THE COUNTERINTUITIVE LOVE OF GOD

The turning point into my gutbucket belief in God was when, almost unbeknownst to me, I accepted that God's will, God's way, was counterintuitive to the reasoning mind. The reality being it is only counterintuitive to the egoic mind...it is right-on right to the Spirit.

Realizing that we live spiritual growth not to avoid necessary suffering but to experience necessary suffering was my breakthrough. 

Whoever read the Sermon, not others' interpretations but the one in the KJV, and thought "What great advice!" or "I can't wait to do this!" 

Face it, the Sermon itself is counterintuitive. For instance, "If someone slaps you upside your head, turn the other cheek" is not inviting to the reasoning mind...and a tish dicey to the spiritually inclined.

Comes our dawning. A peaced Soul is a side bennie... and the gates ajar in open invitation for us to go beyond reason. There it is, the Sermon's Open Sesame in the words of Thaddeus Golas, We must go beyond reason to love.

By the by, the rest of the quote explains in full the suggested injunction that we cease fighting everything and everybody: Go beyond reason to love - it is safe. It is the only safety. Love all you can, and when you are ready all will be shown to you. 

Note "when you are ready." We get ready by relying not on our reasoning mind, but by ceasing fighting, by loving the unlovable, by kissing the leper, by loving our self as the fool. Getting ready is the low-key excitement of the spiritual life.

The best part is that when, not if, we go beyond reason to love, we are living God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

TO BE PEACED, LIVE PEACE...RESIST NOT

I talk often, too often probably, about the change that took place in me seemingly the minute I turned 80 and continues now that I am 80+. I'm talking Big Changes...I'm talking infinitesimal changes...I am a changed me.

I got a jolt this morning in reading Fr Richard's Daily Meditation. Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes wrote of the song “God Did It Suddenly," as in,  God changed the way I walk, the way I talk, changed my attitude, and God did it suddenly.

Whoa and Wow! I was gobsmacked. 

Here's the thing. I have been knowing that for years now...knowing that from my eyebrows up, apparently. But to be walking it without any overt action by or from me...to read that there is a song, an old song, about this very happening is...uh, surprising? disconcerting? perturbing? Yeah, you bet...not to mentiion, UN-Mother of God-Believable.  

I can't put it as clearly, as beautifully as Holmes, so I'm going to (mostly) quote her text: ....it is that understanding—that God can enter in, no matter how devious our perceived problem, and suddenly change everything, can change the hearts of our enemies, can make us strong enough to be able to stand, can give us power and can give us strength.

Lest I forget, I See Me is ever with me,  will do my thinking for me whenever and however, and I am powerless over that. No biggie...just get grateful that we have ceased fighting everything and everybody, thank it for sharing, and turn back to God.

All of this I thought I believed. It is to experience it as I live and breathe today that puts the period to my uncertain sure. God can. God will. God does. Without My Input! 

God can, will and does...whether I know it or not.  I am peaced. 

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...PEACE

The way down always teaches us. -- Fr Richard Rohr

A particularly hard lesson for us to learn is to neither fear nor deny our personal defects, errors in judgment, missteps and mistakes...actually, we need to praise them for what else leads us back to God so earnestly? 

Trying to do spiritual growth, relying only on our own understanding is the first Uh-Oh as we begin our spiritual journey. There is a whole lotta unlearning we need before we are unselfed enough to honestly pray for God's will, God's way.

God's will, God's way is the secret to a peaced Soul. 

The promise of ask and ye shall receive comes true...it is God's circuitous route that requires our change of mind. 

True story: Fifty years ago when I started my search for still more spiritual growth, I thought I had to read the Bible. Naturally, I sought no help, I just opened the book and started reading. Ask and ye shall receive caught my eye so I asked. I prayed for an emerald ring. 

Forty years later a lady I less than loved came into my life seeking my help. I spent many an hour on my knees praying to accept her just as she was, warts and all. Then I'd concentrate on her warts and how to fix them.

The gift came when I realized it wasn't her warts that was the problem. The problem was my faulty perception...or more precisely, my problem was me, is me, will never not be me.  

