Spiritual Freedom

Installation of Spirit is not necessary because we are all BORN with it. That we have forgotten who we seem to be at the crux of every problem. THAT'S the real issue at hand. But I hope there's hope at the end of the tunnel.  

 

Maybe we can AWAKEN that innate Inner Sense (not moral sense, for morals, they are transitory and manufactured). There can be a sudden, revolutionizing experience, one that raises one from the unconscious state to the conscious one.  

 

Only the Divine Spirit can reawaken the Divine Spark. If we come at one another with the spirit of separation, us/them unconsciousness, then we are doomed to become the oppressor of the oppressor.  WE BECOME THEM!

If we forget to believe in each other, we slam the door in the faces of our spiritual family. It is IMPOSSIBLE to oppress the free, for freedom is an INSIDE job. Taking out power back comes from within. Only then can we see the inside of others.

 

We rest in the web of deceit and imprisonment is to give ‘our’ power to hierarchies outside of ourselves.

 

To destroy a Police State with Love seems impossible, but Impossible is God's Favorite Word. If we walk on water, the only ones who can follow us...is us. We can shift the planet by realizing the planet is already shifted. But then, I might have been dropped on my head as a child, which might explain my belief in Love. LOL!

 

Burn it into the consciousness of every person, we can get well regardless of what has transpired or is transpiring in our personal or community lives.  No one gets well until everyone gets well.  One for all and all for one.  We may not all be in the same boat, but we’re all on the same ship.

Comparative Mind/Competitive Mind & Good Enough

"If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me," said WH Auden.

A friend of mine reflected on the following and it gave me pause for thought, too:  

""Someone said to me...
..."you think you're so special - don't you"

I asked them...
..."what would you say to a child who asks you if they're special?""

If I grow up in a loving family, giving and receiving love, surrounded by love, then everything is unified and nothing is "special" or "less than". Love, only love.

My foster dad reminded me frequently that I was the "smartest idiot" he ever knew. I evicted the shame from my head, but the words remain just the same.  It's not what happens to us that matters so much as what we do with it.  

The comparative mind is difficult to dig up from the root, but really, even that's not necessary. No two roots are equal in the Sequoia Forrest. The way individual trees survive is through the root structure. The roots of surrounding trees intermingle with one another, which in the big picture 'holds up' the entire forest. We are in this together.

Einstein said either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.  Similarly, either no one is special or everyone is special. I am unique, just like everyone else.

A sense of entitlement might arise when we feed the ego, but we're all human and have an ego, so no use making a big deal about the defects it feeds. As my foster mom was fond of saying, 'don't throw the baby out with the bathwater'.

Feed everything with love;  forgive everything.  When I feed all of the parts of myself with LOVE, the defects I sometimes abhor actually get healthier (weaker defects). Many people believe loving the darker parts of ourselves is to give it approval and the weakness will grow, but, it grows peaceful and might even RIP some day. LOL! Love one another.

Simple, but not always easy, but always worth it.

Pushing Pawns Above & Beyond

When a pawn makes it to the opposite side of the board, traversing the ENTIRE board to the opposite side, the pawn is "Promoted" to whatever piece other than a King or another pawn. Usually such a promotion changes who wins and loses the game. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory comes when we give up pushing our pawn to the opposite side of everything we think we know.

Why Chess?

The 'game' of chess has taught me lots about life. I encourage every child to learn this marvelous game. While there are a lot of people who play a better game than me, by the rating I had (I was B-Class, bordered A-Class) I am more accomplished than 98% of players. But what's more important, I connect the dots between the game and evolving to a more peaceful, patient lifestyle.

But some people are competitive and waste the opportunity to translate experience from a place of unified love. I am an intuitive player, not a logical one. When I lose a game, I am grateful, for losing teaches chess and winning maintains only what we already know. But when I lost because I don't care about winning, due to compassion for the other players' feeling, I wasted an opportunity there, too.

Learning to play with grace is an inside job, and it has nothing to do with winning or losing. Who am I to rip someone off of this opportunity to grow beyond losing (or winning)?

