WHAT IF OUR STUMBLES ARE GOD'S GRACE?

In learning to realize the spiritual meaning in every daily happening, it is necessary to turn our thoughts back to God and the ways of God repeatedly. Our ego tells us we're getting nowhere if we err...no, WHEN we err. The ego never needs us to remind ourselves of its availability...it is there 24/7. The pearl beyond price is so is God. That's our only choice in reality: I just goofed...do I stay with ego and CYA or go with God and trust in grace?

We so often feel we're getting nowhere when we forget once again that our decision was made to live a turned over life. Our ego is right there always and ever to use our missteps and forgetfulness to assure us that God clearly is not there, but that it is.

God is there, too, but we need to make it known...to our ego and to ourselves. Our "thank you" is sufficient according to Meister Eckhart and that has become my truth.

It was Jung who said “where you stumble and fall, there you find pure gold.” I'm guessing that it is in the stumbling, the falling, that we finally surrender. We let go of our ego's certainty that "I can do it myself" or, more likely, our niggling fear that we should be able to do it ourselves. What if it is our falls that are the grace of God...bringing us home?

This morning I asked the Lord to sit shiva for my ego...or did the Lord promise that? I don't know, but I felt comforted beyond measure. I'm even more comforted in the knowledge that sitting shiva for my ego is going to take "seventy times seven."

Thank you.

ON DIVORCING OURSELVES FROM OUR EGO SELF

The less you are bound by likes and dislikes, the more clearly you will be able to see the core of everyone, even in people who cause trouble...[there is] a phrase for difficult people: 'A lash in the eye.' ...this lash in the eye is an opportunity for learning the skills that matter most in life: patience, forgiveness, and freedom from likes and dislikes. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," August 13.

We not only need to divorce ourselves from our own opinions, we need to divorce ourselves from our self...our ego self.

When we know someone is judging us adversely...wrongly...we need to learn to think to ourselves, "That is not me...has nothing whatsoever to do with me. But if she needs to think it, let her...it is not mine to correct; if he needs to say it, let him...it is not mine to correct."

We can know and affirm daily that it is not us that is being judged. It is her interpretation, his out picture, her need that s/he is judging. We do not touch it, do not respond in kind to any of another's adverse words or actions else we will own the mistake...we will make it ours. (Here's where our mental "thank you" can save us a lot of angst...just keep repeating it with love in mind. It doesn't do us a lot of good to think, "Thank you, God, for this no good rotten so-and-so and his/her lies." That's just trying to have our grace and ego, too.)

When we try to correct another's mistaken judgment, that gives that judgment reality to us, and we react in anger unto resentment. It is in that itch to fight that we make our decision based on self that later (in the next instant) places us in a position to be hurt...and we lose every time by the deeper resentment that follows.

The less you are bound by likes and dislikes, the more clearly you will be able to see the core of everyone, even in people who cause trouble.

Thank you.

GOD HAS NO TIMETABLE

...later I realized that all may experience God, if so be they truly seek Him rather than seek that which may come through Him. -- Joel Goldsmith, "The Heart of Mysticism," at p. 1018.

I have had to accept that the reason my living daily by spiritual principles has been so difficult for me is purely and simply because my ego is so firmly entrenched. Yet, we cannot, by our self-determined efforts alone, uproot ego. I'm convinced that it is only through seeking God alone that ego is derailed...go to God for God, that is all.

I think of the promise, somewhere in the Bible, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you." I often wonder if  the last half of that sentence wasn't put there to tempt our ego. For years, it was nearly impossible for me to read that sentence without the last half springing forth with bright lights, party hats and bells a-ringing. "Seek ye first" kept getting lost in the glitter of the add-ons...and that can still take me unawares.

The kicker is learning that it is the ego that entraps us in trying to go to God for God and that is all...the key word is "trying." It is in the trying that we've thrown in with ego...trying to do His work for Him. It is not for us to wrest God unto ourselves, and God is not available on demand.

As Saint Augustine prayed, "Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou will." That's the ultimate security in living a turned over life, an essential if we are ever to live ego-free...if only for a day, or even momentarily! Because every moment if God-realized counts...God has no timetable, nor is He on the clock.

Thank you.

MY PEACE, THE HEALER

[The following is a (reworked) reprint of my blog of August 26, 2011.]

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. - Matthew 6:14, 15

Unforgiveness becomes our God, our entire focus. That very unforgiveness invites all the garbage, the attack tools, that resentment is. Attack invites counter-attack…a.k.a., karma.

