Monthly Archives: July 2015

CONDUIT PRAYER

For any situation that is causing you unease:

Onto this situation, as onto all other situations I observe, let me shine the light of my holy, dispassionate attention

Let me contemplate it with love, and may I be conformed to its highest purpose

Doe eyed and velvet skinned, six years old Somalian child looks into the camera with steady compassion in her eyes.

Photo by Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma’aji on Unsplash

By bringing this situation to consciousness, and consciousness to this situation, I have given it to God, where it must find completion

All attachment or emotion I had surrounding this situation, I now dismiss, along with the ego which engendered them

As I am become a conduit between the situation and God, who was waiting to bless it in every way, and lacking only a conduit

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There was a Door to which I found no Key:

There was a Veil past which I could not see:

Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE

There seemed – and then no more of THEE and ME.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

OBSERVER, NOT ACTOR

You must cultivate the attitude of an observer. You are pure energy and consciousness, manifesting here in a physical plane.

Become an observer

Think of all that you see, all the interactions, the altercations, the business, all the movement and the changing, as a puppet show. The world is putting on a puppet show for you.

An array of colorful puppets in different guises: a chef, a baker, a masked Venetian dancer.

Photo by Ray Harrington on Unsplash

The clumsy, wooden puppets declaim loudly, lack grace, fall down, and refuse to do their master’s bidding. Their wires are visible, their motivations transparent.

Photo by Umut Yilman on Unsplash

Still, you watch the show. You willingly suspend disbelief for a while, pretend not to see the artifice and enter into their little world. You want to see what animates them, what pulls their strings. As an observer, you witness their emotions and consider their reality. You wish them well and want to see them happy.

At the end of a puppet show, the observer forgets about the small world of the puppets and re-enters the larger physical world in which he lives and moves and has his being. Compared to the puppet world, his is more flowing, subtle and colorful.

And so it is with your eternal Self observing the puppet show of physical bodies inhabited by egos. They strut about with importance, worry about how they are seen, fight, and hit each other with truncheons, nightsticks and whatever else they can get. They get caught up in mighty dramas.

But at the end of their day, their story is told, their use is over, and the eternal You returns to a world inconceivably larger, more flowing, beautiful, colorful and subtle than any the puppets could imagine.

For in and out, above, about, below,

“Tis nothing but a magic Shadow Show

Played in a Box whose Candle is the Sun

Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

A single flame illuminating intricately carved candle holder, depicting Hindu god, praying figure

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

RESOURCES MUST BE MATCHED

A verse of Epictetus:

As time goes by and you build on the habit of matching the appropriate inner resource to each incident, you will not tend to get carried away by life’s appearances. You will stop feeling overwhelmed so much of the time

It’s true: many of us feel overwhelmed most of the time, wondering what’s coming next and how we’re going to manage. Who would not want to escape anxiety like that?

The answer, says Epictetus, is to cultivate the habit of matching the appropriate inner resource to each incident you observe, in yourself and in others.

Matching the appropriate inner resource

Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on Unsplash

If your day seems to fly away and be lost on trivial pursuits, if you feel scattered and unfocused, use this day to practice patience.

The day after, you can practice focus. Write the word ‘focus’ somewhere where you’ll see it, say the word a few times. Determine to remember focus when you experience the least anxiety as you go through your day. Taking these actions creates the presence of focus in and around you. It coalesces focus into being on all levels seen and unseen.

Thank you for this opportunity to define what I really want, which is focus and calm. Let me learn what this situation would teach me, so that I will have the feeling state of patience as a memory and a resource.

When there are too many people around and too much energy dissipated in talking, let me learn from this to seek out solitude and give thanks whenever I meet it.

If my son goes to jail and I lie awake worrying about him, may I learn peace from knowing its opposite. Having learned it, may I then spread peace, which blesses any situation. The pursuit of peace is an alchemy that turns all baser experiences into pure gold. It redeems.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Matthew, 5:9

If someone dies and leaves me bereft and off-kilter, I can look within for a resource that would correct all this. I could realize that death is no more than stepping into another room; they are with us as often as we think of them. Simple as that. I could learn that sadness is a ridiculous indulgence, a babyish reaction to the vicissitudes of this giant, endlessly evolving and mutating mechanism we call life.

After just a short practice of calling out the appropriate inner resources to match each situation, I would have a library of resources to draw from: patience, acceptance, resignation to a higher purpose, peace, a sense of perspective. It would not take me long at all to realize that I have endless inner resources, and that the more I call on them, the more are they renewed.

Epictetus is right. I would very quickly drop the idea of being overwhelmed. There would be nothing to call it forth. I would gain equilibrium.

