FINDING PEACE...HEARING ANGELS

We do not know how His plans are laid, we only need to believe that if we trust Him and accept whatever happens as His will and in a spirit of faith, everything will work out for the best in the end. -- Anonymous

There it is: We only need trust Him and accept whatever happens as His will, and everything will work out for the best in the end. This I do believe...it is my truth. Also, it is all but impossible to just  tell another that truth convincingly. Apparently, the reasoning-mind response to that is either Yes, but..., or, No way.

Actually, this is reasonable since we live in the material world which consists of provable facts...things we can hug or not hug but see for sure.

That's exactly why we must needs be open to seeking still more spiritual growth even as we breathe...not just a half-hour every morning, or an hour or so every day. No. As we grow our life...as we flow with our life...the instant we feel resistance from or to whatever, we have learned to not take it personally. Our new watchword has become, take nothing personally.

We think our thank you and move with the perceived block which often disappears with our acceptance of it. However, those times when the block remains, and there will be those times, we learn to offer no resistance as we smile and remove our self...shake the dust off your feet and move on is the word we get from the Bible and from my favorite, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. (Likely from a lot of other sources but if I get it from those two, I quit searching...I've found my answer.)

Everybody wants peace of mind, nobody wants to do peace. Face it, a fret-free life is a self-free life. Short course in freedom from self: trust, accept, believe in God and his will, take nothing personally, detach and get grateful.

We shall find peace, we shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds! -- Chekhov

Thank you.

A DAILY FOCUSED COMMITMENT

Relying on our reasoning mind leads to resignation. Being powered by self-will, resignation gets us the same-old-same-old...period. The s-o-s-o often ends with us looking for someone to blame.

It takes a daily focused commitment to still more spiritual growth to get over our own self. Ah, but the learning is in what we are focused on...what we are committed to. Say a self-defying problem arises...we tend to want to give that to God to fix...in our favor. And Now.

God can and will solve the problem in our favor...in his way and in his time. Say we, or a loved one, are diagnosed with a dreaded disease...the usual response there is, "Please, God, remove this...take it away...heal me." But dreaded diseases kill and/or maim a lot of people...that may be ours to face.

If we resign our self to our fate of death by this disease, we will die unresolved within...meaning unhappy and often angry...at God. Acceptance of our fate, however, opens us to God's solution in our favor: the mysterious ways of the Lord...a mind at peace, a quietly joyful heart...as we lie dying. Or not. God's will.

This is not "according to me," nor is it a theory. I have been with both cases more than a couple times. It was for me a life-changing experience...in all cases.

Our daily focused commitment is ever: We go to God for God and that is all.

Thank you.

WHEN GIVEN A CHOICE, CHOOSE GOD

The promises that we are given in our quiet time, that we receive from deep on high, are true. But they cannot be true for our self alone...if they are not true for the universe, they are akin to the devil quoting scripture...just ego whispering ego-victory wishes to our self.

I read in Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation this morning that it is written we must be ground like wheat, and once we have recovered, then we can turn and help others. I'm taking ground like wheat to be our ego resisting the need to give over, give up, give in.

My prayer concerns a petty, infinitesimal pushback that my ego Lucy is wrapped around. Having to do with another, of course: God grant that I be willing to give over, give up, give in to her will...let it be...resist not are just words if I'm not going to do them...starting within my own attack mind and walking it all the way through. I can mentally ask him what I can do to help when I walk in the door. What's your suggestion, please and thank you?

There. That's me being ground like wheat. I do not want to mentally ask him what I can do, I want to physically tell her what she can do.  Oh, wait...BFO...is this maybe God in him inviting God in me to love and laugh...together? As One? I'm going with that...when given a choice, choose the one with the less ego.

You must be ground like wheat; once you have recovered, then you can turn and help the others. --  Luke 22:31-32

Thank you.

GET GRATEFUL...OR LOVE AND LAUGH

If the seemingly unjustified regrets of our life (the unfairs, the not-my-faults) are never resolved to our liking, that is our glory...the result we get is the result God wills. That is the reason God invented gratitude.

It is my ego Lucy which holds the grudge, slings the mud, and winds up hurting no one but me just as long as I hold the grudge and sling the mud...if only in my own attack mind.

It is forgiveness (which is the whole of life right there) we need, and we must needs seek to extend it rather than seek to receive it. Toward that end, we learn the art of forgiveness which plain and simple is learning to take nothing personally. If all is God and all is of God, there is nothing we spiritually can take personally. And all else is but a dream.

We tend to give short shrift to forgiveness, using our get-out-of-jail free pass...I cannot forgive, only God can forgive. Ah, but how does God do forgiveness but through our own words, thoughts and deeds?

We begin our gratitude journey toward forgiveness by consciously deciding to replace our egoic wants with our needs, or a willingness to seek and accept God's will. The hard work on our part is letting go of the hard work...of trying to do the forgiveness.

