that brings down the curtain on our picture show.

When our dark night comes, eventually we are forced to surrender to whatever our worst fear is, known or unknown. That which we have for ever so long been guarding and girding ourself against has won. 

It is in the acceptance of our fear, i.e., surrender, that our pain is transmuted and becomes the pearl beyond price. There. God's will in the form of pain...transformed into the great reality of God as love.

Acceptance is nonresistance...nonresistance is acceptance is love. Here's the hard slog: Living that. With God as our forever guide, that is still one hard slog. Accept that...or don't resist it.

Thank you.

THE PRECARIOUS COMFORT OF TRUST

It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

In essence, all my anxious insights coming to me these days say the same thing: Trust God with all our heart, soul, body and brains, and love our friends and our enemy equally...selflessly.

Here's the strength of my egoic mind...knowing and leaning into all that is coming to me, first thought this morning, "Maybe I should read this new book," and still another "maybe I should try...."  The resistant ideas flow, bumper to bumper, and I fight them not. Which, who's kidding whom, is worth noting.

Then I pick up one of my dailies to move it, and it falls open to a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: People wish to be settled, only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. 

Don't tell me God doesn't speak directly to us.

 It is my unsettled searching that keeps returning me to God...which is only right. Leaving no stone unturned ends with an unquestioning heart. Love. God. 

The certain surety of which does not come in this lifetime if we're doing it right. Else what is trust for? 

Thank you.

FEAR...HUG IT, KISS IT ON THE LIPS, LET IT BE

A new "answer" is in the wind...our egoic mind's quiet word today is that the solution to life's quirks and jerks and otherwise unknowns is already in our body...is carried within it. Our body, we hear, remembers, all...ALL...that has happened to us, that has touched us, traumatized or elated us. That we need...what? to get yet another expert to help us translate all that? 

I do not doubt that this new answer got to me around the time I received the prayer, Be it done to me, Lord, according to thy will, and I realized that my life is being done by me according to His will whether I know it or not. 

I decided that I can and must hold my nose and take a deeper leap of faith. With which I See Me linked up with ego and free-floating anxiety became a daily visitor...and is welcome to come calling whenever it wants to since I am powerless over that. Ah, but our Father isn't. 

God can and does intervene in our life in our behalf...and that's not all, He goes before us to make the crooked places straight. 

As I ponder those thoughts this morning, I go into my quiet time, and I feel God's breath around me as I read Eknath Easwaran's "Words to Live By" for June 23: All of us carry a cleansing fire hidden inside. It may be banked...but a spark of the divine is there nonetheless, ready to leap into life. It is nothing less than love of God.

Well now...the perfect win-win. The new "answer" in the wind today is not wrong...it is the same answer that we have now and have ever had. Only the teacher we choose differs. 

We can buy a new book, hire a new instructor, join a new study-group...or we can lean more deeply into God who has never failed us. We freely admit we are powerless over our latest fear, hug it, kiss it on the lips, and let it be...and it is no longer ours. Now it is of God...love. 

There's our forever instructor...love masquerading as fear to lift us deeper into God.

Thank you.

ON USING FEAR TO LIGHT OUR PATH, II

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of December 31, 2019.]

Fear is never lifted out of us. God does not take away our fear...nothing turns us to God faster than fear. There is our first gift of gratitude...in a brown paper bag. 

Again and yet again: We are the source of all our woes. God is our spiritual lantern or our egoic cleanup crew, our choice: Choose you this day whom you shall serve.

Our ego seeks to be absolved of all blame always...but blame is just fear in a different masquerade. We are slow to learn that is where God's glory lies...blame (fear) is spiritual growth aborning for to lift us deeper. Time set aside daily to meditate, to journal, to ponder on the mysteries of the spiritual is our today's GPS.

We slowly realize the nature of the path we have been set upon. It is a path that leads us ever forward guided by ego's denial of its determined hold. The many bumps in our road are our hard-earned giftees; just as important, they must benefit each of us equally. Thus we all come out free of self.

