ON REALIZING OUR ONENESS

The spiritual teachers I've learned from generally all emphasize the importance of realizing our oneness...oneness with all and everything. 

I was pondering oneness this morning, and I thought of my contention that whenever a disagreement arises, God's hand is in it when all parties come out the winner. Which led to the thought that if all sides win, there is no winner, there is only one. It follows then that when one person wins and the other loses, ego is the winner and all sides lose. If all sides lose, there is no loser, there is only one.

Spiritually, this makes sense. To the reasoning mind, not so much.

Clearly, to me at any rate, the reason we want to stay with the spiritual is it is peaceful. Peace usually lives where there is no rat-race competition (which is often only in our own mind). There is very little peace in the ego-powered reasoning mind for it is run by the fear that if you don't lose, I'm a loser.

Finding our own personal definition of oneness is important...probably because the idea doesn't come naturally. But it's like Willy Sutton's answer when asked why he robbed banks..."That's where the money is." We need find Oneness because that's where peace is.

Thank you.

WAS IT AN ANGEL WHO WHISPERED...

I am the meat.... There is no I and meat.

Ponder that.

I am the meat, the water and the wine. There is no I and meat and water and wine.

Ponder that.

When you realize the meaning to its fullest, let it go. Else you will clutch it to yourself...trying through self-will to keep it the same, i.e., true. Your self-will drains the cosmic truth, and it becomes just a verbal talisman...of no spiritual force or effect whatsoever.

Ponder that.

Thank you.

GRATITUDE...OUR DIRECT LINE IN TO GOD

 And only hour-by-hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment. -- Fr. Richard Rohr

Doesn't that knock your socks off? The very truth of it...followed immediately by the very impossibility of it. ("Impossibility" being code for "I don't want to.")

I do try to keep a fairly constant "thank you" running in my mind...not for anything in particular, but for everything that my eyes see, that my ears hear. If I can see it, if I can hear it, my ego Lucy can take it personally (resist it) in a heartbeat. Without gratitude I will follow her over the edge into resentment just that quick.

All we need to remember when we're given "impossible" spiritual direction for upgrading our own thoughts and/or behavior is: Get grateful. Get grateful for that impossible direction since it is gratitude that hands it over to God.

Our problem is we waste precious God time in trying to figure out how we can do that, why we can't do that, whether we should do that, all of which is Miracle-Gro to our resentment. That's Lucy's playground, there is no spiritual growth there.

He goes before us to make the crooked places straight.

Thank you.

OUR SILENT PATH OF JOY

My spiritual growth seems to be based on the bass-ackward mode. I've often thought if there wasn't a backdoor to spiritual growth, I'd still be wondering who God's mother was...my first spiritual question in Sunday school, age six.

I'm guessing that's why I love paradox and parables...I was blessed when I heard and accepted that a spiritual paradox is not an intellectual exercise. It is faith-based thus faith-realized.

Fr. Richard Rohr recently wrote: Yet all spiritual traditions *** teach that the soul must be receptive before God and simply accept love, without heroic effort. It is a path of descent more than ascent, unlearning more than learning, letting go more than any performance principle.

Now that is the essence of paradoxical truth. Apart from the descent, unlearning,  and letting go, the particularly meaningful words to me are "without heroic effort." Heroic effort is going all up in our head...examining, analyzing, dissecting. Repeatedly. We become addicted to our own thinking that way...which way does not lead to God. It leads to more thinking.

Which isn't to say we must stay away from our reasoning mind altogether...we were given it for a purpose. The purpose is just not the final word; it's maybe the cane we lean on in trudging the path we need take to get to God.

That is a path of silence. Peace, be still...and know that I am God.

Thank you.

KEEP AN OPEN HEART

All who live by the sword will die by the sword. -- Matthew 26:52

I try to remember that quote when I'm all up in my head setting yet another friend/foe, stranger/acquaintance, any politician straight. Only I drop the "s" in "sword" and think "all who live by the word will die by the word." Because that's where X percent (all?) wars start...with words. Disrespecting words.

It has taken me a long time to realize (by that I mean to do) but a way to freedom from self is not to walk away from a disagreement...it is to get closer to the person we're disagreeing with. Here's the key...we're not in it to change his mind, but to change our heart. If she is spouting trash, we do not want to change our mind in order to agree with that trash, we just don't want to mistake her for the trash. That's what happens when we take the words personally.

Trash talk is only as hurtful to us as we want it to be...as we allow it to be. It becomes our truth if we resist it. Resistance becomes Velcro-like and brings the snark closer in to us, making it our own...we are nurturing it in effect. 

Remember the old adage, "Hate the action not the actor." The same principle applies here. Detach from the words, attach to the speaker...with an open heart. If we keep an open heart, we will never again have to worry about how we're going to love our enemy, or be kind to those who despitefully use us. God flows out from our open heart and there is love.

Our open heart is God's escape hatch.

Thank you.

WE ARE SOOO BLESSED

From my eyebrows up, I get that it is necessary that we each see God as supplying all that we personally need. But getting it and doing it...living there...ah, two different things all together.

Here's my best guess: Those who get it through realization, knowing from the inside out, know they never need seek anywhere else for help of any kind. The reason that's so hard to come to is it requires a whole new level of meditation. First, we must get quiet...still that busy mind...and listen inward for as long as it takes. Set no time limits...if we hear within three minutes, we've got our connection. We shoot our "Thank you," and walk away at peace. I've experienced that many times.

However, it doesn't always take two, three or four minutes. The spiritually mature are prepared to sit quietly and listen for as long as it takes to receive that God connection. Quite literally for as long as it takes...hours and longer. I am told the fruits of this discipline are other worldly. I have never experienced that.

I consider myself more spiritually mature than not, so I am very aware that the only thing that holds me back from experiencing the long-wait connection is the old want to. If I wanted to sit quietly waiting, I would. Those who want to, do; those who don't want to, pray...for a short-cut, a special dispensation, I reckon. And that's perfectly alright.

We each come into God the way we need to. I can't think God sits in judgment of our chosen way of coming to him. Or withholds his love because we chose the wrong door to enter.

God loves. You and me. Just as we are. Are we blessed or what?

Thank you.

THE SHORTER, STRAIGHTER, EASIER ROAD

Looking back, it is beyond humbling to realize how much of my life has been ruled by slight provocations...that those have been the determiner of many of my life choices.

It is humbling but also enlightening because many of those self-provoked life choices have served a good purpose...mostly in a way I would never have picked on purpose.

Fr. Richard Rohr in his Daily Meditation today puts it perfectly: "God is humble and never comes if not first invited, but God will find some clever way to get invited."

God's clever way to get invited usually grows out of a slight provocation...like, say, my pushback at you when you're being me. That is provoking. I forget my golden rule, i.e., try not to be as nasty as I want to be, and I be as nasty as I want to be. Ah, the ego-victory cycle begins.

It is often only in looking back that we can recognize the perfect outworking of many of these self-ginned cycles. The eye opener is realizing that it was when we lost (gave in, gave over, agreed...lost) that in truth we had won. Often the other became a dearer friend, not always but even when not, we learned a priceless lesson. (I love that a priceless lesson is all about me...a good lesson is about you...interesting, blah, blah, blah.)

Never curse the quirks of God...at the end of the long and winding road, we find those quirks were for our benefit. Start out believing that, and the road is shorter, straighter, easier in the trudging of it.

Thank you.