That being true, why not make a perpetual problem a perpetual gift? Kiss it on the lips and get grateful. That's how the lady and I became friends, and later, when she passed, she left me her emerald ring.

Did I mention circuitous? God's circuitous route brought me what I needed...gut-bucket acceptance that I am the source of all my woes. The emerald ring was just a personal gift from a friend. Or my God's wicked sense of humor...which I lean toward.

Personal change, if done right, will feel like "the way down" which we need remember "always teaches us."

Thank you.

THE PROMISE LIVES: GOD FULFILLS OUR NEEDS

We don't have to make ourselves loving, we need only to remove unkindness from our speech and finally from our hearts. -- from "Patience" by Ecknath Easwarn 

Isn't that wonderful? Were you like I was on first read? As in, well, yeah, everybody knows that. Then,  second thought...so why don't I do it? Or why am I still failing?...not as often, not as ugly, but neither life nor God grades on the curve...particularly as defined by our self. 

It is a fine line we walk between setting a self-determined objective and "removing unkindness from our speech." Ponder that as we slide into "and finally from our hearts." There's the touchstone, unkindness removed from our heart. 

Truth is we can pray till our face falls off, God will not remove unkindness from a hateful heart. Why would God remove our apparent treasure (else why are we holding it so dear?) with no effort from us other than pretty words offered up. Even you and I are clear that we would (and have) gone right back to our ego's house of worship, me, to continue doing that which we just prayed to be detached from.

Our need is not to be detached from the problem...the problem is not the problem. I am. You are. We need to detach from our reliance on our egoic mind especially when it is pushing our opinions, judgments and  unkindnesses.

The harder we try to "spiritually fix" us, the harder we are pushing God and God's will away. The always answer is to align ourself with God...with God's will, God's way. 

With our thank you leading, wants are transmuted into needs, and there the promise lives: God fulfills our needs. God cannot not fulfill our needs. 

Thank you.

WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT

We have come to live what has been taught us; namely, that loving service to others is to live happy, joyous and free. 

Loving is the quiet word...too often, service to others is done with an eye toward what we're going to get in return for that service. Since loving can only go forward, outward, we rest in the love of God...whether we know it or not. 

Our gratitude pays that forward through his constantly replenishing love...ego is shuttered, and there's no "what's in it for me?"    

The lesson our egoic mind will resist until death do us part: Gratitude remains a self-determined objective until, without forethought, we feel as grateful for the less-than appearing as we feel for the apparent more-than. It is the grace of gratitude that opens the door and guides us into "the Land of Plenty," where others may slander us, the dollar may fail, our health may be dicey, and without thought we pray thank you...and mean it.

Those words may seem like an impossible dream, but the pure fact is: We are already there whether we know it or not. Those six words, whether we know it or not, are our new blankie. Hold them close...they are our Velveteen Rabbit as we awaken fully and still more fully.

We are to be grateful not just in the good times, but also in the bad times; to be grateful not just in plenty, but also in need; to maintain thankfulness not just in laughter, but also through tears and sorrow. -- From a quote of Brian McLaren

Thank you.

LIFE...GOD'S LOVE WALKABOUT

God Calling today, November 22: Ask for Love. 

After years of reading that and never thinking a thing about it, my first thought this morning was, I am loved...I do not need to ask for love...I am loved. I need to love. I need to ask to love.

The question then pops: What does "to love" mean to me? What is lacking? I feel loved but I all but discount that in my ask to love. 

To take a stab at it, I'm thinking to love is to be able to give love without forethought or preplanning. I receive love freely...no prepping, no machinations. Thinking about it, I'd say in receiving love I just feel gratitude. 

With thanks to Lakota author Doug Good Feather, gratitude is the doorway to divine intuition, which allows us to be guided by our connection with the Creator. Ah, beauty in Truth. 

Clearly, I need to get grateful for my need to love...there's my doorway to divine intuition allowing me to be guided by God. 

God cannot not love us...it is our realizing unto walking his love that peaces us. Until our life is a love walkabout, it's pretty much wishful thinking...albeit heading us in the right direction. 

