EGO REDUCTION IN DEPTH

Here's my goal...probably my unreachable-in-this-lifetime goal, but my goal nonetheless: To be one who is so spiritually fit within/without that, "if you curse him, he will bless you; if you harm her, she will serve you; and if you exploit him, he will become your benefactor."

Interestingly, on first reading, that was like a magnet to my resistance: I don't think so...give me a break...Oh, how great I art! are just a few thoughts that flitted through my mind.

Reading back through my daily notes awakened my memory to all the mini-breakthroughs that led to my today's realization that that truly is the only path to the attainment of peace of mind and soul.

My prayer from high school had been for peace of mind. Imagine my surprise when I finally saw that my idea of peace of mind was virtually to have a lobotomy...which shouldn't have surprised me. I'd always been one for the quick fix.

But true peace of mind and soul pretty much requires the death of the ego...ego reduction in depth, then, being the starting direction. There. That is the road one gets to walk...bless them, change me, in short.

Thank You.

SHOWING OUR VULNERABILITY

It is a wonderful/scary thing to realize the power of "we." And just two people count as "we" with 100 and/or more also being "we."

What is powerful, and where the scary hides, is how I can be talking to another person, and her interpretation of what I'm saying may be more accurate than my own. For instance, I was with friends yesterday and asked Joe about the health of my friend John. Joe had no new knowledge about John's tests...end of conversation.

I took no further part in the discussion. I later thought I probably had given Joe the impression that I was so concerned over John's health that I simply withdrew into myself. I felt a tish guilty because I hadn't been pondering his health, I'd just withdrawn.

In my quiet time this morning, the thought occurred that if Joe did indeed interpret my withdrawing as concern over John's health, he may be right. The fact is that, in general, withdrawal is not me...I enjoy participation.

There's every chance that my self-protector (which I thought I'd rooted out and sent packing long ago) is not letting me be too aware of the negative possibilities regarding John's health. But neither delayed hurt nor instant gratification, both cut from the same cloth, are the healthiest way to go.

Back to the "we" of all this. It is only by our out-loud-to-another sharing that we become fully aware of our inner fears, fanciful facts, fantasies. And we don't get to select what we'll share that will open us to that inner awareness. We just get to share and be aware of what comes back...and remember to say "thank you" for whatever comes for there's where God intervenes in our life in our behalf.

Probably why letting our vulnerability show is essential and scary good.

Thank You.

THE PEACE OF CHANGING ONE'S MIND

[This is a reprint of a blog of mine from April 30, 2011.]

I found when a tried-and-true spiritual message doesn’t make sense to me that if I’ll just take the time to look underneath the message, I’ll often find the sense of it.

“You must go beyond reason to love” was one of my first puzzlers. Luckily, I recognized fairly quickly that my reason is driven by my ego, and therefore most any problem I had, my reasoning mind’s solution would be for my benefit. To go beyond reason to love meant seeking a solution whereby all parties could be winners. It was perfectly clear to me that I alone could not do that…I would need to let a power greater than myself wholly into my life. That’s when I made my decision to let God have my will, my wants, my hopes, my worries…simply to let God do my thinking for me. I succeed the majority of the time…that’s 51%, but I usually do a tish better than that.

When first I heard ”We have given up fighting anything and anybody,” my reasoning mind balked because reason said not only was I going to have to be a doormat, but I was going to have to like it. In opening deeper, my win/win solution came up. I needed to give up fighting, that’s all. I do not have the option of fighting, arguing, being disagreeable just because I think I am right, in short. So the goal, when I find myself in a disagreeable situation, is to buy time (shoot a “thank You”), and let some other solution bubble up from within…a solution for the benefit of everybody. 

Imagine my surprise when I realized that this is the exact same basis for “agree with your adversary quickly.” The goal is not to agree willy-nilly, making myself a hypocrite or a bald-faced liar (both of which I admit to having been, and I’d just as soon not go back there). The goal is to open my mind (actually, to change my mind from self-based to others-based), to go beyond reason to Love which brings a win/win solution every time.

This has taken me years of practice, and I flub it more often that I would like, but to flub it at all is more often than I would like. The peace of mind brought by simply changing my mind is truly the pearl of great price.

Thank You.