My boxing trainer said I will never be a good boxer because I don't have the "Killer Instinct," and the same applied to chess. He was a good chess teacher, too. Eventually, I beat him in chess more than he beat me. He didn't understand the real love of this beautiful, silent language called CHESS.

I would enjoy teaching young people to play chess and might start classes somewhere or maybe instruct one-on-one professionally. I think that would be fulfilling. Maybe someday.

Repetition is the Mother of all Learning. Be Not Weary. Fake It Until You Make It.

Repetition is the Mother of all Learning. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results might be insane, but it's also the definition of persistence. The hardest pushups are the Alpha & Omega pushups, the first and the last ones.

Be not weary. If we are tired, we are drawing from our own finite energy, rather than surrendering to the One who has all Power, which has been gifted to everyone and is always available, free for the taking.

The ego has a hard time believing nothing is wrong in life and would rather spend its days pretending to eat from the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil.

When something happens, some people complain, and say, "Oh, GREAT!" Others say, "GREAT!" or "Another wonderful opportunity for spiritual growth!"  

Don't just fake it.  Fake it until you make it.

More Dark Night Musings

During the Dark Night of the Soul, I had breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough until I realized "it's just another breakthrough and who knows when this will all end". It's a process of mysterious dimensions through which knowledge has no impact or value.

Once we have 'EVERYTHING (we know)' burned off of our existence (a painful reality to feel illusions of love seared from one's spirit nerves), then and only then do we have a chance to release from the Chrysalis organically.

This is a condensed version of what it's like to birth the death of this world and live in the reality of Love. Rumi understood this when he offered to meet you in that Sacred Space beyond duality. Jesus raised from the dead to release the damned from hell (CS Lewis said the gates of hell are only opened from the inside, so Jesus went there and opened the gate). Buddha exited the comfort of his castle and worldly wealth to find himself and found the Flower of Life to which Jesus alluded when he said Solomon in all his glory didn't compare to the simple grandeur of The Lily of the Valley. That is, Buddha, is attributed to saying (falsely, I might add) that 'if a person were to see a single flower clearly, it would change their life.'

In some circles, they say, "KISS," Keep It Simple Stupid. I always considered the "Stupid" part as condescending and irrelevant, so my ego changed it to "Silly" or whatever popped into my head that started with an "S". It takes ego to know ego. The truth seems to be that God talks to us all differently, hoping we'll tell each other.

Beating people with the truth is cruelty, which proves there was/is/will be no truth in force. Forcing solutions can only break the breaker, and out of this wreckage of 'this truth' grows whom we have always been, which is good enough. Therefore, every mistake is useful.

When I died in prison and came back of my own free will, something had shifted in the spiritual life as I experienced it. Things of this world mattered little. But deeper growth and pain was still to be experienced years later, bringing me to a deeper understanding of who we are. In Lakesh.

Forgive Everything

A universal truth. A person is as happy as they make up their minds to be. I forgave my abuser and it freed me. Holding myself hostage in anger was keeping me sick. He was not even paying rent to be in my mind, so I evicted him (even if he paid rent, I'm no prostitute anymore, so nursing the pain is not an option). Taking our power back and hanging up the blamethrower ain't always easy, but it's worth it.

Grief as Praise

I don't believe this statement about being scared about being forgotten or missed us when we're gone. My ex-wife told me that if I died tomorrow, none of my AA friends would know or care. But would I want my friends to forget me or not?

 

Yesterday, I was watching The Alaskan Bush People. Ami, the Matriarch of the family, was sick and in physical pain. She flew to California for testing, and doctors found growth in her lungs they suspected was cancer. Ami was crying, and her hubby and family were sad yet trying to comfort her. She was crying and couldn't stop. Ami said she didn't know why she couldn't stop, but her hesitation before and after saying it, her looking at her hubby, and my intuition reflected that she knew exactly why she was crying but didn't want to say why. I think she was crying because she didn't want those who loved her to experience the pain she knew of a certainty they would endure. She was not crying for herself, in other words, but for others.