Balance above all

EXAMPLE, YOUR ONLY TOOL

Example is the only teaching tool you have.

Would you not use it?

Who do you wish to help?

You cannot manipulate, arrange, or cause them to come to whatever you would have them come to. You cannot make them go back to their partners, or lose their fears, or stop fighting, or choose happiness, or – in short – put themselves into God’s hands. None of this can you do.

Whenever you arrange something which it is not your business to arrange, plans go awry. Nothing is used the way you intended, and the help you give serves only to magnify a stale situation.

People don’t change because you see the changes they should make.

Stop

Stop trying to control people in any way. To be in the “should” business is to set up vibrations against the very outcomes you want. It’s a waste of time; no one wins. People will do what people will do. Do not get attached to any of it.

The only tool I have to do good is my example. If I want them to finish what they start, then let me finish what I start. Do I want them to speak their part clearly, without rancor? Then let me speak my part clearly, without rancor.

If I would see them happy, let me model happiness. Let me be content wherever I am, led to activities that give me joy, open to good that could be done by me.

If I would see them harmonious in all their relationships, then let me model that also. Let me forgive all people for whatever I think they have done to me: there’s a long list. Let me start by forgiving them now.

Above all, peace

Whatever it is that I would see, that I must become. Above all, must I become peace. My breathing must be slow and measured, my brain rhythms deepened, my vibrations longer, fuller, more resonant.

All this can be accomplished by merely thinking of it, picturing it, allowing your mind to have this image for seventeen seconds or more. Do that now.

When you want a person to be different, ask yourself only: how can I incorporate what I want for this person into my own example?

Image of a lighthouse at night, casting light on the stars

Photo by Nathan Jennings on Unsplash

Thus the master is content to serve as an example

and not to impose his will.

He is pointed but does not pierce:

he straightens but does not disrupt;

he illuminates but does not dazzle.

Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching

JUDGMENT MUST END

The One who knows everything about a situation, does not judge it.

But you who are bounded in time never can know everything about a situation; you are always being surprised by some new development or piece of information. Knowing this, decide now to eschew judgment: you are not equipped for it.

That you judge at all only betrays that you don’t know everything.

Knowing this, do not judge

Each judgment is a piece of binary code inserted into your mind. If you designate something as disappointing, the whole world is then divided into two categories, disappointing or not, and everything has to fit into one of these two. The creator of a judgment observes the infinity of creation chopped up into categories. Everywhere you see evidence of your judgment, but nowhere do you see new information.

Judgment is limiting

If you decide someone is irresponsible, your world arranges itself into categories based on this. You see all people as either responsible or irresponsible, and all acts arrange themselves into one or the other. You observe this arranging because you called it into being. So are you forced to watch and consider examples of irresponsibility, and spend time thinking which are better examples than others. And on and on.

Judgment is circular

As soon as you, even inwardly, designate someone as irresponsible, or highly strung, or divorced from reality, that person feels it and finds it impossible to act naturally in your presence, as he must always be proving one thing or another. Your judgment stops you from ever knowing this person.

Judgment is blind

Let me eschew all judgments that I would make with my human mind. Let me no longer tease myself with who is a good parent, who is successful, smart, or hardworking. Let me put behind me all the rankings and gradations of worth that we like to make constantly. Let me lay aside all comparisons, which do no one any good. Enough. There is no end to these games.

The only way to win is not to play

Judgment admits that there can be more than one kind of anything, that creation wasn’t already perfect. If it be valid to judge, then it follows that there can be more or less, before and after, better and worse, and every other aspect of a landscape which is constantly shifting, changing shape and appearance, in which one thing is measured in relationship to some other thing, which is itself constantly shifting.

Judgment is impossible

It is impossible to know objectively of anything. All you can know of a thing is what you think of it, since you created it yourself.

You created the meanings of all your words. “Faith” will have a different meaning to you, with your experiences, beliefs, and mental furniture, than it will to any other being on earth. “Sophisticated” means something different to everyone who uses this word. So it is with all the words you use.

The entire world you live in is your own creation, constantly mirroring and molding itself to you, trying to make itself a perfect fit to your stated wishes, your feeling states, your mental pictures.

Knowing this, if you would still judge, judge for perfection. You do this by giving thanks. To give thanks for any person, thing, or situation, is to admit that it is already perfect, given to God and therefore touched by God. Be in the feeling state of gratitude, and watch with wonder and joy how your world mirrors and molds itself to you.

Judgment keeps you focused on the imperfect; it is the exact opposite of giving thanks. Refuse to be limited by judgment.