GUTBUCKET GRATITUDE

See, My children, that even in distress, the first step is Praise. Before you cry in your distress, bless the Lord, even when troubles seem to overwhelm you. -- "God Calling," October 11

Praise...my comfort...my "amazing grace" if you will...praise, i.e., thank you.

It seems we begin our rocky road to belief wanting magic. We go to God looking out there...seeking something magical to take away that which we are reasonably fearing in the moment or dreading for the future...and we say "Please." 

Thus begins our journey of learning the art of detachment...of loose it and let it go, of go beyond reason to love. Of the necessity for spiritual insight versus personal outlook.

To go beyond reason (our reasoning mind) to love (nonresistance) is to go beyond please to thank you...from believing we have a need that our Father knows naught of, to acknowledging that we have no need that our Father has not already met. We can comfortably feel grateful.

Once we experience the power of thank you, our entire belief system upgrades. Our rational vision sees lack, our grateful eye sees plenty...or a sliver of gold at any rate. Then slowly through the grace of gratitude, our circumstances change, and we are living in the peace of plenty, a.k.a., enough. 

If the only prayer you ever say is 'Thank You,' that will suffice.  -- Meister Eckart  

Thank you.

Sidebar: Lest anyone thinks this is all "pie in the sky"...or I read it somewhere so I'm guessing it's true...No. This is entirely from my own experience. My actual IRS involvement is now my spiritual experience for which I am gutbucket grateful...top that, reasoning mind!

TO BELIEVE, BEGIN TO BELIEVE

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences. -- William James 

And there it is. God. The evidence for which, the proof of the puddin', is comfortably parked right there within us, waiting for the quiet word to flow free.  

The quiet word, apparently, is Believe. 

To get there, to get to belief, is the Mount Everest of spirituality for we must get over our own self...our Mount Everest. And we can't do that by thinking, pondering, trying...that just wraps us tighter within our own grip. 

To get over our own self, we must go beyond our reasoning mind which is not a personal capability, or talent if you will. To get over our own self, we must get over our own self. 

That sentence alone is enough to make an atheist out of an impatient person. 

Relying on my own experience, I came to believe in God out of nothing but necessity...no where else to go no one else to turn to broken helpless hopeless all alone and out of ideas, a.k.a., Gifted By Grace. 

Ah, but never knowing in the moment, incapable of realizing right then...that I'd just been given the pearl of great price, the gold ring, the secret word...Believe. And it came from within...my answer, which felt like mud in my face, came from within. Having no other choice, I went with it, and have lived without rues, regrets and remorses ever since. An oh, rats! every once in a while but no true remorses. 

James Williams' "evidence" reminds me of Paula D'Arcy's statement, God comes to you disguised as your life. 

All we must needs do is believe...or, get over our own self.

Thank you.

GRANT WHAT THOU WILL

We must move to the laboratory where all such radical change can occur—inside of our very mind, heart, and the cells of our body....It gives us an inner sense of divine union so we can do the needed works of justice with peace, enduring passion, and insofar as possible, personal invisibility.  -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation"

I am fascinated with the ancient people, the desert ascetics, the saints who knew...and lived...detachment as the way to the Divine Spark, the Father within. In my early years, and utterly un-God-consciously, detachment was my personal path...which I returned to almost without realizing it. 

In studying the life of Saint Francis, I learned how he lived a vow of poverty. Who's kidding whom,  living without a penny to bless myself with held less than no appeal to me...so I made myself available to any idea my Father or any of my angels might choose to impart for me to have such a vow that I could live by.

It has taken as long as it has taken, but whoa! Here came an incident that opened the door: Recently, I shared with my group about a personal experience but I did not share some face-saving parts of the story...so I gave the impression that I'd just weaseled a lot. Later, I found myself regretting that omission...as in, nattering to myself about how dumb I was. Came the 3:00 AM blinding flash, and I said right out loud, but I can take that as my 'vow of poverty.' 

There...the fruits of going to "the laboratory within our very mind, heart, and cells of our body...so we can do the needed work ...to gain insofar as possible, personal invisibility."

I know my vow of poverty now...personal invisibility. Now, the works of the Father can flow through without a hint of my fingerprints, echo of my voice, or desire for an "atta girl."

Lord, You have Your work cut out for me...thank You. 

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt.  -- Saint Augustine

Thank you.

