DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

While practical goals are important, the spiritual goal is to awaken the compassion that lies at the root of all change. 'Success' doesn’t mean I’ve saved an endangered species or cleaned up a toxic waste dump or fed hungry children. Success means awakening myself in the Spirit that can help make a better life for others. Success means I have acted in the world as though I were a part of it, not apart from it. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," November 30, 2019

Personally, I was never a goal-driven person until I was forced by my own decisions based on self to seek other than  human help...having run through all the human help I could find. Over many rough and ready roads to my Father within, I realized my path was...had ever been...toward the spiritual.

The above paragraph holds one sentence that describes my goal today, that sentence being: While practical goals are important, the spiritual goal is to awaken the compassion that lies at the root of all change.

I am convinced it is that awakened compassion that leads to a feeling of personal fulfillment, so beautifully described as:  Success means awakening myself in the Spirit that can help make a better life for others. 

I am happy I know this is my goal today, happier still that I am fully aware my success practicing that goal lies ahead, ever ahead. And I am grateful.

Thank you.

ON DOING IT RIGHT

According to Fr Richard Rohr, "somewhere, somehow the challenge comes that sets us on a different path."

This is not a path we take in order to become hip, slick and cool, but a way we trudge toward "a faith that will sustain us when we go to jail, when the money runs out, when we are powerless and cold and alone"...when fear is feasting on our very soul.

That's when we're doing it right. 

What else could so completely prove to us our powerlessness? Could cause us in our helplessness to seek cosmic help. There it is. Proof our reasoning mind in turmoil is a gift from on high deep within.

And its name is God. For it is God alone come to our aid disguised as another in need whom we can help, an abused animal by the side of the road, a dire diagnosis for ourself or a loved one...even the high sheriff and police that we've been trying to avoid.

We never know the time or the place our challenge will come...and, we discover, to our aid. The new path we have chosen teaches and prepares us to invite all in...to welcome all.

We welcome with a prayer of thank you; we love and laugh.

Thank you.

TRUST...OR BE NOT AFRAID

He prepares a place before me in the presence of my enemies. My enemies are my attack thoughts. They are my real enemies, and they are wholly my resistance to what is...while remembering that  resistance is a denial of God.

There will ever be mixups, misunderstandings and conflict in our daily life. In the face of any of those, the hardest action to take is none. To do nothing but mentally shoot prayers of gratitude for the opportunity to trust the Lord is a whole catechism on spiritual growth.

[I tend to think of spiritual growth as ego deflation in depth in designer jeans...I reckon because it takes the "holy" out of it, which is a tish off-putting but maybe that's just me.]

I do know that our trying to "fix" a misunderstanding, and with nothing but good intentions (a self-determined objective every time), is to touch our personal third rail.  Makes no nevermind...by word or deed...or thought?...we take it away from God and delay his perfect work.

Ah, there's where the power of ego first proves itself...it is well nigh impossible to know better and not do it anyway. Apparently, it takes burning oneself enough times that we begin to feel embarrassed...even with no visible witness.

Paradox alert! We learn to get grateful for that embarrassment. There's our sliver of gold...that's God making himself known. Find our gold, and our world changes.

I will go before you and make the crooked places straight. -- Isaiah 45:2

Thank you.

DETACHMENT FROM SELF

[The is a reprint of my post of September 20, 2012.]

When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looks more important than a right dependence upon God, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears. - Anonymous

When first I read that, I realized that my only concern had ever been for relief from my unreasonable fears, never how to serve in my job or in life itself. I was always seeking to get...rather than to realize God as my fulfillment, my sustenance, my abundance.

Any chance of freedom from fear of anything is dependent on reliance on a power greater than ourselves...a power we have no way to control, influence, curry the favor of, or even despise...a power for our own personal good, hence for the good of friend and foe alike...the reliance shows forth in and as service, being of service, becoming a service-giver according to the other's needs (as determined by that same higher power upon whom we are learning to rely).

It is all about detachment from self into Oneness, here and now.

Thank you.

FEEL FEAR, PRAY THANK YOU, MOVE ON

The feeling of running on empty is with me and has been for awhile. My notes in "God Calling" tell an interesting tale...all the way back to the 1980s, November is packed with less-than-wonderful  notes, asides, prayers and plaints.

Life goes in circles and cycles and going with it works best so those notes bring me comfort...hard comfort, but comfort. They remind me that November is the time of the year I've preselected to be my just for getting through time.

Finding grace in loss is grace. It cannot be self-willed...wished for, of course, but acceptance is as close as we'll come to it, and that can't be self-willed either. I've walked over a lot of personal hot coals getting to acceptance and unlearned from each one...and, who's kidding whom, that's gratitude in a cold bath.

Maybe loss is the cherry-on-top...like fear, it exposes our utter powerlessness, and in our emptiness, we can only turn to God. There in the miasma of neglected, rejected and abandoned, we sense our lantern's faint glow...before ever we have eyeball evidence, we know: I feel fear...God is here.

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment. — Eckhart Tolle

Thank you.

THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE POWER OF GRATITUDE

[The following is a reprint of my post of July 17, 2016, and again April 15, 2018...clearly, it calls to me.]

A thought I picked up from Rohr back in 2013: "It was surrender to gratitude—and also to immense confidence that you were a part of something very good."

It is the surrender to gratitude that calls my name, that showers me, inside and out, with immense confidence that I am, myself, something very good.

And you, yourself, are something very good.

That we, ourselves, are, together and apart, One...something very good.

And it all starts with surrender...to gratitude.

Thank you.

WITHOUT MY NAME ON IT

To be graced with the gift of silence in the face of public dissing, I have learned, is the pearl beyond price. Ah, but then to know that as but the first step is to begin living the peace that passes understanding.

The Soul at peace within extends outward, gracing all who were party to the diss with their same inner peace...and, best, without my name on it.

That first step has led to my recognition that my left-alone, almost shunned, feelings are my gold, for I have been led on a new and deeper path. With no effort on my part but willingness, I have found my hope diamond anew.

There's naught wrong with asking God if he loves me for that is my proof to me that I trust he is there.

Thank you.