CLING TO NOTHING...SOAR

Today is the memorial service for my friend. I go with a peaceful heart...and an idea for my going-away party. And it is not morbid to have a plan, so here's mine:

1. Wrap me in a white cotton sheet and place me beneath a tree...a weeping willow would be ideal but not mandatory...for all the elements and animals to enjoy as my body returns to the earth and my Soul soars beyond.
2. When first you hear that I've left the room, say my "Thank you" for me. 
3. My friends, or those inclined to think of themselves as my friends, may...but it's not mandatory either...bow their heads and thank God for me being just exactly as I was in their lives...warts and all.
4. Somebody, somewhere think of me whenever you hear "In My Life," by the Beatles, "Bad Moon Rising," by CCR, and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
5. Anyone who wants can lift a glass of root beer in my memory...Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer would be nice but, again, not mandatory.
6. Release me, let me go.

Anything more than that is on you...and fine by  me. I'll be in no position to quibble.

Thank you.

LAUGH...OUT LOUD AND OFTEN

A friend called recently with a terrible problem. The problem has not occurred yet. But it is going to be terrible when it does occur. She is positive she will not be able to handle it plus she will be humiliated. She knows for a fact that there is no possible way to fix this because she has been thinking about it for weeks and found no answer.

So, her question: What is she to do? My answer: I don't know.

But I do know the mechanics of what we call "cleaning up the wreckage of the future." We doubt ourselves. We dread. We mentally write our own scripts. We put the other down. We push back with malice. We feel guilty. We repeat...incessantly.  

All, each and every one, is simply our attachment to our own ego-victory reasoning mind with its fear of failure riding herd. Fear demands that we get up in our heads and try to find a solution...which just breeds more fear because there is no mental solution to fear.

God's invitation is to simply let the fear fear while we remember, out loud and often: God has my back. God's hand is in this. God has already intervened in this in my behalf. Calmly repeat...remembering to love the cause for needing to repeat and to laugh, out loud and often.

Thank you.

OUR NEED IS GOD'S CALL

In the fourth century, St. Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it’s not God,” which caused me to wonder if my pushing and preaching "thank you" as a cure-all isn't just my idea of God...my hopeful idea of God. Maybe my thank you is just my panacea to keep despair at bay.

How'd you like to wake up with that thought on your mind? It tells the tale of my mood earlier this morning. As I poured my coffee, I asked God when I'm ever going to have the feeling of him in my life. This is the same question I repeatedly asked in the early '70s until a friend said that he had the feeling of God in his life...had even spoken with God...had God speak directly to him...and every time it happened, he was in a straitjacket on his way to the insane asylum. Ba-da bing, ba-da boom. 

I am so grateful for humorous memories. It was that memory that turned my mood upward, and I could remind myself of the many...literally, countless...times God has shown itself in my life. I have experienced the wonder of God...it is my memory that is faulty. 

I then picked up my "God Calling" and my Eknath Easwaran daily reader, and...why am I still surprised?...their messages are direct answers to my squirrely thoughts. 

"God Calling" today is all about in our need is God's presence..."Your need is My Call."

Easwaran reminds us how to stay tuned, or to get back in tune: "Use your mantram...Aspirin works, but take plenty of mantrams too....one relieves fever in the body, the other, the fever of self-will." Ah, the fever of self-will...an excellent reminder that all our despairing, doubting, questioning God are simply self-will...refusing to give over to the fact of God.

I also must needs remember that I am in a period of grief right now. Just because my feelings do not have my departed friend's name on them, doesn't mean that I'm now grief-free. I need to remind myself of that...often.

My grief is God's Call.

Thank you. 

BETTER THAN I'VE EVER BEEN

I come again today in my Easwaran daily reader to the story about Saint Francis of Assisi, the story about a pupil of his asking how to find perfect joy.

Francis goes through a whole rigmarole about what perfect joy is not...it's not perfect holiness and the ability to perform miracles for others, nor is it the ability to speak with birds and beasts and know all the secrets of nature. No...perfect joy, he said, is being down and out and starving, asking for help, and getting cursed, beaten and throw out in the winter night, and being able to say with love in our hearts, "Bless you in the name of the Lord."

