AGAIN...GET OVER OUR OWN SELF

Blinding flash of the obvious: Everything that is happening to me and in my life right this very instant is answered prayer...including this flipping computer.

Everything that is happening to me, that is happening in my life right this very instant is answered prayer...is the answer to my very own prayer as generated by my thoughts, my judgments, my fears, my praise, my pleasures.

It is what I do with this answered prayer that determines my ability to accept my life right this very instant. The more accepting I am (transparent), the more content or more giving I will feel. The less accepting I am (opaque), the nastier and needier I will feel.

My happiness is mine right Now...no matter this pitiful computer.

Thank you.

WE FIND GOD WHERE WE NEED HIM

Here's a wonderment...it is those times when things seem at sixes and sevens in my life, and fear whispers maybe I've been wrong all along, there really is no Jesus-power protecting me, no God at my back, that an ever-so-small something happens that shines a light on my bleak...and I am returned to peace.

Just this morning, for instance, I was gifted with a miracle, ever so small...teeny...in appearance, which I know will be my guide from now.

I've been caught up in I See Me (that's knowing better, doing it anyhow), and this morning my mind hopped on its what-to-do-what-to-do tricycle, and just as it was nearing top speed, I brushed by a shelf, and my main credit card fell out of I know not where. I had no idea I'd misplaced it. I do know I would have been half crazed if it hadn't found me first. Most important: God knew all that before I did.

I was lifted out of my own self-absorbed cycle by a fulfilled need I wasn't even aware of yet. It wasn't a reasoning-mind answered prayer, it was my unknown need that God answered.

The Father knows our needs. And there are no teeny miracles.

Thank you.

DENY YOURSELF...70 x INFINITY

I have a friend who says that we generally speak about five years ahead of where we are. I don't know if the five-year mark is set in concrete, but the idea is stone solid.

I just reread my blog of yesterday and thought how right on the money it was for what I needed to do and did not later that very afternoon.

I could feel myself blush as I read the paragraph: ...the answer, 'Deny yourself,' must needs start in our reasoning mind. When our ego is running a rant on another, on the various things we need to say or do to stop and/or top the perceived enemy, that's when we turn our thoughts inward.

Instead, I gave over to Lucy, my always-right-never-wrong ego, and watched almost proudly as she ran away with my mind and my mouth. It was one of those "I sure got them told!" moments...that is so regretted later.

I am beyond grateful that I've got the instruction book for what to do when wrong, and I can and will follow the instructions.

Here's the thing about spiritual growth...it's not that I choose to follow directions, it is that I have no choice if I hope to live at peace with my own self, if I ever expect to get the peace of mind I've always sought.

When wrong, promptly admit it...and then quit doing it, for Heaven's sake.

Thank you.

THE LORD SPEAKS...WE LISTEN

I dreamed I was walking with Jesus, talking with him...as opposed to listening, please note. I asked him, "What did You do and how did You do it?" Referring to when he was walking around in human clothes, doing the dailies of human life.

I wanted to know what did he do and how, especially when he was being mocked and scorned for being different from you and me. Different purely because he was preaching love...love your friends, love your enemies, love...and that is all.

And the answer that came?  "Deny yourself, deny yourself."

That is the singular, single, lone and only Way to love, to love alone. Our ego will ever legislate for itself, it cannot not. We must go beyond reason to love, and ego is of the reasoning mind...it roosts there. Cannot be budged by want to or knowing better...mainly because want to and knowing better are born and bred in the reasoning mind.

Paradoxically, the answer, "Deny yourself," must needs start in our reasoning mind. When our ego is running a rant on another, on the various things we need to say or do to stop and/or top the perceived enemy, that's when we turn our thoughts inward.

We turn to the Father within and pray, "Speak, Lord, your servant heareth." Then listen.

Thank you.

ON GOING TO GOD FOR GOD

We go to God for God and that is all...the big ah-ha is that going to God for God is learning how to not take anything personally, how to give over, how to cease fighting, how to...period.

