TRANSFORMATION OF SPIRIT AND HEART

The objective is not for understanding but for the inner transformation of our spirit and heart. -- from David Capps' interpretation of the Sermon.

We are taught...and want to believe...that in the instant of realization transformation is complete. 

Living in the material mind's natural understanding, we don't so much reject that as miss the point entirely. Regret not...it is missing the point that requires still more spiritual growth. 

Our continuing reliance on the reasoning mind bars our recognizing raised consciousness is ever ongoing in spiritual growth. We keep thinking of ways to make happen that which is already ours thus blocking even beginning to rely on our consciousness.

The good news is that hope, born of little God-incidences coming daily, allows us to know and rely more on that inner power. Ah, trust trying its wings. 

We recall early years learning that coming to believe required stepping out in trust...all wobbly, tentative and nervous. We love and laugh as we accept that's our go-to now these many years later.

Walking our belief, anxiously or not, opens previously unknown doors and windows within to God's gift of a raised consciousness beyond which our only need is that it be raised higher.

The Father knows our need.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT...LOVE

The difference between "try" and "let" is subtle but essential to spiritual understanding or peace of mind. 

To try stays us in the reasoning mind. Think of a coin...one. With two sides. One side is good, the other side is not good. When we are trying for the good side, of necessity the not good side comes along. And we're stuck in that old rocking chair syndrome...going back and forth, back and forth, moving fast, going nowhere.

To let is to trust unto doing...doing the truth of what we are learning and quoting, as in, the Father knows our needs, or Resist not evil, etc. We let those truths be our movement forward, else they are not yet our truth...our hope but not our truth. Which keeps us in the trying stage, just out of reach of the peace that let brings. 

The slow to believe truth of the matter here is that, too, is to be loved. Here is the foundation for coming to believe...disproving our reasoning mind's reliability is the groundwork for proving our Higher Power's surety.

Nothing is wasted when we realize God is Love. No matter the question, the problem, the conundrum, the answer is resist not, love.

Love is God is Love.  

Thank you.

TO JUDGE AS A SPIRITUAL EXERCISE

The word judge has a rough time in our world...we tend to automatically, immediately, color it ugly...not acceptable, to be avoided. 

Still more spiritual growth being our chosen way, the quiet word has become love. We have set a loose...very loose...course for ourself to seek peace in our mind...love or as close as we can get to it...for all we feel resistant toward. 

Lessons learned...and denied...and learned again as often as it takes: Judging spiritually is not sitting in judgment, which is not productive; judging spiritually is a necessary exercise in finding our own right or wrong.

It takes seriously spiritual discernment to get the gristle from the meat of this. 

Chatting with others, hearing their problems du jour, it is relatively easy to mentally "fix" each of them...not their problems, but them. There is the fork in our judgment road...do we choose to sit in judgment for our ego's sake or to judge for our enlightenment?

We remember, The battle is not yours, but God's which is somewhere in the Bible. As long as we are in the battle, as in trying to be right, we block God. Thus we begin the serious judging of the other for our own Self.  

Love being the spiritual end result, we are given permission to freely, harshly in fact, judge the other...always slapping our name on the other's harshly inventoried item. Spiritual judgment is a kind way to realize the truth of What you see is always yourself  (from "A Course in Miracles").

One reason why judging the other harshly works is that it gets our hackles up in our denial that it applies to us. Here we begin to seriously earn our wings...we hold our nose and take that storied leap of faith to learn our way of quick, fast and in a hurry is not God's will. 

We experience the value of working with our mentor or most trusted friend because this lesson in particular, but life in general, is so counterintuitive. Without God as the rutter, the listener can easily think less of us for being so "judgmental," and we can fall under ego's charge of "less than." 

Plain speak: This is not a choice we get to make. Shucked of all shields, we stand as our enemy in God...and we know love. 

Hard ain't it hard, this pearl beyond price, whose only cost is our gratitude for the enemy who has stripped self bare and set us free.

Thank you.  

GOD LOVE...OURS FOR THE TRAINING

Blinding flash of the obvious: I am the washerwoman for God. 

There. That is our sacred duty...to be a laudromat for God. He trains us with love...trains us to wash, scrub, rinse, wring, dry...without resistance, with love, in every breath we take, in every move we  make. 