It is on us to accept God's love, that which is already ours...born there, growing still.  It is God that gets us there. Pray thank you.

Thank you.

EVIL...EGO IN A PRETTY DISGUISE

A dream is about to come true for me: I plan to visit friends in Santa Fe over Thanksgiving. I have set no personal goals for my Santa Fe holiday...I trust the Father within knows my needs.

After I first read my Father knows my needs, I studied it, I tested it...I came to experience it! I now live in the comfort of trust...with a few side trips when ego has its say. That's when love and laughter, mumbling I'm only human, earn their keep.

We grow into trust from our unpolished, unprepared, unlearned self which gets no kudos...yet we are peaced. There. Our real need is nonresistance which brings not praise, but a new kind of  peace.

Unselfed kudos are lovely but, left unaware, they can be the Venus flytrap for ego. Ego is always in thrall to its true love, being envied by others, which is also the slippery slope to justified resentment. Oh wait...there is no unjustified resentment, is there. That's like justified anger...what, I wonder, does unjustified anger feel like?

Resist not evil. (Evil, ego all prettied-up to go dancin'.) 

Thank you.

THE WORST SHALL BE FIRST

The reasoning mind finds it difficult...face it, well-nigh impossible...to accept in our walking-around world, that already we are all that we seek. Mainly because our idea of that which we seek is pretty, polished and perfect...uh-oh, the nesting place for resentments. 

Our difficult-to-perceive is that to God, apparently, the rough, unfinished and tear-soaked self we're trying so hard to hide is his perfect work. It is our mistakes, errors in judgment, occasional downright selfishness that we need to experience in readying us to receive his guidance...Love.

Fr Richard has said that enlightened people know that their life has been given to them as a sacred trust. 

We know we are more enlightened than we ever dreamed for ourself, but knowing it and showing it has a lengthy stretch between them. 

Comes now enlightenment to pay our dues: That lengthy stretch is our pearl beyond price, only we rarely realize it until after the fact...very rarely and long after for most of us. As we look back, we can welcome our rues, regrets and remorses as the slivers of gold that God walked us through and over. 

There it is...the worst shall be first, or the birth of gratitude.

Thank you.

AS I AM, WE ARE...THY WILL, THY WAY

Blinding flash of the obvious:  I am a Christ-realized person...now I let that to be actualized by my walking forward with it. Thy will, Thy way. 

We are a Christ-realized person...now we let that to be actualized by walking forward with it. Thy will, Thy way.

 

Thank you.

THE SPIRIT MOVES YOU...PASS IT ON

Being open...nonresistant...to God and grace, to legimate suffering, growth, is the essence of ego reduction in depth. 

To me, that sounds so inviting...the idea is so rich...ah, but the living of it? A whole 'nother story. 

I'm beginning to understand that we must needs get there before we can become entirely willing to go there. Which is to say, we seldom see a reduced ego until we get to the looking-back stage...to gratitude in a word.

When I am laying-down-the-Word to myself or to others, I know and I know I know: ego reduction in depth is God's will, so, resist not, quit'cher bitchin', and get cracking. Or, so saith the self-determined ego, rigid, righteous and right as usual.

The slowly awakening truth within us is that we are becoming spiritual beings...which, unbeknownst to us is ego reduction in depth. To our reasoning mind's experience, it is painful, lengthy...uh-oh, neverending? 

  

The reasoning mind hook is not realizing that our very trying to be a good and decent person...kind, generous, giving...is a self-determined objective. Which is better than living the opposite of good and decent, but we stall there...there is no spiritual growth in trying only. We decide to be satisfied with being unsatisfied because our objective is so pure that reason knows it is God's objective. Ah, but have we ever asked God if this be his will? No. Because we know, and we know we know. 

Being open...nonresistant...to ego deflation in toto is literally living in the Now...not even loving kindness in our thoughts...unfocused...Present here, now...not even our idea of God floating free. The gotcha, of course, is if that be a goal, we are still living with a self-determined objective. 

"Just do it" is not only a great sales motto, it means, Just. Do. It.

We make a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God...meaning we're going to try and fail or succeed, makes no nevermind...until we realize that already we are blessed by God, right and wrong, good and not good...all blessed by God. 

