DEFEND NOT YOURSELF

Let me not engage

Let me not engage

I will not engage in any tiresome practices like manipulation.

But isn’t fighting against manipulation, refusing to be manipulated, “taking up arms against a sea of troubles”, just engaging with it all the same?  To fight against a thing is to admit that it is real. 

 

 

 

 

Two elephants engaged in battle with each other

To fight against is to admit the reality of

 

And that is why you must defend not yourself. When you reflexively defend yourself, you are admitting that the claim they are making against you is real. That it deserves your giving time and devoting attention to refuting it. You are taking the claim against you seriously. Who are you defending? What are you afraid of?

 

 

Young man in deep thought

 

 

It always comes back to fear. Every negative feeling-state that you experience is the apparition of some fear you have on a deep level, maybe not recognized by conscious you.

 

 

Two wolves standing on a rock, very menacing

Call it out, in all its guises

 

 

Do you see now how fear leads to guilt which leads you to defend yourself like a Pavlovian dog? Fear is ruling your world. But you must call it out, whenever you see it, in all its guises. When you are accused of anything, realize it is you who accuse yourself with your attention. You can ask: what do I accuse myself of? You can identify the fear. A few minutes is more than sufficient if you are honest in your desire to stop playing games.

 

 

accept

What am I choosing to see?

They accuse me of being vindictive, but it is I who see vindictiveness in them. They accuse me of being a hypocrite, but they are hypocrites themselves.

Ask instead: what am I choosing to see?

 

Defend not yourself

 

It is always easy to see the faults in other people. That’s basic. Even the sinner does this easily; in other words, everyone. But isn’t it only proof of your propensity to see fault in other people? And why are you so motivated to find fault? Why would you try so hard to put other people down? It can only be to make yourself feel better.  If they are vindictive and you notice it, it can only be so that you, by contrast, can feel the opposite. If you find them boring, it can only be because you need to make yourself better than them in some way.

 

 

It is easy to see the faults of others

So easy to see the faults of others

 

But call it out, this impulse to find fault in others. It can be a simple reminder, such as,  “There I go again, finding fault in others, blaming. Stop. Just because. Blaming never solved anything.” Don’t be tempted to engage in mental court cases. You are not in a courtroom.

 

 

 

Defend not yourself

 

Don’t tell a story: give facts. Every time you find yourself rehearsing or replaying an interaction, it is another manifestation of fear. By fashioning a narrative of events, you are fashioning a persona for yourself. Depending on the audience, you may want to project yourself as smart, knowledgeable, sophisticated, any one of a number of attributes you lust after because you think you are not already perfect.

When you see how you are using your interactions to portray yourself one way or another, you will easily stop this practice.

 

 

A woman starying at a reflection of her eye in a fragment of a mirror

You will easily stop this practice

 

Defend not yourself

 

When you are asked a question, or required to give a version of events, stick to what two independent observers could agree on. This happened and then this happened. Think about how it would appear to an outsider. This steers you away from adjectives, which are judgments: unreasonable, petty, irresponsible, selfish, jealous, and so on. All effective tools of the ego.

 


less talk6

 

 

If you stick to relating facts about a situation, your discussions will not collapse, or get distracted, and will always achieve their objectives.

Who would not want this?

Stop trying to get the best for yourself in any situation. To do so implies that something could not be perfect. Whenever you see or make differences in people, you are affirming  the notion that some people are better than others. Stop. You are blowing bubbles, playing with shadows; it is all a mirage, a cloud, a chiaroscuro of effects.

 

Come to what is real

 

 

 

 

BASIC PREMISES

I do not have to discuss anything with anyone under the name of “getting it all out”, or “talking with a sympathetic ear”, or “getting solace”, or whatever other idea I might once have used.  I do not have to discuss how I will be with anyone. 

 

 

Show. This will speak much more powerfully than words.  When you show your meaning, all will feel it, interpret it, and be affected by it.  Would you like your teaching to be taken to heart by everyone?  In that case, live your teaching. Show, don’t tell.

But when you use words, you force your hearers to hear with their physical ears, which feed the import to their rational minds, where the message is tied up until 95% diluted.

There is no need to talk and discuss.

 

basic 9

 

Neither do I need anyone else to change in any way.  I am not dependent on the actions of other people to feel good, feel bad, never at ease, wondering, worrying what they will do.  I do not need them to do anything for me to remember Who I am. And I have remembered that; now let me take it to heart, be changed, commune with the Self always. This is why and how other people become irrelevant.

 

 

You will always be guided as to what to say and do. There is no way for your conscious mind to best strategize this. Leave it out.  Take direction from within. In silence all is made clear. In silence is there great healing.

Silence is your friend

It is not my intention nor my purpose to negotiate conditions under which anything may happen. If there is a question, it is for the Other to explain.

 

 basic 10

 

When you have basic premises, they are clear to others even when you don’t enunciate them. In fact, they become all the more apparent exactly when you don’t enunciate them. This takes a little time for humans to assimilate; they would generally rather try to convince others of their positions by sheer force of words.