I like to think of God's love as training wheels for you and me, for us and for them...for all time, forever. Face it, we will never not be in training to swap out personal love for God love.

His love is universal...our love is singular, selective, gathered more than given. The love of this world, the reasoning mind world, holds love close...as personal to us, for our benefit. Even as we offer love to others, we offer for to get.

To offer good to another, to receive not good in return, to walk away feeling undiminished love toward that other is God love. And ours for the training. 

Thank you. 

FREE IN OUR SOUL-SELF

Long ago blinding flash of the obvious:  We do not have to make our connection to God and others happen...God does. We cannot self-will 4th dimensional consciousness...it is ours whether we know it or not. 

It’s a benevolent universe, it’s radically okay, and God is on our side. We can be at rest. We don’t have to live competitively. We don’t have to climb or succeed because there’s nothing 'up there' that isn’t 'right here.' -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 7, 2022

Our spiritual nature, our Soul-self, shines through us when we are utterly unaware. Our trying to show it keeps it hidden in our egoic self.  

Loose it and let it go. 

Thank you.  

ON EARNING OUR PEACE OF MIND

Common sense often feels like our enemy in spiritual life. An example being resentments. Say someone does us  wrong...common sense says we must pay them back. Spiritually, however, we've learned payback is a shortcut to a resentment with its big red warning: Do Not Get A Resentment In The First Place. 

If we're paying attention, life will teach us that if someone tells a lie about us, the worst thing we can do is to push back. If it is a lie, it will die with some people believing it and others not, and neither way makes a row of pins except if we pick it up...i.e., pick it up by resisting it.

The Sermon tells us if someone slaps us upside our head, we need to turn the other cheek. 

Remember, hard ain't it hard, Lord, loving you? This is the beginning of proving that for true...and where our consciousness begins to be raised unto experiencing the spiritual gift that comes when we resist not.  

If we resist the lie, if we slap back, resistance is now our mindset and will dictate our lives as it eats at our thoughts...until we are in such pain that we pray God to forgive us and set us free. 

Our very misery is our need and ensures that the other is no longer a factor...even though our common sense natters us to keep their name on it. 

Here is common sense on our side: We do not need to make our bed with them, we just let them live free of our mental perimeters.

We are earning our prayed-for peace of mind: Someone does us wrong...let her, love him, keep on truckin'...a.k.a., resist not evil.

Thank you.

ALL IS WELL...WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT

It is the love we give that moves our perception from less-than to enough, or I shall not want.

With a little help from our reasoning mind, we finally get it...the love we give is the hidden-in-the-open secret: To resist nothing is to receive the love we give. 

Again from Fr. Richard Rohr: "We need to be in a position to actually need the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, the grace of God."

It is acceptance of our need...that which we mentally deny, i.e., fear...that lifts us out of the muck and mire of our self-determined objectives into the peace, love and joy of the Spirit within.

Our own need for God, in whatever form it takes, determines our own realization of God in whatever form that takes...with the result always being for our benefit.

Fear...of lack or of love, makes no nevermind...is an invitation to pray thank you. All is well...whether we know it or not.

Thank you.

SURRENDER...THE ROAD TO ACCEPTANCE

Blinding flash of the obvious: We have but one need...to love. 

If love be our only need, we'd best learn how to do that...to realize what love really means to us, no longer for ourself, personally, but for ourselves, spiritually.

First, it means we need to change our mind...everything we ever thought about love: Hug it and kiss it and let it go. 

Then we need to accept, as Dorothy Day taught, Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. 

That is virtually the same lesson our fellowship teaches, i.e., spiritual principles can solve all our problems...love being the spiritual principle from which all else flows.

We know that we cannot manufacture, manage, manipulate or in any way do love for self alone. That is, or we are, God's job...we can only use what God gives us to pass on to others, and we don't get to choose or name the others.

Big Uh-Oh: The others we need to pass love on to invariably appear as enemies to our material mind. It is the love we give that changes our perception...that upgrades our attitude so to speak.

In our decision to turn our self over to the care of God, we become willing to change our mind, upgrade our attitude, toward our perceived enemy...which is any person, place or thing we feel resistant toward.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in changing our mind about a perceived enemy, we surrender. Ah, our pearl beyond price..."surrender," which once meant "you lose," becomes "acceptance," or "we win." 

Everything does in deed work together for our good. 