There it is...peace of mind: Resist not, neither screw-ups nor successes. Do what we do, love and laugh at our efforts, and pray thank you. 

The Father knows our needs...fulfilled them before we knew them. Pray thank you and, as the Spirit moves you, pass it on.

 Thank you.  

OLD AGE...GOD'S AGE OF WONDERMENT

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. -- Meister Eckhart  

Blinding flash of the obvious at 2:00 AM, 10/31/22:  I am not a show pony, I am a plow horse. My glory is in my plodding, that is my comfort and my call. 

From that BFO came the realization that our angels are the fallen down. the redeemed, the self-forgiven through God by grace...and are here for us. 

As has been written, something new has awakened in us so that when we see those on the margins living life in the struggle, we are drawn to their experiences and drink from their wells overflowing with wisdom, about the divine.

This is my ongoing gift, beginning with age 80: Eckhart's process of subtraction is all about lessening the consciousness of Me and growing the We. That process begins minutely and slows down from there. 

Realizing the grinning glory of me as a plow horse is borderline miraculous to my younger self who was all about more, better, bigger, richer...better-than whatever was at hand. Back when, God was the proverbial Who? Today, I can and do laugh out loud, love me and share the story...face it, that's too good a lesson not to pass on.

I'm reminded of everything old is new again...for sure, that is proving true to me since I turned 80. And I am loving it...who knew? 

Oh wait! This is another of God's hidden giftees. Our worst fear is God's gold. Old age is the Age of Wonderment when, not if, we upgrade our attitude. Or keep it stayed in God, and it upgrades itself, as needed.

God loves us sooo much.

Thank you.

WITHOUT ME THERE IS NO RESISTANCE

My thoughts this morning were about Gertrude...specifically, my mentally leveling her for never yet owning her screed to me about me...not the "N-word" remark she made for the group's awe, but when there was just the two of us.

Came the realization: Me is my juggernaut. It is not Gertrude's ego that is doing my thinking, judging...it is my ego about Gertrude's ego. 

I am opened...I realize that Gertrude's language and mine are different but we each are seeking God in whatever our manner, means or language. 

Ego deflation in depth takes the me out of resistant thoughts...there is no resistance without me. I hear again the truth that her path to walk is not my path, but all paths lead to God.

The Spirit still moves when we move past our prejudices and differences. -- Rev. Dr. Yvette Flunder, from Fr Richard's Daily Meditation today, November 16, 2022

Thank you. 

WITHOUT THOUGHT OR EFFORT, WE RESIST NOT

The long journey of transformation leads us to ask new questions about our own goodness, and where goodness really lies; to recognize our own complicity with evil, and where evil really lies. It is humiliating. -- from Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, October 13, 2022

I wonder if humiliation isn't God's gift divine...which to the reasoning mind is unwelcomed, dreaded and divine be gone with ya! 

Humiliation is humility aborning, according to me, which does not make humility any less expensive...just more welcome spiritually. Which explains why the journey of transformation seems so long, so bumpy, so easy to question.

We have realized...often and oftener...that God's timetable and ours are two entirely different tables...God's is Now and ours is now!...meaning yesterday. 

God's Way is "to my mind" upside down, backward, or just wrong. Learning unto accepting that "to my mind" no longer works, that our Now precludes me-thinking, includes receiving...from within. We find our feeling, say of "humiliation," comes in a different guise...ego's is "No, Never" but God's is "Yes, please, and thank you for this opportunity to grow." 

The long journey of transformation that is our life today is all about inner change. The outside remains pretty much the same...a kinda glow may appear as we grow spiritually, or as ego deflates gradually. The Tell is our within is less, ever less, resistant to this invited life.

We will know we are on the right road, heading in the right direction, when we can feel humiliated and laughter bubbles up and we love it without thought or effort. We resist it not. Yes!

Thank you.

SPIRITUAL GROWTH IS ALL ABOUT GIVING

Several years ago I read Deepak Chopra’s “Jesus, A Story of Enlightenment.”  It is a version of Jesus’s unrecorded years in which his buddy is Judas, and the power is in Jesus's nonresistance of Judas's slights and snubs up to the betrayal being the key to Jesus’s enlightenment. 