Fear is never lifted out of us...it is used to light our path out of self into God's hidey-hole.

Thank you.

ON AFFIRMING THE GIFT OF RESIST NOT EVIL

The following quote describes to a T for me the why and the how-to for the Sermon's command to resist not evil. It is a quote of Buddhist author and speaker Valerie Mason-John (emphases are mine, added) and is from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," June 21, 2022:   

We multiply the intensity of feeling every time we move away from something pleasant or unpleasant; we create a vicious cycle of craving and aversion. * * * * *  If we are patient, our feelings will change of their own accord—some quicker than others. * * * * * We will feel the unpleasantness, pleasantness, neutralness, or even the mixture of all three feelings, and will turn toward it without an agitated mind. The heart and mind will accept all of it without protesting. When we protest, toxic emotions begin to emerge. . . .

 

There..the why, the how and the ego-reducing gift of non-resistance. 

Thank you.

HARD AIN'T IT HARD...SOFTER, ACTUALLY

There is an element of grace, of something miraculous arising in us which gives us the capacity to be awake to our experience....This is hard enough when conditions are favorable—when we are relaxed and not particularly stressed about anything. However, when powerful emotions arise, it is generally much more difficult to find a ground in us that can be compassionately awake with what we are feeling. . . .  -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 20, 2011

Still experiencing off-and-on anxiety and chest pains...which produces more anxiety by the mental gyrations questioning if this is spiritual or mental.

My right now BFO: I can go through this now, or I will go through this later. 

By "through this," I mean stay the spiritual course...trusting that this really is my continuing, ever deeper, initiation...this really is how my spiritual and physical life become One...this is how Soul loves mental into letting go of self.  

In going forward with my regular schedule...exercise, various appointments, etc...I am feeling anxiety...I am fearful...what if this is physical, is heart, is stroke? All are jabbing hard, and I pray to be quick "knocked off my horse" like Saul rather than slow walk as I need do to earn my wings. 

What's the alternative? If I walk it, I stay the spiritual course, carry out my dailies, and come out faith-filled...or stay the physical route...pop another aspirine...go to doctor. have still more of the same tests done showing nothing definite. As in, hunker down in self, head-safe, heart unfulfilled...and wait to die.   

Again, I go through this now, or I go through this later...when it will be much harder. It may not be fear of the physical then, it may be fear of financial insecurity which I have been relieved of not by money but by God...that, too, I can worrit away. 

There is no free ride to God...there is no self-comforted way to God...crash and burn-out of the ego is the only way. Hard, ain't it hard, Lord, loving you...but softer than ego's sharp stick in the eye. 

More will be revealed. Sit and wait on the Lord. And hurry up, already. Please and thank you.

Thank you.

THE CHOICE IS SIMPLE, II

[This is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of December 25, 2012.]

G. K. Chesterton, when asked what the trouble with the world is, replied, "I am." 

I doubt he was the first to know that, to say that, he just said it more succinctly than most others. So this is no great secret, has not been a secret for a long, long time.

Why, then, am I always taken by surprise when it again proves true to me?

Interesting that it feels so good when I can point you toward your bathroom mirror when you're complaining about another, and tell you to look in your own eyes, and say, "I am looking at the problem."

There, as always, is ego. The ego is ageless and will always legislate for itself. The secret to taming  resistance to ego is to get grateful for it, get grateful since it eases our way into seeing that we're going down that wrong road again when, not if, we're doing its dictates.

We're powerless over our ego's voice, but in that very powerlessness, we find our choice...God or ego? 

The choice is simple: Get grateful or get screwed...by ego.

Thank you.

THE CRUCIBLE....HIS WILL FOR US

As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that greater peace is in your hearts. —Francis of Assisi

Blinding flash of the obvious: Experiencing the psychic-spiritual pain of a new realization aborning is akin to self will in the crucible melding into God's will. 

