TO UNKNOW, WE MUST BE UNSELFED

We cannot build any serious spiritual house if we do not first find something solid and foundational to build on—inside our self! Up to now, we have been more driven by outer authority than drawn in by the calm and loving inner authority (the in-dwelling Holy Spirit) of prayer, practice, and inner experience. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, August 7, 2023  

It is that essential something solid to build on that invites our streaming unconditional thank you to divert the material mind from our self-wants to our spiritually unselfed needs.

Our egoic mind cannot seek unselfed anything...the purpose of the ego is self-wants achieved yet never satisfied...even when dressed up "for the benefit of others."  

Unselfed love came to me in my realization of love for another. It had no self in it...it was the unselfed love of God that came from God. We have no conscious part in our love of God...of God's love of us...there is no self, just a warm, all-encompassing love.

It seems reasonable and right to seek to feel our love for God, God's love for us, but to seek that feeling is to stay in the self-determined objective of the material mind. The block is seeking not God's will, God's way, but ego satisfaction. 

To seek eyebrows-up knowledge is not spiritual in nature...that is to hinder the love already within us. To unknow, to become unselfed, we must go beyond reason to love. 

Thank you.

THE INVISIBLE LIGHT OF HEAVEN IN EVERYBODY

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness ..... This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. ..... blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody. 

The above is from Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, August 6, 2023. It is Thomas Merton's description of his mystical experience of the True Self, excerpted and paraphrased. It is also a fair description of my epiphany which was shared in yesterday's post.

Thank you.

AN EPIPHANY...DEATH, THE GREAT AWAKENER

A dear friend died yesterday...Jim, with his dry wit and eagle eye, was a special person to all who knew him. He saw the phony person, action, word and recognized himself in it...he never mocked but humanized making it easier for us to see ourselves in the Uh-Oh. I will forever doubt he recognized that as an asset of his...he just lived it.

I had an epiphany after I went to bed last night. I was remembering my friend, and I realized that I had loved him with a pureness of heart...unsentimental, unrealized, unselfed actually. I was held in thrall awe, knowing that this was the love I have sought to feel for God for all these years.

Looking back this morning, I can know that was an awakening, spiritual in nature, to the divine love we are born with...my friend was the gift God used to open my fearfully yearning heart. 

Thank you my beloved Jim...rest in peace knowing you 'done good' even unto dying...you are not gone too soon...it is our missing your presence that feels that...God is always right and on time.

Thank you.

GIVE THE LOVE WE SEEK...GET PERFECT PEACE

Blinding flash of the obvious: Seeking ever inward, never outward, we find that for which we seek...love, God. 

Life is akin to a treasure hunt of our Soul...seeking, ever seeking that pearl of great price, namely, love. 

We find the bully, the hater, the less-than that lords themself over others...and it's like looking in our bathroom mirror. There I am, the bully, et al., achingly aware that something ain't right. 

We pray to God, asking God to fix us...to give us love. Our want is to get love...without a glimmer that our need is to give love. To give love to the bully, the hater, the less-than...the needy.

Comes the light...the love we seek is the love we must first give...that love is waiting within us to be passed on. We go to God for God and love flows forth. 

We rarely realize the gift in the moment...looking back, we are awed at God's perfect work that is waiting within us for the benefit of others...the peace that passes understanding.

Thank you.

ON SHARING GRINS WITH GOD

I just came across a card I saved that came from a friend almost ten years ago. The front shows a kitty on her yoga mat with a water bottle beside her. She is twisted into an incredibly complex yoga position, and she has a most disgruntled look on her face.

The inside reads, "I meditate, I do yoga, I chant...and I still want to smack someone!"

Best part...I just know God is grinning, too.

Thank you.

GOD PEACES THE HOWLING OF HATE

My journal entry this morning is all about now is the time for me to do love: Trump indicted for Jan 6 yesterday...now...now...my part now is to keep my mind focused on God in Trump, in Trumpers, in God peacing the howling of hate...welcome it, defang it with nonresistance within me, within my thoughts. How, I wonder...and I see: It all starts with thank you.

I then read Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, and...how can I possibly be surprised? It is all about the answer to my question...which is nonviolence, or love. 

To quote Father Thomas Keating, Love is all; not [love as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest.

How to defang thoughts filled with howling hate? Resist them not...welcome them with thank you, our invitation to God to do His thing. Only with God can all sides come out the winner.  

Historically, winning a war has meant defeating the opponent. But in nonviolence, there is no real victory until everyone is on the same side. -- Nonviolence educator Kazu Haga 

Thank you.

ON WALKING FREE OF ME

I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight. --  Isaiah 45:2 

It is a tish surprising when we realize that our so-called enemies, too, go before us and make our crooked places straight. 

The surprise proves true in the feeling of inner freedom that comes when we accept that all of those discordant friends are our angels...that they turn us to God almost as fast as fear does.

Inner freedom brings joy, joy in the sense of lightness...almost of buoyancy...that we have even while walking down the street. 

It's a hoot when we see...when we admit...that all our joy rests in our changing our mind. Ah, it gets even better when we remember that a change of mind rests in our being ready to have our mind changed...that all alone we are incapable of changing our mind even when we want to. 

Since our idea for the change is rarely the same as God's, we must shuck all our self-generated ideas, and experience again the same-old-same-old: We go to God for God, and that is all. 

We walk free with that as our good news...then we know it, and we show it.

Thank you.