By all means, you must find at least one loving, honest friend to ground you, which might even be the utterly accepting gaze of the Friend. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, August 10, 2014
Aren't we blessed? We have a a boatload of loving, honest friends we haven't even met yet.
Thank you.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
THINK VS. WORRY
Thoughts of themselves have no substance; let them arise and pass away unheeded. Thoughts will not take form of themselves, unless they are grasped by the attention; if they are ignored, there will be no appearing and no disappearing. -- Ashvaghosha
Learning to think aright is almost a lost art. "Think," "thinking" have a bad rep because we have never learned the difference between thinking and worrying.
We must think a resentment through if we are to avoid living in that resentment. The trouble is the "through" gets lost...we don't think the resentment through, we think the resentment into a worry. And, of course, the resentment has a face...a resentment doesn't have legs of its own. It is his face, it is her fault which we are resenting. We personalize the resentment.
We get the fault fixed in our mind, then we think about it...only we really worry. Worry, worry, worry...always legislating for our own idea that she is wrong and we are right. And if he would just listen to us, he would understand why, how we are right and s/he is wrong.
The way to think a resentment through is to not personalize it...which means we immediately go to God. Not with the resentment...God knows naught about resentments. We go to God in thanks that we can and do have love to give to the other, for the other's benefit, in praise of the other...for the other, in this very situation that the reasoning mind is resisting through resentment, is our angel. This person, this situation, this resentment is in our life right this very minute for our own still more spiritual growth.
We will only get that still more spiritual growth when we quit resisting the other, a near-impossibility for the natural self. So we make conscious contact with God knowing he performs that which is given us to do. [For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me....Job.23.14]
We thank God again for guiding us through...there's our "through," properly completed.
Thank you.
Learning to think aright is almost a lost art. "Think," "thinking" have a bad rep because we have never learned the difference between thinking and worrying.
We must think a resentment through if we are to avoid living in that resentment. The trouble is the "through" gets lost...we don't think the resentment through, we think the resentment into a worry. And, of course, the resentment has a face...a resentment doesn't have legs of its own. It is his face, it is her fault which we are resenting. We personalize the resentment.
We get the fault fixed in our mind, then we think about it...only we really worry. Worry, worry, worry...always legislating for our own idea that she is wrong and we are right. And if he would just listen to us, he would understand why, how we are right and s/he is wrong.
The way to think a resentment through is to not personalize it...which means we immediately go to God. Not with the resentment...God knows naught about resentments. We go to God in thanks that we can and do have love to give to the other, for the other's benefit, in praise of the other...for the other, in this very situation that the reasoning mind is resisting through resentment, is our angel. This person, this situation, this resentment is in our life right this very minute for our own still more spiritual growth.
We will only get that still more spiritual growth when we quit resisting the other, a near-impossibility for the natural self. So we make conscious contact with God knowing he performs that which is given us to do. [For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me....Job.23.14]
We thank God again for guiding us through...there's our "through," properly completed.
Thank you.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
THE MEASURE OF OUR SUCCESS
Your success is the measure of My Will that those around you have seen worked out in your lives. -- "God Calling," October 29
It is extraordinarily difficult for me to show to those around me the measure of God's will worked out in my life when those around me want to argue about it...to debate the issue.
The reason it is extraordinarily difficult is that debating requires ego's input.
God does not debate, God is. God cannot be proved by words, nor by thinking...God is. God is not mine to prove, and entering into a debate over the fact is my ego's problem...not the ego of the one challenging, but mine.
The challenge is merely a question. The answer is the measure of God's will that those around me see worked out in my life. Which the challenger may never see...nor is that mine to fix.
Mine to fix is that sometimes my ego lives in my mouth.
Thank you.
It is extraordinarily difficult for me to show to those around me the measure of God's will worked out in my life when those around me want to argue about it...to debate the issue.
The reason it is extraordinarily difficult is that debating requires ego's input.
God does not debate, God is. God cannot be proved by words, nor by thinking...God is. God is not mine to prove, and entering into a debate over the fact is my ego's problem...not the ego of the one challenging, but mine.
The challenge is merely a question. The answer is the measure of God's will that those around me see worked out in my life. Which the challenger may never see...nor is that mine to fix.
Mine to fix is that sometimes my ego lives in my mouth.
Thank you.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
A NEED...NOT A WANT
[The following is a reprint of my blog of February 23, 2012.]
“I stand at the door and knock.” It is the Father within who stands at the door and knocks to be let out…to be released.
My needs are always met…by God. “The Father within knows my needs.”
My wants are sometimes met, sometimes not. It is my obsession with getting my wants filled that turns my wants into my god of the moment, and thus blocks the grace of God. It is known as free will, but there is nothing free about it.
Likewise, there is nothing, per se, wrong with having wants…that’s how life moves forward. It is when I get all bogged down with whether I’ll get my needs met (do I have enough money to last the rest of my life?) that my wants grow spurs and ride me. That’s when I confuse my want (enough money to last forever) with my need (to open the door of my soul to the Father who knows my needs and whose good pleasure it is to fill my needs).
