ACCEPTANCE IS THE TRANSMUTER

Fr Richard Rohr has written, "Throughout the New Testament, Jesus’s parables and stories paint a picture of a reign in which the poor and marginalized are lifted up and their needs are met."

It was a new day a-dawning when I realized that our needs are met not by money, power or prizes, but by our lifted up consciousness...namely, God consciousness.

I suspect many are now flocking to a Jesus they have monetized...we hear it said that Jesus wants us to have money or that Jesus is offended by poverty. They may be right, and if so, I'm wrong...but happily wrong which is close enough to perfect for me.

I do live in a raised consciousness today which doesn't mean by a long shot that I live free of self-centered fear, wants and judgments. It's that I've found an attitude of gratitude for them.

Through a blinding flash of the obvious, I saw fear as God in camouflage. The longer I pondered that, the deeper came the understanding of that for true, namely because nothing turns many of us to God faster than fear. Ah, and nothing else lifts that fear as quickly.

That BFO opened my inner door to a new slant on my wants and judgments...for the acceptance of those wants and judgments...and to finally understand acceptance as the transmuter.

My self-centered fears, wants and judgments no longer mentally define me as less-than...they cause me pause to laugh at myself, often when I'm brought up short by the very want or judgment I am in the midst of parading.

God's cute, to quote my friend Natalie.

Thank you.

GOD IS ALWAYS RIGHT 2

[This is a reprint of my post of January 22, 2013, slightly reworked.]   

Truth is within ourselves and we must open out a way for the imprisoned splendour to escape. -- Robert Browning

I tend to believe Truth is interchangeable with kindness, caring, patience, love, understanding...that they are all inside us right this very minute. If not, where would we go to get them? To pray for any one or all, it seems to me, is to doubt God's perfect work to begin with.

The minute we recognize a need to be kind, be kind...a need to be understanding, be understanding...a need to be patient, be patient. Loose it, and let it flow forth.

It follows that the highest form of prayer...thank You...is not a request but an acknowledgment of what already is for which we give praise. That very praise brings the realization that what is is just as it needs be for our benefit right this minute.

We have been looking at life from the wrong perspective (i.e., our own). It is not that we are always wrong, it is that God is always right.

Our purpose now is to accept that we already have all we need, freeing us to focus on the how of it, the why of it...which is quite simply going to God for God, and that is all.

Word of warning: Going to God for God is a serious dig...be prepared to pray thank you a lot.

Thank You.

OUR LADDER TO CLIMB OUT OF SELF

Beginning again the study of the Sermon on the Mount, and it is clearer still that the Beatitudes are the primer for changing our mind.

The Beatitudes hammer home the early realization that the hardest thing spiritual growth will ever ask of us is that we change our mind. According to me, nobody ever grew an inch spiritually using the reasoning mind as their "get there" tool. It's an aid...an aid that must needs be used sparingly, but not relied on.

The value of the reasoning mind lies in its leading us not merely to change our mind but to exchange our mind...to upgrade deeper. And the upgrade comes from our apparent downfall...our inability to logically "figure it out." "It" being the vagaries of life itself.

That very crash-and-burn brings us the ladder we need to climb...away from self to Self. We who are weak, miserable, without a clue, discover the Sermon, the first rung of which is the Beatitudes where we read blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek...whoa! There's the proof that the hardest thing spiritual growth asks of us is that we change our mind because neither "poor in spirit" nor "meek" is what the reasoning mind is looking for.

Then comes the pearl pf great price...we realize that the Beatitudes are the base, the origin, of learning "mirror vision," as in, if it looks bad, get grateful, this is God's gift and our need. The poor in spirit, the meek, etc., all lead to the freeing of self and the grace of gratitude.

We have ceased fighting anything and anyone is proving its worth. Its worth being in faith that God has our back, we need fight no more forever.

Thank you.

ON APPLYING THANK YOU TO THE PANDEMIC

I heard a respected person once say that infections are toxins that our mind, body and soul are releasing...fear them not, let them go. We can bless them as they pass out of our body for they are freeing us inside.

With my thank you prayer, I'm choosing to apply that principle to the pandemic. Having accepted that neither fear nor hate can cure or even aid anything, I turn again to the grace of gratitude.

