GOD KNOWS MY NEEDS

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of October 27, 2013/]

Remembering my years of living defensively, I am overwhelmed with joy and gratitude that, to a great degree, I have been moved from that place. And it all began when I learned: We go to God for God and that is all; we seek God for God's sake...not for love, not for power, not for prestige, not for profit.

I can choose to walk free in my own head today...except, of course, when I stub my toe and my ego declares it your fault, and I go haring off down that trail.

The good news is that today I know that, too, is doing it right. Why else would I keep digging for still more spiritual growth? I know this to be true because every time I've gotten to a place within where I feel safe, secure, protected, I "stub my toe and my ego declares it your fault, and I go haring off down that trail."

Only when I become willing to and do acknowledge my initial part in the stubbing of my toe, do I realize I've grown just a tish deeper spiritually.

God knows my needs...my wants, not so much...there, again, a matter for pure gratitude.

Thank you.

IT'S THE DOING IT THAT COUNTS

[The following is a reprint of my post of November 29, 2012.]

"You need not aspire for or get any new state. Get rid of your present thoughts, that is all." -- Ramana Maharshi

Now, there's good advice, which, like most good advice, is utterly useless if we're not ready to hear it. Until we open our mind, release any resistance and ask within ourselves, "How?," those are just so many pretty words.

But I bring good news! Once I was ready to actually do it, to actually get rid of my present thoughts (because my present thoughts were nattering me, and worse, I was starting to believe them), I began using what I'd been taught. I had been taught that my reasoning mind was God's tool to use, not mine. So don't try to turn it off, turn it over...to God to do with as He knows best for me.

One of the tools I'd been given, in order to turn it over, is: Whenever an ugly looks like it's heading for me, think "thank you" first, then "It is I, be not afraid." The ugly is I, my gift. I accept it as such and turn that sucker around as many ways as I need to until I find the sliver of gold. It is there...find it, and that sliver will grow into a blessing beyond our reasoning mind's comprehension.

What we most need to remember is that the reasoning mind cannot get us there. We must go beyond reason to love...the very first "thank you" turns our dread into love, then into acceptance, then into non-resistance...with which we give over to God who does His thing. Not our problem any longer.

This really isn't that hard to remember...it's the habitual doing it that takes some time.

Thank you.

THE PROOF IS IN OUR ACTIONS

The Father knows our needs.

I repeat that often and often and often. I know it...sometimes maybe only from my eyebrows up do I know it, but then on that rare occasion I know it...ah, then it feels imbued in me.

Which is causing me pause today. This month of May, I am having house guests up the gump-stump, and I am not a house-guest-welcoming person. I quickly add, my past experience is that after a guest is here, we've had a wonderful time bonding, and they are on their way gone, my heart hurts that they are not staying longer, moving in with me, living here!

Note that I say "after" a guest is here.... I have never had a guest come, leave, a couple days later, a guest comes and leaves, a couple days later, a guest...really, that is what it has been. It came to me that my Father (who is now playing pitch-pull with Ruckus in Heaven) had preplanned for this because he knew I would be feeling alone and so lonely without my little boy. I have been thanking him daily for knowing my need.

How-some-ever.

My Father knowing my needs and my knowing my needs are two entirely different matters. My wants, what I am used to, what feels right to me...that and those are what I must detach from. That detachment is the foundation we stand on for the change that is required for us to begin and to continue our quest for still more spiritual growth.

This, apparently, is my need: I never have experienced the "rest of the story," as in, as guests leave, feeling like I want them to stay forever, then resisting another's immediate entrance. I realize this is the way to the change I have ever sought...the change in me from loner to lover.

And both of those terms tell their own mistaken story...loner sounds pejorative and lover sounds sensual. Neither tell the underlying story, and it is not until I am clear myself about the underlying story will I be ready for the change I seek...left to my own thinking, I'd never be ready because the change is uncomfortable. But I suspect that is exactly why my Father is sending all my beloveds in a cluster...he knows my needs.

I recognize that it has been a long time since I've thought of loner as pejorative or lover as only sensual...but I've only made the change in my mind. I am being presented this month with my God-gift of change and my ego thoughts of resistance. As is ever the case, it is in my actions that the proof will show forth. And my actions have all been Go!

Oh, and just think...it is through my little guy's moving on up that I'm...moving on up! Thank you, Ruck-a-roonie.

Thank you.

PRAY NOT FOR, BUT IN THANKS

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment. — Eckhart Tolle

Here's my morning ponderable: Isn't praying to God for help going in the wrong direction?

The key there is "praying for." If we have sincerely come to believe and trust that the Father knows our needs, to ask God for any self-determined objective is to remain fixed in our own mind's picture of what we need.

I'm a believer that our best prayers are free-flowing expressions of gratitude for whatever is appearing to us in the moment...be it an unexpected lottery win or an equally unexpected necessary expense.

In living the mirror-image-of-God life, if those events should occur, we know the lottery win for the less-than-wonderful news, and the major expense as for our benefit.