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE IS TO RESIST NOT...PRAISE

 On solitude as told by Catherine de Hueck Doherty, a Russian mystic who experienced God’s presence and deep love in silence:  This silence, then, will break forth in a charity that overflows in the service of the neighbor without counting the cost....But how, really, can one achieve such solitude? By standing still! Stand still, and allow the deadly restlessness of our tragic age to fall away. . . . That restlessness was once considered the magic carpet to tomorrow, but now we see it for what it really is: a running away from oneself, a turning from the journey inward that all [people] must undertake to meet God dwelling within the depths of their souls. [My emphasis added.]

Anxiety names this silence that she speaks of as "left all alone." Ego, having none of that and ever urging the quick fix, wants to be filled with people, picnics, gossip and glitter. 

Ah, but no. This is proof of anxiety as the gift we can only spiritually grow into even as reasoning mind holds dread as its shield. With or without fear, here is where we need be on our journey inward for realization to continue to open to us. 

It is our opening to fear as God in camouflage that clarifies an earlier BFO: Medical diagnoses are real to the reasoning mind and to be respected; ah, but to the mind lifted into God consciousness, the body may be ravished but the mind will be stayed in joy and love. [I nod in gratitude to my dear Beth, now in Heaven, who showed us that truth.] 

My personal proof of that is my incurable, progressive disease: Once a dire penalty of insanity and/or death, through the grace of God and living by spiritual principles, it is now my greatest gift. Still with me, as in I still have the disease, will have it to the end of my life and possibly beyond, but with a fellowship, God-led and God-guided, it controls me no more...spiritual principles solve all my problems. Whether I know it or not. 

It is true that there is no actual need to believe in God to be a good and decent person, but...also true...too few are until they do.

It is our decision to live by spiritual principles that opens us to the unselfed way...while fear, hiding as common sense, is praying to avoid pain. Staying in the Now, we walk through our own stumbles, blocks and anxieties for it is they that redirect us...turning us from our momentary self-determined objective back to God. And we realize again that nothing turns us to God faster than fear. 

We are now at acceptance: We realize that a self-determined objective is but a turning from the journey inward that all [people] must undertake to meet God dwelling within the depths of their souls.

Resist not, praise.

Thank you.

WHETHER I KNOW IT OR NOT

Whether I know it or not.

There they are, the six most important words to remember for a seeker of still more spiritual growth.

A denier of still more spiritual growth is often a seeker of still more spiritual growth...whether they know it or not.

Those six words, when (not if) consistently and conscientiously applied before self-determining to push back would solve all our problems. According to me.

God willing, that is my new unselfed but determined objective.

Thank you.

THIS, TOO, IS OF GOD

Blinding flash of the obvious: If everything I love and hold dear were wiped away right now, I would know this too is of God.   

I ponder: If every inner thing I love and hold dear were wiped away right now, would I...could I?...know this too is of God?

The Determiner of the BFO is my reliance on God through my still more spiritual growth; the Determiner of an inner loss is entirely by grace and by God. So, Yes, I could know this too is of God...not to be of God would mean abandoned by God. Which cannot be...only egoically feared.

There it is, the source of all our woes, ego fear. 

Shout hallelujah! The solution is ever the same: Thank you...this, too, is of God. 

Thank you.

FEAR...LOVE'S FAVORITE THING

Blinding flash of the obvious: Pray not to be lifted into the 4th dimension for you are already there. 

Fear, in the form of anger, hate, loneliness, envy, and the like is the tool the egoic mind uses to stay us from stepping out into the 4th dimension on purpose.  

Knowingly or unknowingly, we are revealed to our own self through our reasoning mind fears. Fight not our fear, welcome it with an inner assurance that when, not if, it comes again, it will be met with our same unselfed love. 

Ah, and now Trust earns its wings.

And that, too, is God's.

Fear or fear not, makes no nevermind to God which is love and love alone. 

Thank you. 

LOVE IS NOT TO DO...IT IS TO BE

In Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation today, he writes of God as pure love...sweet, kind, considerate, lovable and generous (my interpretation)...yet that some think of God as a harsh task master. 

I gratefully and finally accept the God of my understanding is Love...that whatever less-than-wonderful happening within me is of God and, therefore, love. The less-than feeling indicates my need is to change my mind...in short, upgrade attitude, downgrade problem. 

