[The following is a reprint of my post of November 3, 2020.]
The material mind, home of the ego, legislates for self only while masquerading as our benefit. The purpose of our egoic mind is to get, to add to, to build up. Its ever outward focus, looks good, sounds better, is motivated by comparisons.
Outward neither allows nor accepts inward...an inadvertent glance inward calls our self-censor to the forefront to cut short any deeper look-see.
It is acknowledged that personal suffering is all but required to cause most of us to seek spiritual help. Many, many sufferers attest to the fact that their worst life experience brought the God of their understanding into reality.
It takes many years of seeking still more spiritual growth before we realize it was our prayer (dear God, please take this from me) that, to our reasoning mind, went unacknowledged and brought us to complete surrender, i.e., to Whatever...now known as God's will, God's way.
Whether we know it or not, whether we want to believe it or not...everything that happens in our life happens for our benefit.
The real kicker is...that which we're carping about this very day will turn itself into our priceless pearl. It helps when we do what we've been taught...upgrade our attitude to downgrade our problem, and we can have a big fat pearl in the proverbial heartbeat.
Also, and under the cover of ignorance, maybe the benefit is for another but must come through us...and maybe the other is the one our hand itches to smack...and maybe...ah, just recall God's will, God's way and be at peace.
We live in the material world, and we will live in the material world until we grow wings and fly. The ego lives right along with us and will natter us at will. To deny ego its noise, we lift our reasoning mind daily to a higher Power, God.
We are raised up, we continue to be raised up by our belief. Belief cannot be faked...wanting it is wanting it...believing carries the Power of Now.
We came to believe, and that belief enlightened us. We live an enlightened life today, or, let's say enlightened the majority of the time.
Short, sweet and truest: Go with God in trust of his love.
Thank you.
A quick how-to for a fairly worry-free life: Accept that every less-than, or "bad" thing, appearing to our reasoning mind's eye is spiritually for our benefit. The unsecret but seldom realized fact is that when we stay our focus on "God's hand is in it," a metaphor for "God's will, God's way," we are peaced.
God is universal...a formless Power for good for all. I have long known that from my eyebrows up, yet I continued to think of my invisible God in human terms.
My deeper realization process began in full recently with the reading of a book, the author of which hammers home that God is not a figure, a body, a form...God is a Power for good.
That is my now focus...when I remember.
Several "bad" things have come into my life recently. For instance, I overpaid my city personal property tax by $400...which is not chump-change to me. Getting that straightened out is uphill every inch of the way, and we're not even near the top. Then, in December, Verizon sent me notice...need I say more? I have personally visited their office and been given their word it is all taken care of. Yesterday I got another notice doubling down.
Hassles, all hassles, and who isn't personally allergic to hassles?
I am practicing not just saying "God's hand is in this," but picturing the Power for good moving in the best direction for each of us touched by these egoic-quagmires.Which may mean my outcome is that I am out $400, that I owe Verizon, etc., which would benefit me in a way I cannot imagine.
There...that is God's hand in it. Benefited beyond imagining.
Thank you.
That is when I was forced to change. I started feeling helpless, and my confidence was shattered. All that I was left with was faith . . . [and] trust that I was where God was calling me to be. What I began discovering is that every time I allowed myself to feel at a loss in the face of the pain I witnessed, every time I touched my own irrelevance, there was this energy of God that would begin to emerge in our midst. . . . -- Episcopal priest Adam Bucko, "Daily Meditation," December 9, 2022
Various personal Journal entries:
7/15/21 Blinding flash of the obvious: That which we think is wrong with us we finally realize is and has ever been God's will for us...that which makes us whole as our own self. [Beginning to consciously realize God's will, God's way...which had to have been percolating inside for a long time.]
10/7/21: Comes a time when we hold our nose and take a leap of faith...we quit quoting neighbors, mentors, friends and teachers...we become less visible, often misquoted, misunderstood, ignored. Jump up and shout Hallelujah! We're on the right road, heading in the right direction.
12/1/22 God's will, God's way is individual to each of us...the way we do our life. What we are is what God's will, God's way has led us to be...when, not if, we try to fix it, listening to our ego, we falter and fail.
Blinding flash of the obvious: The ego painful is for my benefit...to make an end-run around it is to give ego the win.
