AIM OUR THOUGHTS TOWARD GOD

Yesterday I talked with a lady who shared some bad news. Her health has not been good, and an even worse diagnosis has been given to her...her chronic pain will increase and there is no cure. 

My heart hurt for her, but I hurt not for her diagnosis, not for her increasing pain...I hurt for her resistance to the fact. 

We talked, and she said she was just not ready yet to "find the gold" in this, not ready to say "thank you," not ready in fact to walk away from her fear and her dark fantasies. Who can't understand that? I, in my reasoning mind, completely understand it, can even justify taking an hour to wallow in the fear and the dark. 

The trouble, of course, is that when we give into the darkness of fear, there is no assurance when we can come back from there...or even IF we will.

When we give permission for our ego to link up with our fear, we have jumped back into our quagmire...which is self, simply self. Where we are powerless to extract ourselves on our own and our fear tells us we shouldn't have to. Where we are led to understand that if there were a God, we wouldn't be here in the first place. Which leaves us all alone again...naturally.

The answer is so simple that it's no wonder we overlook it...it's no wonder we can think we're not ready "yet" to find our gold, to say our thank you. The answer is beyond our reasoning mind. It is beyond common sense. The answer is: Welcome this for it is of God. Our reasoning mind will never get us there...cannot get us there, to God. 

Our illness, my friend's illness, may be incurable, may be progressive, but in God's care we can live happily with it. We just aim our thoughts toward God. Our mind is the bow, thank you is the arrow...aim high and let fly. 

Thank you.

YES, BUT...OH RATS

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…. - Matthew 6:13

Thank you for leading us not into temptation, but delivering us from ego. - My blinding flash of the obvious this morning.

I'm reminded of the answering machine message of a friend: A call comes in, the machine picks up, and his message is, "It is not them."

I love that sooo much. I love it because it is applicable every single time I am peeved at her, him, you, them...it is not them. "'Be not afraid, it is I,' saith the Lord."

This morning I am right and they are wrong, and their wrongness has unintended consequences which I am going to put into motion, and then they'll be sorry.

Thank you for leading me not into temptation, but delivering me from ego.

Thank you.

PS  Your job's not done, God..."Yes, but" just popped up. :>)

RESIST NOT EVIL...HAVE A LAUGH INSTEAD

We are told that we must fight evil at every turn…yet the Sermon teaches us to “resist not evil.” 

I’ve come to my own understanding of those seemingly opposite views. First,  I have dropped the very word “fight” from my word selection. ..also “resist.” Fighting and resisting, to me, are open calls for my ego to gear up, take charge, put the old self on parade.

The act of fighting evil is to not dwell in my temptations’ hidey holes. I read once that we can't hate that which we honestly understand. That seemed reasonable to me so I do seek to understand the temptation, be it person or thing. The trick is to understand it without inviting it in to do my thinking for me. 

I had an example just the other day of a temptation singing my song. An acquaintance had stepped on my toes, but I know the drill. I know to not react in kind, so my behavior was excellent…my ego, however, was incensed. I consciously ran the scene over in my mind, came to an understanding of what I believed the acquaintance was about, and let her off the hook. Said, "Thank you, God," and immediately the next word in my mind was, “but….” I knew without going one thought further that I had not let her off the hook. That “but” was my justification for continuing to chew her a new one in my mind...for building a resentment, furnishing it, living there.

All that afternoon, I tried different ways to understand her so that I could get free of me. Each and every time that I felt free and said my thank you, “but” followed. It became fairly funny, truth to tell.

I finally called a friend, told her the story and in the talking, I saw me and realized what had me hooked. I was able finally to let the acquaintance walk free in my mind.

So “fighting evil at every turn” pretty much boils down to “see our ego at every turn.” It is detaching from its siren song that sets us free. There. That is resist not evil...become transparent to it and let it flow on through. Get a giggle out of it while we’re at it.

Thank you.

HUG, KISS, LET GO

A friend was once struggling with the fact that her teenage kids were leaving home. She said that she finally realized what she must do: "I get to hug them and kiss them and let them go. That is all." 

Over the years, I've used that on my resentments, my defects, my judgments, whatever. Instead of nurturing them through guilt, hate and shame (that ugly little voice in my ear saying, "You should be able to forget about this, turn this over, let this go."), I consciously and out loud say, "I hug you, I kiss you, I let you go." 

