CRASH AND BURN...THE ART OF ACCEPTANCE

Apparently, the reasoning mind resists that which it cannot own...as in, win, get over on, shame. Who's kidding whom...that's naught but ego on parade cloaked in self-empowerment. 

The unwelcome fact we so earnestly resist is that our need is to surrender...our want is no, never. Our egoic mind knows to surrender is to lose. To lose is unacceptable. 

We are at the precipice of the rocky cliffs of choice. We can analyze this further, continue to seek reason through analysis...or we can surrender, trust our raised consciousness within, hold our nose and take a leap of faith. Accept in a word.

Interestingly, and according to me, acceptance is a pretty word for surrender. Ego openly resists the very word "surrender"...until reasoning mind opens a tish and renames it "acceptance." 

The hardest part about acceptance is...acceptance. We must give up the egoic idea that we can make an end-round around that which we are resisting, call it acceptance and have spiritual growth. No. But that is how surrender earns its wings...crash and burn births spiritual growth, and we resist no more. 

The sacred art of acceptance: Welcome it, pray thank you, hug it and kiss it and let it go...with love and laughter.

Thank you.

ATTITUDE...OURS FOR THE UPGRADING

It is permissible to take life's blessings with both hands provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly....As long as God is satisfied do thou rest content. If he is pleased to want something else of thee, still rest content. -- Meister Eckhart 

Back in the day, I wanted to believe that God's good for me, as promised by all things work together for good, was a money tree in my back yard, a handsome, horny man in my bed, and me 24/7 beautiful inside and out. I resisted reality even as it came as a blessing.   

Lesson learned: As long as we cling to the idea that all that the Father has for us is wonderful on its face the longer it will take us to shuck our self-shield to welcome not-wonderful, i.e., life. 

Life comes to us by invitation only...bringing exactly what we need to break free from me. God knows our needs...reads our invitation perfectly...opens us to our self-hidden "Oh No" gift. There it is: Trust trotting up on a recalcitrant pony for us to ride...bareback...purely for our benefit and on our behalf.

The Father knows our needs...we know our wants. 

When our wants are loosed and let go, they transmute, and we realize there is only good in God's world. It is our perception, our attitude if you will, that is ours for the upgrading. 

Upgrade our attitude, diminish our problem...true then, true now, forever true.

Thank you.

TO PRAISE THE SCARY IS TO FIND GOD'S WILL

Blinding flash of the obvious:  All that our natural eye fears, sees as less-than, is of God...upon our realizing that, our spirit-Soul gift is born within. 

When our current life situation, invariably our sense of separation, is scary, we need to praise it...this is the pearl beyond price. We will, say, seek more Zoom contacts while needing more personal, face to face, contact. In our apprehension we mentally scurry to glom onto a self-determined objective to peace us...while our Soul seeks God's will.

In our mental scurrying, the reasoning mind gets shucked down to the nub, finally accepting that there are but two emotions...one is love and the other is fear... with all other emotions flowing from those two. 

The get-up-and-shout-hallelujah news is that the Driver of all life is not emotions, but a far higher Power, namely, God.

One or the other of those two basic emotions, however, will be our life's driver until we make conscious contact with God...at which time they become life's ushers. With God driving, they usher us to our rightful place, that place intellect knows naught of. 

This, once learned, we must remember: Always and all ways God is in contact with us whether we know it or not...we make conscious contact with God through still more spiritual growth. Daily. No exceptions.

Most important is the discovery that all of life's problems can be solved by spiritual principles. -- Anonymous

Thank you.

THE MARRIAGE OF SELF-WILL TO GOD'S WILL

In the carriages of the past you can't go anywhere. -- Maxim Gorky, Russian writer 

I recently found myself doing that which I first learned fifty years ago and being reminded by my own actions that consciousness had raised...that there's a different way today. The brain-buster was whether I believed it was better or not was immaterial...life had changed, my mind needed to change with it.

I love when I stumble on an explanation, a validation actually, of a previous flash. The Gorky quote above is a good "for instance," as in, our spiritual mind begins as a gift and is raised deeper daily...or there is no spiritual in it. 

Our life now is fully in the care of a Power greater than ourselves, and we live for the benefit of others...whether we know it or not.

That is raised consciousness. To hold to our first understanding of, say, the Sermon is good as a building block to raise us deeper, but to stay rigidly at the place of first understanding is to pervert the Sermon to a self-determined objective and is not of God. 

Same goes with our first Steps toward a better way of life, i.e., spiritually based, no longer living for me, myself and i. We learn to go with the changes, but we never forget our first lessons on awakening...that is called "gratitude." 

We are being headed in the right direction...with missteps along the way to bless us into humbly seeking still more spiritual growth.

Paradoxically, none of this is done by self-will, none of this is done without self-will. That is the marriage of our will to God's will. 

Thank you.

TO UNDERSTAND IS TO EXPERIENCE IS TO PROVE

Much learning does not teach understanding. -- Heraclitus

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it. -- John Keats 

Keats explains Heraclitus. 

The same thing was explained to me at my first spiritual retreat when an unknown retreatant said to me, "Truth must be proved." 

Until I heard that, I thought repeating affirmations made them come true...it doesn't. I was blessed that I knew exactly what she meant, and I have never forgotten it. 

When I realize Truth personally proved to me, I do my best to walk it. Talk it over if I feel the need, but the proof is in the walking, the living, the breathing...there is the transformation. From a busy mind to a silent self. 

 

The times I still feel apprehensive, I think it through. I remind me that I don't do or want to do things that are hurtful to myself or others today. I can, in effect, kiss that fear on the lips...and do what I need do.

How else can I experience Him going before me, making my fearful place peaceful?

Feel the fear and do it anyway...unknown to me who first said that but that is a pearl beyond price.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE IS NONRESISTANCE IS LOVE

The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow. -- Eknath Easwaran

The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow, and also sometimes comes in the form of personal pain. In the form of crash and burn as often...or seldom...as necessary for us to break our ego's hold. Actually, as often as necessary for us to break. To break from the unbeknownst to us fear that has been our ego's sword and shield.  

I do not believe we have a choice in the matter for unless and until we go through the pain, the panic, the dark night of the soul, we reasonably believe our own image, i.e., that we are in control of our life. It is the reason in reasonably that brings down the curtain on our picture show.

When our dark night comes, eventually we are forced to surrender to whatever our worst fear is, known or unknown. That which we have for ever so long been guarding and girding ourself against has won. 

It is in the acceptance of our fear, i.e., surrender, that our pain is transmuted and becomes the pearl beyond price. There. God's will in the form of pain...transformed into the great reality of God as love.

Acceptance is nonresistance...nonresistance is acceptance is love. Here's the hard slog: Living that. With God as our forever guide, that is still one hard slog. Accept that...or don't resist it.

Thank you.

THE PRECARIOUS COMFORT OF TRUST

It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

In essence, all my anxious insights coming to me these days say the same thing: Trust God with all our heart, soul, body and brains, and love our friends and our enemy equally...selflessly.

Here's the strength of my egoic mind...knowing and leaning into all that is coming to me, first thought this morning, "Maybe I should read this new book," and still another "maybe I should try...."  The resistant ideas flow, bumper to bumper, and I fight them not. Which, who's kidding whom, is worth noting.

Then I pick up one of my dailies to move it, and it falls open to a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: People wish to be settled, only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. 

Don't tell me God doesn't speak directly to us.

 It is my unsettled searching that keeps returning me to God...which is only right. Leaving no stone unturned ends with an unquestioning heart. Love. God. 

The certain surety of which does not come in this lifetime if we're doing it right. Else what is trust for? 

Thank you.