TO FIND OUR FATHER WITHIN

What if Donald Trump is our Saul of Tarsus? As in Saint Paul before his involuntary conversion.

What if that's you and me? What if we're all Saul, rigid, righteous and right, before involuntary or voluntary conversion? According to me, some of us crash and burn leaving no place to turn but to a power greater than ourselves; some of us are born seeking a higher power and some just stumble onto it. It makes no never mind how we get there, get there we must...again, according to me. 

Will we open our mind to the possibility of it?..to the possibility that we are Trump in disguise...or Pruitt...or Hillary! Are we willing to find within our own self that part of them we are repulsed by, to seek for that identity in order to release it...loose it and let it go...and find our Father within? 

Until we do, we will be tied to our own repugnant thoughts...calling our own thoughts Trump, Pruitt, Hillary, et al. And those thoughts will grow...but we won't.

Thank you.

FIND THE CONNECTOR, GOD

And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. -- Romans12:2

Finding my own personal definition of Oneness has been, and continues to be, important to me...probably because the idea doesn't come naturally to the ego-centered reasoning mind.

Many begin trying to get our own picture of Oneness by meditating on the waves in the ocean...how some are bigger, some more forceful, more breathtaking...attention-getters! The little ones, however, the ho-hum bump-in-the-water ones, are the connectors...the underneath connection. We realize Oneness begins at the root, underneath, in the ever-so-small seed...unseen as it were.

It seems easy to our reasoning mind to see your problem and think we know the solution...if you would but listen. It is considerably harder to get our own attention, to turn our so-called solution toward our own self...and there discover our problem, the underneath connector.

We remember that what we see is always our self...ah, the calm of the spiritual solution opens up to us. That calm is the gift of Oneness.

Find the Connector, God, and be at peace.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL...MIRROR IMAGE

I've long been a believer that learning to take nothing personally is the path to God's hidey-hole.

Which leads me to answered prayers. Learning unto acceptance that answered prayers seldom even resemble the result we sought may be one of life's hardest lessons to remember. That's why thank you is so important for us to hold to...that's the proof of our open mind. To pray thank you and mean it in the face of an apparent Oh, no! can only be God calling.

I am in the midst of such an answered prayer right now...which invites me to prove how well I've learned to take nothing personally. The miracle is that I know this even as I go forward...know it from my toes to my nose. The tripwire is the human condition...it is such that from the nose up, our reasoning mind runs the show or wants to.

Sometime back, I said to an acquaintance, out loud and in perfect sincerity, that I wanted to be able, just as Jesus did, to have calumny visited upon me and to answer, to respond, not at all. Yes. I did say that. And I meant it. I still do, only not out loud anymore...I'd forgotten the command: Tell no one.

Here's the nut of my learning: (a) I can reasonably understand that for whatever reason, my acquaintance took my statement personally, as a personal offense, and she is delivering my answered prayer. (b) I can spiritually believe that my acquaintance is my angel in disguise, and she is delivering my answered prayer.

I am at peace with this learning process, and I can say with experiential authority that one of my life's hardest lessons today is to remember to take nothing personally and to keep the emphasis on her as my angel for she is only carrying the message I sought.

 This is my own answered prayer, and I am grateful for this proof of God in my life.

Thank you.

AN ATTITUDE OF FAITH REWARDS

This attitude of faith will receive its reward, as surely as the acting upon My direct Guidance. -- "God Calling," June 24

Ah..."its reward." What a grand and glorious day, hour, minute...instant!...it will be when I read about receiving my reward, and my first thought isn't of money, glory or society.

It would not be surprising to learn that God's will, or our ego-need, is for us to win a grand prize, a no-money-just-glory prize, and for no one we know to hear about it...ever.

My ego dreams of winning big with an audience present to applaud...and enviously. Or, more particularly, it dreams of winning with its current bane of life present...and envious.

The U-bie we must make is to accept our ego just as it is: Our ego. The more we try to make our ego a spiritual tool, the stronger our ego grows. Same goes when we try to make our reasoning mind that proverbial highway to heaven...ain't gonna happen. That's just Miracle-Gro for our ego.