There. That's where "agree with your adversary quickly" gets you...that's the payoff for "if someone slaps your face, turn the other cheek." That's the answer to why we cease fighting everything and everybody. Perfect joy.

We know we can feel joy through other ways and means. But perfect joy? I'm guessing that's it, The Way...because it's such a paradox, and goes against our ego's every inclination. And from my eyebrows up, I get it.

Interestingly, it seems that every year when I come to this, I'm in the midst of feeling betrayed by yet another friend and mentally composing scripts to shame her, set him straight, make them all sorry.

Here's the measure of my spiritual growth today...that is absolutely true and it cracks me up. That may well be as good as I ever get, and, that's not all, it's better than I've ever been.

So be it, said the witch.

Amen.

WHEN SELF IS THE SHIELD

There are people we will meet in life with whom we have no affinity. We are advised that of those people are some few we simply cannot afford to have in our lives. It is really important to understand that it is not often...it is rare, in fact...that we come into contact with such persons. We must never let our ego decide this point.

Somewhere in the Bible it tells of coming into a village where we are clearly unwanted...we're told to shake the dust of the place off our feet and move on. Thaddeus Golas in "Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment" warns of such people, and he, too, tells us to move on...take nothing of the other with us (i.e., resentments), detach and move on.

I believe that their very self is their shield, and in that shield is our ego's almost irresistible temptation to try to remove/destroy it...for their own good, of course, or so says our ego. The attempt to destroy inevitably hardens both their perceived need for their false protection and our ego's perceived need to destroy it.

It is the "almost" wherein our answer hides...in the "almost irresistible temptation." In that one word, almost, is our release, our momentary escape hatch...God. In that instant, we learn to turn our thoughts to God, utter our thanks, and move on, taking nothing of the other with us.

Here's where our golden rule, "Don't be as nasty as you want to be," saves us. We have our permission to, as graciously as possible, say, "You may be right," and split.

And God grins.

Thank you.

A GREAT GETTIN' UP MORNING

I've just read of the Law of Three, a metaphysical principle first articulated by G. I. Gurdjieff. The main point I read that electrified me: “It is a great mistake to try to eliminate resistance." And, instantly, came a blinding flash of the obvious: To resist resistance is resistance.

Well, it's a great gettin' up morning for me!

Because I simultaneously read and realized a brand new concept...and understood in that instant that it is likely right...I know that I'm in for a deeper level of learning.

Almost my entire spiritual foundation is based in eliminating resistance...coming from the Sermon on the Mount, "Resist not evil."  To my ego, anything I come across that I disagree with translates as evil. So, if we don't resist evil (if we let whatever comes to us flow through us), what else matters?

I have that almost-forgotten eager feeling in my stomach. Here's something that seems to expand by contradicting my very belief system, and I am really excited to learn more.

It must be of God...my past pattern on hearing a differing, possibly contradicting, view on a belief of mine has been to deny its validity first and ponder it later...then deny it. Actually, I've not been that closed minded, but I have been known to analyze my "analyzations."

This “[i]t is a great mistake to try to eliminate resistance" just...well, it kissed ME on the lips...and I am grateful.

Thank you.

WILLINGNESS...ALL THAT IS NEEDED TO BEGIN

I've been feeling like I am arm-wrestling with God. God, who knows how to win, reminded me of an old blinding flash of the obvious.

Way back when many were fighting the attempt to continue flying the Confederate flag over the South Carolina state capitol, it came to me: If those opposing the flag would stop resisting...would change their minds...they could accept the flag as simply the so-called red flag that inspired the Union to win the war over slavery. Accepting the flag releases the resistance. Having nobody and nothing to resist, the other side could then think of the flag however they chose. Both sides could let the flag wave free.

The same is true of the swastika which started out in life, among other things, as a good-luck charm, as a religious symbol found in Navajo art, as a prized symbol among many other peoples of the world.

The fight is ever in our own heads.

A flag is simply a piece of cloth; a swastika is just a sign; whatever our momentary nemesis, by our thinking, we bring the symbology, the reason to resist. By our willingness, we can change our minds...for that is all that is needed to begin.

Thank you.