UNORIGINAL RANDOM THOUGHTS, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 10, 2012.]

Random thoughts...all of which have been said before, but they're on my mind today:

There was a time, back in the day, when I worried that I was not humble enough. Then I came to see that I would have to get humble before that could be a problem. After which I realized there is no "humble enough." Every waking moment is a realistic chance of our being humbled...and being humbled by our own design. The best we can hope for is enough sense to see our part in it, to take responsibility for it...that is humility aborning.

And, no, believing that we are nothing but worms in the dust is not humility...it is ego on parade, dressed up as Less Than You Are Thus Worthy of Note.

Fear of financial insecurity, fear of anything, is just another way to stay stuck in the belief that our fear has more pizzazz than God, which after all is a power greater than our reasoning mind.

In the material world, fear is essential for there are only two emotions: Fear and Love. If we're not feeling so good about something/anything, that is fear; if we are feeling good about something/anything, that is love. It is essential that we recognize each so we can upgrade our attitude about whatever we're feeling not so good about else it will grab us by the hair of the head and run away to wherever it chooses to run. Likewise, it is essential to recognize the good feeling for love so we can wallow in it.

Money is not the root of all evil. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil. There is nothing wrong with money or prestige and power...it is our obsessive search for money, prestige and power that beggars us.

God loves us just exactly as we are right this very minute. On a good day, I love you a tish more than I love me...then humility whispers, "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

Thank you.

FEAR NOT GETTING IT WRONG

Rather one must learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.  -- Meister Eckhart

What joy I feel! Eckhart's quote speaks of living in raised consciousness. My experience yesterday is evidence that I am! On occasion, as needed, and by grace, I am living in raised consciousness. 

Yesterday as my mind went to blaming my friend and setting her straight in a "kind" way, the thought bloomed, "She is not the wrong one...I am." The thought repeated itself until I realized the counterintuitive insight that I was missing. My view of her "wrong" had been "righted"...released in a word. 

Released not by thought but by God's grace.  

There it is...inner evidence of raised consciousness...without thought, without reasoning, without prayer, the change came from within, and I felt peaced.

We must not forget the deeper truth...that these moments of realization are our way to a higher depth. Our focus today is not on getting it right but not fearing getting it wrong.

To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, turning away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. -- Ibid.

Thank you.

THY WILL, THY WAY...TRUST AND WONDER

To grow to our full height, we need to be challenged with tasks that draw out our deeper resources, the talents and capacities we did not know we had. We need to be faced with obstacles that cannot be surmounted unless we summon every last ounce of our daring and creativity. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," March 13

My thinking, feeling, doing, being all seem to be roiling together in a cauldron of confusion...or is it wonderment?

A week ago today I said to a friend...without thinking, apropos of nothing...I Am God. I said it without thought or mental preparation...the words just fell from my lips. Neither of us said so, but it's not too hard to imagine that as put-offable.

Today, I wonder if my saying "I am God" was a turning point. Ah, there's my stuck place...my fear of mild cognitive disorder or my hoped-for raised consciousness turning point?  

The timing is the key...a year ago, I would have been ecstatic for my spiritual breakthrough, today with the fear of MCD coming on, I wonder...and pray thank you.  

OR those words may come to be the door opening for my doubting-but-seeking friend's still more spiritual growth. For sure they rattled her...who's kidding whom, they rattled me! 

Honestly, I got to my knees this morning and thanked God for my quandary...then read the Easwaran quote above and knew it for me for this day. Don't tell me God's not got my back. 

Thy will, Thy way...we can trust whether MCD or spiritual growth, Thy will, Thy way is for our benefit. 

Thank you.

FROM TOENAIL TO TRUTH...GOD'S WILL AND WAY

Blinding flash of the obvious: I Am that I Am...stay, study, ponder, find Truth here. 

Free-floating thoughts: I go with I Am that I Am is me, is my power...and it may well live in my littlest toenail. Go to the smallest, rely on the least part of that I Am for it is the greatest in me...the answer.

