RESIST NOT...HAND-IN-HAND WITH OUR ENEMY

I am coming to understand at the end of her life how Mother Teresa could write in her diary that she did not feel that she knew God at all. Not to compare me with a saint, but her experience is a comfort to me...and what else is a saint's experience for?  Against my own remembered experiences, the feeling often floats that I only know the right words, that I know naught of the actual living of those words. 

Comes the double gift and burden...we know, or we hopefully know, that feeling, too, is ego. 

As I have often read and written, it is interestingly pathetic how long we will cling to the belief that reason is our safety net...that "victory can be ours for the thinking."  When it is detachment from reliance on our reasoning mind that sets us on the path to freedom. Another, oh please, I know that.

But that's it...that's our mare's nest. Simply knowing...and agreeing...that it is detachment that heads us in the right direction toward freedom, is ego's hook permitting our falsely believing we've got it. What we've got is understanding from our eyebrows up...ego's home plate...which too often we take for bragging rights. 

To live the turned-over life we seek, we find we must metaphorically hold our nose and take a leap of faith...in other words, and yet again, Just Do It. Our awakening is experiencing the difference in saying Just Do It and the time, the effort, the trudging we must do to just do it. 

In the end, all that essential time, effort and trudging lifts us up deeper to detachment, to letting go, to forgiveness. There. That is nonresistance.

This is where we find God's hand in the hand of our enemy...and we are graced with gratitude.   

Resist not evil. -- Matthew 5:39

Thank you.

EGO...GOD'S BFF

Blinding flash of the obvious: Never fear losing...that's where God stands, ready to catch us when (not if) we fall.

More and more I am seeing that our shortsightedness lies in our trust in winning. We have been taught and, against our own experience, continue to believe that winning is The Answer...our solution...our brass ring...our happy ever after.   

Again I am called to Rohr's "We get to God by doing it wrong not by doing it right." Or, my point, we get to God by losing not by winning. To the reasoning mind, that is hogwash, not to put too fine a point on it. We must go beyond reason to love.

We can be grateful for the grace of God, good mentorship and loyal friends that our mind has a crack in it...or, more appealing, is ajar. We rely on still more spiritual growth to stay it there since our own ego will ever be legislating for "a better way"-- its way. 

The danger with winning is it has such a fabulous material-world reputation. Face it, its reputed potential is hard to hate. But the very want to win, anything, can at some point become a self-determined objective which quick, fast and in a hurry becomes our singular focus...transmuted into the God of our understanding.

The spiritual reality is that it takes losing to discover "that winning feeling" within us...already there  awaiting our awakening. 

In losing we find God...and the many unmet-yet friends to welcome us. In the momentary feel-good of winning, we stand alone. It is a solitary trip...but isn't that what ego is? 

A word about ego. I choose to believe that we need neither hate nor fear ego, but freely love it. Who's kidding whom, it is ego that keeps still more spiritual growth our forever goal. I kinda think of ego as God's BFF...a good reminder to me when I get short with it...or when the possibility of winning pops up, singing my song.

 Thank you.

REALIZE ANEW...EACH DAY

All our unknown answers are held for us within our unconsciousness. And, per today's "Daily Meditation" of Fr Richard Rohr, We can’t get to the unconscious logically, literally, or mechanically. We have to fall into it...usually by suffering....Until our certitudes and our own little self-written success stories begin to fall apart, we usually won’t touch upon any form of deeper wisdom.

Ah, this uncertainty I am in is the process of realization. Realization is not a one-shot deal. We see Truth, we understand it, we get it...but it is useless until we prove Truth through realization. The proving is our every day welcoming of our unknown, unplanned, unexpected life. With or without anxiety. 

It's akin to walking through a briar patch...we get that walking through it is going to hurt, so we think about it, talk about it, ponder, analyze, teach!...but until we step out into it, until we are showing not telling, realization is just a word.   

Apparently, this is my path today...the path of unknowing, the scary-to-the-reasoning-mind path, where we prove anew daily that which we have realized before, only it is deeper today. This feels very like my early years when I was told to not talk about my anxiety but I did anyway because I had to. It was that that drew to me others who were silently suffering anxiety. 

Oh my..."God Calling" today:  ...remember that the varied path does not always mean that you need the varied training. We are seeking lost sheep--we are bringing the Kingdom [to others].

There it is. We think of suffering as being for our ego-deflation-in-depth...which it is, but it is also for the benefit of others. When God's hand is in it, all of us come out the winner. 

I pray my thank you because I suffer today for the benefit of others, knowing others suffered for me to bring me to my sacred briar patch...to walk me through my sacred briar patch. 

We are blessed beyond knowing.

Thank you. 

DON'T DO FOR TO GET...DO FOR TO GIVE

Throughout the Sermon, we are told to do in secret what we need do, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (I'm convinced that is the quiet word re anonymity...in anonymity, the ego is quieted and the true Self is freed.)  

