SHAKE THE DUST OFF YOUR FEET, MOVE ON

As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that greater peace is in your hearts. . . . For we have been called to heal wounds, to bind up the broken, and to call home any who have lost their way. —Francis of Assisi

Often what we say and what we do are two entirely different things which, as we come to learn, is often as it needs be. More than a few times we've caught ourself...or been caught!...doing the opposite of what we've preached. Our initial reaction is usually embarrassed denial...a reasonable reasoning mind response. 

What a surprise to find that this could be a point in our inner turnaround...from reasoning mind to spiritual understanding. Over time and with ever deeper spiritual growth, we come to recognize a higher meaning in everyday living...in our life itself. 

We are beginning a reconciled life which is more than just a change of mind, it is the exchange of mind...which lets us be totally present in the moment while holding to our Soul standards.

It's a hard thing to give up, our first understanding of that which we knew in the moment was of God. We must beware not to cling to the Truth as we first perceived it, to the literal message, i.e., the letter of the law. It is our clinging to our own understanding that causes it to transmute into a self-determined objective.   

What we don't then fully understand is this exchange of our mind is taking place within us...from our reasoning mind's viewpoint deeper into the raised consciousness of the spiritual. 

There is always a deeper meaning to the Truth, a.k.a., Love, than we see in the moment. Just as we have learned that we can never fully know or explain God and the ways of God, so too with Truth or Love for it expands, grows, encompasses all. 

There will ever be disagreements and/or misunderstandings. Our continuing education need only be that we can stand firm on our Soul's inner standards without an outward argument. We mentally hug her, kiss him, let them go...and move on. 

And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. -- Matthew 10:14  

Thank you.

A NEW REALITY INTERPRETED

According to me, this new sight promised us with our exchanged mind is like unto Saint Francis' new way of seeing and interpreting reality.

To live and breathe and walk in our new way is to be present without resistance...without hesitating or looking to preserve our egoic self. The confounding experience of our new walkaround is we are utterly unaware in the moment that we are living from a new place.  This is unselfconsciousness. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: Unselfconsciousness...Saint Francis' vow of poverty perfected. 

Unselfconsciousness allows the vow of poverty...we loose all attachments and let them go. When we have enough, that is enough. 

When our idea of that which represents security is our focus, we are seeking out there. It takes our God-inspired eye (the third eye) to be open to poverty or simply enough. A test of our willingness to be open to poverty is to begin giving away our perceived security. Ouch.

Interestingly, I suspect we have all experienced giving away more than we thought we "could afford." We all have that ability  within us...it was given us before conception. It is our free will that enters to say nay to detaching our self from our wants which always come disguised as our needs. 

We must needs learn to live in this new way of seeing and interpreting reality for our reasoning mind is resistant to the unexplainable, therefore our want-to and our willingness are fleeting.

To reiterate, the confounding experience of our new walkaround is we are utterly unaware in the moment that we are living from a new place. And there is the danger. Because we are unaware in the moment...unselfconscious...we consciously decide to make that our self-determined objective for the future. 

Detour! There's a muddy road ahead! Or, do not pass "Go," etc., etc., etc. 

We cannot make future changes. God is not in the future. God is here, now...and so am I. Be.

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGH...GOD'S WILL

To live without self-centered expectations is the secret of freedom in personal relationships, e.g., I get irritated not at you but at my idea of you. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," October 4

According to me, attack thinking is nothing more nor less than self-pity mentally weaponized.

It takes a while to see that self-pity is weaponized against our own self. We cling to our inner victim's hair shirt...feeling unloved, unwanted, unneeded and unappreciated. Justified!

That weapon is the blindfold that refuses entry to our new way of seeing. From our eyebrows up, we can recognize it for its poison but to loose it and let it go?...ah, there is our life's work. 

The first Step on this journey is willingness. Willing to be nonresistant to being thought wrong, less-than, the fool...and to know in our heart that those are the words that are opening us to our Father who stands at the door and knocks.

Here's where our reasoning mind and our spiritual mind meet and meld...where our (reasoning) attack mind meets the peace of (spiritual) self-acceptance.  

Self-pity comes calling when we invite in our interpretation of others' thoughts, feelings, motives in relation to us. Invariably, we're taking ourself too seriously which is also known as the reasoning mind's playground, 

There it is...self-acceptance, wrapped in taking ourself too seriously, wrapped in love and laugh. 

Love and laugh...God's will.  

Thank you.

ON HAVING GREAT DETACHMENT

 Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. -- Saint John of the Cross (from Eknath Easwaran's "Words to Live By," October 4) 

To see through our new eyes is to walk in the Steps of the Beloved...with a mind not set on getting but on giving...for others. That doesn't sound easy, but it is a lot harder than it sounds. If we're doing it right, we will experience how unready and unwilling we are to have great detachment. To suffer!...in a word.  

Just as we think we're closing in on it, we experience another truth...how few people we meet in our life who think this is a good idea. And those are our friends. 

That usually comes as a surprise but really it shouldn't...after all, we've read more than once or twice that St Francis called it “perfect joy” when he was reviled or treated with contempt. Face it, when first we feel "reviled and treated with contempt," we resist...strongly. It takes shock and horror to turn us toward the underneath meaning, and we get that feeling of "perfect joy." 