PRAISE THE THORN THAT PIERCES EGO

The paradox, the conundrum, the puzzler: There is ever some irritating person(s) who becomes our angel in disguise. Apparently, that irritating person must become not just an irritant but a veritable poisoner of our reasoning mind before we can loose him and let her go. 

I have found that it matters not who represents the thorn that pierces our resistance and begins our inner turn around...all of our Gertrudes are it. 

We stay stuck in our reasoning mind when we try to fix it...trying to ignore her which of course cannot happen, or by trying to curry his favor calling it "agreeing with our adversary quickly." Who's kidding whom...we lost that with the "quickly." 

We cannot blunt the thorn and call it friend...it served its Now purpose...we pray our thank you which is to loose it and let it go...from the Father within outward carrying a smidgen of peace for us to follow up on daily. 

We sing let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me and hope that we've done our part. No. We are the peace in the world...every smidgen, dot and iota of peace we release from within counts toward world peace. Know it and show it. 

There we have our foundation. Now, we build on it daily...forgetting, stumbling, bumbling, admitting our wrong, giving forgiveness (our sliver of gold), praying thank you, and moving on up a tish deeper. 

The thorn to our ego is the angel to our Soul. 

Thank you.

RESIST NOT, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you....  Matthew 5:44

Love your enemies, your persecutors, is laid down more than once in the Sermon. To the reasoning mind, that does not make a lick of sense. 

Ah, but we are exchanging our mind...we are seeking now for spiritual understanding where resist not evil is one of our truths. 

The door to understanding opens...since we know that resistance is fear, we recognize hate as fear weaponized. 

Here's the down and dirty or kiddie lit version of the path to living resistance free: 

• To love our enemies is to have no enemies of the mind. 
• Without mental enemies, our heart and soul are clean and clear. 
• To love all is to live detachment for love does not attach, it flows out; hate attaches and grows in. 
• The more we love, the smaller our little i; the more we hate, the stronger the little i. 

Now, to allow that to move from our head to our gut to our heart...then our Soul owns it. 

Thank you.

THE EVIL IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

All that owns us, all that possesses our minds and hearts, our attachments and compulsions, must be healed and reconciled...from within.  

I am coming to  believe that the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety is the entry exam for moving on up deeper into spiritual thinking. On first reading the Sermon, we follow our reasoning mind which is to say, we ignore it...or Just Say No. 

It takes time and willingness...brought on mainly by our ongoing rues, regrets and remorses...to make a decision to give any part of the Sermon a try. (My first want-to was to believe that the meek shall inherit the earth was not a curse but a personal gift for me. I'd finally let it be true that far from being Wonder Woman, I was Wonder Wuss.)  

When we make that decision, the Sermon begins to  fulfill our need to look beneath the words and find the inner meaning, i.e., God's purpose. We read do not resist one who is evil and know for the evil is in the eye of the beholder. 

Our need is not to understand the other according to our lights for that is still self-driven; the need is to look in our heart not our head for God's vision of the one we are perceiving as evil or wrong. This happens in a nanosecond, and three days after we're dead, we still have more to learn.

When we understand the purpose of the Sermon, we realize how Gandhi could study it daily for forty years...and no doubt die knowing he had more to learn from it. 

As for me, the more I study the Sermon, the more I love the study...trust me, that's another first-class miracle.

Thank you.

ON THE MONEYBAG OF OUR OWN OPINIONS

We are called to give over, give up, give in.  What we must give up, give away, cede, is our own security...that is, our idea of our security. 

Since our journey begins with our knowing little of our spiritual self, our core, the most resistance comes with changing our mind...from our outlook to our insight.

Until we accept that all our answers are within, we are stayed in our reasoning mind. When we accept, we begin our U-bie heading in the right direction, open to seeing exactly what our own idea of our security really is. Comes the dawning...our security is mentally based in our own opinions. 

The Sermon tells us to swear to nothing at all...to let what we say be simply "Yes" or "No" for more than that is all ego. And there's our big Ah-Ha! This is the way to agree with your adversary quickly and to give up fighting anything and anybody.

To the reasoning mind, both of those have been "pie in the sky," either unwanted to begin with or impossible to attain. It is finally no surprise when, here it comes again: We must go beyond reason to love. 

We remember Eckhart's saying that the spiritual life is all about subtraction, not addition. Blinding flash, it's all about detachment but the detaching is from our own opinion...our mental opinion. Ideally before it ever reaches our mouth.

A man had not yet given up everything for God as long as he held on to the moneybag of his own opinions. -- St Francis 

Thank you.