All the words that we speak are not just words that we quote by rote, repeat, write about. They are true, but they must be proved by us in our life...or they are as naught. This crucible that we go through, the pain, fear, wonky EKGs, light-headed dizzy is us being put through the strainer of conscious thought into the consciousness of the Christ...where words become truth imbued, and that is All. 

Memory goes back to the early '70s in Foggy Bottom, me sitting in the middle of my bed crying,,,fearfully sure I was losing my mind. Finally, I let go and out loud said that maybe I am supposed to lose my mind, so go...if a lost mind is God's will, let it be so I may walk free with God. I fully expected to run outside, frothing at the mouth, and screaming...nothing happened. Nothing except the anxiety broke, and I knew I wasn't going to lose my mind...right then anyway. And I laughed. 

Gratefully, mercifully, now we know we need do nothing "to get" God...He became I, and consciously came to be within us. 

My recent reconnection with less-than living as my Father's will for me is being proved, and this is the process. This mental crucible is his will for me. This is less being fulfilled as more...less self-conscious intellect, more God consciousness.

Choose it now or choose it later. 

Thank you.

ON CHOOSING SLOW TRANSITION

Freedom to choose less rather than more. --  José Hobday from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," June 16, 2022.

To seek less rather than more is my self-described less-than living. This is the spiritual life we never know up front that we are seeking. The fact that, upon discovery, we are puzzled but pleased is proof to me that we are being God-led.  

To quote José Hobday further, less-than living is: To live simply...it is about freedom. It’s about a freedom to choose space rather than clutter, to choose open and generous living rather than a secure and sheltered way. 

Here's the rub, the freedom we choose may arrive appearing as our worst fear, which, unbeknownst to us, is the God of our own understanding. We must choose to meet our fear, God, to kiss it on the lips to be free to choose open and generous living rather than self-secure and sheltered.

Yesterday, I found me caught on the borderline between egoic mind and God consciousness. I felt wonky, unbalanced and fearful, and did not know whether this was "just" anxiety, or a heart blip, possibly a stroke. I took two aspirin and drank my Gatorade, but after an hour of the episode, I chose to call 911 to get free of me...and gratefully I call the EMTs blessed.

Blinding flash of the obvious: Less-than living is to choose peaceful transition into God  consciousness rather than anxiety rather than heart attack/911.

I seem to go with paralyzing anxiety or certain death as my two choices so I feel immense gratitude, or relief, that my BFO has given me the third choice: The start of peaceful transition into God consciousness.

Comes now the caveat regarding the BFO: The word "start"...we need remember our first day at any school, job, first anything...all of which generally we began with nerves ajangle but came out being happily benefited. 

We cannot expect instant transition...Jesus didn't get it in an instant and neither will we. It's a slow lift underneath to God's arms.

Underneath are the everlasting arms of God. -- ‎Deuteronomy 33:27 

Thank you.

BELIEVE...TRUST...EVERYTHING IS A BLESSING

Walk in My Way and trust Me. No evil can touch you. [BFO: If it does, it is not evil...it is of God.] -- "God Calling," June 16

As I soaked in that promise, I realized a truth for our friend who is now living with dementia in a Memory-Care unit. 

In our friend's out-ot-touch with the material world state, ours is to invite believing unto trusting that he lives in spiritual security deeper than he ever had in his cognizant "real" world. Thus he can, he  will and he does. There. Faith on the hoof.

Rather than cursing fate, we can pray thank you for everything..dementia, too...is a blessing of God. 

...Rest in that truth....Rest, that is, cease all struggle. --"God Calling," June 16

Thank you.

OUR WORST FEAR...AH, GOD'S PERFECT GIFT

You are very very nearly at the point when you shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. -- "God Calling," June 15 

There it is...there, the point of the great turn-around where "ask what you will and it shall be" does not read, "ask for unlimited money, personal glory and sexy love, and you will have them." No. We are imbued with the realization that God's will is our will, that our head-want and our heart-need have merged and now are as one. 