Most everthing that happens that causes us personal embarrassment or ego-pain is for our benefit, but only if we meet it, greet it and walk through it. If we cut and run, we will meet it again, when or where we know not...the certainty being, it will be more personally painful.
To "walk through it" is to find love within for the one on whom we have placed the blame for our ego pain. Heads up: That one is often our own self.
The love we find within knows no blame, knows no shame, knows gratitude only. Gratitude for another spiritual lesson in living. The ego pain is our resistance to the spiritual, the desire to cling to the security of self-deluded wants masquerading as needs.
Grinding out teeth-gritted gratitude is ego playing to win...just another ploy to stay spiritual growth.
Gratitude cannot be held for our own...it stays with us as it shares itself impersonally and perfectly.
Gratitude through grace is God's gift wrapped in thank you without thought or plot. It remains ours...ours to pass on.
Our problem is not our shadow self as much as our over-defended ego, which always sees and hates its own faults in other people, and thus avoids its own conversion. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, January 24, 2023
Thank you.
That all things are possible to him who believes; that they are less difficult to him who hopes; that they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues. -- Brother Lawrence
I always feel heart-warmed when I find a quote or just a mention of Brother Lawrence. My first spiritual reader, gifted to me in 1971, was his book, "The Practice of the Presence of God."
I read the above quote today and, mercy, it brings tears. Its meaning is so much clearer to me today, but the glory of the God of my understanding is that I understood it to be true in 1971...how, I did not know, but I knew, and I knew that I knew. There. God in action.
My today's tears are of awe and wonder and gratitude. Back then, I was already under God's care and feeding, I just had no reasoning-mind concept of that. Paradoxically, my "reasoning mind concept" is still my bane to hug and kiss and release.
Brother Lawrence plain and simple...it's putting on airs to call him naive...plain and simple is what was then and is now so inviting. It is rather intriguing that he comes again into my consciousness just as he was introduced in 1971...and now, as I have noted, many rehappenings are coming with a new understanding opening.
The resurrected memories have brought a new realization of how important it is to see from a lesser point of view. Detach...shuck our shields...be aware of the small gifts...seek less...appreciate the minutes...give not to get but to give.
That is the all of it, just to give. To get is no longer available...viable? Our thank you dispels the thought...the want.
I still feel gobsmacked that Brother Lawrence innately lived for the benefit of others. If I get there three days after I'm dead 'twill be proof enough that God lives.
Thank you.
A long ago blinding flash of the obvious that continues to grow deeper in consciousness by taking us to a higher understanding is that God's will, God's way is counterintuitive. Jesus, the Buddha, my Uncle Chester, et al., each lived a counterintuitive life. The kicker is that so do we...whether we know it or not.
Until we crash and burn, hit the wall, surrender...whatever term fits our sense of complete personal failure...we will resist changing. Resistant to the realization that we nurture our desperate futile attempts to save our self by clinging to our will, our way.
Counterintuitively it is surrender to our complete personal failure that lifts us to a new plane of understanding.
Slowly, we become conscious of our life on this different plane. We are content...even happy...to be about living unselfishly...for the benefit of another...most of the time.
We discover the unsought gift of living God's will, God's way. Unsought because we knew naught of it...we only knew my will, my way. More honestly we only wanted to know my will, my way.
It takes complete surrender for us to turn away from self-determined objectives which are all about the three most important people in our life: me, myself and I. (I have no idea who first said that...probably Abraham Lincoln...but ain't it the truth!)
Living a giving life guarantees bumps, bruises, roses and rainbows...and love beyond measure. We're welcomed into God's hidey hole.
Thank you.
Life moves in circles and cycles. Yours, mine, tulip trees' and rich peoples'. We have accepted that we are the source of all of our woes...and for how long each woe hangs with us. We know that changing our mindset is the way out of our own turmoil.
Yes, but!...knowing that and living that are two entirely different matters.
We can seek still more spiritual growth till our face falls off, our mineset is entirely contingent upon our belief that we are right. That mindset gets iffy when anxiety slips in, catches us unaware...we find our self unsure, afraid, scared...and aren't even sure of what. It feels dicey when we do not know the right question much less the right answer.