 

If I died tomorrow and nobody knew it, perhaps that would be a kind and good thing for those who love me. But on the other hand, I wanted to be at the Memorial Celebration of my Sponsor who passed, but I didn’t know she passed until reading a Facebook comment after the fact. I knew ‘in the Spirit’ she was leaving Earth School, for I had a Vision to this end, which ameliorated my grief.

 

Grief is Praise!

 

Grief is evidence of love, for we cannot grieve that which we never loved. We also can’t rob someone of their High Opportunities to grieve in life. So I hope you will laugh and cry, both remember and forget in balance, bringing to mind the good and forgive the mistakes we learned at a price. When we forgive ourselves, there is nothing but sweet loving acceptance in all of its brilliant brushstrokes of experience.

Treatment Victim Mentality & Recovery

Treatment is a place where we pay money to find out recovery is free. I worked at Hazelden and other places helping late-stage chronic inebriates, alcoholics/drug addicts, stay alive and maybe even recover (if they have the 'capacity to be honest'). Therefore, I am NOT saying treatment centers are bad. They are good. I've noticed people with negative attitudes blame others for their unhappiness when in reality they are their own problem. A person is as happy as they make up their minds to be. SPIRITUAL IMMATURITY is responsible for most anger in this world and I've noticed Minnesotans are notorious for passive-aggressive perspectives and behaviors. To evolve past these issues, we (yes, we, WE and I included...WE live in this world TOGETHER and need one another to rise to our highest potential). FORGIVE EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING. Hanging up the Blamethrower is never easy, but it's worth it.  St. Francis of Assissi had it right.

Before We "Knew" It

Before we could form words through our mouths, we could successfully navigate the freeways of laughter.  If you have forgotten what it means to be alive, the evidence is in the laughter.  If you don't laugh anymore, it might mean you're overthinking everything, that you have quit truly living.  QUIT THINKING!  Surrender every thought, your entire will, and life, to the wordless meaning for laughter that is innate to every living human on Earth School. Forget everything you THINK/KNOW and roll with the flow of surrender, of trust, in the truth that your entire life is governed and created by this innate choice.   

 

OK, that's annoying.  I worked on this Blog for 30-minutes and lost most of it after publishing it.  Laugh to keep from crying?  Ironic.  LOL!

Loving Comparisons

My letting others love me as they are is my loving them as they are. It is the first cousin to loving myself as I am. Even people deeply in love, totally committed, never love equally one day to the next. One day I love more than the next or prior, and then the tables turn and I am loved more or less, day to day. It ain't a contest.   Comparisons that don't end in paradox tear people apart. Paradox ends in surrender to the noncontrolling nature.  Making the comfortable uncomfortable and vice-versa, yields to being honest, open and willing to embrace the unknown. No one learns from what they already know. Learning is always on the edge of mystery.  The purest learning occurs in a vacuum free of preconceptions.

Problems Fed by Solutions & the Mistaken Identity

There's no such thing as reality, there's only perception. Einstein believed the mind that created the problem could not free itself. but I believe that in the Surrendered life, if God allows it, then it serves a Higher Purpose. If I pray, for example, for God to remove my defects of character, but they remain, then the defects serve a Higher Purpose.  What I call a defect is, therefore, a mistaken identity.  

Sartre being a lover of paradox, said we are condemned to freedom. The irony of the non-paradoxical Problem/Solution matrix is that a solution requires the presence of a problem to solve. It's akin to forgiveness needing the presence of an offense to forgive. Corrie Ten Boom said we should forgive regardless of the temperature of our hearts.

The Dark Night of the Soul free one of the idea that idea matters. In the controlling mind, I'm in charge of what I say, you're in charge of what you hear; to the Surrendered heart and mind, it's all the same (an echo of divinity both in sender/receiver).

Dark Night Storm:  The cool thing is that after our lives blown up into little convoluted, chaotic pieces, all swirling in the tornado of deconstruction, when the storm passes and the pieces of US all descend in perfect, divine order, we come to believe that Beautiful Mystery can be trusted. Trust rises above the Age of Reason of the Problem/Solution dance.