It is always our perception that is in need of upgrading...accept God as ever-present love, and any less-than we perceive is our seeing, not God being.

Believing this holds me up when I do (and I do) perceive, feel, see, think less-than-wonderful happening...in short, when I am in fear. 

I feel fear, God is here.

There's the signal for a mental U-bie...or our "welcome" cantata to fight not nor flee, but to welcome with thank you. Then we need to prove God, love, is here...within us, without us...going before us to make the crooked places straight. 

The blinders fall...proving God is painful! Which is no wonder...we are disproving ego's power. 

We realize anxiety as our self-selected choice for God to use to bring us out of self into Self. We can choose anger or self-pity or arrogance...there are unlimited less-thans...the pure gift is our realizing unto accepting that our bane is our choice. 

God love works for our benefit always and with whatever we are willing to give up.  Acceptance is our inner recognition that it is God who does the realizing through us, it is not ours to work out.

Whole new realization of give over, give up, give in...it is  not ours to do, it is ours to let flow from us as the done-deed it is.

Thank you.

INITIATION IS STILL MORE SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Blinding flash of the obvious: Initiation is life.

Initiation is life, and life is still more spiritual growth, and that is all...whether we know it or not. 

We can quit trying...trying, short for "self-determined objective." 

When I quit trying, I love, laugh and live gratitude...with all the bumps and bruises necessary to bring me into alignment with God's will for me.

Thank you.

WITH ANXIETY RIDING HERD...THANK YOU

Given my ongoing anxiety of which I have written so much lately, I found my blog of July 15, 2014, all but prescient. This, then, is lifted partially from that blog: 

There has been no greater impetus to my spiritual growth than my anxiety, my golden goose. For nothing else did cause me to seek God so deeply, so completely.

According to Fr. Richard Rohr, "...we need to stand in that position for our own conversion. We need to be in a position to actually need the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, the grace of God."

That's it. Our own need for God, in whatever form it takes (anxiety, illness, loss) determines his flow through us in whatever form that takes (mercy, forgiveness, grace...love).

There. It keeps coming back until we get it right, although I strongly suspect "until we get it right" is wishful, or ego, thinking. That presumes an ending...we get it right. Face it, it keeps coming back for our still more spiritual growth...neverending.

Oh my. Clearly...slowly but clearly...still more spiritual growth is a forever thing, not an until death do us part thing. Since for me there is life after death, my spiritual growth will keep on keeping on...with anxiety riding herd for God.

Thank you.

NOTHING IS PERSONAL...GIVE UP THE FIGHT, II

[This is a reprint of my post of November 22, 2016.]

Some friends and I were talking, and the question was posed: What in your recent life has changed you the most? Then, have you kept that change current? How?

With that in mind, I do believe that my deepest change came when I took the leap of faith of trusting that God's hand is in it, in it for my own benefit, whenever I'm going through something less than wonderful, the old sixes and sevens.

My sixes and sevens situations are almost always personal and on parade in minor disagreements. That word "personal" is the clue..."Detour! There's a muddy road ahead...detour!"

My great inner change came when I became willing to give up the ego-need to “stand up for myself,” also known as "take my own part." My new goal became to go for a win/win not an I win/you lose. I now want to be willing to give over to the other first, to make the first move. I succeed more often than not, but I'm a far cry from...where I want to be.

Keeping it current, I still must make a conscious choice almost every time I run into an ego-block. I must remind me "and here, too, God's hand is in it." Sometimes it feels like I'm arm-wrestling with God before I get a hold on my ego Lucy. Lucy stands guard so efficiently that neither my reasoning mind nor God get first thought. However, thanks to the grace of God and a little help from my friends, I have learned to restrain my tongue today.

I'm guessing that peace, and keeping it, boils down to there is nothing personal in a God-conscious world. Give up the fight and follow Me.

Thank you.

FAITH ABORNING...PITCH COMMON SENSE

If my head is not free of me, me, me, all the still more spiritual growth I have or think I have will, to quote the late and beloved Sen. Everett Dirksen, "have all the force and effect of a snowflake on the bosom of the Potomac."

A word about me, me, me which is simply ego...and here's another turning point: We begin to understand that me first in thought is a this-world necessity. Otherwise scrupulosity rears its rigid, righteous and right head...oops, we're slip-sliding down that road of self-wrapped regrets again. 

