DAILY LIVING AT A HIGHER LEVEL DEEPER

Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe says the first thing you do is slow down... the call to slow down works to bring us face-to-face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved....It is about staying in the places that are haunted. -- Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, June 26, 2023

I heard the first thing you do is slow down some fifty years ago. The wonder to me is that it has stayed with me for I thought at the time that was purely bunk. It has, however, proven to be my go-to when my mind goes to race-race, run-run.

The last sentence in this quote is my tell. If I'd heard to slow down is about staying in the places that are haunted, I would have freaked since haunted was what I was running from. 

Here is an example of reasoning mind and spiritual mind processing from two different planes of consciousness: Haunted to the reasoning mind is the home of our rues, regrets and remorses...tormented in a word. Spiritually, tormented is the gift...that is self, feeling fear but knowing nothing turns us to God faster than fear.  

Reason is dependent on self, spiritual is of God. Reason, used with good judgment (slow down), is necessary to our daily life; spiritual, used with discernment (slowed down), is our peace passed on to others. Spiritual growth is all about daily living at a higher level deeper. 

Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have - the key to life and happiness for others. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

ALL, EVEN COVID, IS FOR OUR INNER GROWTH

Blinding flash of the obvious: Whatever comes to me in the next second, day, week, month, year or 10 years comes for my benefit...be it diamonds or dust, love or left all alone, whatever. It is of God and for my inner growth. 

I am going through changes that I know not of. It is all consciousness-raising...or maybe my reasoning mind catching up with my already-raised consciousness? Maybe this is how it is supposed to happen? God raises our consciousness, and we tag along praying that he will when he has already? 

Leap of faith! Consciously choose to believe that we already have that which we pray for...faith, belief, trust. Then God's will, God's way prevails.

Finding the good, spiritual growth, in a bad situation, three years of virtual isolation due to Covid: Being stripped of people, friends, et al., to meet and talk with...being left all alone, my reasoning mind's worst fear...is leading me to conscious awareness of where I am already. By constantly praying for it, I have been resisting it...I am awaking at the place I've been praying for all the while.

I expect this to be ongoing change...this is consciousness-raising. Already raised consciousness is what we see when we look back...and realize God's will, God's way is ever ours whether we know it or not.

God is so good to me, you, them...to Putin, Trump and the generic Gertrude, too. 

Thank you.  

ON LIVING FOR THE BENEFIT OF OTHERS...TRUST

It takes great inner freedom to be a follower of Jesus. His life is an option, a choice, a call, a vocation for us, and we are totally free to say yes or no or maybe. We do not have to do this to make God love us. That is already taken care of. We do it to love God back and to love what God loves and how God loves!  -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, July 5, 2023

Hmmm...I ponder Fr Richard's message in relation to the difference between pain and necessary suffering. I have been comparing daily living as aided by shrinks vs inner spiritual growth. 

A short and way-too-simplified thought, but it opened my mind: Shrinks are paid to help us through our human pains; spiritual growth comes without a dollar value and welcomes necessary suffering.

Fear not the human pain that comes with the dailies that shrinks help us to not take personally; welcome necessary suffering, the higher lessons of living for the benefit of others...of giving over, giving up, giving in with love and laughter.

Human pain is basically getting over ourself, with when wrong promptly admit it, or unselfish honesty, as our guide; spiritual growth comes with our choice to go to God for God and that is all...which cannot be landed by reason. Face it, the egoic mind is out of its element here. 

My earlier years were all about me, my, mine and how to get me more. I was not an unhappy person, I just wasn't satisfied. 

My life has come to be about giving over to the other...particularly the other I'm not enchanted with...and finding spiritual growth in love and laughter there. 

It takes great inner freedom to go to God for God and that is all.  We do not have to do this to make God love us. That is already taken care of.

Thank you.

CHANGED, HEALED, HUMBLED...LOVE & LAUGH

Looking back I see change in action in my life. Thoughts float freely of my recent inside changes, and I become aware that none of my changes were self-generated or self-effected. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: To be changed is to be healed is to be humbled. 

To begin to change, we first must recognize that which needs changing and accept that it is never "out there." This is a long-time process mainly because we stay stuck in our own mind trying to figure out how to fix us.

We start with that which we dodge naming, a defect of character...we call it a "flaw in temperament" or, even prettier, a "personality trait." We learn this: Until we own our defect, our defect owns us. 

There is our answer...our defect is invariably our dependence on ourself to make the change when that has never been ours to do. Ours is to surrender...to lose. To lose ourself to God, to lose our self-determined objectives to God's perfect objective...love. That is all. Love.

Love that which is causing our angst. Love will not remove that which is causing the angst, it removes the angst. In exchange for love and laughter.

To freely love and laugh at our own self is to be changed, to be healed, to be humbled.

Thank you.

WORST BECOMES FIRST...GOD WINS AGAIN

Some unbidden thoughts in the night that we welcome in the morning:

Curse not our rues, regrets and remorses...welcome our defects of character...they are our Chariots of Fire that are carrying us to God.

What else but fear turns us to God so quick, fast and in a hurry? What else but self-determined objectives bare our bum for all the world to see and turn us to God, our once last, now first, hope and prayer?

We judge not Joe Doaks who is as a gnat creating an obsessive nuisance in our brain. No. We pray for our thoughts about Jo Doaks who may be close enough to perfect as is. It is our own thoughts about them that must change. 

Face it, our thoughts are the only thing about any person, place or thing that we can change, and then only through prayer...get-out-of-self prayer.

The hardest thing that will ever be asked of us is that we change our mind.

Thank you.

REALIZING ANEW OUR CIRCLE OF LIFE

'Spiritual in nature' is to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. (Paraphrased from Fr Richard's Daily Meditation today.)   

Recently, spiritual in nature has made a home in my head and my heart, and today it means we become like a child...full of joy...accepting frogs, Fritoes, mud pies, and Right Now equally...for fun, for love and laughter.  

Our spiritual gift is the Divine Spark...already our own, born within our first breath, steady always, and coming from God, returning to God. There...Aslan's Circle of Life. 

God loves me us so much.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT EVIL...WELCOME PEACE

Blinding flash of the obvious: For me to question, to rue or regret, anything I do, think, say or be today is for me to question my God.

My earlier desire, borderline commitment, to living God's will, God's way has grown baby legs...and they are being strengthened. 

My material mind mistakes, showing my bum in public, the errant thoughts, all have ever worked together for my good...unrecognized and unrealized as such even as they were bringing me to Thee. 

I am now gratefully awake, aware that my future path is to stay on this path. Realistically, I get to bring myself back to it when reasoning mind seems reasonable, and I bite the apple.

My good today lives in my welcoming the pains of the "new" me that come with God in the process of changing my mind...ever bringing me to higher consciousness...deeper. 

Thank you.