We must go higher than our reasoning mind to be raised deeper than our reasoning mind.

It is an attitude of faith that we seek, and that starts with an attitude of gratitude. And that starts with thank you...for everything, be it an Oh, No! or an unearned glory.

We say thank you and that is all. That attitude of faith will receive its reward.

Thank you.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

In my quiet time this morning, I was praying my standard "bless all my beloveds," and the words "and all my un-beloveds" followed without thought. 

I realized, there it is, the nut of my searching mind, the how-to toward peace, love and joy...consciously seek more for a loving heart for my un-beloveds than for my already beloveds. Face it, as the Man said, I already love them. 

It's the uns that make a mare's nest in my mind. Which, therefore and of course, get the most attention...and not the needed spiritual attention, but the unneeded ego attention. Ah, but even when making the self-determined attempt to love the unlovable, we stay in the un position by identifying the uns as such.

I'm guessing this is what opens the teeny-tiny window for light to come in on Oneness. It's only through comprehending unto living Oneness that we can love the unlovable for only then is there no unlovable to love. All is One.

I wrote my blog, then read my Rohr, and  I was taken by this statement: We abhor and denigrate welfare for the poor but hardly blink at welfare for corporations or for the banking and military systems. Doesn't that say the same thing? The poor being the uns, the moneyed being the beloveds. 

When will we ever learn?

Thank you.

REMEMBER TO DO THE LOVE YOU RECEIVE

I had two quite different experiences yesterday...one of incoming ugly and one of incoming love.

First, the ugly: I was at lunch with several people. A friend and I were at the end of the table, seated across from each other. The two people next to us literally turned their seats away from us and talked with the others at the table the entire time. We were never included unless we threw a remark or a question up and over. Another lady seated down the table told an incredibly hurtful story about two others (who, of course, were not present). She excused her story by saying the unkind remarks originally made "had just fallen out of her lips without forethought." But she told this disparaging story to people who had no need to know...and with forethought. 

I am exercising not taking the behavior of the first two personally because it says nothing at all about me. My insight is in understanding why the other lady would break bad with such a mean-spirited  story. The reason, it seems to me, is that ugly begets ugly. Specifically, whether she consciously realized it or not, she was in the presence of uncivil behavior. If we do not in some way address that incivility, it will inform our behavior. Plain speak: It will do our thinking, our acting, for us as the rude behavior of the two did through her.

Second, and best part, the love: Before lunch, a lady I know but am not close with, came up, and, kinda stuttering, said she had an offer to make me: She'd heard me say that I'd love to visit my hometown one last time but this and that were making it unlikely to happen. So, she was offering to drive me to my hometown (an eight-hour drive!) in the Fall, that she'd make herself scarce while I visited friends, etc. I am beyond touched at such a straight up example of love, such heart-generosity...gobsmacked fits here. 

It is worth noting...and not forgetting...how ugly spreads like spilled ink on a white tablecloth...p.d.q. with no good following. Then, how love takes its own sweet time...it spreads by growing up and out. I know the offer-er will continue to show forth love, I will have her example to follow and share with others who, no doubt, will catch the fever and show it forth. Ugly just leaves a stain.

My goal today is to stay my memory on the love...and pass it on. Equally important, I want to not forget that ugly does beget ugly, to not forget the less-than-wonderful behavior I experienced...and not pass it on.

Thank you.  

OUR EGO IS OUR DICTATOR

[The following is a reprint of my post of March 15, 2014.]

We hear of a person's life being changed...and it is!..but what must change first is our reason for desiring change.

We get Soul change when we are no longer trying to change in order to get anything including peace of mind.

Peace of mind generally is the cover story we tell ourselves when we're really seeking ego satisfaction...financial security, to love and be loved, personal glory (if only in the form of agreement that we're right). These are self-determined objectives. We can and will change in order to get them but that seldom brings the peace of mind we think we're really seeking.

These ego-based wants masquerade as needs, and become the God of our understanding, fooling only us. Their sustaining root is our desire to believe that i am and you are not.

As long as we believe there is a "you" to resist, our ego is our dictator.

We go to God for God...that is all.

Thank you.