Fully accepting me first as God's will is necessarily hard to allow. But it is akin to most if not all of God's gifts which seem to be the opposite of intelligent thought...as in the ridiculously glorious resist not evil...once we've got that it puts the period to most mental resistance. 

It's the egoic mind that takes good to the outside of enough...as in, if me first is good, than me, me, me is triply good. No it isn't. Me first is our commitment to do God's will to the best of our ability trusting him at our back. Triple me is ego on the march without a thought for God's will.

If it makes sense, it's most likely ego...if it doesn't, it's probably God. Get grateful...that's how faith is born, bred and blooms. According to me.

Thank you.

ON GRATITUDE FOR OUR HIDDEN ANGELS

Many years ago I was gifted with the realization that anxiety is my chosen tool for God to use to guide me to the place in consciousness that he needs me to be. 

Apparently, that is mine to forget, remember, forget, remember...but with every rememberance, revel in the grace of gratitude.

I am reminded today of that truth, that anxiety is my chosen driver for God's use in guiding me. With the added gift today of seeing that the hidden purpose of anxiety has ever been to lift me from fear-based consciousness to love-based consciousness. 

The place that I need be to learn what I need to accept, is right where I am, smack dab between fear-based consciousness (self) and love-based consciousness (God).

Anxiety is my angel flapping her wings ready to lift me deeper...I'll give her this, she does good work. 

In being lifted higher to God's deeper hidey hole, self-resistance is predictable...I let it be with tears, rapidly beating heart, and, oh yeah... a heartfelt and smiling thank you.    

God loves me...you and me...so much.

Thank you.

GOD CAN AND WILL IF SOUGHT...SO SEEK

We must prove our truth. It is only by risking our all that we learn after the fact that there was no risk. God does the proving, and he uses our hands and feet, our body and brains to do it. We just need to hold our nose and take a leap of faith to prove it. -- lifted from my own post of December 22, 2015

Here's me...again preaching to me that we must prove our truth. Well, at least I'm not discovering how wrong I was...we really must prove that which our favorite spiritual guru is quoted as having said and we read and agreed with and quote a lot. 

The proof of that is how often I quote the Bible...which I admit (brag?) I do not now nor have I ever read, don't understand, and don't intend to study. But when the likes of Meister Eckhart or Joel Goldsmith quote from it, and I connect, I quote it endlessly...just as if I've experienced it. 

Ah, comes the anxiety-ridden light...again. 

It is these rough and rutted roads that we walk that prove our trust is of God...every tear, every fear is our God-given right of passage. Out of self into Self. God selected, God protected. See how easily the words flow? Uselessly it turns out until ego suffers, hits crash and burn, and rises a humbled, happier child of God. 

All of which takes time...and more time...and time still. Face it, if we're keeping time, we're wasting time and effort...but that, too, is a God-gift. It takes as long as it takes, and every minute is blessed by God even as we curse it. 

I know I am in the midst of my current crash and burn...but I know I'm heading in the right direction by the very direction I'm consciously headed...toward still more spiritual growth. 

God can and will if sought. (God can and will whether sought or not, I add with fingers crossed.)

 Thank you.

PERFECT JOY...LETTING GO OF EGO

Francis reminds the first friars that they only know as much as they do....He moves from the common economy of merit to the wondrous economy of grace, where God does not do any counting, but only gives unreservedly. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 10, 2022.

Are we today being moved from the common economy of merit to the wondrous economy of grace?  

If that be so, our attempting to do what we know is further proof that our idea of God's grace being painless, beautiful, painless, perfect, painless is egoic mind superseding...still. 

Albeit necessary still! 

By the spiritual pain of the egoic mind pushing for self, we are led to our need to seek the Father within. Finally we experience the egoless way to benefit from our need is by giving over to the other. 

God's gifts are 100% mutually for our benefit and for the benefit of others...specifically, the other with whom we are in resistance. The ego requires a resister for it to maintain its assumption of control...through spiritual growth, we can hug it and kiss it and let it go. Sometimes quickly, sometimes not so fast...but God is never late.

Francis did it all with a 'perfect joy' that comes from letting go of the ego. There...a realized aspiration for the benefit of self and others.

Thank you.

