ON COMING TO FIRST LIGHT

When making our transition from the primarily material mindset deeper into the spiritual, recognizing unto realizing that making mistakes is the accepted way to learn is a hard, hard lesson. Talk about counterintuitive...which is a hefty word for spitting in the face of reason.

Learning a specific spiritual lesson...we have quit talking it, started walking it...requires an inner (silent) commitment to keep on keeping on. At some point, and we know not when, the burden is lifted, and we are freed from "trying." 

Impatience is the bane, of course. Face it, we can't nail down "at some point," as in when, specifically.

Both the danger and the comfort is that we feel secure resting in the once-new-to-us message of the Sermon...in short, give over, give up, give in. The danger is our spiritual lesson has become rote...which, face it, is also the comfort. It has transmuted into a self-determined objective. We may, but seldom do, loose it and let it go.

Our reasoning mind, now in charge, relies on common sense which is steeped in self-protection so resists change as chancy, and continues to hold to our proven security. Thus we cannot see that we are back to relying on our own dreaded self-determined objectives.

We are born into the material world with the reasoning mind intact...in charge so to speak. The material mind is ever with us; spirituality we must seek. Spiritual growth requires daily discipline so that we may grow deeper...we seek to change, an alien concept to the reasoning mind.

We are given the gift of understanding...we are at first light. We see that the struggle is not ours, it is God's. Our singular focus is centered in believing that. Trusting that. Living that. For it is true.

 ...the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. -- John 14:10

Thank you.

LIVE THE QUESTIONS, 2

[This is a reprint of my post of July 29, 2012.]

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

Thank you.

I SHALL NOT WANT...TODAY

Through meditation [like Centering Prayer] it gradually becomes ingrained in us that “losing one’s life,” regardless of the action that may ultimately be required of us in the outer world, entails first and foremost a passage from our ordinary awareness to our spiritual one, because only at this deeper level of non-fearbased, wholistic perception will we be able to understand what is actually required of us. -- Cynthia Bourgeault

The exchanging of our mind, from material to spiritual, is a process that we walk through seldom with clear, or any, recognition. 

In looking back, we realize a change usually from someone else pointing it out. It's then...and we often feel a tish baffled...that acceptance begins to take root. (However, if we're the only one seeing the change, count on it, ego is strutting its stuff.)   

Our exchanged mind begins with the opening of our heart center: 

• We see those first drawn to us to learn, teaching us today. 
• We see those we were drawn to as our teachers sometimes being taught by us today. 
• We lose, we find...we know them as the same, of God, today,
• We let go a beloved with sadness but no regrets today. 
• We accept an un-beloved with the grace of gratitude today. 
• We shall not want...we seek to give today.

We are left stunned. Befuddled. Enchanted. But not in doubt.  

I'm taking this for my greening process. Later, no doubt, I'll know it for other, but for today...close enough.

Thank you.

ON OUR EVOLVING THOUGHTS...TOWARD LOVE

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The word in that sentence that today I focus on is "evolve" since the egoic mind does  not naturally lend itself to learning how to...or working toward...what? ah, get over itself. 

It takes conscious effort to make time each day to meditate...but once we make ourself available, conscious effort is for naught. We cease trying to get out of our mental and into our spiritual...we cease trying. Period.

To the reasoning mind, convincing ourself how we are thinking may be our problem begs analyzing. Which is more evidence that changing our mind is the hardest thing life will ever ask of us.

Face it, the reasoning mind is our security blanket. As we begin our journey in discerning the spiritual way as preferable to the material way, we are probably too aware of our necessary next step...to loose it and let it go. The "it" being our reliance on our security blanket.

It is a scary lesson learning that our reasoning thoughts are heading us to our necessary crash-and-burn. But not until we know nothing, and we know we know nothing, do we find there in the ashes our Phoenix rising. 

Our thoughts are evolving. Within us, love is in the process of being depersonalized. In our walking-around world, we know snarks, snubs and sneers no more...we are going beyond reason to love. 

Most especially, we can now think, work and live for a higher purpose...toward being one with those making MLK's prophetic words come true.

Thank you.

FORGIVENESS AS A FIRST CHOICE

Blinding flash of the obvious: 'The kingdom of heaven' is God consciousness.

Our consciousness is raised through meditation or contemplation out of the self-determined objective state, the egoic mind, into an ever higher consciousness. Every day we make ourself available for we never know the day or hour when we are moved up deeper into God consciousness.

It is our raised consciousness that cements the decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God. That decision is not made just by saying, praying, wanting...and they all matter...it is our daily mental exercise of detachment that seals it.

We make our mind available to the God of our own understanding daily and many times daily. God is already perfected within us, He knows our needs. We need to clear our mind of self to hear, to see, to Be. It is through our daily availability that we are awakened.

Now our decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God is ours to live...and with practice we do so live. Practicing every day.

Now we can make a decision to be a forgiving person...and know forgiveness as a first choice. We no longer strain to give over, give up, give in...we forgive.

Now we sing with confidence, All our troubles, Lord, soon be over.

Thank you.

ON LIVING IN THE GIVING STATE OF MIND

A couple flashes came to me this morning. First: To experience our Spark of the Divine we will need to foul up royally...and then came: Our ticket to Heaven is someone else getting credit for our work and getting rewarded for it, leaving us unnoticed...unknown, unrewarded...in this world. 

In other words, to foul up royally in order to experience our Spark of the Divine is to remain ego-centered. That is, we stay in the "get" state of mind...wanting to get rewarded, get noticed...envied!...to be special by being separate. The ego-state of mind is to forget the "give" state of mind where, by grace and by God, we live to give over, give up, give in.

We are told that there is the Spark of Divine in everyone, everywhere. Like God, it is not available on demand, it is wholly gifted to the washed and the unwashed alike. If not in this lifetime, maybe the next, I'm guessing. 

It is worth the wait.

Thank you.

SEEK TO LOVE...THE ONLY SAFETY

Just this morning, in my mental meanderings, I saw what a dear friend needed to do to fix herself, and I immediately started figuring how I could tell her...in a loving and spiritual manner, I need not say.

Comes now a bolt of light: What I am seeing as my friend's problem is exactly mine, and my fix for her fits me to a T...and I know not how to do it. 

Double bolt: I know not how to do it because I have used it for my CYA all my adult life...it justifies my me. Holy moley.  

God loves me so much that He immediately gifted me with these two thoughts: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings, and the Father abiding in me does the work. 

I know from experience that my humble ask is my readiness to detach from my self-determined objective of what needs be done. That is the door opener for my Father's work to move me into the action we need to take. The timetable is His, the willingness is mine.

We often hear that we know it is God's will when it goes smoothly, we know it's our will when it does not. That may be true to the reasoning mind, not so much spiritually. Our interpretation tells the tale...going smoothly may be our denial, our avoidance of the ego-puncturing stuff. Not going smoothly may be the necessary crash-and-burn that hurts as it is happening. 

As Rohr wrote this morning: It [our egoic self] is what we know and all we know. To move beyond it will always feel like losing or dying. 

That is precisely what we are feeling when we are detaching from our shortcomings...when the Father within is doing His work. Face it, detaching from our shortcomings is changing our mind...from reasoning to spiritual...from "mine" to "Thine." 

Until we are entirely ready to exchange our will for God's will, we will feel like we are "doing it wrong."

Go beyond reason to love...it is the only safety. -- Thaddeus Golas, "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment"

Thank you.