Going to God for God and that is all is ego deflation in depth. Ego deflation in depth is not something we can self-will, but it can only begin within us, with our gut-bucket feeling of being hopelessly and helplessly at sea to our own life at the moment.

That is surrender. We feel like a quitter, a loser, only this is not a "feels like" situation. We are accepting that we are a loser in this no-win battle of our own choosing, our own life. And there it is...the ray of light in the form of hope that opens to us.

Gloriously, we are not given the answer to the problem that brought us to surrender...which is what we thought was necessary and what we had been praying for. No...we no longer need a situational answer. Our heart and mind and soul are freed, and we know peace.

This does not last.

If we are doing it right.

This is the first step in learning how to...period.

We go to God for God and that is all repeatedly and for the rest of our life. That is the nature of ego and of God...both are with us 24/7, 365...it is ours to choose which we obey. Ego is our free-will siren, God is our saving Grace.

Choose you this day whom ye will serve. -- Joshua 24:15

Thank you.

UNTIL LOVE FLOWS FORTH FROM WITHIN

My quiet time began this morning with my thinking:

Relationships changing and/or breaking up - Gertrude and Ruckus and my mentor and those moving on - initiation? 

To take nothing personally, especially the mean one, Gertrude...in my eyes, she is acting hurtfully, spitefully, I doubt her eyes see it thus. I'm betting she sees me in that light. God, thank you for opening my eyes to see aright, and to know seeing aright is with the eyes and mind of love - to know it and to show it. 

“It is the very love of Christ that now urges us.” Is that what Gertrude is showing me, the very love of Christ? Is that what I need to show Gertrude? How?

It was the thought that this might be initiation that opened me to the first time I ever heard of initiation in re spiritual growth. It was in my beloved "God Calling" of March 29: Initiation precedes all real work and success for Me.

I sailed past that sentence for many years until I read in a Joel Goldsmith book of the many initiations that we must experience in order to grow spiritually. 

My thoughts this morning led me to ponder taking nothing personally. That is an art, an act of purity not of our own self, meaning it is hard to do and impossible if we're just self-willing. It's just so many words until it is flowing forth from within.

Then the act of initiation itself bubbled up for pondering. It seems I've been thinking of the initiation we must go through as some mystic mind game that we just think our way through...up to the next level, as it were.

I realized that it matters not if it's initiation or real...if I'm experiencing it, it is real to me. Those who go through the rites of any initiation must do that which is presented to them in order to either be accepted or to move on up to another level.

Initiation or not, we must walk through the  pain, feel it, detach from our own resistance to the act of loving it...for this, too, is God.

Hoo, boy.

I am grateful that you've got my work cut out for you, Lord.

Thank you.

LIFE'S LESSONS AND GOD'S WILL

Learning life's lessons...then doing life's lessons...ah, there it is, the sum and substance of life itself.

Learning is the easy part, but we don't find that out until we've learned, which leaves doing as the hard part, but that's only if we go at it solo-powered.

My life's lessons are few, and looking back I feel like I knew them the minute I first heard them. Basically, they are: take nothing personally; try not to be as nasty as I want to be; pray "Thank You" to everything...and mean it.

It is the offshoots of life that keep us tethered, according to me, and by that I mean tethered to our desire for still more spiritual growth. Every hesitation, stumble and/or fall is our opportunity to seek still more spiritual growth.  

A basic offshoot of mine in learning bloomed when I became willing to show my ignorance...which is just asking for help, for another's viewpoint. The fear that then they'll know I don't know, and I'll look the fool I got to kiss on the lips and know it for just another sliver of gold in my learning process.  

And that leads to another offshoot, i.e., learning to view down as up...which is the short form of the lesson that God's view is the mirror image of our view. I accepted that as fact when I realized the worst thing that could ever happen to me had turned out to be my precious pearl beyond price, a gift of grace and God...and I use that as my yardstick for the less-than-wonderful events of life today.

Know and show that God's will is always love...there, that's the root of life's lessons.

Thank you.