THANK YOU WILL EVER SUFFICE

I Zoomed with a group of friends yesterday, and we were discussing spiritual matters, prayer in particular. I was impressed at how many of us over the years have composed our own prayers...almost all of which were bits and pieces, phrases, etc., from other prayers.  

Interesting to me was that most of the prayers were longer and more convoluted than the original prayer. I pondered that and saw it as only right as we strive for still more spiritual growth. We add on until we make our U-bie and then begin subtracting. 

The touch-my-heart part, however, was that the prayer of each person had the goal, albeit unspoken, of our being a good and decent person, particularly a better person than we saw ourself to be. Ah, and for the single purpose of staying the course and helping another. 

My prayer  was gifted me some years ago when I read Meister Eckart who said, If the only prayer you ever say is 'Thank You' that will suffice. 

This morning's "Daily Meditation" of Fr Richard Rohr explains the completed truth of that Thank You prayer: [Spiritual growth] always comes through the wounding. What we do when faced with our deepest wounds determines whether there is authentic spirituality at work or not. If we seek to blame other people, accuse, attack, or even explain and make perfect, logical sense out of our wounds, there will be no further spiritual journey.

There. Just pray Thank You, that will suffice.

Thank you.

FREE TO DO IT WRONG...LOVING AND LAUGHING

The actual and ordinary life journey becomes itself the godly journey. We trust God to be in all things, even in sin and suffering. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," September 13, 2020

Comes the day when we make the decision that we want God's will done in our life more than we want our will done in our life. Willingly we begin to trudge, to crawl, to claw...to demand to know God's will. Until we see that our decision completed our commitment...that all our seeking is natural to release us from the binds of our reasoning mind. 

Only then can come the realization, which is acceptance, that all our answers are within. There it is...we have the key that opens the windows of our mind, the door to our heart, removes the bars to our Soul. 

As we seek deeper, we know the key for the bare beginning...the bare beginning to the rest of our life journey heading in a new direction: The Way forward seeking God's will rather than our own. And failing. And making our U-bie. And moving forward. And failing. 

The grace of gratitude reveals that with each step forward, with each fall, etc., we choose to love and laugh. For we know we are heading in the right direction, doing what we need to do...God's will. 

We have become that living, loving, laughing proof that we don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. Hallelujah! We're free at last.  

Just for today.

Thank you.

THE KEEPER OF THE GATES AJAR

Blinding flash of the obvious: To go to God for God is still a self-determined objective.

To seek God even for our best, most spiritual, reasons, remains a self-determined objective. We cannot not have God; we pray our thank you that we remember we already have God...then we focus on trusting that, on trusting God as we understand Him. 

It is by focusing on God as we understand Him right this very minute that we are opened to go to a  higher consciousness deeper. Our focus on God Now...not the security of God in the future...is the Keeper of the gates ajar.

Thank you.

MY JUDGMENTS ARE ON ME

I come again to my nemesis Gertrude. This one, this Gertrude, just irritates me on sight...I feel my Lucy With the Football tightening up when he walks into the room. 

I want to judge/snicker at his whining about his children not understanding him and the hard, hard life he has had...and I immediately think that his children have had a harder life just living with him. 

From my eyebrows up, I know that judgment is on my judgment. This, of course, is not new news to me...it's not pretty, but it's not new. 

In looking deeper within, I recognize this is part of the pattern I've been feeling, touching on in my journal...some of my "old" feelings making themselves felt again. (As has been said, they're not old if we're still using them.)

With that recognition, comes the solution to my problem thoughts: Most important was the discovery that all of my problems could be solved by spiritual principles. -- Anonymous

My primary principle, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, seeps into my mind, and I am comforted. I recall that this decision is not "made," then we get up and walk away, never to think of it again. We recommit to it as needed, sometimes daily, but we set no time limits...we trust our Father within and follow suit.

With that principle surfacing, comes a blinding flash of the obvious: We are not to overcome Trump and/or Trumpers...we are to welcome them with compassion in our head, heart and soul...for to self will compassion is to patronize. Clearly, the same goes for all my Gertrudes. There it is...problem solved. 

Now, to walk my solved problem, to welcome all with heartfelt compassion, requires me to spend some serious time with the God of my understanding for of myself, that ain't gonna happen. 