According to me, Jesus's enlightenment may have begun with his knowing to take nothing personally...to love in the face of hate. To resist not evil.

For me, that was the cracking of self's sealed door letting in the light for a slow turn within...away from  personal interpretations of hurt/anger that justify reactive hurt/anger. I quickly add that I am still learning and expect I will be till the proverbial three days after I'm dead. But I'm heading in the right direction.

The beginning, the pearl, is the recognition, then understanding, then realization that it is not the snarks and snubs that cause us pain...it is our ego-victim's perceptions inviting hurt, wanting that sense of betrayal. Our need for still more spiritual growth opens our mind, and we see the adverse comments or actions belong to and from whomever they came...with or without less-than intent. When we let them remain there, they remain there. 

When I was a little girl, I was afraid of the dark. I remember once seeing a shadow of a tree on a windy night, and I knew it was Not Good And It Was Coming To Take Me Away...away from my safety, security, love. Hysteria followed...it was real to me, and I reacted in kind. That didn't happen often...my folks were good people but they weren't fools.

It's a great gettin' up morning when we realize for fact that one of our most basic spiritual-growth needs is not taking personally real-appearing slights and snubs. They are not personal…they are not real. They only become personal, real, when we personally respond to them. We attach ourself to them by our resistance to them. 

Hard lesson learning: I See Me can and will link arms with our ego and our common sense, and those three can and will fight till our last breath against "letting them walk all over me," "taking what is rightfully mine," "making a fool of me," etc. That hard lesson is the first thing we learn in still more spiritual growth, may be the last thing we release as we lie dying. 

Our spiritual growth in short is give over, give up, give in...with the grace of gratitude in our prayer of thank you. 

Thank you. 

THE GIFT: WE SEEK TO, NOT FOR, LOVE

Blinding flash of the obvious:  Look not for love...seek to love.

Ah, no longer are we looking for love (in all the wrong places to finish the quote of a great country song), now we are seeking to love. There...a revelation of the exchanged mind.

Looking to love is when wrong, promptly admit it and we have ceased fighting everything and everybody, not to mention every other thing our Fellowship suggests...according to me.

Unbeknownst to our reasoning mind, we have been seeking to love all along...or at least since we were plucked out of the consciousness of self-determined objectives and lifted deeper into the consciousness of the perfect objective which is of God. 

The love we seek to give is not of us, not ours to parcel out...it is of God, is God, has ever been within us, without us. It is universal not personal...we hold it dear by giving it away.

That is not ours to understand, that is ours for which we bow our head and pray thank you. 

Thank you. 

TRUDGING THE ROAD OF HAPPY DESTINY

Our appointment with life is in the present moment. -- Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hahn

What we know is held in our brain...our brain, where our ego struts its stuff...it is our Soul that holds Truth. Reasoning mind is the connector...the reasoning mind where our still more spiritual growth began so long ago...resisting unto realizing, resisting unto welcoming. 

We were slow to learn that "slow to learn" is doing it right. We tried too many times to talk the truth we heard but until we could walk it without forethought, i.e., "figuring it out," we were just trying to make an end run around God.

Actually, we were looking to get around God's will for us. Face it, God's will for us personally, just had to be either too harsh or not harsh enough. We had come to accept that God is Love, but our rigid, righteous and right will had to be a surer thing than something as simple as love.

What an awakening, when we flashed that God's will for us...ever and always...is love, nothing but love, and we get there by trudging the road of happy destiny. 

Happy destiny...loving kindness breathed in, peace, love and joy breathed out. With a whole lot of self-will in the mix to be schucked and shed...when we were doing it right.

Thank you.

EGO: TO HUSH IT, HUG IT...AND GOD SMILES

Is there any worse feeling than our mouth speaking forgiveness and our heart beating vengence? 

There is the recurring proof that what we know and what we show are often two different things entirely.

Doing it right turns out to be the slow, painfully powerful...and only...way to maintain our spiritual growth. Always and all ways, the road leads through our reasoning mind to the unavoidable humbling by God's will. 