Forgiveness dissolves anything between our Father within and us, leaving only peace…here and now. Forgiveness is a part of My peace, the dissolver of karma.

Thank you.

DO GOOD AND FORGET ABOUT IT

"No good deed goes unpunished." I have no idea who first said that, but the first time I heard it, I laughed. The second time, and thereafter, I wholeheartedly agreed...because it surely seemed to be true.

Now, however, I've come to believe that it is only true when the ego involves itself in the deed.

A good deed done with no thought of self is neither punished nor unpunished. It is momentary in the doing...that's all. Its effects may last for a short or long while for the receiver, but for the doer, no. It is finished.

Now, the test: Can we do good and forget about it? Can we even imagine really doing a good and honorable thing and not feeling ownership in any way? Ah...I'm feeling resistance. The reasoning mind's "Yes, but...." has joined with ego and is pushing back. Which proves the truth of my last thought as I drifted off to sleep last night; namely, that our ego is the root of all our woes...perceived, interpreted or imagined.

Yet, the answer remains the same as when first we learned it....ego deflation at depth is our necessary work if we are to know spiritual peace...or peace of any kind in fact.

It may be that ego is God's gift to us as our cross to bear. That which is necessary to us to keep us on the right road back to God. The necessary part being our chipping away at ego in order for us to get to God.

Sounds complicated enough to be of God, doesn't it?

Thank you.

BEYOND IMAGINING...AND IT IS GOOD

It is I, be not afraid. -- somewhere in the Bible (at the place in the New Testament where the Main Man is walking on water toward the fishermen in the boat, and they are some kind of scared when they see It coming.)

Those six words, it is I, be not afraid, are all we need to remember whenever our "worst" fear looms large. Our worst fear being whatever fear looms at the moment...a mouse in the house or bankruptcy closing in or a questionable mammogram. Makes no never mind...if fear is the response, it only grows if we start trying to talk ourselves out of it...make light, pooh-pooh, pretend it away...all are fertilizer to fear.

The instant fear inches its way into our consciousness what we need to do is exactly the opposite of what we want to do. We want to get shut of it, to close it out; we need to see it more clearly, to invite it out into the open, to look it in the eye, and to say to ourselves, out loud or silently, "It is I, be not afraid."

We are in the process of realizing our fear as God (or our good) appearing in the form of a mouse just to get our attention. Let's face it, we can believe in that which we can see, thus fear...the unseen, not so much. So as a starter, we say this to build our trust, to help us come to believe. If nothing else, it takes our minds off the mouse...and that in itself is a reason for trying it.

It is the holding on to this promise, repeating it repeatedly, that lifts our consciousness into the spiritual realm, away from the reasoning mind's fearful imagining. What we find in the spiritual realm is beyond imagining...and it is good.

Thank you.

TO LIVE IN GOD'S POCKET

It seems to me that spiritual intuition, coming from our center, is soft and brings peace. Intellectual understanding, born in our head, is hard and brings doubt. It takes the spiritually intuitive flash and breaks it down in order to be explained...or to be questioned, not provable or proven false.

To live in our head requires us to question spiritual intuition which is not explainable, and all the spiritual books, writings, materials will not...cannot...impart spiritual realization. They can, however, point the way, and as such surely are necessary to the rank beginners in this world like you and me. The spiritually inclined may or may not receive realization, but true seekers keep seeking.

As we come to rely on our intuition, it manifests as our good...even/especially when it arrives looking less than wonderful. That may well be how we come to trust paradox...it makes no reasoning-mind sense but it proves to be our good. Our head denies what our core welcomes.

The intellectually inclined may or may not receive the same understanding, but if and when they do, they stop and examine it. They pull it apart until their own mind proves its truth to their satisfaction which means they have their own interpretation of it. It is now an intellectual point that comforts the mind and leaves the heart and soul out of the mix. There is neither spiritual comfort nor spiritual growth there.

Those of us who are intellectually inclined and spiritually seeking get to make ourselves available to still more spiritual growth every day in every way. We will examine, will pull apart, will doubt and question...and in that very process, if we are willing, we begin to open. Open to the process of our inner self coming to blossom...not knowing when, where or how It will come, but accepting It as ours and preparing for It.

God-realization might not come in this lifetime since God has no timetable...It may happen the next instant having taken seed three or thirty lifetimes ago. To trust that we live in God's pocket NOW...always and ever NOW...is all we need.

Thank you.