And if my incurable, progressive disease can be a good thing...and it is to me today...then so can this pandemic be.

Trump is a tish harder.

Thank you.

MISTAKES TRANSMUTED INTO GOLD

I'm guessing ego is the source of the majority of our mistakes. But it is our mistakes that lead us to God so we need thank our ego not curse it.

This is the direction we must needs turn toward in reaching ego deflation in depth...which is the exact opposite direction our reasoning mind has ever led us. We have learned, of course, that the way of God's will is most often the opposite way of our will.

Trying to make sense of spiritual truths, reason diminishes it to make it understandable. Yet, Rohr speaks true when he says, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. How reasonable is that?

I had an experience yesterday that was just another sharing of an event in my life that was of grace. Then, at 3:00 this morning, I awoke in deep distress with the rues, regrets and remorses about my sharing.

I recalled the Sermon's warning about bragging on oneself and calling it spiritual growth: In the bragging we get our reward, we get naught from the Father who rewards in secret.

Then...here came God to save my day! I was reminded that studying the Sermon is all well and good, but until I do what the Sermon says, it's just so many words. It was in doing, making my mistake, realizing my mistake, seeking God's love and laughter, that my mistake brought the Sermon up from just words to realization within me. My mistake was transmuted into spiritual understaanding.

That's called building one's house on rock. According to me...or I'm hoping.

Thank you.

OR LOVE AND LAUGH

Our literature tells us that we must cease fighting anything and anybody. We may believe the words, but it's the doing that's brings us up short. In fact, our first reflexive response to that sentence is a refusal to believe it means what it says...we figure it must be a misprint.

Even when we finally come to accept that it means exactly what it says, we unconsciously, sometimes consciously, hold a part of ourself "above" it. We know from personal experience that stuffed anger is a resentment aborning, a certain-sure soul slayer; ergo, we're for leaving it to the wannabe saints amongst us.

That is living in the reasoning mind, letting our ego determine our life. We have done that before. Face it, we lived there once, rarely with a positive outcome...meaning when everybody came out a winner.

Staying ourself in the spiritual search, we turn away from justifying resistance and double-down on seeking to understand nonresistance. There...we are opened to the mother lode. It is when we seek to understand unto acceptance that the spiritual axiom comes alive in our heart, our soul, our body and our brain. It is a spiritual axiom that whenever we are upset, no matter the cause, there is something wrong with us. 

Now we can receive with an open mind how to cease fighting anything and anybody...we surrender our egoic need to always be right...or, more to the point, to never be wrong. Surrender is acceptance in disguise, the hairshirt of acceptance probably. When we get by our belief that surrender means loser, we begin to move on up, to a deeper life within.

That deeper life, I truly believe, is the place Chief Joseph spoke from when he declared, I will fight no more forever. Yes.

Thank you.

ON MOVING BEYOND...TO LOVE

To be united to God we must 'break through' the sensible world and pass beyond the human condition to move beyond knowing to unknowing, from knowledge to love. -- Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio (from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" of January 31, 2020)

I take comfort when I read such as the above quote, particularly we must 'break through' the sensible world and pass beyond the human condition to move beyond knowing to unknowing.

That confirms what I've been believing for so many years now...believing but failing in the doing...no, I think faltering is the better word. I try and  falter fairly regularly, then try and succeed, then try again...which means I'm heading in the right direction.

I admit that my successes are usually met with enough scepticism by me to keep me trying again. I give my reasoning mind credit though for pitching in to help...questioning my motives usually.

Fortunately, there are successes that cannot be questioned they are so obviously of God...but some I must needs run by my mentor and maybe a confidant to get another take for in case my ego Lucy is gathering glory for her own.

The best part about inner successes is they are not for public display. They just give off an inner peace, kinda like a sigh of relief. Talking about them brings them into the known which dispels them for they are the unknowable.

I've seldom had to worry about not talking about them...I rarely remember what has been imparted. That may be God but it could be age...although it has ever been that way, and I haven't always been 80.

The gold is my behavior begins to change...my thoughts that dictate my behavior have been upgraded not by my will but by grace and by God.

Thank you.