ON GETTING TO THE NEAR SIDE OF SELF

Blinding flash of the obvious: I am in the crucible coming to live that which I believe.

All the words I quote are true to me only if I live them. I was gifted with "When I feel fear, God is here." Comes the dawning...that is my prophecy. My need is in its proving itself, thus the galloping anxiety, i.e., fear. 

Comes again the realization that everything happens by invitation only. I chose anxiety as the gift to use to bring me over the Rubicon to the Father within. All the torturous anxiety of recent weeks is my continuing initiation...if it is not, I will be shown, and that too will be for my benefit. 

This then is me trudging the road of happy destiny...with an ever deepening view for me.

Blinding flash of the obvious: Getting to the near side of my own self is the journey.

Thank you.

HARD, AIN'T IT HARD, LORD LOVIN' YOU

The hardest part of spiritual growth is the discipline of self, the necessary daily discipline of taking the time to practice the Presence.

I have no idea who first said that, but I used it in a post back in 2012...who said it first is immaterial, it is the doing and the need for the reminder to do it that is balm to my heart this day. Which proves its truth. 

What I recognize today as the "hardest part" is the different levels of "discipline of self" that we go through. We long ago set a time in the morning to pray, meditate, journal, ponder...daily. That, however, has not kept the egoic mind from trucking right along...like as if we never heard of spiritual growth.

I'm free-floating with anxiety now and, as I've written about, I have been for a while. I called 911 with the first bout, and the first responders, finding nothing, called their cardiac unit...nothing identified itself to them either as "the" problem. They offered to take me to the hospital if I wanted...I passed on that. 

Early yesterday morning anxiety began an on-again-off-again run which lasted for several hours. I did my thing and made my peace with riding it through...it slunk away after a while. 

This morning it is panting at the door. I welcome it with my thank you prayer, what the reasoning mind calls doing nothing but trusting. Yet my practicing the presence today is to follow directions: Sit and wait on the Lord. 

Believe it, that is the hardest part.

Thank you.

NOBODY CAN BE LEFT OUT, II

[The following is a slightly reworked 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.

We are gifted in our spiritually awakened life with the realization that there is a measure of good in everything. Our job, if we ever hope to be freed from the egoic self to any degree at all, is to search for that sliver of gold whenever the appearance of ugly comes our way.

Even better, when good comes, we learn to go beneath the Wow, I Just Got Mine in order to find not mine, but God's. Which, without fail, is inclusive of others.

It's comforting to know that any good coming to me, flows through me and includes you...and them, the "lessers" we are unconsciously looking down on right this very minute. Nobody is left out.

We all get ours in a spiritually unlifted world deep within.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. -- Matthew 6:33

Thank you.

TO BE GRATEFUL FOR ALL THINGS

Looking back over the years, gratitude shines like the sky sparkling with diamonds (lifted from a Chekhov card). But it is apt...to decide, the decision!, to feel grateful keeps the light shining from within.

It is that decision, to feel grateful, to say thank you, for all that comes right Now is the bedrock for a life of happy, joyous and free

My quest for gratitude began fifty long/short years ago when I met a man who said...often..."The most spiritual thing you will ever do in your lifetime is to slow down." 

I thought he was addled.

A short time later, in response to my question of how I could stop my anxiety, the same man said, "Just do something about something."

Again...addled.

Lo, these many short years later, both of his sayings have become mantras to me, or aphorisms, depending on how seriously I'm taking myself.

Brand new mantra: Be careful what you wish for becomes be careful what you denigrate...both can and will come back and bite us where it hurts most...the ego. 

Slow down we realize as spiritual by moving our focus from our worry-want and placing it on our need, our trust in God to fix our worry-want according to his will. 

Do something about something is to do the next thing, plain and simple. Note: It is not to do the next right thing, which is the birth of indecision...to do the next thing is such as to put the used coffee cup in the dishwasher, no thinking required.

I am convinced it is the ego that first complicated that saying by adding "right." According to me, trying to decide what is right, and exactly so, stops forward movement. Action, forward movement, is what we need to turn us from our quandary, whatever it may be in that moment. 

Do something about something...distract in a word. Distract self to attract Self.

No declarations of  loyalty are required, just a response to a repeated question: 'Can we agree to be grateful for all that is given?' - Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 6, 2022

Thank you.