 

basic 1

 

This makes as much sense as trying to draw someone to your side by turning a volley of arrows upon her.

 

 

 

If there is a lack of basic premise in you, this will be interpreted as confusion. Because it is confusion. Lack of clarity regarding your basic premise will beget confusion in all your doings and dealings, and can hardly effect what you would be done.

 

 

giving back 8So you can see how important it is, at the start of each interaction, at the birth of each undertaking, that you take some moments to clarify your basic premise concerning it.  Lack of a basic premise will prompt questionings and distract you into attempts to define yourself.  The clear acknowledgement within yourself of a basic premise will silence questions.

 

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Who would not want this?

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A basic premise is not the same as a goal or objective, which represent outcomes in what you call the real world.  A basic premise is a decision you make within.  “I am here to be truly helpful”, “I am here in the best interests of the child”, “May I have no other desire than to do good”, are some examples of basic premises.

 

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A decision you make within

 

In any undertaking or encounter, establish your basic premise within as many times as you wish. Remember also it is not your purpose to argue as before a court. To do so only admits the possibility of guilt, that someone is going to be wrong. All arguing is only the effort to pass the boulder of blame to the other.

 

Therefore waste no time in arguing, but first establish your basic premise. You can have a general basic premise, that you remind yourself of as you catch yourself in your morning waking moment.  “Let me have no other desire than to do good.” And you can consciously reach for a basic premise for each situation you choose. “I am here to be truly helpful”. In this way, you are entrusted with the gifts of God.

 

When you have a clear basic premise, and it is aligned with God, you are the judge who just handed yourself a sentence unimaginably favorable to you. Everything is going to fall your way; it cannot help but do this. When you consciously align with His will, you bring Him into the situation. Your clear intention is asking it.

 

Clarify your basic premise, and all else becomes clear.

 

May I have no other desire than to do good

 

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AGENT OF SOMETHING LARGER


A feather quill resting in a bottle of ink

The benefit of doing three pages of writing every day is that it speeds up whatever tedious process you may be going through.  How does it do that? It is like meditation, in that it gets you in touch with the Voice for God. When you approach the writing as a chore, and write prayers to fill up the lines before you can stop, well, that too is a form of asking.

You have done a lot of asking now. You have been heard. We know what you desire. It is time to relax now, listen, to  be that instrument you so often ask to be.

If you knew you could access the Voice for God at any time, why would you not do this, for this is so.  You can access the Voice for God at all times. What is this but the best news you could ever hear?

 

A figure sitting in meditation

 

Let me take a moment to be thankful for that now.  Thank you that I can access the Voice for God at all times.

Let me access the Voice now.

Let me be the agent of that something larger. Let me be Your agent.  If there is something to be done, let me be the agent of its being done. If there is something to be voiced aloud, let it be voiced through my throat. If there is something to be thought, then let it be given thought through my molecules, through the matter of my brain, through the ground of my being. May I be wholly used by You. I would consider it the highest honor and the proper fruition of my life as a human, as well as the crowning glory of my existence.

 

Saguaro cactus in the foreground, against a background of a spring Arizona desert

 

Must Your agent be conscious?

But my agency does not have to be conscious to me.  I do not insist on Your purpose being revealed to me. How could I understand it? How could I insist on anything?  I am but Your agent. Use me as You wish. Guide me here and there like a puppet. By all means, use my mouth for Your words. I have no will but Yours.

 

Elaborate, intricate Islamic art

My agency need not be conscious

 

How much better it is that I do not plot and plan, worrying about events and trying to control outcomes. How much better it is that I surrender my will to Yours. How much better it is that I have stopped worrying about what to say and what to do.

What burdens these are to have been lifted.

 

Here and there lose their meaning

 

Desert wildflowers overlook Death Valley, CA

 

 

 

LOVE: THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE

love 52

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Love must be the guiding principle, the north star, the hand at the tiller, the thesis statement, the main idea, the sine qua non.  There must be none other.  Anything else is wrong.

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guiding principle 2Stop projecting yourself outwards. Doing this, you see only the image of yourself writ larger in your interactions with what appear to be others, but are really your creations.  If you are devastated by something that happens, everyone around you will know of your devastation, will mirror it and increase it.  Whatever attitude or position you take about any situation, exactly that attitude is what you will see projected back to you.  If you are elated, people will mirror back your elation. If you are anxious, you will attract and be attracted to anxious people.

And so on.

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The more negative attention you pay to the situations about you, the more do you only magnify what began in you in the first place. To pay any kind of attention to this maya, this unending, tumbling, whirling cauldron of change that you call reality, is not to be conscious.

becomingImage by Janice De Santis

 

Consciousness is completely unaffected by maya.  Consciousness is the ever-present knowing of the truth that is always there, although you may not always access it. Sometimes you are in alignment with it, and all deals work out for the good of all with minimal involvement from you.  Friend, this is how it is supposed to feel always!  There is no mandate to be sad, or suffer, or feel apart from something you want. When you feel these ways, it is the result of either a decision you made, or one you failed to make.