Whatever our secret obsessive self-want has been, it has never been first for God's will...no matter how spiritual we made it seem. Our head slow walked that to our heart, and slowly/suddenly truth has bloomed there. 

No more do we ask, wanting...now we give thanks, gratefully. God has and has ever had our own ready for us...as with Francis—and his spiritual sister, Clare. Count on this...meaning, fear it not...ours will come to us looking like our worst fear come true...if we're doing it right. How else can our fear be lifted, transmuted, made gold? Thank you.

It dawned on [Francis] that his destiny might involve living by a different set of values than his parents and peers.

Thank you.

WORRY, TOO, IS OF GOD

Mary's prayer: Be it done to me, oh Lord, according to your will. 

My blinding flash of the obvious: My life is being lived according to Your will...whether I know it or not.

That BFO keeps coming back to me...my life is being lived by me according to God's will whether I know it or not. 

Shortly before that came to me, a different spiritual light flashed through me, and I knew it was God enwrapping me. I felt, I sensed, I knew God as my source, my love, my protector...my all.

I have not pondered, not analyzed, not thought a lot about it, but I have lived with a new sense that any and all things that come to me cannot be but for my benefit...no matter the oncoming appearance. That has floated free in and out of my thoughts...demanding nothing, just holding steady and true

Interesting to me is that has not kept my egoic mind from doing what it does whenever it wants, namely, worry, fret, and natter. Ah, with peace sliding in under the wire, allowing my Father to prove his promises: He knows my needs and fills them, he goes before me to make the crooked places straight, he can and will intervene in my life in my behalf, etc.

There. That's why worry, too, is of God. It's our humble invitation to God to _______________. He gets to fill in the blank, he knows our need.

Thank you.

GOD CANNOT NOT LOVE US

Many years ago, a new friend who was an atheist gently said to me that one did not need to believe in God to be a good and decent person. I felt gobsmacked...and that was before my ears ever had heard that word for my mouth to fall in love with.

I briefly considered that idea, but intuitively knew that it did not fit me. Even then I was clear that I not only wanted but needed a Power greater than myself on which to rely, to trust, to grow within me...and that Power was God. Clearly, I had an undeniable reason to believe in God, plus, on my own, I was neither a particularly good nor decent  person...borderline at best. 

Which is why I hold that truth dear...not to mention for when, not if, I go to polishing my halo...again. 

Who's kidding whom? If it weren't for humans, God would have no laughs at all. Hey, we're doing him a favor! There it is...the sliver of gold in taking ourselves too seriously. 

God just loves us.

Thank you.

THE SACRED BLESSING OF UNKNOWING

Looking back to when I began my serious work, i.e., to sincerely and consciously do the Sermon, I "suffered in silence" with two friends, and unknowingly made great leaps within me...which my egoic mind still hides with self-improvement plots. 

Friend One has not connected, Friend Two has semi-connected...yet my silence with Two was thought-driven, i.e., "to get God," and my silence with One has been from love...even as I have not yet grasped how love feels...or is "supposed" to feel. 

My Sunday ritual is a connector/contactor to the great Immensity that Fr Richard writes of. Most often, the words I speak sound like a rank beginner's...and rightly so. Staying there may be a cop out to justify not trusting wholly to God...daring to talk but not walk. 

Doesn't the quote from The Cloud, by love may He be gotten and holden, by thought never, nail it? As in, I have just admitted, first, to not yet grasping how love feels, and, second, to continuing to talk not walk. And what is that but thought in overdrive? 

According to Fr Richard, a transformed person does see things in a much more expanded and compassionate way which St. Paul calls 'a spiritual revolution of the mind.'

My hope is that I'm at the start-gate to becoming a "transformed person," which is close enough for me for now. I do believe I am just where I need to be according to the God of my understanding, and I am even in my ignorance moving on up deeper. I also suspect it is my ignorance that is my blessing.  

