GOD DOES THE HEAVY LIFTING...TRUST

Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our name on history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts. —Eknath Easwaran

Ah, to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts...indeed, that has been my goal in life for as long as I consciously knew I had a goal in life. 

As Franciscan sister Ilia Delio has written: The journey inward requires surrender to this mystery in our lives, and this means letting go of our 'control buttons.' ..... it means being willing to surrender all that we have for all that we can become in God’s love; and finally, it means to let God’s love heal us of the opposing tensions within us.

The major discovery upon reading that and many other like words is agreeing with them is as far as that gets us...agreement. It is going beyond that agreement that finally leads us to surrender...to surrender our own idea of right and wrong. Whether we know it or not, to surrender is to do it right...give up all hope, flounder, fail...lose, in a word. That is how the seed, planted in our consciousness, takes root.

Spiritual growth kicks in when we stop talking those words and start doing them...taking our wobbly first steps, falling backward, asking for help, falling forward, asking...listening...changing.   

We finally accept that God's ways are not our ways...that our ways must change. Changing our mind is all that is needed, yet our resistance to that takes...well, nonresistance. Surrender, again. 

It is only in looking back that we can see all that flailing we did while trying to keep from losing was our path to winning...through God as he toted our sorry self home...to happy, joyous and free.

Trust...God is in surrender.

Thank you.

LEARNING TO TRUST WHAT IS...AND TO LOVE IT

The spiritual experience is about trusting that, when we stop holding ourselves, Inherent Goodness will still uphold us. Many of us call that God, but it isn’t necessary. It is the trusting that is important. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, December 16, 2022

According to me, the way of the Lord is counterintuitive, as the way down always teaches us.

The consequences of the way down...which we try with a will to avoid, slide by, justify, deny...is our self-selected teacher. Face it, without the consequences, it is unlikely we would accept the necessity of giving over. 

We give over, give up, give in for some time before our eyes are lifted...before we trust that God's better way is not wimping out.

It is our choice of how we see our life...through our ego's eyes and whine or through God's eyes and shine. That choice is, per Fr Richard, the foundation of any true religious seeing...learning how to see and love what is.

Who- or whatever is the source of our resistance...our spouse, our friend or foe, our job...is to be met in its reality with thank you. There it is...the call for still more spiritual growth.

If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, October 29, 2023

Thank you.

OUR NEMESIS IS OUR ANGEL, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of  December 28, 2018]

The forever lesson to learn: To our reasoning mind, the one arousing our negative side is our nemesis...ah, but spiritually, that one is our angel.

There it is...the key to changing our mind. Then we must needs stay our focus on the power within which is ever on hand to further the opening, as needed.

This is an ongoing spiritual process...an opened mind releases the power for good within. Our detachment frees our thoughts from building self-determined results. That which we are resisting is freely transmuted in our mind...and we are graced with another angel in our midst.

Thank you.

TO SURRENDER IS TO WIN...TRUST THAT

There is no mention of any moral worthiness, achievement, or preparedness..., only humble trust and surrender....If we ourselves try to “manage” God or manufacture our own worthiness by any perfection or performance principle whatsoever, we will never [have a raised consciousness], but only more of ourselves. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, December 18, 2023 (paraphrased)

That paragraph holds the secret to living a turned-over life...surrender, I lose, begets trust, we win. 

The basic need for those who seek still more spiritual growth is the gutbucket acceptance that God's will, God's way is our forever solution. That acceptance opens God's will, God's way as counterintuitive to our will and way, and the human condition no longer prevails. 

Surrender means we lose. We must lose, fail, let go of any perceived want masquerading as a need, no matter how good and true...even holy...we believe it to be. 

It is only by losing that we rise again, lifted by a Power greater than our self. It is in the process of being lifted up, the long and arduous process, that trust is born within us. Long and arduous becomes our pearl beyond price...not by self-will, but by God's grace.

That brings to mind the saying that the hardest thing life will ever ask of us is that we change our mind. We have learned that we cannot change our mind on a want-to...that, too, is God's to do.

