THE PARADOX OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

I suspect the reason unconditional love is so difficult to do is because it requires us to go against our  pseudo "survival" instinct. The reasoning mind will always legislate for itself, and getting our own wants met masquerades in our mind as survival. Putting another's needs before our wants just feels wrong...especially when the other is someone who has just stepped on our toes or who makes us uncomfortable in any way.

On paper, unconditional love is like my budget on paper...nothing but good, personally beneficial and reasonable into the bargain. Doing unconditional love, like sticking to my budget, is a horse of another color.

Everybody wants to get unconditional love, everybody thinks they want to give it. It is in the trying to do it that we learn the truth...it requires a total denial of self.

The paradox of unconditional love: We cannot get it, we can only give it, and the only thing standing in our way is our willingness to do it.

Thank You.

RELEASE TO RECEIVE

If we are to have any lasting spiritual growth, we must learn to get closer to those who irritate us.

There is the place, that is the way we learn to live patience, forgiveness, freedom from personal wants...the either/ors, the likes/dislikes of life...freedom to love...unconditionally.

It is in letting go of protection of self...which is different from self-protection...that one finds the freedom to love...unconditionally. Until we realize unconditional love is within us right now, we will ever seek and not find unconditional love.

We must release it to receive it.

Thank You.

LEARNING TO RESIST NAUGHT

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can.... -- Plato

I need to break statements like that down to my level of understanding. We ought to fly away from earth [self] to heaven [Self] as quickly as we can...is my beginning to make that my own.

How to do that? To fly away from self we must become transparent.

How to do that? By learning to resist not...anything.

There's where time comes in...learning and accepting that God's time is not our time. There is no 24 hours in a day in God's world. There is only now. So now is the acceptable time to practice the art of becoming transparent...to give up resisting anything and anybody.

The biggest block to the idea of transparency is the reasoning mind. It cannot, nor will it ever, accept transparency as a viable way of life because there is no control there...no ability to move things about...no chance to win.

Here again, we must go beyond reason to love, to God, where we learn to resist not...anything. Which is one more impossibility to the reasoning mind...whose greatest weapon is its immediate ability to find the worst case scenario in any suggestion wherein it feels threatened. As in, "If I give up resisting everything, I could be raped, robbed, murdered, sliced and diced, abused beyond human understanding, etc."

The fact is every time we think we've made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, we've made a decision to go beyond reason...to love, to God. We've made a decision to give the art of becoming transparent a chance, to try non-resistance.

Like everything else in life...there is no perfect. We simply become willing to try...to resist naught.

Thank You.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES AND FIND PEACE

In faith, there is no possibility of an uninterrupted success story. The only way you’re going to face your wild beasts and your shadows is by failure and rejection, by people not loving you, by having to learn how to love your wife and your children and those who hurt you—the enemies—those who make you aware of your own incapacity to love. -- Fr. Richard Rohr

It's a humbling fact but my wild beasts and shadows today are my own petty ego fears...what Gertrude meant when she said blah, blah, blah. Or Jim Dandy when he gave me that look. That kind.

I can't even remember how long ago it was that I faced a really serious wild beast. I do remember that it was yesterday...literally yesterday...when my mind was rehearsing how to let Joe Doaks know he had offended my delicate sensibilities, and that was not OK, not acceptable to me, and the trouble with him is....

Fortunately, today I seldom get further than that...that's what still more spiritual growth has gotten me, and I don't even blush when I admit that that is enough. I rarely react to my ego fears today, nor do I respond to my ego-victory wants.

I've learned to call my wild beast aborning my angel, say "Thank You," and move on...move my thoughts on.

BFO! That's why I seldom have wild beasts and shadows in my life today!

God is so good to me.

Thank You.

GOD IS...NOW TO TRUST THAT

[This is a reprint of a blog of mine from July 21, 2008.]

I was talking to myself this morning, rattling on about the fine line between my spiritual world and my ego-victory world, and it occurred to me that there is no fine line. There is a moment in time…that moment when I make my decision to throw in with God or to hold to my reasoning mind for my security. (That moment of time comes more than once, thank God.)

It’s akin to living at the Grand Canyon, living fully and happily on this earth, but seeking more. So I keep enough distance from the rim of the Canyon to be able to see it, risking nothing, but occasionally edging closer…then darting back, then venturing closer…and still closer. And there I am at the rim, looking down, stomach feeling like it has already jumped…and I know, if I am ever going to fully realize the God I seek, I’m going to have to take that leap of faith…trusting that I will be caught, held close, secure.

Then my reasoning mind, bolstered by fear, kicks in with all of its questions…how do I just DO it? What if my leap of faith is just another self-determined objective? What if God’s true way is something entirely different, and here’s me, hanging out there without a net?

Good news: there is no “without a net” when I’m seeking still more spiritual growth. Better news: God does not care how I come to him…just seek, keep seeking, seek some more. Best news: God already is…within me, without me.

Now to live that, trusting.

Thank You.

CHANGE WE MUST OR CHOKE WE WILL

Healthy religion is always telling us to change instead of giving us ammunition to try to change others. -- Fr. Richard Rohr

I read my Easwaran daily reader this morning, and the entire writing is on resentments...how easily they form, the harm they do, and, specifically, how to detach from them.

As an aside, the page had not one mark of mine on it. I didn't check, but I do doubt there is another page in that book that doesn't have an underline, an exclamation point, a question mark...some mark of mine...somewhere on it. And I know that resentments are my number one offender...that which I must let go of before they form.

It is very interesting, enlightening really, to watch a resentment in another grow, fester, become a "serious" offense. I was reminded of my friend Sylvia with Gertrude's unthinking remark to "Pay attention" made to Sylvia. That remark has now grown in Sylvia's retelling to Gertrude shaking her finger under Sylvia's nose and yelling at her. This is after Gertrude, realizing Sylvia had taken offense, called her, apologized, and they talked about it. Every time they are together, Sylvia's voice is harder, she actually seems more opaque...and Gertrude becomes more tentative.

This may be how divorces are born...wars are started...friendships are ended.

I wrote about this in my journal this morning, then I thought again of something I'd said recently that may or may not have offended. No one has said anything to me about it, which has not  stopped my mind from deciding who was wrong to take offense and why I was justified in saying what I said. I'd just started a rerun, and the words, "Agree with your adversary quickly" flew through my mind.

Clearly it was my taking the time to write down what I was seeing with Sylvia's resentment that opened my answer to me. I can, without making a big deal of it, acknowledge that I misspoke, allowing anyone who may have taken offense a chance to so say or not...his/her choice. And I can simply acknowledge that I regret it.

God is so good to me.

Thank You.

WELCOME THE PAIN

[The following is from Fr. Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation: The Art of Letting Go" -- August 3, 2012.]

‘The Welcoming Prayer’ encourages you to identify in your life, now or in the past, a hurt or an offense: someone who has done you wrong, or let you Feel the pain of the offense the way you first felt it, or are feeling it in this moment, and feel the hurt in your body. (Why is this important? Because if you move it to your mind, you will go back to dualistic thinking and judgments: good guy/bad guy, win/lose, either/or.)

Feel the pain so you don’t create the win/lose scenario. Identify yourself with the suffering side of life; how much it hurt to hurt. How abandoned you felt to be abandoned.

Once you can move to that place and know how much it hurts to hurt, you would not possibly want that experience for anybody else.

This might take a few minutes. Welcome the experience and it can move you to the Great Compassion. Don’t fight it! Don’t split and blame! Welcome the grief and anger in all of its heaviness. Now it will become a great teacher.

Thank You.