TO KNOW AND TO SHOW: GOD'S HAND IS IN IT

A major stumbling block to spiritual growth is our inability (or refusal) to understand the difference between resignation and acceptance. We can even have an enlightening experience that shows us the difference and still falter and fight it at some point later.

Resignation is our belief that we cannot help but do that which we are doing even though we do not want to do it. Ergo...we keep doing it. Against our own good sense. Actually having a sense of self-justification for, after all, we "can't help it." So we continue doing the same-old-same-old...sometimes unto death.

Acceptance is our belief that we cannot help but do that which we are doing even though we do not want to do it. We keep doing it up to that point divine: We crash and burn. With a plea within for help to anybody, anything, anywhere, God or the devil on horseback, makes no never mind, please, please, please, please, please. We've got to stop, and we cannot.

It is that hopeless, helpless realization that we need help that slams the door on our self-determined resignation and opens the door to the hidey hole of God. That is when we turn over our own self, guts and glory, without reservation as to who gets us. Whoever takes us up and relieves us of the unendurable pain of being is welcome to us. And that is surrender.

Paradox Alert: We pretty it up later and call it acceptance because surrender sounds like we lost and acceptance sounds like we won. Both are true. Proving the truth of when both sides come out the winner, you know God's hand was in it.

The surprise is the realization that our surrender amounted to a simple exchange...our will for God's will.

The stunner is how many times during the day that we are faced with the same decision...to resist or to accept...and how often we still choose to resist.

We have ceased fighting anything and anybody. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

FEAR FEELINGS AND HOW TO LOVE THEM

My followers must be prepared not to sit on My right hand and on My left, but to  drink of the cup that I drink of. Poor world -- teach it that there is only one cure for all its ills -- Union with Me. Dare to suffer, dare to conquer, be filled with My sublime audacity. Remember that. Claim the unclaimable -- "God Calling," May 6.

When, not if, we're feeling put upon, betrayed (fascinating that "betrayed" comes up, I'd venture to bet, more often than any other fear feeling), it is for sure our first response is to analyze ways to prove our accuser wrong...either by pay back or by justifying our resistance.

Claim the unclaimable.

That means, in short, to claim the ability to say not a word, nay: THINK NOT A THOUGHT in resistance, as in by talking them over to our way of thinking. To just do that from our place of nonresistance, a.k.a., love, is our goal...and it doesn't count if we self-will our way. That's the whole purpose of being "prepared not to sit on My right...but to drink of the cup that I drink of."  

Our lesson begins when we can do that without feeling self-righteous about it.

Thank you.

THERE ARE NO MISTAKES

Too often, it seems, we are led to believe, or lead our self to believe, that we must be rid of our will...that our will is wrong period.

The problem, according to me, is not that our will is wrong, it is in the difference between going for our own will and for God's will.

If we are serious about still more spiritual growth, we are told we must try with a will or fall by the wayside. The rest of the story is made clearer by Easwaran in his today's "Words to Live By" entry: ...after years of training, our will has become an invincible ally, ready to take on the almost superhuman challenge of stilling the mind. That to me is the two wills being reconciled within.

Our will is perfectly used when we are aligning it with God's will. When we have a want that we feel is a need, we learn to let God decide which it is.

If it is a want that feels like a need then it deserves serious attention. I do that by writing about it, by talking it over with my mentor and with friends...I ponder it for awhile. If it gets through all that still feeling necessary, I go for it.

Here's the payoff: If it turns out less than wonderful, as in not at all what I wanted, I know that, too, is God's will. I figure that's what I needed to go through for God to get me on the other side of my want to where he needed me to be.

When we accept that, we rest in the knowledge that there are no mistakes.

Thank you.

IT'S ABOUT TAKING NOTHING PERSONALLY

It seems every year on May 4 when I read my "God Calling," and I see Claim big things. Claim great things that my ego Lucy does her happy dance, thinking,  I can claim a million bucks! No, a billion! 

The very next words are the ice water in our face: Claim Joy and Peace and freedom from care.

