INTO HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS DEEPER

Struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejections and abandonment, daily humiliations, experiencing any kind of abuse or your own clear limitations, even accepting that some people hate you: All of these are gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul. -- Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation of December 8, 2013

I posted that quote on December 9, 2013...it fits me like a glove today. That good fit just flashed the reason why an uptight, skin's on crooked, something ain't right feeling has been riding my spine. I am meeting later today with my executrix/beneficiary...getting my estate in order, giving up all my account numbers, passwords, money amounts. No one but I have ever had any of those. 

Clearly, I am struggling with my own shadow self...I'm asking me to trust another human being with my material security. There are claw marks on my Soul from trying to trust God, skid marks on my very being, and that's from sincerely trying to trust the One I know as Love.

Another flash...and a deeper realization. It is not just giving up the keys to my material security, it is the portent of my Will coming into its own. What if that is unexpectedly soon?  

I understand that is a natural Uh-Oh and Whoa feeling...I got that understanding from talking my parents off the ledge when they were going through this. But this is me. And the folks are strolling across Heaven now.

I am getting a deeper understanding of why love and laugh are so prevalent in "God Calling." I'm already grinning at my feelings of fear and trepidation. 

Light bulb: I "found" the above Fr Richard quote today to assure me: All of these are gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul.

Thank you. 

RESIST NOT...LOVE, LAUGH AND LET GOD

[W]e experience the universal being of God.... If we know where history is going and what God is leading us toward; if we know what our lives could and should be, why are we wasting time with all this violence and all this stupidity? -- Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, August 13, 2023

When we have worked so diligently...studied, analyzed, pondered daily...to do the Sermon, it is a  puzzlement that our first thought after we hear of Putin's path to perdition or of the Trumpist trumpeting is, in effect, kill 'em! Do away with them! Shut them up...shut them down...by their own violent means!

That is to participate in the unraveling of our spiritual growth. That is the crime against God. If we are not incrementally moving forward spiritually, we are moving backward...and at warp speed. 

Knowing right and doing right are two entirely different things until we are doing right without hesitation, justification or ought-to loudly whispering in our ear. Repeatedly reciting I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also becomes our block. 

 

We know to resist not evil but way too often it takes a tanker to move us there...all the while praying for God to do something. He has already...it is ours now to follow suit. 

There is the sliver of gold: To follow suit is to trust God and do something about something.

We turn the other cheek by thinking, feeling, doing a loving something. No matter how small the something, that is the opening through which God flows for the benefit of all. 

God's hand is in it when all sides win.

Thank you.

THE GOD OF MY UNDERSTANDING IN ANXIETY

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: What if my anxiety is God? 

That BFO almost scared me into denial of it. But it stayed with me, and I wondered more deeply, what if the God of my understanding lives in my anxiety?

I recall my great comforter, another BFO: I feel fear, God is here. 

God knows my needs...my needs are within me...my needs invite anxiety...anxiety turns me to God...God is within me. 

Ah, I feel fear, God is here. 

Let this be, ponder and praise it: The God of my understanding, appearing as my anxiety, is not to be prayed away but to be welcomed...with thank you.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...RISK IT!

Even though the gold of your true nature can get buried beneath fear, uncertainty, and confusion, the more you trust this loving presence as the truth of who you are, the more fully you will call it forth in yourself and in all those you touch. -- Tara Brach 

If we're doing life right, we must go through tough times...walk rough and rutted roads...feel gutbucket fear. There is no thinking, talking, analyzing our way out of it, but try we must...we must for the alternative is to sink into that I don't care that I don't care state where I See Me rules.

We must put to use all the spiritual growth we've been seeking, finding, misplacing, finding, exchanging, and there in the 23rd Psalm that we meditate on daily: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me...Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies....

Possibly for the first time, we understand that...and wonder, how can any of those three qualify as the good we seek? 

Dawn aborning...they form a fairly apt description of the "tough times...rough and rutted roads...gutbucket fear" we've been in. Yet centuries ago, that Psalm was written that starts, The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. 

We shall not want...the Father knows our needs. Our need right now is the breaking down, loosing and letting go of our egoic mindset. Consciousness being raised is a heavy lift when ego is hanging on, clinging and clawing. That is the material mind resisting change, plain and simple.