Father, hear my prayer, Thank You.

Thank you.

UNBELIEVING HIDES TRUTH...BELIEVE!

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. [Me: Yes! All...and thank you.]  -- James Finley as quoted in Fr Richard's "Daily Meditation," May 13, 2022 

The only people who grow in truth are those who are humble and honest. This is traditional Christian doctrine and is, in effect, the maxim of Alcoholics Anonymous. Without those two qualities—humility and honesty—we just don’t grow. -- Fr Richard's "Daily Meditation," May 20, 2022  

Only one thing is necessary. If you are present, you will be able to know what you need to know. --  May 24, 2022 

BFO: There is a virginal point within me that is God which is ever growing me. --  June 11, 2022 [We all  have a point of less than within us...find that point for there is God.]

All we need to know, we know...what we will need to know, we will know. ..whether we believe it or not. Know this: Not believing hides it from the unbeliever only. 

Believe!

Thank you.

BELIEVE, TRUST, DO...PRAY THANK YOU

From Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, June 7, 2022:  A transformed person does see things in a much more expanded and compassionate way. St. Paul calls it 'a spiritual revolution of the mind.' . . . . . You must contact this Immensity! You must look back at what seems like your life from the place of this Immensity. You must know that this Immensity is already within you. The only thing separating you from such Immensity is your unwillingness to trust such an utterly free grace, such a completely unmerited gift.

When Meister Eckhart's thank you came into my consciousness, this Immensity was mine...I knew and I knew I knew, and I knew this was not of me but of God.

For ever so long I have eyebrows-up believed that. I have been aware, too, that as long as I continue to look for It out there (praying to get), It will not be manifest in my life...in short, I won't have It. It is already within...believe, trust, do.

Ah, and there be the immensity of the egoic mind for which that, too, give thanks. Without the egoic mind continuing to deny that a power greater than itself lives within, the natural person would likely rest on its surety...its surety of knowledge. Which is a good thing but not a sure thing, i.e., the surety it fears to live. 

 

The only surety is God which is only available Now. There is no God in yesterday, there is no God in tomorrow, for yesterday and tomorrow are of the reasoning mind. There is only God Now...here, Now. No seeking for more, no regrets for less...just gratitude for the grace of God, Now.

And if our Now brings poverty, dementia, left all alone...thank you for in those reasoning mind fears we find God's Immensity. It is written that Lazarus was dead, yet arose and walked. Why not believe that? Why not trust that? How else does positive thinking arise and walk? 

Our life through our actions follows our thinking. More things are wrought for good than this world dreams of, to paraphrase Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

It is already within...believe, trust, do...and pray thank you.

Amen.

WE GET IT WRONG TO GET IT RIGHT

Much learning does not teach understanding. -- Heraclitus

Heart-knowledge is more important than head-knowledge.  

Our heart...God...speaks to our head; our head...ego...speaks louder than our heart. 

There. To lower the volume on our ego is the spiritual U-turn we must make to be redirected...away from self toward God. This is the less-than principle that makes that turn vital; i.e., go for less not more, here it is less volume not more. 

Our reasoning mind fears that is "getting it wrong," and Fr Richard calms with "We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong." 

Paradox alert! To be right can never be wrong, but to be wrong is a right road to travel.

There in our heart, not our head, is our gold, our peace, love and joy.

Thank you.

ON CHANGING OUR MIND FOR THE BETTER

It seems my prayer has ever been for peace of mind...as a child, young adult, adult, elder, my basic prayer was and is for peace of mind. 

I recently had a God-gifted experience that showed the way for peace within and without us.  

A person I once knew as arrogant entered my life some years later, and I saw them as wholly changed for the better, humble in fact. 

When we recognize that positive change in a person, we now accept that it is our perception that has changed, too. To accept our upgraded perception is to upgrade our memory...resentful memories purified equals a more peaceful mind.

