LOVING THE UNLOVABLE

By love may He be gotten and holden, by thought never. -- "The Cloud of Unknowing"

We learn Truth, we accept it and in the acceptance think we know Truth. No. We have taken but a single step toward our knowing Truth, it being a given it is the most important step.

Living Truth, however, living free of our reasoning mind dictates, our ego-victory drive, our very self is our Soul work.

It seems the minute we realize that, our reasoning mind gears up, already twisting, turning, trying to figure out how to...how to not think our way free by thinking about it.

Actually, the way free is simple, the doing not so much. For the answer is love...whatever we are thinking, feeling, doing, being...love it more. According to Joel Goldsmith, "We need only somehow to increase our capacity to love."

This is especially true (and counter-intuitive) when we find our thoughts in a dark place, and we're feeling scared, repulsed, angry...resistant, in a word. The way out is to open our minds to the possibility of loving it. Our "thank you" will head us in the right direction, toward an open (non-resistant) mind.

Love is the highest and holiest action because it always contains that which is not love within itself, it always and ever moves to include the unloving. -- Thaddeus Golas, "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment"

Thank you.

THE ETERNAL ANSWER...LOVE MORE

We must learn to listen with an unhindered ear, divorced from all of our opinions, all of our preconceptions, all of our fears of the enemy.  Listen...and learn that our enemy is any person, place or thing that we are resisting at the moment. Listen...and learn to love our enemy as our self.

Once we learn that, we understand that the only thing that stands between the Power within us and loving our enemy is our self, our ego-victory self.

I believe it is true that we are born with just two emotions, i.e., love and fear, and all else stems from those two. If that is true, then why not choose love? (For that matter, even if it's not true, why not choose love?) Make our decision always and ever to choose not just to react with love but to act with love as our starting point.

This is a lifetime job and nothing is or can be more fulfilling. We reap what we sow, a.k.a., what goes around comes around; ergo, we send fear, we receive not good...we send love, we receive good. 

It is the love that we send out that returns to us, filling any self-perceived lack full to overflowing...with twelve bushels full left over.

Thank you.

WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN?

My blinding flash of the obvious on awakening: I am wrapped in angel wings...thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen.

My angels guard you day and night and nothing can harm you. You would indeed thank Me if you knew the darts of frets and evil they turn from you. ("God Calling," June 5)

Here's a thought, a scenario: What if those "unknown darts of frets and evil" turned from us are our unanswered prayers?

What if our deepest desire, our oh-please-God-please prayer, is the one thing God knows would do us and all we love harm beyond measure?...and he protects us from it by denying it to us?

And what if we were able, through sheer self will, to get our self-determined objective, overcoming all obstacles, trampling all resistance, we got it. And after we got it, we thanked God and told all that clearly it was God's will because we had overcome so much until we got it.

What if it turned to dross a week after we got it? Would we ever think that all our woes were the result of our using our freewill to achieve the result we prayed for? Of course not. Chances are we would choose to take that as proof that there is no God, else he wouldn't have done this to us.

We are the source of all our woes. It may well be that the only thing standing between us and all our gifts is our self-will. If we will but turn that self will over to a power greater than ourselves, we can and will know that we are wrapped in angel wings and we will know peace.

We can fight no more forever, just like Chief Joseph.

Thank you.

GOD'S IMPERFECT MESSENGER

I take comfort in the fact that we are all God's imperfect messenger. The trick is to mentally move that comfort from me alone to you, too. To you when I see you as wrong and your wrong is butting up against my right. That's when you, as God's imperfect messenger, get a tish hazy in my mind.

We live in a world of personal prejudices...that's probably the human condition. The road to peace of mind, though, is to quit excusing our prejudices because "that's the human condition," and get on with doing our spiritual growth exercises. Quit talking, start walking.

I'm reminded of this because of a conversation I had just yesterday with a friend about one of my current bugaboos, a whole class of people, unfortunately. I heard myself saying that I could not love them as a whole...I could only love each one of them separately and personally as s/he came into my mind. Which is true, but I was brought up short when the thought occurred that I need to practice that on those who are a lot closer to me...as in, friends who tick me off. Unfriendly acquaintances whose actions I take personally. Purifying my thoughts, divorcing myself from my own opinions...that's where the spiritual work comes in.