I wonder why it still amazes me that giving over gets...peace, love and inner joy. That may well be the only way of knowing true peace, love and inner joy.

We can pray for them till our face falls off, until we give them, we're just spitting out words. To consciously give...what? Reprieve? Father forgive me, but forgiveness still sounds sanctimonious to me, but that's it of course. What it is is to forget that which hurt us, peeved us in the first place. Try doing that on your own with no help from a higher power.

It's like a little kid going to her mom to kiss her boo-boo, make the hurt go away; indeed, the hurt goes away. And the kid has just kissed the thing himself to save a trip inside to his mom...and the hurt went nowhere. Not till Mom kissed it, was it made it better. 

We hug it, we kiss it, we let it go. In short, we give it to God…and our hurt goes away.

Thank you.

GOD'S OWN GPS

I watched the Beatles' 50th celebration on TV last night and was shocked to remember that JFK was assassinated less than three months before the Beatles came to us via Ed Sullivan. Oh, the excitement! That November of 1963 I did not believe I would ever smile again.

No idea why, but I'm reminded of a song of the '60s that had the line, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

My big-time wow was learning that all it takes to grow younger is for me to get over myself. And it's true...won't keep the grey hair from growing, won't stop the wrinkles from coming, but it will stretch our minds which is where younger lives. We stay active and positive because we are seeking to give...to give to you, not to get for me. It requires us to ever be aware that our happiness depends on your happiness.

The giant hook, of course, is that we cannot do that on our own.

I cannot possibly be more concerned for your happiness than I am for my own just by deciding to do that no matter how right I believe that to be. I know this for an absolute fact because I've tried it so many times and failed so consistently. The end result was me cursing total strangers, kicking the dog (not really...maybe wanting to), just angry. Does resentful ring a bell?

How can having such high-flown objectives not be God's will? It's that splat of ourselves all over the sidewalk that awakens us to the fact that though that may well be God's will, God has a different way of getting there. His own GPS so to speak. We need to follow his guidance...or it's just another self-determined objective, our own self-will, which will run us ragged yet never get us where we need and even want to be.

God's will and our will may be the exact same thing...but we must seek and follow God's will to get there. 

Thank you.

THE ART OF LETTING GO

Pilgrimage to the place of the wise is to find escape from the flame of separateness. - Jalaluddin Rumi

Refuse to lose...the battle cry of the loser; strive to win...the battle cry of the ego. Both fear of losing and obsession with winning are one and the same...just another hidey-hole for separateness.

“Live to fight another day” can be upgraded to “live to give another day.”

Live to fight is a self-determined objective with our goal being self, all things self...protection, will, image. Live to give is of God with others as its goal. It is important to know and to note: It must be all others. Except just one anything, that exception becomes our god, and we've fallen back into the fight mode.

All of this came to me this morning when I read a note I had written in God Calling: "1986 - my actions are good; my thoughts and fantasies are not - to turn my anger/attack nature over to God." 

There's the proof that God can and will if sought...because I do what I'm writing about the majority of the time today. Sometimes that's only 51 percent, but that is a majority. Unfortunately, when I'm in the 49 percent, I am 100 percent there. But that is more than I could ever have done on my own...and it keeps me aware of the fact that I am a rank beginner still in the art of letting go.

Thank you.

GO TO GOD FOR GOD...THAT IS ALL

Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy? This question has been making the rounds for decades now. The tripwire is when we answer, "Both!"  That is the point where "right" becomes the mud that we pick up and sling in our own face. To have both requires someone else to be wrong. Proving to him his wrongness and letting others know not how right we were but how wrong she was becomes our obsession. 

It is our reasoning mind that clings to the fantasy of being right and happy. It is the reasoning mind that fights the reality that agreeing with our adversary quickly brings peace of mind.  

I am convinced that we will not accept the reality over the fantasy because the fantasy is so present...here, now. The reality, peace of mind, takes time...God's own time. 

First, we must be willing to change our minds, then we must turn to God to do that! We swear if we could change our minds just like flipping a switch, we'd do it. Imagine the surprise of learning that when we discipline ourselves to first go to God, it really is like flipping a switch. 

I don't have to imagine that trying for "right and happy" is a short cut to misery, self-pity and a sense that something is wrong...which, of course, leads to trying to find someone to blame.

When we learn to go to God for God...and that is all...we can and will be right and happy for we will have ceased fighting anything and anybody.

Thank you.