We feel as if our God has taken a leave of absence, and we do not know how to get righted. Where's the solid, never-failing God of my grandma's understanding?
Here again (when will we ever learn?) is God's counterintuitive answer. Pray thank you! Welcome the scary, scarier, scariest for how else do we get passed it?
There is no peagreen-purple petrified transmuted in a heartbeat to baby blue and cute-as-a-button...why do we still secretly hope for that when we have come to know from our own experience that God has our back, that God goes before us to make the crooked places straight...that we need to walk the crooked places straight as we put one foot in front of the other.
When we stand there in fear staring at a crooked place, it is guaranteed the crooked place always seems...fearfully...ever more crooked.
Nothing changes until we hold our nose, take a leap of faith, and feel like we're hanging out there in the ether...finally to realize we have landed on the other side, no worse for the fear of it.
None of this can be our truth until we actually prove each of these words in our own experience...not from reading, writing or thinking. but by living them.
We cannot wholly trust God until we open our self for all our world to see our worst fear and our personally finest hour. That one may be as simple as we once got an A in geometry....without cheating. Which for sure would have hammered home my trust in God.
Humans need spiritual goodness to strive for, to move us upward. Here's my good news...or a BFO, I'm not sure...we will never have unconditional trust in God. The human need for spiritual growth, or God Itself, precludes it. Ah, but that spiritual goodness is within us right now...it is the unrealized Kingdom of Heaven.
Thank you.
Blinding flash of the obvious: We are the source of all the upheaval we are experiencing in our world today.
The key there is "in our world." In our consciousness. The view of the univerdal upheaval I am seeing is probably not the view of billionaires, preachers, teachers, and teen queens.
My letting others have their view (hard!), shucking me of mine (harder!) needs be realized as one seek...the spiritual quest. Each requires inside help which can't even begin without trust...then God, God's slivers of gold (our uh-ohs), God's will, God's way all work together for good.
Changing our mind, which we have learned cannot be done by self-will alone, is the way out of our turmoil. Nonresistance...resist not evil...is the way to not enter into turmoil, and neither can that be self-willed. We go to God for God...the help we need shows up.
It all...i.e., life itself...comes down to God alive and active in our consciousness. With side trips for the egoic mind to strut its stuff else what's spiritual growth for?
Our reasoning mind doing its thing, i.e., thinking, happens with God's knowledge and, apparently, approval...hard lessons learned are God's gifts to us. Face it, we need a way to hone our basically base nature.
If God didn't approve, he would have long since changed life as we live it. Only he has the power which he channels through us however we choose to make ourself available for him. According to me.
There's no wrong way to do the right thing...just longer ways to get there.
Thank you.
Enlightenment is birthed in nonresistance...nonresistance is birthed in crash and burn...crash and burn is birthed in resistance.
Or, put another way, resistance leads to crash and burn...from which there is no hope of human help. There...nonresistance at birth. Nonresistance, or Help! I do not know what to do, opens the mind to higher help, i.e., God. Ah, enlightenment aborning.
All things work together for good.... -- Romans 8:28
Fear not the ugly appearing for this too God makes whole through love. -- blinding flash of the obvious, January 9, 2023
According to me our life goes in circles and cycles. On occasion life will seem at sixes and sevens...sometimes lesser, sometimes overwhelmingly huge.
Experiencing the lows sows the seeds of fear in our egoic mind...experiencing the highs takes us on flights of fantasy. Ah, but it is our personal powerlessness over those thoughts that invites spiritual solutions...we experience our powerlessnes just as each presents itself, and we yield to each.
Enlightenment is birthed in nonresistance.
In the end we resist nothing, and we are peaced. If we are not peaced, we are not at the end. Pray thank you.
Thank you.
God may be right.
To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. -- Sun Tzu
Here is the deepest lesson of gratitude, then. 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. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, November 23, 2022
There is our answer. Here is our prayer: Thank you.
If the only prayer you pray in your life is thank you, that would suffice. -- Meister Eckhart
Thank you.
Morning blinding flash of the obvious: Fear not the lack appearing for this too God makes whole through love.
In the material world walk of life, we learn early that we need to do, or to not do, this, that and the other thing in order to get...to get...to get.
