TO PRAISE THE SCARY IS TO FIND GOD'S WILL

Blinding flash of the obvious:  All that our natural eye fears, sees as less-than, is of God...upon our realizing that, our spirit-Soul gift is born within. 

When our current life situation, invariably our sense of separation, is scary, we need to praise it...this is the pearl beyond price. We will, say, seek more Zoom contacts while needing more personal, face to face, contact. In our apprehension we mentally scurry to glom onto a self-determined objective to peace us...while our Soul seeks God's will.

In our mental scurrying, the reasoning mind gets shucked down to the nub, finally accepting that there are but two emotions...one is love and the other is fear... with all other emotions flowing from those two. 

The get-up-and-shout-hallelujah news is that the Driver of all life is not emotions, but a far higher Power, namely, God.

One or the other of those two basic emotions, however, will be our life's driver until we make conscious contact with God...at which time they become life's ushers. With God driving, they usher us to our rightful place, that place intellect knows naught of. 

This, once learned, we must remember: Always and all ways God is in contact with us whether we know it or not...we make conscious contact with God through still more spiritual growth. Daily. No exceptions.

Most important is the discovery that all of life's problems can be solved by spiritual principles. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

THE MARRIAGE OF SELF-WILL TO GOD'S WILL

In the carriages of the past you can't go anywhere. -- Maxim Gorky, Russian writer 

I recently found myself doing that which I first learned fifty years ago and being reminded by my own actions that consciousness had raised...that there's a different way today. The brain-buster was whether I believed it was better or not was immaterial...life had changed, my mind needed to change with it.

I love when I stumble on an explanation, a validation actually, of a previous flash. The Gorky quote above is a good "for instance," as in, our spiritual mind begins as a gift and is raised deeper daily...or there is no spiritual in it. 

Our life now is fully in the care of a Power greater than ourselves, and we live for the benefit of others...whether we know it or not.

That is raised consciousness. To hold to our first understanding of, say, the Sermon is good as a building block to raise us deeper, but to stay rigidly at the place of first understanding is to pervert the Sermon to a self-determined objective and is not of God. 

Same goes with our first Steps toward a better way of life, i.e., spiritually based, no longer living for me, myself and i. We learn to go with the changes, but we never forget our first lessons on awakening...that is called "gratitude." 

We are being headed in the right direction...with missteps along the way to bless us into humbly seeking still more spiritual growth.

Paradoxically, none of this is done by self-will, none of this is done without self-will. That is the marriage of our will to God's will. 

Thank you.

TO UNDERSTAND IS TO EXPERIENCE IS TO PROVE

Much learning does not teach understanding. -- Heraclitus

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it. -- John Keats 

Keats explains Heraclitus. 

The same thing was explained to me at my first spiritual retreat when an unknown retreatant said to me, "Truth must be proved." 

Until I heard that, I thought repeating affirmations made them come true...it doesn't. I was blessed that I knew exactly what she meant, and I have never forgotten it. 

When I realize Truth personally proved to me, I do my best to walk it. Talk it over if I feel the need, but the proof is in the walking, the living, the breathing...there is the transformation. From a busy mind to a silent self. 

 

The times I still feel apprehensive, I think it through. I remind me that I don't do or want to do things that are hurtful to myself or others today. I can, in effect, kiss that fear on the lips...and do what I need do.

How else can I experience Him going before me, making my fearful place peaceful?

Feel the fear and do it anyway...unknown to me who first said that but that is a pearl beyond price.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE IS NONRESISTANCE IS LOVE

The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow. -- Eknath Easwaran

The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow, and also sometimes comes in the form of personal pain. In the form of crash and burn as often...or seldom...as necessary for us to break our ego's hold. Actually, as often as necessary for us to break. To break from the unbeknownst to us fear that has been our ego's sword and shield.  

I do not believe we have a choice in the matter for unless and until we go through the pain, the panic, the dark night of the soul, we reasonably believe our own image, i.e., that we are in control of our life. It is the reason in reasonably that brings down the curtain on our picture show.