To look to God in gratitude for the same reason we wanted to pray for help is beginning to live our new changed mind...the grateful mind or the centered mind. This is the mind plucked of self-interest and wrapped in God goals...meaning, wrapped in care and concern for others.

While all that may be entirely so, we fool our self when (not if ) we forget that we are first a human being with free will, another gift from God. Free will, a.k.a., Me First...and there's my ego, Lucy With The Football. Learning to know neither shame nor pride but gratitude that she is alive and well in me is my daily cross and sliver of gold.

Without getting tripped up by our ego, we'd likely have no humility at all. And there it is...why I know gratitude for old Lucy.

Thank you.

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND

If you are searching,

You must not stop until you find.

When you find, however,

You will become troubled.

Your confusion will give way to wonder.

In wonder you will reign over all things.

Your sovereignty will be your rest. 

[From "The Wisdom Jesus" by Cynthia Bourgeault. She notes it as from the Gospel of Thomas, recovered in 1945 amid the Nag Hammadi scrolls in the Egyptian desert and now largely accepted as an authentic teaching of Jesus...the other gospels stop with seek and you shall find.]

I read that teaching, I understood it from my eyebrows up...no, actually, from the first words, If you are searching through Your confusion will give way to wonder. I knew it because I have experienced it. 

The last two lines, however, cause me pause. I do not doubt their truth, but my understanding keeps slip sliding away.

In wonder you will reign over all things and Your sovereignty will be your rest. Interestingly, when first I read them, I knew what they meant...to me. In their travels from my brain to my gut on their way to my Soul, however, they keep taking pit stops, changing ever so slightly each time. 

I suspect my first thought of them is my truth: Receiving the gift of desperation fills us with wonder that our power is in our powerlessness...and we realize that we reign over all things for we have given up the fight. I liken it to Chief Joseph's I will fight no more forever. In those few words, we know our sovereignty is in our rest.

I doubt not more thoughts will come and go, but the answer is probably in Seek and you shall find. There is no defined what that we shall find...nothing we can put in a box and carry around with us. Just our ever deepening trust that what we find is a God-fulfilled need in the moment. And it is good.

Thank you.

IT IS NEVER HIM/HER/THEM

What we  hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence. -- Samuel Johnson

Old Samuel could say in a handful of words what I've been trying to get to for days, weeks and months now. Even more incisive is the  old joke asking how to get to Carnegie Hall with its punchline...practice, practice, practice.

The hook to a faith that works is still more spiritual growth is counterintuitive...the reasoning mind will not get us there, not even if we sit and think till our face falls off. It is, however, the vehicle we have been given for the hand-off to attain spiritual growth. Not by my might nor by my power nor by my will can my good come to me...but by my constant consciousness of the Father within me/without me. 

That's where the diligent practice of subtraction, detachment...unknowing...enters. It's akin to practicing nothingness. Until we make our breakthrough. Then we know and we know we know...only we can't put it into words without sounding sophomoric.

Learning to practice unknowing is what leads us up to another way of thinking...the art of accepting a changed mind. For instance, as our first step we learn that to love is to not get above our raisin'...we are not saints, and we're not going to be anytime soon, and we cannot not judge another just by knowing we oughtn't. Hey...BFO: It is acceptable to judge negatively that which we see and resist in another...as long as we are living what we see is always our self as our guide.

There. Bring it all back home...no better way to get a true look at that which we need to recognize within us in order to come to acceptance of self and others. Which is also known as love.

According to me, that's the how-to in learning to love your enemy as yourself. Who in their right, i.e., reasoning, mind would ever be able to pull that off without bald-face lying? Again, according to me.

Thank you.

SO LIFE IS ABSURD...LAUGH AND LET IT BE

The discipline comes in training our thoughts to neither make the remark okay...s/he didn't mean it, I misheard...nor to imagine even snarkier toppers, personalizing thus justifying our less-than-wonderful response. 

Just yesterday morning I wrote those words as my how to train our own thoughts to give over, or, how to take nothing personally.

Yesterday around noon, I took an incredibly...and totally unexpected...sharp dig from a neutral acquaintance. I responded not at all, neither verbally nor mentally. Sometime later, after I had returned home, the remark came to mind, and hot? Whoa! Faster than a blinding flash of the obvious, I was spitting fire. It was more than apparent that I needed to find the humor in this so I quick called a friend who has a like mind for the absurd. It was either laugh about it or begin/continue resentment building. And laugh we did. 

Further, in my yesterday's post, I wrote, We train our thoughts to go to God and the things of God...for instance, we can think of lilies of the valley, puppy dogs, rainbows. This is by way of adding one more choice: We can find a friend to laugh about it with.

It is the subtlety of life's happenings that take us so unaware, and that's the very core of why we must train our own mind to want to turn from ego-victory to spiritual growth. And, who's kidding whom? Ego victory by its right name, i.e., I WIN, is hard to hate.

I've taken to thinking of spiritual growth by its right name, Love and Laughter. What can I say? That just sounds a lot less plodding to me.

Thank you.