INHERENT GOODNESS IN NECESSARY SUFFERING

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 

Trust. Trust is my Now watchword...changes are taking place within us Now, always Now, whether we know it or not...which we seldom do.

The phrase when we stop holding ourselves is the sliver of gold...seemingly a throwaway line used to prop up the promise of Inherent Goodness doing for us.

Face it, when we stop holding ourselves means when we crash and burn...when we give up hope of our self-determined Heaven. After we've gotten a taste of spiritual growth, we want to go there...usually by trying to make an end-run around crash and burn by quoting all the "right" words...talking God and staying stuck in self.

It is our failure to save our self our way that invites necessary suffering into our consciousness. That is not punishment, it is trust aborning...trust in the spiritual path opened to us. That glimmer of trust is the first crack in a self-determined objective's hard shell.

Trust, unlike hope, is hard-won...hope springs eternal, but trust must've been born in Missouri for it is the Show Me of all spiritual growth. At that, I'm thinking trust is God's go-cart...it gets us where we need to be when all else is coming up short.

Trust does not come easy...if it comes easy, it is either wishful thinking or a true miracle. Only God can quiet our quest for truth. Trust that.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE...SURRENDER, BETTER DRESSED

Only after God has taught us how to live 'undefended,' can we immediately stand with and for the other, and in the present moment. It takes lots of practice. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, June 30, 2014

To live undefended...there's the price we pay, the gift beyond knowing. 

The paradoxical price: The reasoning mind resists because common sense knows better, and the spiritual mind seeks to accept because we must go beyond reason to love.

We come to accept that spiritual growth is counterintuitive. The Sermon on the Mount makes the case, as in, if someone slaps you upside your head, turn the other cheek or if someone steals your cloak run after them and give them your coat or, the biggie, resist not evil.

Each of those statements...face it, all of the Sermon...requires one thing...that we change our mind. Or that we exchange our mind. 

Our material mind will not get us there...cannot, more like. We are born into the material world, the world of opposites...good or bad, right and wrong. The majority of humans live there even with "heavenly" assistance...sincerely seeking God, finding the God of our own understanding, deep spiritual study. 

Here's the great paradox: We believe from our eyebrows up, we live a more turned-over life than we ever dreamed of, we want the best for others, friend or unfriend, and still in an off minute or longer, we find our self "doing wrong," say sitting in judgment, and feeling less than good about it. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: That is neither right nor wrong...that is the necessary turn-around for us to seek God's will, God's way. 

We may recognize our error, even admit it, but accept it? God's perfect road to acceptance is through surrender. Surrender means crash and burn. We lose. We're lost and wondering, where's God now?

Undefended, stripped bare of self-will, all hope of our way gone, and utterly unaware, we've gone to God for God. That is acceptance.

Thank you.

ON NOT KNOWING...WE LOVE AND LAUGH

The important thing is not the truth or what’s good for the whole, but what’s good for the small part of which I’m a part. - Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, January 1, 2024

My thought on first reading that quote was, I don't think so! Which proves I need beware of my ego's first thought which was "How egotistical!"

My second thought is about bringing good to a less-than-thought. This time, I trusted spiritual growth to lead me to an open mind for a new take on a judgmental thought. 

Much of what we initially resist, when we take another look. brings us to a deeper understanding...ah, acceptance, and our minds are changed.

I now recognize that quote as akin to the truth that we must take care of our self first or we'll not be fit to help another. By "take care of our self first," we learn we must take the action...we must turn the words we love to quote into actions that require ego deflation in depth. 

Another awakening...growing spiritually is to first take care of our self by putting others before us...giving so the other may get, listening, offering to lend a hand when it is not convenient to us. Staying stuck in the material mind, or the egoic mind, all those actions are...face it, unnatural. That is the nature of ego...put no one before self.

Here's my own Great Lesson: There is a balance to living. We cannot...are not supposed to...figure that balance out all on our own. We are in a new way of thinking, feeling, doing, being. We ask the help of God in others, we trust by following their directions. When wrong, we promptly admit it...and find that was the gift, being wrong so we could admit it and learn. 

When, not if, we get to the "right" answer, know this: We're going down that wrong road again. Spiritual growth is trying, not knowing, knowing we don't know, not believing we don't know, trying, not knowing.... 

Until three days after we're dead, according to me. Clearly, I cannot know...my three days haven't started yet.

The sliver of gold is we are now enjoying not knowing, offering a hand, learning to love and laugh...with, never at.

Thank you.

GOODBYE '23, WELCOME '24, AND THANK YOU

As we meet the new day, week, month, year...    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   

Interestingly, the word given me for 2024 is trust. 

One of my favorite quotes, from Ginger and where she got it, I know not, is: Knowing nothing, I speak freely. 

My hopeful expectation for this coming year is to speak freely in trust of whatever my words or my acts may be, they be with love, and I continue to deepen my grateful thank you. I trust that all is God-sent and is for our benefit...mine and whoever else receives it.

Also, as 2023 closed down and I lay half asleep last night, this flashed: I fear receiving love. Oh. That is pretty much the opposite of what I thought my fear was...is. My 2024 just got a tish more...let's go with "interesting."

Here's the promise...more will be revealed, trust. I am being shown even as I ponder. 

Thank you.

SEEK LESS...ON THIS NOTHING WE NOW LIVE, II

The following quote of Joel Goldsmith is a reprint of my post of December 31, 2022. It fills my heart yet again. 

You have come to that point in consciousness where you are seeking for what the world calls the intangible. When you came to a spiritual teaching, you knew in advance, or soon learned, that you were going to obtain nothing in the external realm. What you were seeking was the Invisible, that which cannot be seen, heard, or known. And yet you were seeking to be able to see, hear, and know just that. Through that seeking, you are coming to know that which is unknowable, see that which is invisible, hear that which is inaudible. And on this Nothing you now live. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Leave Your Nets"

We go to God for God...and that is All.

Thank you.

GOD IS IN OUR MISTAKES...SEEK INSIDE

Everything is profane if you live on the surface of it, and everything is sacred if you go into the depths of it—even your sin. To go inside your own mistakenness is to find God. To stay on the surface of very good things, like Bible, sacrament, priesthood, or church, is to often do very unkind and evil things, while calling them good. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, May 26, 2013

Well now...there is the eye-opener, the answer to my morning's blinding flash that I am currying favor...gushing flowery words, giving $$$ tips, giving over to the other rather than to God. That is staying on the surface looking to get my wants met.

I need to surrender my surface self...hug it and kiss it and let it go. Accept my standard, long ago gifted me: Spiritual principles will solve all my problems.

 

As, if and when I keep my mind open for the Word from the Father within, It comes to me from Me in the moment. 

Plan not, worrit not, follow the Father within.

Thank you.

THE NEW COLOSSUS GONE BEGGING

 "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We come again to our need to recall the promise of America to the "wretched refuse" of other teeming shores. 

Again, and yet again, we trample that promise without so much as a backward glance as we roll on...and who cares if we're going in the right direction? We're strutting our stuff, showing 'em how it's done...and who cares if we do not have a clue our own self? Throw another log on the fire.

I miss Kate Smith singing "God Bless America," and America standing with its hand over its heart and tears of gratitude in its eyes.

Father forgive us for we know not what we do.

Thank you.