It may be that they have changed for the "better,"  or they may always have been as we see them now,  only hidden by fear...theirs and/or ours!

When we feel ourself resisting anyone...their actions or reactions...our peace depends on our recognizing that the less-than that is appearing is, in spiritual fact, fear hiding good...then our focus is on seeking that good.

Only God can change our mind for good...ours is to cut the lag time by becoming staying willing.

Thank you.

LIVE, LOVE, LAUGH AND KNOW HAPPY

My June 7 God Calling note to me: '92 - It seems like ever since I started seriously trying to do the Sermon on the Mount, I have never looked uglier...could this be 'praying for patience' principle? What if this is the way God wants me to look, and I am doing it right? And 30 years later: '22 Yes! 

Oh my. To read my consciousness from thirty years hence is to feel boondoggled, gobsmacked and graced all as one. 

I just spent several minutes trying to remember what specific back then I felt so ugly about that I was trying to apply the Sermon to it...which is a giggle and a grin right there. Actually, that's a good-on-ya, girl...there was the time I'd be beating my breast and wailing at my self-centered ignorance, my lack of spiritual with-it-ness...when all that was needed it is getting now, a giggle and a grin...love and laughter.

My yesteryear's consciousness updated brings me to the visit to my hometown that I am considering. It is a tish off-putting how uptight I'm feeling about it...all centered on how I'll appear to my high school friends...or, in particular, my un-friends.   

This I know for truth, and I know it from my own experience: If I take my true me back home I will be accepted, welcomed...free. Ah, but if I take my gussied-up me, looking impressive, or more impressive  than "her"...better than I am, in short...I will be snubbed, laughed at, pilloried-to-the-post if only in my own head.  

I am complete...I am all that I need be to be accepted and welcomed. It is only when I try to make me so that I walk away feeling less than, looked down on, scorned. Lessons from high school revisited. 

My blessing is that I have years of trying, succeeding and failing living experience, that has brought me deeper to a higher consciousness for my foundation today...God as I understand him living me living the God of my understanding. Same as each of my hometown friends and un-friends...whether we know it or not. 

For me to hold dear: How each appears to me is my perception...my interpretation...my choice. Judge not, reject not, live, love, laugh and know happy are not just so many words. They are a non-personal foundation for grace and God to flow freely amongst us.

By love may He be gotten and holden, by thought never. -- The Cloud of Unknowing 

Thank you. 

FROM THE NOSE UP IS GOD SPACE

We are changing within and without whether we know it or not. 

Our difficulty with change is our unconcious inability, a.k.a., unwillingness, to allow our need, God's will, to take precedence over our wants, our self-determined objectives. 

Our only need is to trust God's will unto doing God's will...and there be the hump. To trust God's will is to release our reasoning mind's wants...the perceived imperatives to look good, to get our "rightful" be it money, power or glory. Specifically, to let go of God as our pony to ride to get those wants we have misdiagnosed as needs.

To reiterate, we are changing within...whether we know it or not. That haunting want has already been upgraded by our Father to thank you.  

Now, we walk it...that is our leap of faith, walking it. Very imperfectly. By putting one foot in front of the other. Again. And again. And yet again.

We are toes-to-nose grateful that God grades on the curve...the curve being love and laughter. Nose up? God space.

Thank you.  

GOD...THE GIFT THAT WE ALREADY HAVE

My morning wake-up gift was the quote that simplifies and magnifies for me the God of my understanding's how-to manual: Your best chance, as I see it, is to try not to be as mean as you feel like being, and not to give yourself airs, and to hope for the best. From the genius of Henry Mitchell as printed in his column in 1988 in the Washington Post. 

From that came my p.d.q. spiritual principle: Just try not to be as nasty as you want to be...which has been my "golden rule" since first I read the original quote. 

That brought with it this morning another favorite quote, this one anonymous: All my problems can be solved by spiritual principles. 

