THE ENEMY WITHIN IS THE ENEMY WITHOUT, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of October 14, 2012, slightly reworked.]

So the [Seeker], too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. And The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. -- "Life Together," Dietrich Bonhoeffer, at p. 17.

It seems that most everything that is true is a paradox...on its face, it does not make sense, yet meditate on it, and it becomes clear.

I have ever been taken with the 23rd Psalm...in particular, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." Whose reasoning mind would think that's a good idea? And yet, what better way to walk free of our enemies than by sitting down to, literally or metaphorically, break bread with them?

It seems to me that, in the end, and after trying everything else possible, the path to peace is quite simply the overcoming of self, or, ego reduction in depth. 

There is no more lasting way to that end than making peace with our enemies, our enemies within and without...for there are no enemies without that do not originate within.

Thank you.

ON MELDING INTO SPIRITUAL

Recently, the word I have been hearing...a lot...is, Sit and wait on the Lord.

Well, now. Clearly, my take on sit and wait on the Lord needed to be expanded way deeper. 

I finally Googled that phrase and found Psalm 27:14:  Wait on the LORD: Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: Wait, I say, on the LORD

I am experiencing a spiritual peace even as I am actively making changes in my walking-around world...where Just Do It is working even as yet I have no idea of the results of my changes. Until shown better, I am letting this be the melding of the material mind into the spiritual.

To me, this all boils down to trust. Trusting God lets the material me tend to earthly business; the spiritual I Am is the Spirit’s work. 

My lack of concern or undue curiosity about the results is evidence of God's will, God's way. That is proof enough that God is on the job.

Thank you.

THE PEARL IS IN OUR IMPERFECTION

Thank You that I am an imperfect instrument of Thy peace -- my every-morning prayer to the God of my own understanding. 

The "imperfect instrument" is our material self that ensures that we need always seek.

"Thy peace" is the pearl of great price, the promise that as we seek ever higher we know love more deeply.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,  

When our strength has failed ere the day is half done, 
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources, 
Our Father’s full giving is only begun. 
-- Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

Thank you.

RAISED CONSCIOUSNESS IS EVER DEEPER

I awoke this morning with a flash of feels-like truth: The less I am mentally 'connected' with the material world...feeling inept, unsocialized, all alone...the deeper I am being raised in consciousness. 

In my quiet time later, I read Fr Richard's Daily Meditation where I found theologian Beatrice Bruteau has written: We are looking now from a point of view that is rooted in our sense of our own reality in God.

Answered prayer...God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGH...AND DANCE IF YOU WANT TO

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.... -- Matthew 5:39 

According to me, it is a given that the Sermon on the Mount defies reason. There are, however, three words in the Sermon that take that defiance of reason to the outside of enough. Those three words...resist not evil.

I had to study those three words, resist not evil, until I got it. It was not easy, and it took as long as it took...in fact, until they owned me. Until my reasoning mind gave up the ghost, and I realized nonresistance is to exchange self-determined objectives for God-consciousness. 

Often, we must needs go back there, say when a less-than-wonderful looms, and we're halfway into taking it personally. We get reminded that the basis of our truth is to live a nonresistant life, a spiritually based life.

To live a spiritually based life is to become willing to live not for self but for others with a sincere desire to take nothing personally.

As we seek for willingness and a sincere desire, our primary goal remains to love and laugh...and dance if the Spirit moves us.  

[God's] essential paradox—that to lose is to gain and to die is to live. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, September 16, 2021

Thank you.

ON BECOMING ONED, II

[The following is a reprint of my blog of November 13, 2016.]

To walk free in my own head. That is my one, my only, my unifying goal.

If I am not free in my own head, all the spiritual education I have or think I have...all the sacred tomes ever written, read or to be read...will, to quote the late and beloved Sen. Everett Dirksen, "have all the force and effect of a snowflake on the bosom of the Potomac."

To walk free in my own head is the Father within flowing freely from me, to and through thee...ever flowing like the sea.

And we are unified, Oned. 

Thank you.

ON SEEKING THE PERFECT OBJECTIVE

Sometimes, it is only in the midst of the “tempest,” in the heart of a storm of circumstances which we can’t control, that we come finally to realize something of the wonderful mystery of God. —Paul Murray 

What is so difficult for the reasoning mind to accept is that the "tempest" is whatever we are resisting at the moment...anthill or mountain. In our walking-around world, the common dailies of life are our "tempests." 

A "daily" is a broken shoestring when we're in a hurry...a redlight when we're in a hurry. Comes the light...when we're in a hurry is code for self-determined objective. 

Living by spiritual solutions today, we (slowly...eventually) detach from our self-determined objective so as to seek the perfect objective which is of God...God's will, God's way. 

Ah, there it is...we come finally to realize something of the wonderful mystery of God. 

Thank you.