The convenient thing about Dualistic Thinking is if it continues long enough, it eventually brings one from the bridge of reason to the shore of faith and trust. Perceived truth might set us free, but it also might piss us off first.  Freed Perception arises like the Phoenix.  How many times should we forgive others for their transgressions?  Seven times?  No, 7 X 70, Christ said.  But if we forgive ourselves both before and after the imagined offense, we return to the Garden of Eden and the snake of ego leaves the Vine.  There's more truth in a question than in an answer.

I Didn't Mean to Hurt Someone

The Alcoholic that was in my life drank herself to death. I had exited the relationship before she passed, as I felt directed to do so by my Higher Power.  

 

But before I ended the relationship, my Sponsor said she was holding onto the bottle, and it was pulling her down to drown in the abyss, and further said I was holding onto her 'to save her,' but that I too would drown if I did not let go of her.

 

Let Go and let God. If the person gets sober because of us, they'll never take accountability of their lives. A person cannot realize the meaning of Step One without experiencing Powerlessness. If we throw pillows under the alcoholic to keep them from falling too hard...WE KILL THEM. They have to hit concrete, unfortunately.

 

Powerlessness leads one to believe beyond the illusions that didn't work. Powerlessness clears denial.

 

We have to work our program. If a plane is going down, first take your oxygen mask and then pray for the next right thing to occur. If the prayer is answered, then take action. There is One who has ALL power...so ‘keep your prayers on’.  I would rather leave the house with no clothes on than without my prayers on.

 

This Too Shall Pass. Take care of 'you' so you'll be strong enough to provide service work from a place of wellness, rather than from pure grief or shock.

 

Euphoric Recall happens when we feel the love for the addict/alcoholic, but guess what? Love itself doesn't go far enough. The number One killer of children, for example, that dies in drunk driving tragedies, die at the hands of the one that loves them most (the parent drunk driver). Love doesn't save the children; loving ACTION does.

 

If you are healthy, you will not in a way that jeopardizes others.  "I didn't mean to hurt someone" is childish. You have to live ON PURPOSE.  If you love someone, you will not harm them on purpose.  If you love yourself, you will not place yourself in harm's way, either.  You have to mean NOT to harm someone or yourself, and consciousness is the essential condition leading to this end.

 

Quit walking through life with sharp edges.  File off the sharp edges, Live and Let Live.  For me, Love is my Religion, and Action is my Gospel.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

When I was speaking for MADD on Saturday, a group of Veteran Bikers had a shindig at the Crowne Plaza. Someone told me after I spoke that they had "Nazi Paraphernalia" set up on the tables. I was honestly skeptical that a reputable hotel would allow such a thing, so instead of my staying clear from fear or anger based on his statement, I went to see for myself.

Sho'nuf, I carefully inspected each table of displayed items for sale and saw nary a swastika, or anything remotely related to Nazism. These were simply Vet Bikers as far as I could tell. They were respectful in their dialog, and while they looked a bit rough around the edges for the lily-white suburbanite who called them Nazis, these folks actually reminded me of some of us AA folks. Although we AA's don't always present the Norman Rockwell prototype of an American, most of us are pretty committed to making our world a safer place to live in.

The Nameless Poem

God, I notice I write a lot of poems with the word
God
in them.
Why do I do that?
Am I obsessed with unconditional love?
Am a needing the crutch of trust called beautiful surrender?
Am I so vagrant in my own answers, 
that my questions seem rich in Higher Coincidence?
~Maybe~
I get tired about talking of God in poetry,
because...words never say anything, anyway, about God.
How can a human be definitive about genius?
Is not genius comparative?
Is a genius a genius to oneself?
Can an idiot know genius?
That's ego.
EGO...Edging God Out.
Breaking the addiction to judgement...
cease eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good & Evil.
Don't worry, be happy.
That's Godly.
That's why I write about
God.