Our awakening comes with our first glimpse that God is Love and sees nothing to forgive. We come to accept that we are forgiven...more importantly, we know this can only be held by passing it on. Forgiveness is passed on when we realize that there is nothing to forgive.

We love and laugh.

Thank you.

GOD GOES BEFORE US AS BACKUP

I and the Father are one...ah, but i am the vessel that holds I, the Father within, and it is incumbent upon that little i to keep I the Father holy...to run interference on my own ego, the driver of i, to think holy and wholly of I the Father for whom i am the representative. -- my morning BFO

Without conscious effort, my thoughts will ever go on the attack...like a lion on the prowl. Oh, I'm glad I thought lion...I can name it Aslan and gratefully consider my attack thoughts as seeking the ones whom I need to love. Akin to the monster in Golas' LSD trip who, when repulsed, said, "What was it that you thought needed to be loved?" That is one of my all-time favorite examples of learning to think from a different perspective.

I came across a note I wrote to myself on October 7, 1985. It's all about a co-worker with whom I was in constant discord. At the time, I described our problem as, We're in a personality conflict...he doesn't have one. Which is a clue of just how far I had to come to even begin to turn my thinking around.

I am most grateful I kept that note for it is my hard-copy proof of how and when I began my journey of consciously seeking to do love instead of to do hate. The note is all about me seeing me, not the co-worker...and I listed each thing about him that I was resisting, and I named them Me or Mine. And I asked that God's will be done through me...whatever that might be.

On the back of the note, dated September 24, 2005, I  wrote: The punchline: B and I became friends and when he departed the job, we split with a hug in love and laughter.

It fills me with joy just to read and remember that time. It calls to mind since then the times I've been forced to go there again...and have received God's own blessing each time. By simply giving over, giving up and giving in.

Lose self-consciousness, gain God-consciousness...which is ephemeral. We can only access it Now.  That's why we find our self going back again and again...ego is always driving the bus, God is ever heading it in the right direction.

He goes before us to make the crooked places straight.

Thank you.

ON REFLECTING PEACE TOWARD OTHERS

 Between human and human, only spiritual forces will suffice to keep them in harmony. -- Anonymous

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. -- Etty Hillesum

Love protects us from nothing, even as it unexplainably sustains us in all things. -- Saint John of the Cross via Fr Richard Rohr

 ....release the imprisoned God-Power within you. That Power, once operative, will immediately perform miracles. -- Anonymous

All of the above are quotes from my various daily readings. Each and all say the same thing to me; namely, there is a Higher Power within our very own self that is always available, always there for our own benefit, is most often the exact opposite of what we think we need (or what our ego is seeking), and it is that Power that produces miracles in our life.

Interesting to me, it seems a small but solid ego-block to our accessing that Power is our refusal to let each other know it by whatever name that speaks to us. I call It God and/or Jesus. My friend Gertrude calls it Buddha...and gets furious when she hears the name Jesus. An acquaintance  calls it Allah and thinks others bigoted for not. Etc.

It seems that when I try to let the Gertrudes be Gertrude (i.e., Wrong), I wind up with a resentment looking to do my thinking for me.

My peace has been enhanced mightily when I quit resisting their resistance...not by silent and superior judgment, but by sincerely asking God to bless my thoughts and heart about their thoughts and heart. He can! He has! He does! Equally important: I can't! Ah, but I can through the God Power within me.

We go to God for God and that is all. That Power, once operative, will immediately perform miracles.

Thank you.

ALL PATHS LEAD TO GOD

Here's my stand: We each are given our own choice of how to go to God, but getting to God is the outcome for all of us.

There is only one beginning, God consciousness, and one ending, God consciousness...the filling between, i.e., you and me (or ego), is innumerable, with newbies being born every instant.

It is our ego that legislates for itself ever and always...ergo, there's our spiritual workplace. The work, of course, is ego deflation in depth which starts with our conscious decision to deny self. In our daily walking around world that means we need to deny our perspective, our wants, our opinions. Fairly puny matters in fact. But to my ego Lucy...that's my truth, on which rests my self-esteem, for which I must stand and fight.

This, then, is our spiritual work: To give up analyzing our resistance...a stuck place for certain sure, since analyzing is just another word for justifying. The light breaks through when we realize analyzing is resistance, that we must needs give thanks for it...in another word, surrender.

In the moment of our surrender, our decision is made in favor of the Lord's outcome whatever it may be. We give up, we give in, we give over. It matters not who "wins," or who "loses," because with Lucy out of the picture, there is no winner or loser. There is only grace. Our burden, self, is lifted.

We can choose to live dependent on our own self, on our reasoning mind, or to live dependent on a power greater than our self...that which we cannot see, touch or hear...or, fortunately, prove. We have made our choice and in this sacred place we realize our life is just beginning...our spiritual work has just begun. There. Faith is born.

We must all carry the cross of our own reality until God transforms us through it. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, October 17, 1018

Thank you.