GRATITUDE...GOD'S HELPING HAND

Until we give up hoping to get something from God, we will not go deeper into higher consciousness. 

Until our only desire is of getting that which we already have, God, we will stay on the surface of higher consciousness. 

Plainly put, until our worst fear is met and welcomed with a kiss on the lips, that fear will hoard our peace. Plainer still...until we surrender to our worst fear, our worst fear will edge God out...never winning, but ruling. 

There is no enough to the egoic mind...so why stay stuck there? Why not bring grateful to what is, just as it is this very minute? That's close enough to perfect right this very minute for that is what is right this very minute.

True peace of mind is having little, needing less, and living to give of that. There is our recipe for the peace we seek...that, and maintaining gratitude by praying thank you always.

Thank you.

WILL WE EVER LEARN?

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless. -- Frederick Douglass

Where's my beer? -- John Q. Public

 -- Reprinted from July 4, 2018, comic strip "Candorville" 

Thank you

IT'S NOT JUST A BELIEF...IT'S A FACT

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

Our problem with an aphorism, such as the Eternal Birth must take place within us, is owning it when it does take place within us. 

Who can have such as that take place and not expect wonderment? As in, our eyes to be filled with the sight of glory, our ears to be thrilled with the sounds of angels, our head to be quieted in wonder...forever. 

We experience the likes of that in the nanosecond of  realization (at which time I've learned to quick jot it down or I forget it). Remembered bits and pieces may float through on occasion but it is hard to believe bits and pieces are for real...Reality. 

It seems everytime I read Eckhart's words, I wish comes to mind...I suspect we do experience the Eternal Birth within us many times, but we wrongly call it wishful thinking. 

We dare not claim that pearl for our own when our petty problem with the generic Gertrude is snuggled up right along side...even as we are making reasoning mind progress with our petty problems...e.g., learning to cease fighting everything and everybody is not to agree with everything and everybody. (I knew it!)

There. Enlightenment takes root not just by believing in the instant but daring to give the Father continuous credit. Continuous. We even get permission...direction!...for so doing: Pray without ceasing. 

When we keep thank you as our mental loop, believing that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf is not a belief, it's a fact. 

Thank you.

HASIDIC ON AWAKENING PRACTICE AND PRAYER

When you awake in the morning
immediately remember
that the blessed Creator has acted toward you with
goodness and kindness,
for He has returned the soul to you;
the soul that fills your whole body. . . .

Before opening your eyes,
draw the Creator to you—
likewise with your ears, mouth, and mind.

If you follow this practice,
all your deeds will be holy that day,
as it is written, 'I foretell the end from the beginning.'

-- translated from on-awakening Hasidic practice-prayer (lifted from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," July 2, 2022)

GOD NEEDS NO WHITE HORSE

Guilt is ism's white horse. 

Guilt is ego/ism's white horse. 

Guilt is the egoic mind's white horse.

We know guilt when we feel guilt, and we know why we're feeling guilt. There...the fork in the road of our personal right and not right. 

It might take a minute or two to remember but we are the source of all our woes. Right fork: "When wrong, promptly admit it;" not-right fork: "When wrong, think it over." 

Chosing the not-right fork gives the ego a leg up. It births ego-result thinking, and the white horse is the only desired result with that.

Check it out: All of the above examples wind up with "white horse," the reason for "thinking it over." Which spiritually get us absolutely nothing. Kinda makes me think of the great anti-war song of the '60s: War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Guilt's value is comparable to gold's value...not a whit if left untouched. But who in this world has ever left guilt or gold untouched? 

It is what we do with either once we have touched them...toyed with them...made them our own. And by our ownership have been made their own. Ah, there's the pig pile.

Guilt aborning and p.d.q. attended to with God as our guide is a gift of grace. Found gold turned for the benefit of others is boundless grace.

Guilt left to our egoic mind to "fix" will inevitably bring its own not-right for us to work through...or lose to, our choice. 

Same goes with gold...only Soul scorching harder in our loss. Or so I am told...I have way more experience with guilt than I do with gold but I have every reason to believe it. 

God's message for us is short, uncomplicated, true...and, minus a white horse, apparently hard to believe: God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf...always and all ways. 

We hope so, it's easy enough to say...ah, but depending on it? There be the roots of all our spiritual growth, without which...there's God's gift and hook...without which we keep coming back until we get it right.

Thank you.