GOD, INFINITE PATIENCE...LOVE

Just a Closer Talk With Thee: Thank You for all my dark suspicions about others' dark suspicions about me for they lead me to You. Amen

Try this: In your mind, call friend and foe 'Beloved' -- it's well-nigh impossible to hold a resentment toward someone you have named 'Beloved.' 

I know (and hope to someday soon fully realize) that the 3:00 AM I-see-me wake-ups of rues, regrets and remorses are as nothing...all wrapped up in self-deception. Self-deception is blame and shame; there is no God there.

It is self-deception that blocks the love within from flowing out...or, for that matter, from flowing within, a balm to your being. 

Love and laugh...or, again, just get over yourself.

Thank you.

GOD'S GRACE RUSHES OUT FROM WITHIN

[The following is a reprint, slightly reworked, of my post of April 10, 2012.]

To "sow to the Spirit" is to place all reliance, all trust, all hope in a higher power deep within. That is to turn from our ego-victory reasoning mind and reap the things of the Spirit.

It was only by divorcing myself from my own opinion that I realized that truth. It was my opinion that I could, more should, be able to get my self-determined needs met by thinking, by analyzing, plotting, planning. This is arm wrestling with God, a egoic no-win proposition.

Our very problems, through our own reasoning-mind efforts to overcome them, only grow bigger and uglier...until we experience that grand and glorious sensation of crashing and burning. Only then do we reach for help from an unknown, unseen source. Only then can God's grace flow from within to save us from our own self-determined fix-it objectives...in Its own way, in Its own time.

It's a whole new way of thinking...to be grateful, and sincerely grateful, for all my worries as they are happening, as in a loved one's health, my petty peeves, my I'm right/you're wrong mental games. When I am lifted there, I am free and do know a complete reliance on God.

Failure of aid from outside sources opens me to my "complete reliance on that which heretofore has never been experienced...the Infinite Invisible" which brings the realization that My grace is sufficient for thee.

Thank you.

GOD IS OUR NET

 ...it is crucial to allow God and at least one other person to see us in our imperfection and even in our nakedness, as we are—rather than as we ideally wish to be. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 19, 2019

Ah, there's the dreaded wish-come-true...to be known by another and loved anyway.

We are brought up short by the realization that we hold the key. Only we can determine who is allowed entry into our being. Then comes the big Oops. Yes, we can determine who enters, but we cannot determine or control their interpretation of what they are privy to.

That, another's interpretation of our imperfection, our nakedness, is our Cross...share it or bear it, our choice.

We only realize in looking back that our decision to open up our imagined devil's den within was God doing for us through us.

We hold our nose and take a leap of faith in hopeful trust that God is our net. And he is...every time. And especially when, first take, the net feels less than we'd hoped for; second take, proves to be our gold.

God loves us so much!

Thank you.

THE READY INTERVENTION OF GOD

In a casual conversation recently, I repeated an old fantasy of mine (I repeated a lie). I thought nothing at all about telling it for it had been one of the many fantasy stories I had told for most of my adult life...in fact, I told it until I realized it was nothing but a fantasy. Apparently, it had been my wished-for truth.

Later that evening when I remembered the conversation, I was a tish taken back that I'd told the story for I'd gotten clear of it some time back...I'd told myself.

Ah, and here came a blinding flash of the obvious to save my day: We must needs repeat, rererepeat, our prettied up crap to become reconciled with it as a part of us...to love and laugh about it within and without. If it were, as we wish, lifted out without work and more work on our part, there would be no  spiritual growth.

For what it's worth, and strictly according to me,  in repeating my fantasy, I was "doing it right." That was the God of my understanding staying my subconscious egoic need for control which still more spiritual growth subverts. It was my initial despondency when I recognized that I had repeated the lie that let the BFO out. As long as the lie stayed covered up inside, I could fool myself that it did not exist. All the while it was playing shame-and-blame with me, pulling me down away from love and laughter.

There. Proof that God can, will and does intervene in our life in our behalf.

Thank you.

USE OUR DIFFICULTIES TO GET FREE

According to Buddhist psychologist John Welwood, We are learning to use each difficulty along the way as an opportunity to go further, to connect more deeply, not just with our partner, but with our own aliveness as well.  [From Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," June 17, 2019.]