To God, apparently, the rough, unfinished and tear-soaked self we try so hard to overcome, or at least to hide, is his perfect work. It is our mistakes, errors in judgment, occasional downright selfishness that we need to experience to receive his guidance...which is love, is always love whether we know it or not.
Coming to enlightenment...trust in a word...is a long, rough and rutted road with detours and sink holes aplenty. The material world is ever with us, the reasoning mind is sometimes right, trust takes trust which is not available over-the-counter.
There is no cheap enlightenment, but the Way, like many good things, starts so small as to seem insignificant. Yet, it is the little things, the pebbles, the gnats, the twigs, that first get our irritated attention. The irritation leads eventually to our learning the paradoxical lesson and the deepest spiritual truth: Resist not evil. The paradox being if we don't resist that on first hearing, we're probably not ready yet. There is no cheap enlightenment, we must grow into it.
As we look back, we know all of our rues, regrets and remorses as the tools God used to walk us through our own resistance...those regrets fueled our crash and burn. Slowly, we welcome that lengthy stretch as our pearl beyond price.
With an exchanged mind, we love and laugh and welcome the worst being first...or the grace of gratitude.
Thank you.
In the prophetic worldview, God supports falling forward, mistake-ridden risk-taking, and boundary crossing for the sake of growth in consciousness and relationship. -- Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev in Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, January 6, 2023
This leg of my journey, the consciousness raising or the exchanging of my mind, confirms my long-ago blinding flash of the obvious that spiritually God's will, God's way is upside down, backward, opposite to the material world's view.
I felt comforted recently when I read Steve Job's quote that it is the crazy ones who think they can change the world, the round pegs in the square holes, who actually do so because they see things differently.
We see things differently. We can own that with the caveat that our world is changed because we see things differently.
For instance, in the material world, both sides can lose but only one can win. In the spiritual world, there is no win/lose.
The "loser" is the "winner" for just like fear, it leaves us no place to go but to God. Losing lifts us to God...we are Oned; winning leaves us with nothing but ego...alone in a word.
We go to God for God, and that is all...for that is all.
Thank you.
News we know well yet hear each time as if for the first time: Ego deflation in depth is not a one-shot deal.
The goal of ego deflation in depth is akin to all goals...they focus us on other than God. And no matter how good, true and spiritual they sound, they head our search away from God toward our self-determined objective.
We learn and learn and learn still...yet... again: To seek is a self-determined objective, not of God. Naming it "seeking God" does not elevate it. Quit seeking...we have God. Obviously, we need turn toward a new direction.
Seek not...praise. Give thanks. Pray thank you.
We recall that love is the solution, no matter the problem. So, bless our ego. With praise, it serves us well...it is the alarm that awakens us when we're sounding too good and heading in the wrong direction.
The less we seek, the more peace we have, as in, The Lord is my Shepherd...I shall not want. I shall not want...I seek not...I have enough...I shall never not have enough. Ah, peace.
Thank you.
My first blinding flash of the obvious of the new year: HOPE!
My second BFO: This is my now guide...Hope, happy hope.
I saw me yesterday. I saw and I said, "I do not want to start my next life as clueless about love as I have lived this life."
For a long time, I was blindly ignorant of universal love...or impersonal love. Not until my sense of full surrender of my egoic desires to my spiritual needs could I get a glimpse or a grasp of a new way to think, feel, be.
Only then did I want to try to give over, give up, give in...the majority (51%) of the time. And then, to give without thought or manipulation. Without qualifiers from my reasoning mind. To trust God, the Father within me, to head me in the right direction. Knowing unto accepting all that, too, I will misread, misinterpret, miss...but thereby learn from.
This morning I scanned Matthew 6:33, KJV, and realized again that the bottom line is, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you."
I wonder if the words and his righteousness aren't the most overlooked words in the Sermon. Certainly, they are by me. I once had a resounding flash about their essential meaning...and yet today when I idly think of "seek ye first," I usually need to recall those three words after I've first missed them.
I can believe that Trust...Trust in our Father within...is born, lives or dies in seek ye first his righteousness. And here comes belief leading my New Year's BFO, Hope, Happy Hope, by the hand.
This year, this month, this day begins my living my belief...and love can more freely flow. Build here.
Thank you.