Think about it, we've been studying the Sermon on the Mount for a long time. It is in the Sermon at Matthew 5:11-12 that we first get the quiet word: Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account (my emphasis).  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.  

I am still striving (sometimes succeeding) to do that...with ample opportunities I need add. I consider those, good and not so much, God's "atta girl." 

But until we're not only seeing with new eyes, but willingly walking the new path, it's all still self-determined objectives. We're thinking with our reasoning mind...still learning that we must go beyond reason to love. 

Ah, but trying to go beyond reason to love is doing it right...by doing it wrong. How else do we learn to recognize our turnaround point? 

As Rohr often says, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. 

Thank you.

TO SEE THROUGH NEW EYES NOW

Assurance is that calmness born of a deep certainty of God's strength available to us and in His power to love and guard us from all harm and wrong doing. -- Anonymous

Blinding flash of the obvious: To God all my wrong doings are His gifts to me for they are the lever that turns me to Him...pray thank you, gratitude will follow. 

My wrong doings most often come from my self-determined objectives...even when I believe they are good and right. There's where our thank you saves us...it turns our thinking away from why our way was right and invites gratitude to accept what is just as it is.

Thy will, not mine, be done are just so many words until we are living them. This is so hard to do because the actual doing most often meets with commonsense and reasoning minds, i.e., resistance. Which is ours to understand, not overcome. 

We no longer seek to do the "right" thing according to our lights. We want to do God's will, God's way, whatever, however...brambles, detours, snides, snarks and/or ill will coming at us. For this we have come to believe: Thy will is better than our will no matter how it looks to our eyes arriving. 

This is the new sight promised us with our exchanged mind...we will see through His eyes now. 

Thank you.

WE CAN TRUST OUR FATHER...DEPEND ON IT

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continually return....It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us....Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. --  Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly (from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," October 2, 2020)

This is the divine spark that mystics and religious masters long have written about, have assured us is real...indeed is that upon which we need to depend.

It is in the words "deep within us all there is a creative Life that presses to birth" that reminded me of the lesson years ago inviting me to believe that the God of my understanding stands at the door and knocks, not to be allowed in, but to be allowed out. 

It is that Divine Spark that allows the reasoning mind to transmute into the intuitive. It takes time,  a trusted mentor and friends, and the grace of God to even begin the living from our intuitive place.   

My most recent experience: My plan was to in-person vote absentee on Wednesday this week. I was very anxious about it...since I had done this before with no anxiety, I presumed, and told others, that this was more evidence of the loss of confidence I have experienced ever since I turned 80. So I drove down to the polling place, certain I'd never find parking close by, and found they had several parking spaces reserved "For Voters Only." I had dreaded the blocks-long line I would find for I rely on a cane. Well, I parked at the front door, and with no one in line, walked in, voted, walked out and drove home. 

I laughed at my anxiety over my perfectly reasonable projections...especially my old-age excuse...and thought no more of it. 

This morning I had a blinding flash of the obvious: It was not loss of confidence that comes with aging...this was the exchanging of my mind, from self-assurance (that which was ever my self-determined objective) to Self assurance, the still small voice of the Father within. (I admit I will need to wear this for a while but it came unbidden, my standard for "not mine, Thine.")

The starter dough for my proof was the outcome: All my rational dreads...no parking, long lines, need to walk and wait forever and me with a cane, and I'll be unable blah, blah, blah...were not merely transmuted, they were banished.  

Indeed, He does go before us to make the crooked places straight. What wonderful words! Words we can lean on while our reasoning mind is in the process of letting go...until we intuitively realize that the Father within really does know our needs. 

We can trust, i.e., depend on, His knowing...always and all ways.

Thank you.

WE ARE SLOGGING TOWARD CANAAN

Rejoice. These are your wilderness days. But surely and safely, you are being led to your Canaan of Plenty. -- "God Calling," October 1

Passing thought: Everything in the material world is of the moment, comes and goes in circles and cycles. In the spiritual realm, truth is unchanging...ever here now.

Our wilderness days are of the material world, not permanent, fleeting in fact, but, depending entirely  on how seriously we take ourself, the memory of them can remain in our mental bank for years. 

I'm guessing that's how our attack mind is born, bred and honed...maybe attack thinking is nothing more nor less than self-pity mentally weaponized.

All the passing thoughts and guessing are truly unimportant...a slice of the circle and cycle of the reasoning mind. What needs our full attention is the Rejoice part telling us we are being led out of our wilderness...out of these days that are neither believable nor comprehensible, and the feeling of look out, here come the locusts is heavy over our head.

Being led to our Canaan of Plenty is the result of the crash-and-burn of our interpretation of our  material world. As so many mystics promise and as Rohr says, great love or great suffering is the price of admission deeper into a higher consciousness.

All of the less-than-wonderful happenings of this year 2020, together with each one's own personal tragedies, must needs be realized as our sliver of gold to hold onto. Because this is what we have before us, what we have is to be welcomed, accepted, thus transmuted, or we'll need slog through it again. 

It keeps coming back until we get it right. Here's the kicker...it keeps coming back by invitation only. We are reminded yet again, that the invitation is our resistance. Resist not evil...let it flow right on by.

There's our reason for rejoicing...our resistance had disguised our pearl of great price. The scales have fallen, we can see.

God comes to you disguised as your life. -- Paula D’Arcy 

Thank you.