Turning within to God with a full expectation of peace, love and joy flowing forth toward Gertrude who stepped on my toes...really hard and I know she did it on purpose...is a lot different from thinking of, say, Rush Limbaugh...who steps on my toes with every word he speaks...and imaging him with roses and rainbows around his being. Which I've never done in my life, I race to add, but that's the sense of it all.

Rush, too, is God's imperfect messenger...not one whit different than I am. Now that is humbling...which is a good start.

Thank you.

DO SOMETHING ABOUT SOMETHING

It is a fact that "any action, no matter how small, will help us to overcome deadly procrastination." Which reminds me of advice I got some 40 years ago...words that at the time I thought were utterly inane: "Just do something about something." I now call those words golden.

It is a fact that any action, that is any action, will break the seemingly iron-bound grasp of procrastination. The only reason that is so hard for procrastinators to believe is, not believing, they refuse to move.

We go back to the same old, same old: Feel the fear and do it anyway. For that is all procrastination is...fear. The smart thing is to accept that and move...do something about something. But, no. We'd rather hear that, doubt it, think about it, analyze it, ponder it...i.e., do nada...and let guilt hover over us, paralyzing us further.

That's why the reasoning mind needs spiritual help. The reasoning mind is a God-given tool, but on its own, it can do some serious harm...to us and to anybody around us.

We thank God we've learned to thank God, then pull up a spiritual passage to lift our thoughts out of self. A couple of goodies: "Came to believe that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf." "He performth that which is given me to do."

Actually, any thought of praise will turn our thoughts away from guilt...then we are free to do something about something.

Thank you.

NOT MINE TO WORRY ABOUT...NOTHING IS

At some point, it occurs to us that the way to remember that which we seek we already have is to start giving away that which we are seeking...love, money, understanding, patience. If we will follow the natural line of thought, it becomes relatively easy to comprehend giving as a receiving action. A quick and easy reminder is always: You got to give a hug to get a hug.

Which pretty much explains away begging prayers as in, "Please give me X, Y and/or Z." Our need is to open our ears to hear, our eyes to see...we already have X, Y and Z. Many mystics teach that prayer is silent receptivity. Some also maintain that there is only one legitimate prayer and that is to attain God.

I get that...very possibly from my eyebrows up only, but I question it not at all. The way I walk it is to simply acknowledge God in everything that comes to me by a simple "Thank you," and if I don't feel the thank you, I let God know.

Just this morning, I got up and was faced with a couple problems, neither of my making, neither of which I know how to fix. I was UN-happy. So I said to the Lord, "You know the problems here, and you know how to fix them. You got the power, Lord...use it. Don't let it go to waste! That's what you got it for."

[Sidebar: There's a passage in “God Calling” where God tells us to “command” him...that he is ours to “command.” Since I started doing that, I have had A-MAZ-ING results. Just saying.]

Then I went about doing what I do. I kept reminding myself to listen...stop, shoot a "thank you," listen, move on. I know I will get a clue, if not an entire answer, as to where to start. It is not mine to worry about...nothing is. And I am grateful...which beats unhappy for sure!

Thank you.

QUIT THINKING, START DOING

I awoke this morning with this prayer in my thoughts:  If I get to choose between a healed knee and a healed relationship with my friend, I choose a healed  relationship with my friend.  Thank you. Amen.

I went into my quiet time and was led to the following:

It is not the avoidance of problems that makes you [free], but a daily holding of the problem, straight on (while not letting it hold onto you)—and finding a resolution in the much deeper and more spacious 'peace of Christ, which will guard your heart and your mind.' (Fr. Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, November 27, 2013)

Then the next:

In personal relationships, we all get troubled when we do our best to be kind to someone and that person treats us with hostility or ill will in return. This is common in life today, and most of us quickly reach the end of our tether. 'I don't want to see you again,' we say. 'I want to get as far away from you as possible!'

All of us have these human impulses. But that is just where the Gita or Jesus or the Buddha would say, 'No. That is the way of the timid. That is the way of the weak.' Stick it out: not by becoming a doormat, not by blindly obeying whatever command the other person gives you, but by resolutely refusing to hurt anyone no matter how much you have been hurt. (Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," June 1)

There...that's exactly how to find the spiritual resolution I pray for...which is certainly not news. What I love so much is that I prayed as if I didn't have a clue what to do and was immediately led to the answer which, let's face is, is the same old, same old. Boiled down it's simply, quit thinking and start doing; i.e., love and laugh.

As my friend Natalie says, "God's cute."

Thank you.