We recall the old gold: We go to God for  God and that is all...ever re-re-recalling that we already have any/every thing we can think of to pray for. The turnaround is ever the recognition that it is not the egoic want but the spiritual nature of the egoic want that is God's gift for us. 

Our continuing task is to discipline ourself to turn runaway thoughts back to that spiritual reality. Or, to quote from Fr Richard this morning,  to fan into flame the gift that we already have.

Thank you.

OUR FATHER KNOWS BEFORE WE ASK

I awoke recently with my anxious mind all gripped with the "what if" of dementia...and the peace of our Father enveloped me. 

In that moment of peace with my Father, I was assured that He already knew "what if" and if that was meant to be the case, He had me safe and secure. The Father knows my needs came to me in that moment. 

If...any if...it...any it...happens, the best will result on our behalf and in our favor...whatever cloak it is wearing on arrival. As death was to Lazarus, dementia is to us. Believe it or believe it...not our choice. Whether we know it or not

For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. -- Matthew 6:8   [For fact's sake, I unabashedly admit I only quote the Bible when it says what I want to hear...or choose to believe.]

Thank you.

GOD CONCEALED, FAITH REVEALED

It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Not a week ago, on May 28, I was gifted with Daniel in the Lion's den sent to usher in my intuitive God realization of June 1. 

Yet here's me today all in conflict in my head. I even started journaling with the shrug emoji and the admission of that as the prayer of my head this morning.

Now, Now!...here comes God to clear the way.  From the ether dropped my beloved Teilhard quote, Let myself be taught to adore every dark corner conjured up in my mind by seeing my Father concealed within it.

Before I take myself way too seriously, a reminder to me: Thank you will suffice.

Thank you.

CEASE FIGHTING...LOVE AND LAUGH

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

Ponder that for a minute or two and, amazingly, several words pop that fit the "purest form of spirituality." For instance, nonresistance or surrender or acceptance...and acceptance is the only one that doesn't sound to the egoic mind as either punishing, surrender, or just wrong, nonresistance. 

But, stripped of the fancy sounding "sacrament" of the present moment, it becomes clear that is what we do...the "we" who seek still more spiritual growth, and the "we" who just seek peace of mind (unaware or uncaring that, too, is still more spiritual growth).

We learn early on, back when it seemed we were met with an "oh-no!" hourly, to turn that fear-fact around, look at it in every possible way until we find a sliver of gold. We then hang onto that sliver of gold for it will lead us free...free to find God in what is right in front of us. 

The quoted text goes on: The sacramental principle is this: 'Begin with a concrete moment of encounter, based in this physical world, and the soul universalizes from there, so that what is true here becomes true everywhere else too.'

Now we get to the meat of the matter. We begin with a flat fact in our own life, say our battle unto surrender unto acceptance of an incurable, progressive disease. 

When we surrender, that transmutes unto acceptance, and the soul universalizes from there...so what is true here, peace,  becomes peace everywhere else too.

We have ceased fighting everything and everybody...and we have peace, the pearl beyond price. 

Thank you.

NOW IS...PRAY THANK YOU

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: With gratitude, I welcome my current worst fear for it is that fear that re-turns me to God...thank you.

As I sit in the silence, I ponder. 

I recall when first I "got" it...that our reasoning mind's less-than, i.e., that which we resist, needs to happen for us to experience our own powerlessness. I "got" it more than a few times since, every time a tish higher at a deeper understanding. 

For ever so long, I took that as evidence that I hadn't "got" it the first time. No. We need those first, second, one hundred, etc., wake-up calls. That is the lengthy process of letting go of what we think we know to fully grasp, or realize, that only our Father knows our needs...and Meister Eckhart's If the only prayer you ever pray in your lifetime is thank you, that would suffice proves true in our head and in our heart. 

Short, sweet and true, we pray not for our feared less-than to be removed, we pray thank you for what is. Just thank you. Now Is. 

Thank you.