SPIRITUAL...GRATITUDE STRUTTING HER STUFF

For whatever reason, spiritual...the word spiritual...keeps returning to my consciousness. I have ever resisted religious, or the act of being religious. To me, the act of being religious just has an unwelcome odor to it.

Spiritual, though, feels welcoming...no heavy-duty messages hidden within, begging to be brayed...not to be too judgmental about it. 

Since the word spiritual has been hanging over my head, I have been analyzing exactly what its meaning is to me. I've come up with many vaporous words but no meaning so I've resorted to Google: In short, spiritual - having a sense of peace and purpose. I only love that.

Further:  Spirituality recognises that your role in life has a greater value than what you do every day. It can relieve you from dependence on material things and help you to understand your life’s greater purpose. Spirituality can also be used as a way of coping with change or uncertainty.

Just reading the meaning has helped me cope with the uncertainty that was causing me to judge religious so harshly. There is nothing wrong with religious, or religion, the "wrong" is in my reaction to it, allowing my egoic self to override my better nature. 

It is these little joys, these teeny-tiny overcomings that are God's slivers of gold, that allow gratitude to stuff her stuff. That is good news, and I am grateful.

Thank you.   

OUR UNSUSPECTED INNER RESOURCE

Life is spiritual in nature...we are spiritual beings seeking to become spiritual beings. As long as we are stayed by that self-determined objective, our wishes and wants blind us to our unsuspected inner resource. 

Self-determined objectives are not of God, are wholly of self even when right for us.  It is our will that lets no light in...no love, no laughter...just self utterly determined to get that which, unknowingly, we already have, i.e., our unsuspected inner resource.

A life spiritual in nature is love given without a thought of getting a return on our output...it is to give with an open hand, head, heart...to live "get free."  That cannot be done with an unaided will.

The unsuspected inner resource is ours now, has never not been ours, has ever been the source of all good in our life, has turned less-than-good into our pearl...it is unsuspected, it is inner, it is our resource. 

That unsuspected inner resource is sometimes thought of as a Power greater than ourself. Some choose to call it God. Worrit not its name. Believe.

Thank you.

FINDING THE GOOD IN A DICEY SITUATION

Continuing to ponder spiritual in nature, I'm thinking that finding the good in a less-than-good situation is heading in the right direction. 

Fr Richard Rohr has written, God is to be found in all things, even and most especially in the painful, tragic, and sinful things, exactly where we do not want to look for God. 

Our reasoning mind seeks peace, according to our definition of peace, and painful, tragic, and sinful do not fit our definition...are not even minimally acceptable. 

Trying to define peace of mind...ah, there's a minefield. Face it, everyone's definition of peace of mind is inherently and intensely personal...beginning, as it must, with our own peace, our own mind. That, of course, brings us smack dab up against the forever challenge...the need to change our mind. 

That is a forever need when we're going for still more spiritual growth for that is the crux of raised consciousness. Spiritual in nature necessarily begins with our raised consciousness.   

Think of raised consciousness as an unresistant mind in the midst of trial, travail and personal pain. Then the sinkhole opens; i.e., getting that unresistant mind, that mind at peace. There's our ego's hook, it's gotcha! 

We will know the right answer, i.e., loose it and let it go (John 11:44), long before we are living there.  Recognizing that...and with that, realizing that time is on God's side...and so are we...brings thank you riding in on its white buffalo.

We are peaced.

Thank you.

SPIRITUAL POWER HIDDEN IN POWERLESSNESS

Sometime back I read that spiritual power is always hidden inside of powerlessness. 

It takes a boatload of still more spiritual growth to bring reasoning-mind truth into agreement with that spiritual truth. According to me, to willingly subjugate self for spiritual enlightenment is the essence of the road less traveled.

Unless and until our wants have been transmuted by grace and by God, our wants will center on self...transmuted, they become spiritual in nature, embrace others and transmit Love. 

We are active participants in this transmutation all the while knowing it for God's gift. Ah, spiritual power hidden inside powerlessness 

Thank you.

SURRENDER...LOSE TO WIN TO LOVE

To realize that life is spiritual in nature is to begin to understand living in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else.

I'm guessing that it takes a lifetime...or two...or more...to fully grasp living a life spiritual in nature. Face it, that is what is known as a heavy lift...meaning, it is next door to impossible when relying on self-will for our self-determined objective. 

To stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else is to surrender. To surrender any and all self-determined objectives in exchange for the perfect objective of God...Love. 

Clearly, the way to live such a life begins in our thoughts.  We must consciously bring our thoughts into that radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This takes time and more time only to realize that is the end result...when we have surrendered all hope of being right or even of being piously wrong. When we have given over, given up, given in...surrendered, in a word.

Surrendered in the realization that to cease fighting everything and everybody is to live a life spiritual in nature...free in God consciousness. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: To surrender is to cease fighting is to lose is to win is to Love.

Thank you.

NOT TO DISCOVER BUT TO RETRIEVE, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of  December 30, 2013.]

It is such a comfort to me, when a problem looms, to remind myself that that problem has already been solved.

I usually want to get in the midst of it, figure it out (to my advantage), get all concerned to agree with me, but I need to quiet my mind, to listen. To listen...not for the answer to my perceived problem (for in God's world, there is no problem), but for the discipline of simply sitting quietly and listening.

As Fr. Richard Rohr has written, "...spiritual knowledge is more like retrieving than discovering."

Whatever answer we need (which likely has not an iota to do with what we're thinking we need) will come to us. That answer may look less than wonderful and a butt-biter into the bargain, but it is, in truth, our gold mine.

Ours to remember: Be not afraid...it is I.

Thank you.

ON BECOMING THE GOOD WE SEEK

Go with God and be the good you want. For the source of our billion bucks is within us...the source of all our good is within us. There from before conception, there now, there three days after we're dead. - Ari of Aslan1, December 1, 2014

If all of that is true, and we may believe it from our toenails up, can we prove it? Do we? 

We may prove it every day, but our egoic expectations hinder our realization. 

Since we believe that we believe, we expect to get that billion bucks, or at least to have a million bucks in hand. And there it is...our proof, shot to death by an expectation.

We must divorce ourself from expectations...go behind the bucks to the Source...under the good health to the Source...beneath the good life to the Source. 

Once we awaken to the Source within us, our life changes...we become a mini-Source...without conscious effort. Our consciousness is raised deeper, slowly, little by little, one baby step at a time. We live the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. If we shall not want, we have enough...I Am the enough we seek. 

We know this from our toenails up. We recognize its walking-around proof when others tell us how we have changed. Others being relatives, friends, dicey acquaintances as in not-enemies-but-less-than-friends...in other words, those with no currency riding on it. 

The best...we are unaffected by others' notice. We smile our thank you. We are peaced.

Thank you.