So the difference between [material mind and spiritual mind] is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God. -- Anonymous (slightly reworked for clarity)

Thank you.

ASK NOT...TRUST

Blinding flash of the obvious: I'm not asking you, God, I am trusting you...thank you.

I think I just sent a true prayer...ask for nothing, trust. The Father knows our needs. 

Whatever comes to us appearing as unloved, debilitating illness, poverty, etc., we get to welcome in trust. To be feared for as long as it takes to kiss it on the lips and send it packing...in other words, to surrender in defeat, to rise again in acceptance. I feel fear, God is here.

The lifelong lesson learning is that it is the fear we send packing. We may be friendless, ill, flat broke, and most everyone has experienced those to some degree in our lives, if we've done it right, but the great and glorious news is God has our back. 

With God, we walk through this that is appearing...the same as we have walked through as much or more and came out the other side smiling. Without God, we'd still be beating our breasts and wailing.

Together we are the incarnate hands and feet and body of God. -- Fr Richard Rohr

Thank you.

THE 23RD PSALM: FEAR NOT, GOD IS HERE

It has long been my contention that God's word is counterintuitive to the reasoning mind. I have meditated on the 23rd Psalm for a long time. I was years into that practice before promises and parts of promises from that Psalm gave me the gift of realization...helped me understand the mirror image of God's Word. 

Here are some gifts:

1)  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me... The promise is that we will walk through the feared valley, and the shadow of death is our myriad fears, i.e., fear of being left all alone, of never being loved, wanted, needed or appreciated, of dementia...all of our dreads that come alive at three o'clock in the morning. 

Our healer: Thank you...I fear not, God is here. 

2)  Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me...Thy rod and staff are our rues, regrets and remorses which we use to beat our self mercilessly. Those regrets have nowhere to go but to God where we find our comfort. 

Our healer: Thank you...I fear not, God is here. 

3)  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies... Here's the most surprising gift...it is God who does the prep work: Thou preparest a table. The next gift is that mine enemies are not our enemy du jour, not Gertrude or Jim, not sister, or any person. No...mine enemies are our self-centered fears, fear of the future, regret over the past, etc.  God prepares the table, seats our enemies at the table, then walks us to the head of the table...where we realize with God, they are there for our benefit. We hug 'em and kiss 'em and let 'em go. This keeps us occupied for a lifetime when we're doing it right. 

Our healer: Thank you...I fear not, God is here. 

Do not doubt that more will be revealed for which we say, Welcome, thank you...I fear not, God is here.

Thank you.

MATTER AND SPIRIT HAVE EVER BEEN ONE

We have created an artificial divide or dualism between the spiritual and the so-called non-spiritual. This dualism is precisely what [has been revealed] as a lie....matter and spirit have never been separate....these two seemingly different worlds are—and always have been—one. -- My paraphrase from Fr Richard's Daily Meditation of January 13, 2017

When first I read that, in 2017, I was stunned...I even wrote that it turned my whole material mind vs. spiritual mind upside down. According to me then, they were two separate things, and life was about rising above the material to live in the spiritual. 

The date is of interest to me only because it is a lovely example of how long it takes, having realized something from our eyebrows up, to then move it to our as-we-breathe understanding. I eyebrows-up knew that to be true on reading it...my belief in my oft-referenced the Father and I are one no doubt had its basis in that.

I grinned at my knee-jerk reaction this morning...I felt like I'd never heard of that before. Yet, what a comfort...this is right at the proverbial seven years it takes for change to cement itself within. I have many examples of learning, believing, doing...then backsliding as if I'd never learned. I have made peace with that as my way of making a truth my own.

In general, coming to believe unto doing our new belief is not a one-shot deal...we read of the miracle happening but the one to whom it happened has already been declared a saint. Who's kidding whom? Sainthood is not our path to walk...in this world at any rate. 

But here's my today's proof...it has been growing within me, settling in, making itself at home. Now, seven years later, I see me living the fact comfortably the majority of the time...progress, not perfection, being our road to love and laughter.

Thank you.