We think we can loose it and let it go and walk free at last. Here's the rub...we cannot. But...God can and will if asked. Further, if asked with our 'thank you' when we do not have a clue, and no longer fret, how God is going to use us to get there. 

We risk coming to believe God's will, God's way...we trust.

Thank you.

THE EVERGREEN NATURE OF UNSELFED LOVE

Learning the lessons we need to learn...as in Eckhart's if the only prayer you pray in your life is thank you, that would suffice.

My yesterday's post has a line that all but jumped me this morning...namely, Ah, but now...now! Bob goes out without so much as a by your leave. I then described my budding resentment at being left out. 

Reading that, I was stunned by the memory, the realization, that I sent no get-well cards to either Jim or Bob...no e-mails wishing well, thoughts and prayers, nada. Thoughtlessness, maybe...it is always suspect. But I know better...I know deeper. I truly cared for each, yet I showed them nothing when they needed it most. 

My recent flashback of ignoring my brother Paul as he was dying flickers, as I fled past him in his hospital bed...pretending I neither saw nor heard him. Today's behavior is the same.

Again I see how much death did and does play a part in my life as today. There is no rational explanation for my total noncommunication with Jim and Bob... precisely as I was with Paul who was my hero, and he was dying. 

Denial is obvious if we stay strictly on the psychological level, but the spiritual way asks for more, go deeper to go higher. 

My moment of remembering Jim and realizing unselfed love...of knowing God there...halos Bob. 

Unselfed love continues to grow, to sprout wings and to fly, encompassing all...spiritually ensuring still more will be revealed. 

Thank you.

OUR SEAT AT THE TABLE

Any self-image, positive or negative, held too tightly, reinforces our attachment to the false self. --  Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, July 9, 2023

 

Yet another friend has died...three gone in six days. The lessons to learn that are sneaking, slipping, marching out from within...with a little help from my Friend...are priceless.

I was lifted deeper for Jim into unselfed love. I felt peaced for Cyn. Ah, but now...now! Bob goes out without so much as a by your leave. I got an e-mail giving the time and place of his memorial service, and I didn't even know he'd passed. There it is, the source of my full-blown resentment, not being "in on" his dying. Left out. Ignored. 

Seriously. My ego went on a walkabout...an obsessed walkabout...with ways to let it be known that I was wronged...the old, "What am I, chopped liver?" singing loud and proud.

Our commitment to still more spiritual growth can, will and does carry the burden of proof that God has our back. I began the serious work of letting God change my mind (which boils down to trust God and fret not). 

This has reawakened my unloved, unneeded, unwanted, unappreciated hangup...but now with the cure, love and laugh. Trust uses the roughage of self to ensure we know God's will, God's way...always and all ways.

The first words I heard in my quiet time this morning, You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, proved my chopped liver to be God's pearl beyond price. 

My now cure is that my egoic enemies, unloved, unneeded, unwanted, unappreciated, are words signifying nothing but a good reason to love and laugh when taken too seriously. 

Our forever cure is that our enemies are all egoic in nature signifying nothing but a good reason to love and laugh when taken too seriously. 

Best: Jim, Cyn and Bob have a seat saved for us at the table.

Thank you.

FROM SEPARATE SELF TO ONED

For all practical purposes, this change of identity from the separate self to the connected and True Self is the major—almost seismic—shift in motivation and consciousness itself that mature religion rightly calls conversion. -- Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, August 7, 2023

I suspect that holding the reality of this change of identity will prove our spiritual mettle. There's the flash... holding the reality is the key.

The opportunity to prove that came yesterday. I had lunch with relatives, one of whom was my childhood idol. Ah, back in the day, she was spiffy...looks, words, action and attitude...she had it going on.

She has been diagnosed with dementia which has not yet progressed to its extreme.  

I was gobsmacked by her now appearance...how easily she could have been mistaken for a baglady. Then...then!...came my seeming inability to detach from my focus on her appearance. Guilt slithers in whispering "shallow" and "superficial." Shame is on the attack. 

Comes now our spiritual nature sorting, hugging, kissing it on the lips with thank you. Human nature tends to focus on the appearance of a personal Oh No until we can own it...meaning until self-judgment gives over to unselfed love. 

It takes as long as it takes, but thank you cuts the lag time.   

Thank you.