If that is true for me, it is true for all humans...within the smallest smidgen of God's littlest toenail, the highest powers of God-consciousness are there in full measure.

...there’s a place within us where those names have become one, God’s name and our name. That’s the source of the authority out of which we speak. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, February 16, 2023

Thank you. 

EXPERIENCING THE SPIRITUAL ACT OF LOVE

I came across the following from a post of mine from March of 2015:

This is not an act of will. If our only goal is for still more spiritual growth, as in to know God aright, we will be led forward in ways beyond our reasoning mind's comprehension. This means, it usually arrives as an 'Oh, no!' * * * * * Face it, we'd never let go of our reliance on our reasoning mind if every fear we conjured up became butterflies and angel dust before our very eyes. [Sidebar: Or before we learned God's lesson.]

That is an apt description of what seems to be my lessons today. I am gratefully aware that my Now is as it needs to be because of a flash yesterday when another "Oh, no!" tried to come in. The immediate next flash was "I welcome this less-than-wonderful judgment, I hug the judger and let it be."  

By my thought, I could regret not the relearning for the welcoming was based on these words from the Sermon: Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. 

Admittedly, I had to Google the exact words this morning, but the meaning of the words was with me yesterday carried by the nonresistant thought. In that instant I knew the judger to be an angel in disguise.

Slowly learning, I reacted not at all...neither overly warm nor with cold disdain. Normal...but with the warmth of acceptance flowing through me. 

Oh, wait! Is that love? The spiritual act of love? Yes, of course...what else could it be? 

God loves us so much.

Thank you.

THE WAY OF UNKNOWING

The road to God is the Way of Unknowing. --Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, December 27, 2023

My recent mental twister was the pain of not knowing...not knowing what to do, where to start or even how to. One hundred percent on the mental plane...anxiety on the hoof and running wild in my head.

I rode it to the outside of enough, which is my accepted entry into the kingdom, and my head aligned with my heart aligned with my soul, and I got calmed.   

Thank you opens the door, and we get it done in God's good time. Not a minute too soon, nor too late...which does not stifle the frisson of fear. It does stop fear from running roughshod in our belly. 

We don't march to fear's drum now...most importantly, we leave the how of it to the Father within. 

The road to God is the Way of Unknowing.

Thank you.

WE MOVE UP, WE MOVE BACK, WE MOVE UP

To have faith, to grow toward love, union, salvation, or enlightenment, we must be moved from order to disorder and then ultimately to reorder. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, January 21, 2024

We love the truths that we have had to walk through, thoroughly experience and finally crash and burn into. We believe them to be ours forever...primarily because we reasonably believe we've got that lesson learned. Well, yes...that lesson for that time. 

Ah, but students of the spiritual nature of life learn...very slowly if we're doing it right...that these lessons come back. Repeatedly. In a different guise, of course. That is the basis of spiritual growth...all that we learn in the moment is for that moment so we can continue to grow. 

That's why the Sermon on the Mount is my particular favorite. No matter the problem we're faced with...itsy-bitsy or humongous...the basic answer is always the same...resist not evil. 

Personally, I've had to allow the word evil to take on many different meanings...resist not hassles. Resist not disagreeable people. Resist not being misunderstood, slandered, disliked. Etc., etc. etc.

My early spiritual growth was necessarily bass-ackwards...I agreed with everything and everybody. And gathered a boatload of resentments...which I could not resist not. There it is...God's sliver of gold.

My self-determined objectives all failed me, and I was forced to dig deeper within my own self to find God's will, God's way for me for you for them. 

God's gift to me was the deeper understanding of resist not evil. Among other things, it's learning how to disagree without being disagreeable.

A couple of side bennies of that are learning how to state my truth softly, to listen without a mental rebuttal forming. Maybe the best is the warm feeling that comes when, without faking it, we can say, "I see...you are right." I hasten to add, that feeling does not come often...and never too early.

I know this...all that I know, all that I have written, can and will be mine to learn again...at a higher level deeper, at a deeper level higher. And I will resist...just not as long, not as hard, 

Proving yet again Fr Richard's wisdom, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong.

Thank you.