Monthly Archives: April 2015

LIFE: WHAT IS IT FOR?

Every instant of life offers you the chance to choose for God, and to rely on His power instead of your own. Relying on your own has never brought you to rest or completion. But when you have chosen for God, it is His power that sustains you. Now do you not need to plot and plan, to go before and behind, to check up, make sure, be proactive, to be engaged in constant, stressful busyness.

After you have chosen for God, all burdens, large and small, will be lifted from you. You will see them for what they are, mistaken attempts to control, to bring about an outcome, to cause this, to prevent that. You remember how eagerly you picked each one up, how important it seemed. But there was never an end to any of them; each attempt at control led farther and deeper into a Gordian knot of misery that could never be untangled. This is how it ever is when the ego is in control. The ego has no vested interest in making things go well.

Send the ego away

Make the decision to live in harmony with the universal. Would you save yourself from grief, stress and worry of any kind? Or would you have a lifetime of it? The choice is this stark. But it is also easy.

My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Matthew, 11:30

Would you not have rest after all your worries, your travails, your endless seeking? You think another partner will make you happy, or an exciting new job, or changes in your location, circumstances and appearance. Superficial things. You are seeking outside yourself.

If you believe happiness is anywhere but with God, you are condemned to a life of seeking without finding. All that is necessary is to bring the mind back to the eternal, where it already finds peace and joy.

All those situations that previously gave you worry, stress, or grief, will resolve seemingly of themselves, or fall away, or be transmuted into peace and joy.

Let your condition be joy

THE BODY: WHICH YOU ARE NOT

It is always better to pay less attention rather than more to bodily concerns: your hair, clothes, physique, shelter, food, income, beauty, youth, stamina, heart rate, appearance, and on and on. You do not need to judge your body against other bodies; you do not need to overindulge it with luxuries it does not need; you do not need to spend time trying to gratify it.

You can pay attention to your body, provide all its basic needs, keep it healthy and functioning well, be active with it and enjoy it. But do not let your sense of self reside there. Do not identify with the body. Do not let your life’s work be its needs and wants.

You are not your body

You do not need to serve your body. Shed your bodily concerns like so much unwanted old clutter. They are taking up too much space in your mind anyway, crowding every other thing out. Think how much space will be cleared when you let go of this self-identification with the body. It will be the transformation of a dank, dusty old closet to a bright, hopeful, sunny space.

Who would not want this?

An arum lily lifts its trumpet to its source, the sun

There is an inner beauty

You stand in your own way when you are slave to your bodily concerns. There is an inner beauty that transcends bodily beauty, as all baser metals give way to gold. Seek that beauty that is within. Enable it. Be its slave.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow

They toil not, neither do they spin

Luke, 12:27

Neither make yourself a slave of your shelter, always improving, or decorating, or berating, or lamenting the lack of one more thing. Give thanks for the shelter you have. May all beings be as well provided.

A lot of your evils: avarice, greed, desire for power, unbridled appetites, are the result of excessive zeal in procuring for yourselves. What if enough of you, as a species, were to renounce all self-procurement, let it go, know that there is enough food on the earth for everyone, that all the world is provided for?

Loose your hold

In your calm at knowing that all needs would always be beautifully answered, you would relax and loose your hold on the source of all supply. When you let go of your several strangleholds on this flow of energy, once it had shrugged you off like a snake easily slithering away, it would be free to increase the energy flow many-fold, and shower blessings upon your collective Self.

May all your processes be gentle

GIVING THANKS/YOU NEED NOT WORRY

Giving thanks and not worrying are two sides of the same coin. These are two branches of the same tree. You give thanks because you do not need to worry, and you do not need to worry because you give thanks.

The mind looks for causality. Which one came first? Which state caused the other? Neither. There is no time. It is an illusion the mind clings to. These two ideas are joined, just one part of a larger Idea.

In general, you are thankful for far too little. This doesn’t make you a bad person, just one who is missing an opportunity. If you want more, consciously give thanks.

Gratitude increases flow

You might like your sofa because it is comfortable, useful, and you have spent many peaceful, productive hours on it. You think of all the people who have slept on it. You are happy that you were able to offer them comfort and hospitality. By paying attention to how happy this makes you feel, you create a positive feeling space around the whole idea of your home and shelter, your heart’s charity’s hearth’s fire. This encourages more of the same kind of good to come.

Do you eat something that you like? Do you feel your body welcoming this food? Give thanks. Thank all those who participated in providing this meal, who grew the food, who prepared and served it. Giving thanks for what our bodies consume completely changes the energy of the food, and its power to do good to you. May all beings be as well provided for.

Is it easier to reward one who is always praising and giving thanks for what she has, or one who finds fault in everything and is unhappy?

Look for the situation that has natural flow. Giving thanks creates, widens and deepens a channel for all good to flow, to you and to all.

Giving thanks enables good

SIDEWAYS THINKING

Another name for sideways thinking is removing focus. Maybe there is a situation that has been occupying you for a long time; you can’t see a way forward. You would like some direction on it because you’re tired of spinning your wheels. Chances are, it’s very hard for you to stop spinning your wheels because it is now your habit to be preoccupied by this situation.

More focus is the last thing you need here. In fact, you need the opposite. You need a way of removing focus. This is where sideways thinking comes in.

You want to ask a question of this situation. How can I help? What can I say? Should I remove myself? How? What should I do next? How shall I proceed?

Frame the exact question you want to ask of that situation. Pose that question.

At the same time, visualize your situation as a can of colored smoke. When you pose the exact question you want to ask of the situation, you open the can.

You know that it is going to take some time for that smoke to get out and give you the full message that you want. Would you settle for less than a complete and satisfying answer, because you forced the answer with your impatience? Would you take a cake from the oven half-baked? Would you pick a flower that was still in the bud?

No one would do this.

Knowing this, it is easy for you to decide to go and do something else for a while, letting the smoke exit the can in all its wantonness and glory. You will know when it is time to come back. You will know your answer when it comes. But for now, you know how to distract yourself.

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