Again we return to resist not. Our human condition will link with our I See Me without thought and in an instant. Through our spiritual growth we now know to resist it not, welcome it with our thank you, then quick change our reasoning mind...to the grace of gratitude.

We tried to stifle our reasoning mind until we recognized our ego's use of it was the culprit. It was our ego that needed a hug...or, to hush it, hug it. Acceptance of our reasoning mind as God's conduit out of self into Self was our answer. 

Now, we waste no time regretting our mouth speaking forgiveness with our heart beating vengence...we kiss it on the lips, detaching from that useless opinion with our thank you. 

And God smiles.

Thank you.

ON THE GIFT OF MAKING A MISTAKE

God uses our mistakes to liberate us, to soften us, to enlighten us, to transform us, and to heal us. (A paraphrase lifted from someone, somewhere...I regret I neglected to note from whom and where.)

That quote reminds me of a favorite tool we have, that being: When wrong, promptly admit it. Lest we forget, the most important word there is "when," not "if."

Being wrong, making a mistake, is not to be stupid, ignorant, laughable, and worthless...as our ego is given to insist. Taking ownership of our errors in judgment, when it shows up in our own less-than wonderful behavior, is our inner Light showing us to regret not, that there is a better path to walk.

To realize that is to accept we were never consciously taught blaming and shaming, we just gravitated...gravitate...to it. It, CYA. is, not was, there in material-mind consciousness, offering a cover...to ego's pea-green-purple scared relief. 

Whether we know it or not, we never cease to learn and to grow spiritually, so we'd best recognize the good in our reasoning mind. It is as essential to us as the air we breathe...detached from ego by our still more spiritual growth, it becomes God's tool to help in shaping our spiritual being. 

Our reasoning mind's mistakes, misunderstandings and misreads underneath are God's slivers of gold...used to get us where we need to be. Proving yet again Fr Richard's, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong.

Thank you.

GOD'S UNFATHOMABLE WILL...RESIST NOT

True contemplatives have changed sides from inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything.  -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, October 17, 2022

That is my understanding of one with a spiritually changed mind...from inside self, all about me, to inside Self, all about we. When we are raised deeper in consciousness to we, we becomes Thee.

The unvarnished truth? Neither I nor anyone I personally know are There. I do believe we've all made a 51 percent transition, meaning that the majority of the time we're sincerely seeking God's will over our own will. 

Seeking. We are willing...getting ready...heading in God's direction. In God's good time, we'll get there...out of self into the higher consciousness of the likes of Chief Joseph who promised, I will fight no more forever. 

There it is, the promise that we renew daily, whether we know it or not: We have ceased fighting anything or anyone. 

Resist not evil...God's will always and all ways. 

Thank you.

THE SERPENT, THE LAMB AND THE LION

Blinding flash of the obvious: Our inner trinity...the serpent, enlightenment; the lamb, our self;  the lion, security...Love.

Well. My reasoning mind is flummoxed...trying, but at a loss as to the meaning and the timing of this BFO. Why me and why now? I just know the serpent came to me in my quiet time a while back, the lion has lived with me for many years, and the lamb is my comfort. 

When...or  as...I have a need to go deeper, the serpent will enlighten me, the lion will protect me, and still more spiritual growth will follow...realized or unbeknownst, makes no nevermind. God is leading the way.

I feel the grace of gratitude.

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGHTER...GOD'S HIDEY HOLE

Resist not evil. -- Matthew 5:39 

I first came across that verse from the Bible sometime in 1972 or '73. My original response, my reasoning mind's response, to that single verse pushed, led, nattered, irritated and agitated...loved...me into seeking still more spiritual growth. 

I have lived that off-and-on, imperfectly, half-assed, just barely and with a vengence, ever since...always and ever for my spiritual benefit whether I knew it or not. 

Some of my flashes, morphed from my meanderings:

We resist not in love, which is not only the home of our inner Source, it is our inner Source.

We resist and know that ego, riding fear, is whispering in our ear. We resist not and welcome God, love, whispering in our ear.

Resistance lives in our reasoning mind, ever thinking, ever analyzing, ever keeping higher help at bay. 