When our dark night comes, eventually we are forced to surrender to whatever our worst fear is, known or unknown. That which we have for ever so long been guarding and girding ourself against has won. 

It is in the acceptance of our fear, i.e., surrender, that our pain is transmuted and becomes the pearl beyond price. There. God's will in the form of pain...transformed into the great reality of God as love.

Acceptance is nonresistance...nonresistance is acceptance is love. Here's the hard slog: Living that. With God as our forever guide, that is still one hard slog. Accept that...or don't resist it.

Thank you.

THE PRECARIOUS COMFORT OF TRUST

It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

In essence, all my anxious insights coming to me these days say the same thing: Trust God with all our heart, soul, body and brains, and love our friends and our enemy equally...selflessly.

Here's the strength of my egoic mind...knowing and leaning into all that is coming to me, first thought this morning, "Maybe I should read this new book," and still another "maybe I should try...."  The resistant ideas flow, bumper to bumper, and I fight them not. Which, who's kidding whom, is worth noting.

Then I pick up one of my dailies to move it, and it falls open to a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: People wish to be settled, only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. 

Don't tell me God doesn't speak directly to us.

 It is my unsettled searching that keeps returning me to God...which is only right. Leaving no stone unturned ends with an unquestioning heart. Love. God. 

The certain surety of which does not come in this lifetime if we're doing it right. Else what is trust for? 

Thank you.

FEAR...HUG IT, KISS IT ON THE LIPS, LET IT BE

A new "answer" is in the wind...our egoic mind's quiet word today is that the solution to life's quirks and jerks and otherwise unknowns is already in our body...is carried within it. Our body, we hear, remembers, all...ALL...that has happened to us, that has touched us, traumatized or elated us. That we need...what? to get yet another expert to help us translate all that? 

I do not doubt that this new answer got to me around the time I received the prayer, Be it done to me, Lord, according to thy will, and I realized that my life is being done by me according to His will whether I know it or not. 

I decided that I can and must hold my nose and take a deeper leap of faith. With which I See Me linked up with ego and free-floating anxiety became a daily visitor...and is welcome to come calling whenever it wants to since I am powerless over that. Ah, but our Father isn't. 

God can and does intervene in our life in our behalf...and that's not all, He goes before us to make the crooked places straight. 

As I ponder those thoughts this morning, I go into my quiet time, and I feel God's breath around me as I read Eknath Easwaran's "Words to Live By" for June 23: All of us carry a cleansing fire hidden inside. It may be banked...but a spark of the divine is there nonetheless, ready to leap into life. It is nothing less than love of God.

Well now...the perfect win-win. The new "answer" in the wind today is not wrong...it is the same answer that we have now and have ever had. Only the teacher we choose differs. 

We can buy a new book, hire a new instructor, join a new study-group...or we can lean more deeply into God who has never failed us. We freely admit we are powerless over our latest fear, hug it, kiss it on the lips, and let it be...and it is no longer ours. Now it is of God...love. 

There's our forever instructor...love masquerading as fear to lift us deeper into God.

Thank you.

ON USING FEAR TO LIGHT OUR PATH, II

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of December 31, 2019.]

Fear is never lifted out of us. God does not take away our fear...nothing turns us to God faster than fear. There is our first gift of gratitude...in a brown paper bag. 

Again and yet again: We are the source of all our woes. God is our spiritual lantern or our egoic cleanup crew, our choice: Choose you this day whom you shall serve.

Our ego seeks to be absolved of all blame always...but blame is just fear in a different masquerade. We are slow to learn that is where God's glory lies...blame (fear) is spiritual growth aborning for to lift us deeper. Time set aside daily to meditate, to journal, to ponder on the mysteries of the spiritual is our today's GPS.

We slowly realize the nature of the path we have been set upon. It is a path that leads us ever forward guided by ego's denial of its determined hold. The many bumps in our road are our hard-earned giftees; just as important, they must benefit each of us equally. Thus we all come out free of self.

Fear is never lifted out of us...it is used to light our path out of self into God's hidey-hole.

Thank you.