I love it...and laugh for I do spend serious time with God daily. I quiet my reasoning mind and listen for the still, small voice within which assures me that God has already solved my problem.

I can only know it by showing it; I can only show it by living it; I can only live it by recommitting to my primary principle as needed.

Thank you.

EXCHANGE THE EGOIC MIND FOR THE SPIRITUAL

Thinking creates the separate self, the ego self, the insecure self. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation, August 31, 2020 

We know thinking is as breathing...needed, in a word. 

I'm convinced it is our reliance on our thinking that forms the foundation for our attack mind. Ah, the attack mind. It gets short shrift in our personal how-to manuals...we're usually focused on getting to the good result rather than how the less-than good was born in us.

It is the denial of self, the egoic self, that is the stairway to Heaven within. When we make a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, the process of inner transition begins. 

It takes a long time...or it takes as long as it takes for each individual...to realize more fully each day the import of our decision. Training begins when we realize the need to tame our attack mind; then moves up when we willingly begin working with spiritual principles toward that end. 

"That end," the taming of our attack mind, we must remember is simply to get over ourself. According to me, attack thinking is nothing more nor less than self-pity mentally weaponized. 

To have traded the reasoning mind for the spiritual is to live comfortably without conscious effort giving over, giving up, giving in. 

That stairway to Heaven within is the Way...the right direction in which to climb each day, remembering always that when we made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, the process of inner transition had only begun. 

Ours is not only to trust but to rely in faith on the care of God doing for us through us the next right thing...in God's eyes. Then we will have a mind that has been exchanged, and we will know the peace that passes understanding. 

Thank you.

PRAISE THE DETOURS WE TAKE

The hardest thing spiritual growth asks of us is that we change our mind...or, more to the point, we exchange our mind. Give back our material mindset in exchange for the spiritual. Loose it and let it go. 

This is especially true in personal relationships...and what else forms our world but personal relationships? It seems there is ever someone who can and will torment us. The gold and the mire both together: Our tormentor is our angel in disguise.  

Without our angel in disguise, how would we learn that a nonviolent response is ever the spiritual way...equally important, how to nonviolently respond. Yet another level to our learning: Keeping our spiritual growth green requires tending daily...the lesson itself grows us. 

When we realize our reasoning mind is our block, our mind has been exchanged. We begin to see through God's eyes. We now understand, say, ask and it shall be given to you. Rarely to our reasoning mind does our ask result in it being given to us. Looking through God's eyes...we see; we come to believe.

There are many paths open to still more spiritual growth. There is agree with your adversary quickly. Or, when (not if) our toes are stepped on, seemingly without provocation, invariably we will  find we have made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. Or, get over yourself. 

All roads lead to God...it is the detours we take that determine our willingness to grow spiritually.

  

Thank you.

TAKE NOTHING PERSONALLY...RESIST NOT

I am coming to see nonresistance as love, simply love. Or, no, I've probably got that backwards. I need to know love as nonresistance. 

In my walking-around world, nonresistance has become my stretch for the golden ring, love. Or, specifically, learning how to stretch for that golden ring.

In general, life is about meeting and greeting...that's how relationships begin to be built. There are those I hear, some I don't; some I am willing to listen more closely to, others, no. And vice versa. The vice versa is the most important part of the stretch, which, after all, is still more spiritual growth.

In that regard, first light brings us to understand our need to depersonalize...to take nothing personally. 

Nonresistance is staying without attachment, no matter our momentary feeling, flattered or offended. How else can we learn how not to take others' words and/or actions personally? It is our personal reaction that attaches us...all the while our reasoning mind insists that a personal reaction is simply the human condition. We must go beyond reason to love.

Nonresistance allows us to refocus away from our reaction toward our spiritual need...to understand the other as ourself. The other is never the root problem...we are, and we are our only problem. The other is our angel. Ah, there's our greening lesson. Just keeping our lips shut in the face of un-love works, but, face it, Scotch tape would work as well. 

What you see is always yourself. 

That surely requires some fine tuning for there will ever be those we cannot hear just as there are those who cannot hear us. I just put them in the "too soon met" category. Nonresistance can also be walking away. Shake the dust off your feet and move on.

These are the times that prove our only need is for our mind to be centered in God. Deciding who we stay with, who we move on from is not for the reasoning mind, nor for the merely spiritually inclined. To take nothing personally, we go to God for God and that is all.

Thank you.