We are warned against doing our business in public (donating money, praying, even lending a helping hand) when the purpose is for looking good, getting admiration or praise  The looking good we seek is our reward, negating your Father who is in secret, sees in secret, and will reward you.

I wonder if that same doesn't apply for when we share. We do not share to educate, or to enlighten, or to 'show and tell'...no, we  share to be educated, enlightened, told by our Father within. Actually, I'm thinking the same applies to all we do...even when "pitching in" is to feel good about ourself, that is our reward. 

Our life lesson is all about doing for others without thought of self. The hidden message then is that what we do for others is what we do for ourself...ah, is what is done for us by our Father within. 

The hidden, very hidden, message: If we are doing for to get anything...praise, money, peace of mind, a reward of any kind...we are doing for our ego, and yikes!, there is no enough to our ego. We will ever feel unrewarded...lacking, in fact.

In the end all that matters is what we have done for others. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

ON DEEPENING OUR TRUST IN GOD

Anything that upsets our normalcy is a threat to the ego but in the Big Picture, it really isn’t.....Falling apart is for the sake of renewal, not punishment....Our best response is to end our fight with reality-as-it-is. We will benefit from anything that approaches a welcoming prayer [e.g., thank you] - Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 26, 2021 (My emphasis added and bolded.)

NOTE: Here's my assurance that God has me headed in the right direction: Almost the entirety of Rohr's "Meditation" today, is about building trust in God and moving out in that. Except for this Note and my BFO, all the italicized parts of this blog are quotes from Rohr today.

Blinding flash of the obvious: This is my time of building trust in my Father within.

Reasoning mind balks: Isn't that what I've been doing all these years...building trust in God???

Comes the light: Indeed, that has ever been my hope, my intention, but now: suddenly you’re placed in an utterly different world, where what you used to call 'normal' doesn’t apply anymore. 

The unsettled feelings, the anxiety that sits on my shoulder moving from left to right at will, are the reasonable response to the  "new pair of glasses" my old "normal" has received. I can fear it not for it is heading me in the right direction...toward a deeper trust in God.

I had an interesting experience yesterday afternoon...I knew it might be a risk, but I felt a strong urge to speak about "in the instant of realizing our defect, it is lifted" which is not often heard in the rooms. It is, however, written about in spiritual literature, and, interestingly, my blog yesterday morning was all about that.

Immediately after I spoke, I felt the old familiar regrets, the "coulda, woulda, shoulda." It took a couple minutes of wallowing to bring me to my "thank you," then to the realization that I had just taken a step up deeper in building trust in my Father.

This is what building trust in God feels like: ....what it feels like when everything falls apart. It’s not a threat. It’s an invitation to depth. It’s what it takes to wake people up to the real, to the lasting, to what matters.

I sometimes think of God's love as akin to the love of Ari, the first love of my life, my seven-pound Maltese. Ari would see me, wag all over from tail to nose-tip, and pee. Proof positive: It is impossible to hate love no matter how it comes to us.

Thank you.

SIMPLIFY...DETACH...SUBTRACT...LET GO

We want so much to change...to change for the better...for our idea of the better.

We get the quiet word: In the instant of our desire, the change is made. I believe that to be true. The me-problem being the change is made not as we wish it to be, not according to our idea of the better, but as the Father knows our need to be.

In not recognizing God's change, all our rues, regrets and remorses follow in the wake of our attempts to make the change...uh-oh...according to our self-determined objective, our own idea or what we want.

Spiritual growth is in its roots, not in its blossom. Our roots are our growth, there is neither need nor room for thinking, talking, "venting." Still more spiritual growth only grows deeper. 

Howsomever, never knock the blossom...the blossom is visible proof that God is growing us. (Lest we forget, the blossom has a very, I'm talking very, short shelf-life.) Our major error though is in taking credit, even silently, for the beauty of the blossom. We can gratefully appreciate our God-growth within our soul...but humbly bragging that we had nothing to do with it is ego on parade.

Maybe it is true...life is all about simplifying. We start with learning, with education; we move upward putting to use what we learned, including a lot of falls, bumps and bruises which birth our need for spirituality in some form or fashion. We start the divine trudge with a changing of our mind about what we've learned and lived; we slowly exchange our mind from earthly to heavenly...and we know peace.

We let go of self and gratefully accept of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works. 

Thank you. 

ON THE REALIZATION OF GOD

Supply is the realization of God. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Letters" @ p 631

Realization does not come by the activity of our natural mind...as in thinking, pondering, analyzing. No. We prepare our self for still more spiritual growth...and realization...through spiritual discipline. 

That will include thinking, pondering, analyzing, but the discipline is in learning and accepting when to stop all our mental activity. The discipline results in sitting and waiting on the Lord...meditating in a word.

From our eyebrows up, we can know God is already here within us/without us, but until we realize that for truth, we work on our trust...and wait. According to me, that is mini-realization...without the bells and whistles but heading in the right direction.

Our full realization may not come in this lifetime...I'm convinced it pleases God that still we trust and wait.

Thank you.