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love 50

A decision you failed to make

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Lack of consciousness is synonymous with failure to make decisions.  Failure to make decisions is a form of abdication of your prime function here. Failure to make decisions moves you neither backwards nor forwards, it only prolongs how long you must be here. Lack of consciousness is a holding pattern. No one wants to be in a holding pattern for long, do they?  If they knew they were in one.

guiding principle

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When you are not deeply, quietly aware, then everything else you are paying attention to is just another holding pattern. It is you projecting outwards what you already believe. If you already believe that it’s right to look out for number one, then the people you interact with will have the same beliefs. If you already believe that love must be the guiding principle, then love will enter into every situation you observe, picking you up with powerful wings and flying over all difficulties. Thus do you live out your beliefs.

It is what you came here to do

It is what you came here to do

You all live out your beliefs; it is what you came here to do, to create with your beliefs. Why is consciousness so important?  It is important that you know that, and acknowledge that you are here to create with your beliefs.

I am here to create with my beliefs. I am here to create.

Once you have acknowledged and accepted that you are here as a creator, and that you have the power of choice every moment, it makes sense next to ask: what would I like to create?

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If you chose now, “Let love be the guiding principle of my life”, then you would never face another decision.  Every decision would be made by that first one.  Let love be the guiding principle of my life.

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When there is only one way to have life, nothing can present as a decision.  You can make this invitation each morning as you awaken into consciousness:  Let love be the guiding principle of my life. Do this, and then observe how every decision is made for you, with the greatest good to all, and all your concerns grow and prosper, without much attention from you.

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IT IS IN CHOOSING WE ARE CHOSEN

 

 

My randomly chosen lesson and workbook section both seek to teach the same thing.  Let me put it into my own words.  It is important I wish peace and joy to whichever one of my brothers may be causing me grief, pain or worry.

 

Remember, your brother is not causing you anything you aren’t choosing.  You cannot put your unease off onto other people, whatever discomfiture you are feeling.  Whatever burr is under your saddle, it is you who chose it to be there.

 

How did I choose it to be there? 

 

You gave it the jewel of your attention.

 

Choosing: monarch butterfly on pink zinnia

 

Where attention goes, experience follows. It is you and only you who chooses where your attention goes. You may say:

“Oh no, I have to worry about them because…”, or

“How can I relax when…”, or

“When he/she or this/that changes, then…”

 

But all you are doing with this is delegating your responsibility outwards to doubtful underlings. If you are not sure of your purpose, how can you expect your underlings, who are only your projections, to be any better?

Of course they cannot. It is you creating them. They are your mirror neurons. They are what you are projecting through the lens of your judgments.

Become as a newborn baby. Pretend you just landed here yesterday from outer space. You don’t know anything. But you are willing to learn.

 

 

 

Shed the past, like so many old diary pages you tear up and throw away. Have you ever read an old journal or diary from years before? Do you want to be that person now? Or do you want to be one of those who knew enough to change?  Who learned to bring all of their choices into consciousness, and to make them so mindfully it seemed the self became invisible, subsumed into the Self.

 

It is in choosing we are chosen

 

 

 

 

 

FLIM FLAM MAN

flim flam

Here you are again, chumped by a smooth-talking, fast-walking flim flam man. You believed all his promises, although there was no way for him to deliver any of them. How much better off you would be with a mute, who would be unable to sing his own praises and be reduced to being judged by his actions alone. But you do not have to listen to a man’s words to know who he is in his heart. He is telling you every minute who he is, by his actions. He cannot help but do this. We all come down to our actions after all.

By their fruits you shall know them

Matthew, 7:16

If you never want to be taken in again by another flim flam man, remember:

  •     Stop your ears to his words. The next time someone is spinning a golden tale of himself, ask yourself, in whose interest is he speaking? Stop your ears to his pleas, entreaties, braggadocio, threats, promises, all other blather, all words.

 

  •     Close your eyes to all appearances. If he wears nicer clothes, lives in a nicer house, in a nicer neighborhood, with better people, and in any other way seems higher than you, reject this temptation on your part to assume an inferior position. No, this cannot be. If it is your habit to be seduced by any appearances, close your physical eyes to such baubles, and  teach your spiritual eyes to open and become aware.

flim flam 1

  • Pay attention to results. It is not about what they say it is. Flim flam men are always good talkers. But they leave behind them a trail of broken relationships and unfulfilled promises. They promise more than they deliver.

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Every flim flam man is the same as every other. Ignore any claims of specialness. You must close your eyes to his flim flamming appearances, and your ears to his flim flam talk.  Look instead at his actions, especially when he is unguarded, when he least expects to be observed. Look at his history, because how he has always been is the best predictor of how he will be in future.

And ask yourself: where is his heart? what does he do with time? what does he love?

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness

Galatians 5:22

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It is easy, girlfriend.

flim flam