Nonresistance, love, opens the door for our Source to flow forth. (I stand at the door and knock.)

Nonresistance releases from within a power greater than ourself, and that exchanges an apparently less-than-wonderful situation for the better. 

Nonresistance is not of the reasoning mind, it is of higher consciousness, God's hidey hole, or, love and laughter. 

Lest we forget the seldom-remembered truth: If our nonresistance is a self-determined objective, it is resistance.  

Thank you.

ON LOVING OUR EGO...RESIST NOT

We are learning unto accepting that the Sermon's resist not evil means precisely that: Resist not evil. Not to put too fine a point on it, but not resisting resist not evil is a spiritual education on its own.

Resist not evil must needs take us way deeper into higher consciousness...where we breathe in loving kindness and breathe out peace, love and joy. In that, our meditation mantra, evil is transmuted, and loving kindness begins to grow from within out. 

We accept that this is not the place where we live 24/7, yet we recognize our ongoing need for ego-deflation in depth which clarifies our goal...to adjust our self spirtually to the world we live in.

Comes now the turning point: The place where our exchanged mind ceases to fight our ego and commences to love it...or, in truth, to be willing to love it. What else but our own ego would keep us seeking still more spiritual growth so diligently, so urgently? 

Blinding flash of the obvious: Loving our ego is akin to loving an incredibly spoiled child...wanting to gets us nada, and giving in to the child or to ego is not loving it. We need a power greater than ourself to break the code.

There's our key. Our road back to God lies in the inner realization of resist not evil. Loving the rough and rutted road paved by our rues, regrets and remorses, God's slivers of gold, is our way back to God. 

When we can love our ego, then we have ceased fighting everything and everybody. We resist not. 

Thank you.

GOD DISCLOSES HIMSELF TO US AS LOVE

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of November 4, 2013.]

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: Just call His name. That is all.

When we are dealing with personal relationships that at the moment feel tight, opaque, confining...the answer is ever the same: Turn our minds and our motives inward...and wait. 

According to Eknath Easwaran, "Calling on the Lord in our heart by repeating his Name, we find access to our deeper reserves of devotion, firmness, and love."

Every idea, every solution that comes to the reasoning mind, is still a self-determined objective. It may be right, but even when right, by depending on our own self to achieve it, we're going down that wrong road again. Even my favorite spiritual reader, "God Calling," states, "Do not seek to realize this...as the result of effort."

While we're waiting on the Lord, we can take a look at whomever has stepped on our toes, seemingly without provocation. If we look, we will invariably find that we have made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. (That from another spiritual source that is never failing.)

Owning our part is the for-certain-sure way to clear our access for God's "deeper reserves of devotion, firmness, and love" to flow forth.

The eternal question, of course, is, why don't we leap to do that? Why do we linger in that ego-victory land of angry hurt (right's righteous masquerade), where we hurt so justifiably and so futilely? 

When we are ready for God to change our mind, God discloses himself to us as love...whether we know it or not.

Thank you.

EGO...SILENCED BY LOVE AND LAUGHTER

Do not seek to realize this fullness of Joy as the result of effort. This cannot be....  -- God Calling, November 4.

Every day presents an opportunity to love or to resist love...to let God or to stay stuck in self. All roads lead to God so neither way is wrong...one is just better than the other. 

Counterintuitively, self-stuck is the better way for it invariably (slowly, painfully, but invariably) leads us to God. On the other hand, to "let God" is too often eyebrows-up knowledge alone which encourages ego to begin preaching. Believing we've got a lock on spiritual, we seek no deeper.  

Every idea, every solution that is born in the reasoning mind, is still a self-determined objective. Even when right, if we're depending on our own self to carry it out, we're going down ego's rigidly righteous road again.  

Every idea, every thought that comes unbidden and stills our questing heart is almost certainly God calling. We are lifted deeper by grace to continue our search for still more spiritual growth.

From my own recent experience, I know that to inadvertently look the fool humbles us, ah, but our unselfed laughter lets peace, love and joy out. Love of laughter is a healer and passes on as loving kindness to the next one in need.