It was during my 10+ years of taking care of the IRS that I learned that…which is exactly why I know my experience with the IRS to be of God, a need I had, but assuredly not a want, and for which today I am deeply grateful.
Thank you.
“I stand at the door and knock.” It is the Father within who stands at the door and knocks to be let out…to be released.
My needs are always met…by God. “The Father within knows my needs.”
My wants are sometimes met, sometimes not. It is my obsession with getting my wants filled that turns my wants into my god of the moment, and thus blocks the grace of God. It is known as free will, but there is nothing free about it.
Likewise, there is nothing, per se, wrong with having wants…that’s how life moves forward. It is when I get all bogged down with whether I’ll get my needs met (do I have enough money to last the rest of my life?) that my wants grow spurs and ride me. That’s when I confuse my want (enough money to last forever) with my need (to open the door of my soul to the Father who knows my needs and whose good pleasure it is to fill my needs).
It was during my 10+ years of taking care of the IRS that I learned that…which is exactly why I know my experience with the IRS to be of God, a need I had, but assuredly not a want, and for which today I am deeply grateful.
Thank you.
Monday, October 27, 2014
BECOME ONE WITH THE STARSHINE
In my college years, we used to ponder the mystery of life. With our collective and wondrous reasoning minds, we pretty much decided that we are born, we die, in between we are as bumps in the road. That's it.
Over the years, I've gone back there often, and may I say it was a great gettin' up morning when I got a new realization of life, death and the bump in the road.
I believe today that the task given the bump in the road between life and death is that it must needs rise above itself...to become one with the starshine (a word from the '60s that I love).
That is what we are tasked with before conception. As we are sent out, we are implanted with all the love, kindness, security, success, patience, peace that there is, but we can only access it by giving it away, by using it for the benefit of others...that is becoming one with the starshine.
Our own intelligence always legislates for itself...Intelligence (God) always legislates for others. (Helpful hint: I am, you are, we are others...we're the ones for whom God legislates.)
Joel Goldsmith maintains that the human mind is enmity to God. I maintain that until we learn we must rely on Intelligence, God, rather than our own smarts, we are as bumps in the road.
Thank you.
Over the years, I've gone back there often, and may I say it was a great gettin' up morning when I got a new realization of life, death and the bump in the road.
I believe today that the task given the bump in the road between life and death is that it must needs rise above itself...to become one with the starshine (a word from the '60s that I love).
That is what we are tasked with before conception. As we are sent out, we are implanted with all the love, kindness, security, success, patience, peace that there is, but we can only access it by giving it away, by using it for the benefit of others...that is becoming one with the starshine.
Our own intelligence always legislates for itself...Intelligence (God) always legislates for others. (Helpful hint: I am, you are, we are others...we're the ones for whom God legislates.)
Joel Goldsmith maintains that the human mind is enmity to God. I maintain that until we learn we must rely on Intelligence, God, rather than our own smarts, we are as bumps in the road.
Thank you.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
GOD'S HIDEY HOLE
We are ever being assured and reassured that there is a place within...within our own self...where grace resides, God's hidey hole if you will. Our great mistake is in trying to figure that out in order to make it true. It is in the trying that the ego lives...and calls itself spiritual growth.
It is not the fear of the pain of surrender that keeps us from holding our nose and taking a leap of faith into grace. It is self-absorption. The self wrapped in ego can never agree to the possibility of pain no matter the promise of peace to come...later on...through pain. No, the ego's siren song of nothingness draws us deeper into self-absorption, that's all.
"God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf." Now, to get out of the way and let that happen.
Thank you.
It is not the fear of the pain of surrender that keeps us from holding our nose and taking a leap of faith into grace. It is self-absorption. The self wrapped in ego can never agree to the possibility of pain no matter the promise of peace to come...later on...through pain. No, the ego's siren song of nothingness draws us deeper into self-absorption, that's all.
"God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf." Now, to get out of the way and let that happen.
Thank you.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS FANTASY
Blinding flash of the obvious: Everything I ever learned from a book, including the Bible, I must throw away and learn to listen to the still, small voice within...which tells me only things I learned from the Bible.
I realize that the "everything" is "every spiritual thing," and that the still, small voice confirms only that which is of God...for there have been "truths" that were wishful thinking on my part. When I hear that which I already know from having read it in, say, my Big Book, and having stepped out in it, practiced it, lived it...then I know it for truth. All else is fantasy.
Thank you.
I realize that the "everything" is "every spiritual thing," and that the still, small voice confirms only that which is of God...for there have been "truths" that were wishful thinking on my part. When I hear that which I already know from having read it in, say, my Big Book, and having stepped out in it, practiced it, lived it...then I know it for truth. All else is fantasy.
Thank you.
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