WHAT IS TO US IS NOT WHAT IS TO GOD

This is my truth for today: We all are born from a spark of The Divine, from the consciousness of love, i.e., God consciousness, into material world consciousness. It is only within our reasoning mind, that we separate from God into the material world consciousness. All of our life is a returning to that God consciousness we were before we were born.

Those of us born deformed, unformed, deaf, blind, not whole to the material world consciousness, having come from that core of the Divine, are complete in our Oneness with God. Those of us whose minds break, who lose an arm or an eye, or have any malady appear...at age 10 or ll0...having that same core of the Divine, are complete in our Oneness with God.

It is through our realization of that Oneness that we refind the peace we were before we were born, and that realization is not ours to get, it is God's to give.

What we, the world, sees, is not what God sees, is not what is to God. What is to the world is not what is to God. We can release from our thoughts the idea that we need to pray for the sick, the maimed, the poor...or for the wealthy and powerful...God already is within them.

We can thank God that our only desire is to raise our consciousness deeper...unto knowing God as we did before conception, and from whence goes forth all good.

Go to God for God...that is all.

Thank You.

SEEK...SIMPLY SEEK

"The Christ is a spiritual entity, a spiritual impulse...a spirit that is in man, and S/He it is that is blessed, anointed, upheld by the Father." -- Joel Goldsmith, The Heart of Mysticism, at p. 220.

It was a real ah-ha moment when I grasped that Christ is not a person. That Christ is a spiritual impulse within us, upheld, sustained and maintained by God.

That was my initial mind-broadening venture into the meaning of love...or what love as an action really means to me, within me...no matter what another's definition is. It clarified for me the essence of love.

I realized that this spiritual impulse called Christ is love. Therefore, I knew that God, through the Christ, loves me, and that it is more important that I know that God loves me than it is that I know that I love God. It cannot be otherwise.

I know from my eyebrows up that Christ lives before conception in consciousness which is the universal pool of love, i.e., non-resistance, transparency, acceptance, surrender, invitation, welcome, thank you. I know this in my heart most of the time. That is why every morning after I've walked and fed Ruckus, I make myself available to God...just seeking a deeper knowing.

Thank You.

GETTING OVER ONESELF

"We have given up fighting anything and anybody." -- Anonymous

"Ahimsa is not a policy for the seizure of power. It is a way of transforming relationships so as to bring about a peaceful transfer of power, effected freely and without compulsion by all concerned, because all have come to recognize it as right." -- Thomas Merton

"Bearing with people is the essence of nonviolence. To do this with a feeling of martyrdom, however, is not very helpful; we need to bear with people cheerfully. But this does not mean making ourselves into a doormat....Letting people take undue advantage of us is not helpful for them any more than it is for us." -- Eknath Easwaran

Thank you for protecting my heart from my ego-victory mind which will always seek to top or to stop anything and anybody it feels is resisting it. -- my morning blinding flash of the obvious.

Thank You.

BEGIN!

[The following is a reprint from my blog of January 31, 2012.]

“Don’t wait for ideal conditions…Begin! And the conditions you need will come to you!” I read that in today’s Eknath Easwaran’s  “Words to Live By,” which means I’ve read it on this day for the past 20 years. It has to be laughable that I still feel a tiny shock of pleasant surprise when I read it again.

Actually, I have read and heard that many times in many different places…more importantly, I have experienced it many times, and each time I have known that this was outside the human scene…not of my ability to pull it off.  I consider it evidence of the strength of my ego’s need to be my answer…my reasoning mind’s “I’m in control here!”…to always be surprised when I recognize that neither my ego nor my reasoning mind can meet my real needs.

The Fourth Dimension beckons me…I seldom touch the reality of the Fourth Dimension, but it beckons me, and I know it for truth. So I read, I study, I practice…and I learn: “…you do not have to struggle for enlightenment. It is coming to you as fast as you can accept and respond to it.” (Joel Goldsmith, “Leave Your Nets,” p.107)

Further, per Goldsmith, all we need do is to practice seeing this universe from the standpoint of God as individual being, “…letting every opinion, thought, and conviction stem from God.” We will, no doubt, not break free immediately or entirely, “but that is not your concern. Your concern is that you begin….”

The exact advice with which I began my quiet time this morning: Begin!

Thank You.