We are learning to use each difficulty as an opportunity to go further. There it is...the nugget of gold we seek. Unconsciously at first...thus we resist every difficulty and believe it God's will when we conquer one. In fact that is our rigid self-will using one, many or all of its tools...victim, avenger, fear, et al., to "win."

Word of warning, we will stay stuck in self until we loose it and let it go."It"  being whatever we are resisting.

To paraphrase Eknath Easwaran, when someone upsets us, hurts us, maligns us, we must not draw back but go closer to that one for our spiritual goal is to overcome our own self. The hurtful one is but our chosen taxi to ride, or angel, to get ourself clear.

Welwood further wrote: A conscious relationship is one that calls forth who you really are. . . . 

Building a conscious relationship may feel hurtful, ugly, sharp, stinging...wrong, in a word. But if it only gives us the equivalent feeling of puppy love it is the equivalent of puppy love...fleeting, egoic, fun for the moment but utterly self involved.

To find and to  live out who we really are can be...at times must be...painful to our ego-self, to our surface-self, else we stay on the surface of our own life...involved with self alone. There is no God in that.

We must go beyond reason to love.

Thank you.

THE PLACE WHEREON YOU STAND

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of October 8, 2016.]

....the will of God is not a 'fate' to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new . . . something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act which must be retrieved in and by us. -- Thomas Merton

I don't know why but Thomas Merton's writings usually sail right over my head. I say that to give some understanding to the only thing that grabbed me in this quote, the bit about our cooperation, seeking first the Kingdom of God.

My understanding may be well off the mark from what he meant, but my heart sang on reading it because I have come to believe that seeking first the Kingdom of God is quite literally our only quest. My place in the world, the future of our country, how to help the sick, the poor and the downtrodden are important but seeking first the Kingdom of God is essential.

The mindbender to me is the realization that our rightful place...serving our country, the sick, the poor, the downtrodden...is the search for the Kingdom of God. When we finally learn unto acceptance that our self-determined objectives lead us down blind alleys, we are given to look higher. Our error has been not in the object of our desire but in the beneficiary. When we seek for self, we seek alone; we seek for God, we find others...and God.

We seek first the Kingdom of God and find it right where we stand...the place whereon you stand is holy ground. Where else could we expect to find it? Our Father is within.

Thank you.

BECOME FULLY PRESENT TO THE PRESENT

The feminine . . . is shifting the global paradigm from one of dominance and individualized salvation to one of collective awakening and service to all beings. —Mirabai Starr

Made mine: My Father within is shifting me, my thoughts and my wants from one of getting-over-on-others-while-looking-good to collective (mine and thine) awakening and service to all beings. 

For women mystics, contemplative life is not so much a matter of transcending the illusions of mundane existence or attaining states of perfect equanimity as it is about becoming as fully present as possible to the realities of the human experience. In showing up for what is, no matter how pedestrian or tedious, how aggravating or shameful, the what is begins to reveal itself as imbued with holiness. * *  *  *  *   When we purposely build periods of reverence or stillness into our days, we practice gazing through the eyes of love, and we get better and better at seeing love everywhere we look. —Mirabai Starr 

Made mine: For those of us seeking still more spiritual growth, contemplative life is not so much a matter of transcending the illusions of mundane existence or attaining states of perfect equanimity as it is about becoming as fully present as possible to the realities of the human experience [we give up fighting anything and anybody]. In showing up for what is, no matter how pedestrian or tedious, how aggravating or shameful, the what is [their wrongly thinking they are right and we are wrong] begins to reveal itself as imbued with holiness [we practice mentally unto physically being the first to give over]. *  *  *  *  *  When we purposely build periods of reverence or stillness into our days, we practice gazing through the eyes of love [by picturing our resistance moving from our head...self...to our heart...God],  and we get better and better at seeing love everywhere we look. 

The incredible fact of all these words is that I can personally attest that they work. That's not all, the whole string of words can also be stated as get out of self into God or let go and let God...or any of the goodies we agree with yet rarely practice. 

Just do it. -- Nike [Face it, an  ad campaign that is wildly successful should be a clue that it works...try it. Just do it.]

Thank you.