He goes before us to make the crooked places straight...with love and laughter.

Thank you.

IN PRAISE OF THE HUMAN JOURNEY

Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 9, 2013

Is it life that is counterintuitive? Or is it God, that power greater than ourself that is within us? Or are they, we and the power within, one and the same...counterintuitively?

Necessary suffering, we have learned, is a path to God. Learning and believing is a lot easier when it's "lab" work...when other than the personal me is the subject matter. Comes the day after gradution...when what we've learned is what is before us to live...learning it and living it become two different things entirely.

We don't get to God by talking it, we get to God by walking it...by experiencing the trip-up bumps, hard knocks, snarks and snubs. 

It is the rare and wonderful person (and we are not one) who, first out of the box, experiences those with peace, equanimity and love in their heart. Ah, but that is the goal of still more spiritual growth...whether we know it or not, that is our goal. According to me, that is the counterintuitive essence of God's will.

The path we walk is all about shucking our shields, that which guards our reasoning mind's "Me First" fixation. We no longer want to be the winner, but we're still stuck not wanting to be the loser. 

There is our new goal...loose our ego-based wants and let them go. What's in it for me has become how can this benefit you...and me? 

If we think we're wanting all the benefits for you and none for me, we're still caught in ego. God plays no favorites...he wants the best for you and for me...for all. There. That is a higher Power, a power greater than. Period. 

We with our reasoning mind can only bow when we are graced with recognition and pray an honest, i.e., unselfed, thank you.

We must go beyond reason to love...we must go beyond the human condition to God.

Thank you.

BREATHE IN LOVE, BREATHE OUT PEACE

Blinding flash:  Breathe in loving kindness, breathe out peace, love and joy.

The peace, love and joy we breathe out surrounds us, enwraps us, walks with our feet, talks with our voice, thinks our thoughts, and passes on to whomever receives it...to be passed on. This is not ours to do. This is not ours. This is God consciousness over which there is no control. There is only God.

All of that is truth to me...ah, but so is the human condition, feet on the ground, head in the mundane, that is the me I see in my bathroom mirror. The me that shows forth when I am not meditating.

The great gift of meditation is it points us in the right direction...toward still more spiritual growth. Where we learn by detaching...from our own ideas. If ego deflation in depth is the way to God, then we need to expect to show our bum in public...not beat ourself up when we show it. Oh.

I recently had just such a God-gift...ego deflation out there in my public arena...and, apparently, I have accepted it without regrets. I give no props, just hopeful gratitude.

It is the great exchange of our minds, from reason to spirit, that transmutes our egoic face-saving to our peaced self. Looking good has lost its luster which is not human-effort possible...face-saving is survival instinct to our ego. 

To "get it wrong" with no regret at all is probably conceit...to get it wrong and wallow in regrets is ego...a rueful admission of our wrong is God doing for us. (Rueful...love and laugh sans a me-hook.)

Breathe in loving kindness, breathe out peace, love and joy.

Thank you.

THE PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING

I came across a post of mine from 2015 and was taken by the similarity between then and now that showed in what I wrote about.  As Dylan wrote some years back, the times they are a-changing...but not by much it seems.

Seven short years ago, religion seemed to be our bugaboo. Politics seems to be the main player today, but, face it, with religion ever hovering in the shadows. 

The following is from that 2015 post. Note that the very first word, religion, is the one change needed...with the word politics substituted: 

[Religion] Politics seems to me to be the last holdout of the justified-hate crowd. If we're ever going to face our own ego down, and by that I mean, let God out from within, we need to consider giving our ears freedom. Freedom to hear others speak their truth...neither rejecting it nor buying it whole cloth.

Just because we listen, doesn't mean we must respond, vocally or mentally. We can give a silent shrug or hug and keep on walking. We can do that...but only by disciplining our own mind. Our own attack mind.

We can pray for peace until our face falls off, but peace will not be ours until we give peace away.

Lessons we are slowly learning...the peace we need be seeking is not the egoic peace of "winning" or even of self-determining to "let the other win." No. The peace that heals is the peace that passes understanding. Not of self, of God.

Thank you.