I do take comfort that joy and peace and freedom from care, after I'm reminded, are preferable to me. They're the "OMG...that's right!" in my reasoning mind world.

Here's the gold...the minute I read "claim big things" and Lucy starts her happy dance, I start laughing. There it is, the proof of my spiritual growth, puny as it seems. Back in the day I would all but weep at my shallowness, utterly disgusted at Lucy (who was my nameless ego then and the embarrassing bane of my life).

I do feel absolute freedom when I recall the blinding flash that named Lucy, that said Lucy cracks God up so why not laugh along. I can know from that very experience that is worth...well, it is priceless, who's kidding whom? 

The freedom to love and laugh at myself is joy and peace and freedom from care. God loves me (and Lucy!) so much.

Thank you.

ON RECOGNIZING GOD'S WILL

To honestly seek to do God's will requires our complete trust in the goodness of God. This is the reason we meditate, the why that we must needs discipline our own self daily to sit and wait on the Lord...to come to that basic trust. For it is a surety that the day will come when God's will looks less than wonderful...dire, ugly and let-this-cup-pass awful. When that hour comes, our ego-based reasoning mind will be out the door and down the street...and there it is. This is the reason we meditate.

It does no good to resist our resistance...that just builds it stronger because we're giving it our complete attention through our resistance. Negative resistance gets negative results.

It takes a great deal of mind-emptying to witness the opening of the gates within...we cannot think grace into consciousness. We can only welcome it once it appears...and sometimes not till afterward do we recognize it.

The reasoning mind will always fear the appearance of any unknown if on its face it looks dicey. It will accept the appearance as reality and mentally resist either by fight or flight, both of which are barriers to God's will.

The answer? Same-old-same-old. Welcome that fear, kiss it on the lips so to speak, and detach...that's what's known as unlatching the gate. Then just sit quietly with or without a smile on our face for God is on the field.

Thank you.

HEAD FOR THE DREAD!

Spiritual growth infinitesimally opens the hidey hole of God within us. More spiritual growth allows us to realize that that infinitesimal opening may be all we will ever get. With still more, we realize it is all we will ever need.

I'm convinced the first realization ever I had (or that I remember having) was the blinding flash of the obvious: Not to be a winner, not to be a loser, to Be.

I ignored that for years...and years. No, I really ignored the importance of it. I never forgot it...and it came to mind often when I was on the losing side of any "debate." Now that I'm pondering it, I don't recall thinking about it whenever I was winning.

I suspect it came to mind now because I am in the midst of a realization of powerlessness. I have all the right words, thoughts, doubts and certainties...we all do for there aren't that many. What we must accept is that we're choosing to stay in our spin cycle of fear, a.k.a., our comfort zone, praying for God to come save us from our own picture show...refusing to accept that he already has.

That is how we remain stuck in our own reasoning mind consciousness never risking to Be in God consciousness.

To Be in God consciousness is to move on up...a tish deeper. Head for the dread! Be who I be...me!

Be.

Thank you.

GOD'S PERFECT WILL...IN AN IMPERFECT SETTING

Well-grounded peeps seem to be able, with God's grace, to take their calamities of life in stride and turn them into their demonstration of faith.  -- Anonymous

That garbled quote qualifies as my security blanket. The first time ever I read that, I felt like I wanted to crawl into the book, wrap the words around me and know myself safe forever.

I had a worriting possibility come to me this morning. My ego Lucy jumped on it and was half way to hysteria before I could think the possibility all the way through.

Interestingly, just yesterday I'd been talking with a friend and mentioned that quote and how important it is to me...how important it is period. So it was right there this morning to quiet Lucy and head her back to her bunker...not to mention and give me peace.

There. My proof once again that my Father knows my needs long before I am aware that I even have such. So, if my worrit proves a reality, my Father has already got it in hand. Which means, of course, my worst case scenario may be God's will for me.

I remember and reaffirm that I would rather have God's will done in my life than my will. Always and all ways.

Thank you.