WHAT FREEDOM FEELS LIKE

I read Fr. Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation this morning and identified with: "One of Jung's foundational ideas is that mere words and concepts do not give us access to the unconscious. *  *  *  Analysis, if it remains dominant, is merely a control mechanism of the ego."

And then I read my God Calling and saw why I identified with Rohr's statement. I had written a note some years back that fear of letting go of what my reasoning mind has not yet resolved keeps me stuck in the past.

That was true then, it is true now. The great leap-to-your-feet-and-shout-hallelujah fact is that without resistance to that fact, we are freed from the compulsive need to analyze...to analyze even that fact!

Knowing, or rather accepting, our truths about ourselves is the sky-light for our Soul. Accepting that I over-analyze has freed me to over-analyze in which case today I rarely over-analyze. With a little help from my friends (and foes!, my real angels),  I keep a clearer eye on myself, my motives, my perceived persecutors, my me...I just don't analyze us endlessly.

I'm fairly certain that is what has given my intuition its voice. My blinding flashes of the obvious are free now to step right up and out...to state their case as it were.  I no longer have to analyze them unto uselessness.

There. That is what freedom feels like.

Thank you.

PRAISE IS OUR WELCOME MAT

Things I try to remember:

The first step in avoiding a resentment is to not respond in kind. To respond in kind to another's jibes, slights and snubs is to become the other's puppet...we detach from our sacred self and attach to the other's ego self. Or, bluntly, we become a mule for someone else's anger.

Whenever we think "I can't," substitute "I choose not to." Because we can...with God, all things are possible.

Whenever I'm feeling proud of myself...or of another, for that matter...I substitute "I am pleased." (The very word "proud," through no fault of its own, has been co-opted by ego and usually is met by resistance.)

The path to happy is through praise...the road to a head full of free is through praise...the way to a faith that works is through praise.

Praise is our welcome mat...always out, always stepped on, still welcoming.

Thank you.

CLOSE ENOUGH TO PERFECT. FOR NOW....

I awoke this morning knowing I need to upgrade my attitude, to turn my thoughts away from the bullets I seem to be receiving and realize them for the daisies they are...if I choose them to be.

I have experienced pure peace...we experience peace whenever we choose to, actually. It is our thoughts that keep us from living there. It becomes reasonably easy after awhile to train the mouth to stay shut, to keep the eyeballs stationery as opposed to rolling in contempt at his remark or her idea or them in general.

The thoughts, though, are a different witch to burn. They are ever on, and if, at the moment, there is no him/her/them to focus on not rolling our eyes at, our thoughts can and will attack inside. Spiritual growth is not the only inside job...self destruction is, too.

When we allow our thoughts to go to that place of either 100% well or 100% not, we allow our poor, pitiful, put-upon-me victim to slash, lash and burn us at will...we have invited our victim to be the god of our own understanding. It will never say no to that invite.

Just acknowledging that process has quieted my inner churning. There. I have done my part in upgrading my attitude...by reminding me I'm still crazy after all these years and that's close enough to perfect for me. For now.

Thank you.

BE WARY OF THE OVERLY SCRUPULOUS

We seek still more spiritual growth not for knowledge but to experience...to experience the Father within us.

Without the experience of God within, we do not have God, we have eyebrows-up knowledge...and that is all.

To know only from the eyebrows-up encourages the assumption that knowledge is sufficient. Proving yet again that assumptions are dangerous because they are so often wrong. According to me, knowledge to God is the least of all the human attributes.

Those who rely primarily on their brain power rarely trust their intuition...God's perfect hidey-hole. They are of the dual mindset...scrupulous in their belief in black/white, right/wrong, exaggeration to any degree is a bald-faced lie. Resting in the letter of the law leaves no room for inner expansion...no pathway to God's hidey-hole.

Be wary of the overly scrupulous.... -- "The Cloud of Unknowing"

Thank you.

THE ROOT IS LOVE AND LAUGHTER

Life is a never ending discovery of self, according to me. The hard lesson learning is our need for immediate detachment from our discoveries. Immediate detachment means the instant we receive an insight, by our thank you, we return it to God to do with as he wills. That can only benefit us.

Usually, however, when we discover a new piece of our self, this enchants our ego.  Regrettably, the ego will quickly see the need for improvement, overwhelming us with the double-edged urge to either improve the improvement or to flail in self-pity because we still are not enough...to our reasoning mind. All of which leads to the want (masquerading as a need) to find somebody to blame...usually our poor, pitiful, put-upon parents. Or God.

I am convinced that the only way to ever live at peace within our self is through forgiveness. To learn the art of forgiveness is to learn the art of love and laughter...of and at our own self at first. Then with anybody and everybody we come in contact with during our day.

We can just smile and keep on walking and have a good day. I'm convinced that's the root of forgiveness.

Thank you.

ABUNDANCE

[The following is a reprint of my blog of November 23, 2008.]

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.  John 10:10

I find it interesting that whenever I come across that quote, my thoughts usually go directly to winning the lottery…to me winning the lottery, in truth.

The fact is, the quote specifies having life, having life more abundantly. Which is so much more than winning the lottery. Because life encompasses all…health, wealth, wisdom, joy.

To me, then, to have life and to have it more abundantly, is to walk in the perfect world of God consciousness. That is the proof of the promise that all my problems can be solved by spiritual principles.

This may be a two-pronged miracle for me: 1) that I do believe this, considering how often I fail to prove it; and 2) that I prove it at all…and I do, and I do.

Thank you.

ON TRANSCENDING THE REASONING MIND

There are so many good and true people who are attached (and resistant) to the way they first were taught about God...Jesus being their usual whipping boy. They cannot seem to loose it and let it go. The single best instruction I ever received...and took...was to find a God of my own understanding.

I accepted that instruction without question, and I am still building the God of my own understanding. When I read or hear a Truth that transcends my reasoning mind, I try to let it prove itself out. I can't "pass it on" until I have experienced it for true in my life.

That's exactly how I came to trust a "blinding flash of the obvious." A blinding flash of the obvious is being able to find an inner authority that we can trust, a voice larger than our own--and yet it is our own voice too. We must learn from the inside out. God's voice comes from our deepest depths.

I used many different sources in building that definition...Rohr, Easwaran, Goldsmith, Erma Bombeck, F.X., Arty...a whole raft of 'em. I know I am blessed to have so many friends, known and unknown, to whom to listen and learn. So that what I pass on, I know to be true to me...I have experienced it.

Thank you.