Mar 31, 2015

Pondering’s

 

Step 11. I commit to use various forms of prayer and meditation to increase my awareness of my conscious contact with the God of my understanding, praying only for the knowledge of my God’s desires for me and my willingness to carry that out.

 

This step forms the methodology to be able to live a Life of Abundance on an ongoing basis. Here is where we form the habits that will become life-long that enable us to grow in the recognition of the Love of our God, for as I have said, we either grow or we diminish; there is no resting point where “that is good enough”.

 

 

The life that we are learning to become was expressed several times by Jesus in such phrases as (Mark 11:23) “Truly I say to you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea’, and does not doubt, but believe in their heart that what they say is going to happen, it will be granted them.” The key phrase in these saying by Jesus is “Does not doubt, but believe in their heart that what they say is going to happen.”

 

We are filled with doubt about the Love of God. How many times did we pray for something and it did not happen. (Actually, it may have happened the way we prayed for it to happen, as we may have prayed for the wrong thing to happen, as we shall see.) But this doubt lingers. We have heard intellectually that we are made in the Image of God, and we understand intellectually that God is the Creator and that therefore we should be a creator, but I know myself and there is no way that I am a creator. Thus says our deep feelings, lost in our ego that frames everything only by what it can see and hear and feel in the physical world. We are our own worst enemy, or as Pogo once said “We have met the enemy, and it is us.” The process we have to learn, or in this case, unlearn, is our life-long dependence on the physical world for all our resources of living.

 

Again looking at the saying “We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), we can begin to catch a glimmer of that spiritual being that is a basis of life, our created self — made in the Image of our God. This glimmer we may have seen in such things as a sunset, a sunrise, a flower, the light of love in our beloved’s eyes, the moments when our breath caught at a painting, the sight of a newborn baby; all these are moments where the spiritual side of our life blazed forth in the soft light of beauty and love. We have all tasted this side of life, and we strive to recapture this joy as often as we are able to, given our state of life at a given moment. This is the side of life that we are attempting to reach with full acceptance that we are not just worthy of these moments, but are due these awareness senses by the very fact that we are alive, and are capable of having these moments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, if we desire it. These moments are achieved by finding our soul, and becoming aware of the stirrings of our soul at each moment of life. Then we can be one who “Does not doubt, but believes in our heart that what we say will happen.”

 

We have all tasted this sensation. We understand we have the capacity to sense these moments. But our ego denies us the sense that these moments can be ours at any time, for they stem from outside of our ego, at a moment of openness to God’s presence in the world, in the beauty of nature, family, and the world outside of ourselves, often the world that has no name but swirls around our life, the center of our soul.

 

This life is truly paradise, if we have eyes to see, and it is ours for the asking. But we have to commit ourselves to the process that will empower our life to overcome the pull of the ego, the pull of the physical world that pounds at us through our five senses. The process is not difficult, taking only a few minutes each day, and the process itself leads us to that level of Knowing that enables us to live the Life of Abundance that is our birthright.

 

Living in the Past

 

We spend most of our life living in the past. Everything we know is dependent on what we learned in the past. However, we too often take all we have learned and relive it over and over all the time. All of our past fears, worries, and sense of lacking haunt us every day, and we seem to unable to overcome these past memories. One of the tasks is not to overcome the past, but to put it in the past! We have to learn to release the past, let it be in the past, and to let it go so it no longer governs our every moment.

 

God is not in the past. God has no time frame, and the past and present and the future are all the same in the frame of the All in All. Now for those living in the physical plain of existence, the past is important for all the information we have soaked up over our life. This part of the past is healthy, but the problem is not what the past is, but the way we frame the past in our minds. In truth, the past is in the past, and cannot be changed in this lifetime. But we humans carry the past as part of our emotional baggage, and we too often not just note the past, but we relive the past over and over. The past sets the stage for the next step, but by itself cannot effect the present or the future. The past is what it is; we have to live with the consequences of the past, but we do not have to repeat the past. Especially we do not have to repeat the emotional part of the past, because then the past becomes the present, and prevents us from moving into a different future, as the past holds us captive in it’s grip of fear, anger, and worries. When we relive the past emotionally, we remain frozen in those moments of time that prevent us from growth in the Spirit.

 

These times in our lives where the past has frozen us can best be dealt with by doing the early steps, especially steps 4 and 5, where we review our life, talk to a trusted friend, and let it go at that point.

 

Living in the Future

 

We often combine living in the past with living in the future, where we will have our revenge on the past, or we remain frozen in fear from all the ‘what ifs’ that may occur, but probably will not occur. When we live in those moments that will never happen, we find ourselves unable to do the things that we need to do to ease the present and can set us on a path to the Joy and Peace of a Life of Abundance. The future holds the unknown, but the future is ours to set the tone for the Life of Abundance. How we view the future, with fear or with out doubt, as Jesus put it, is the difference between “Telling the mountain to hurl into the sea”, or wallowing in our fears of what ‘may’ happen – (but most likely won’t,) but those fears will remain, for “it could happen tomorrow”.

 

Living in the moment

 

Living in the moment, or the Now, as Eckhart Tolle puts it, does not negate all our storehouse of knowledge, but instead puts that knowledge to use, using it where and when it benefits the task we are trying to accomplish, and putting it aside when it will hinder the task we are trying to accomplish. We have to view each day as a series of events, each having their own meaning, but still it is just an event, leading to another event in our life.

 

The use of the term “Event” is not just a term. If we can make ourselves look at the day just as a series of events, some pleasant and some or many not so pleasant, we have a chance to gain some level of control to our reaction to these events. Otherwise we become trapped in an event and cannot let it go, and then we react badly when the next event comes along, leading to feeling overwhelmed as the events pile up.

 

Yes, the boss jumped on me for some ‘trivial’ incident. Yes, my spouse cheated (again) on me. Yes, the kids are a holy terror and cannot be controlled. Yes, I am finding it difficult to pay my bills. Yes, someone close to me passed away and left a huge void.

 

I could go on for pages, with little and very big events, but they are all events that mark the daily flow of our lives in great and small ways. Some of these events have profound effect on our lives, but most of them have no lasting effect on our life, and unless we drag them with us, over time will be gone and forgotten, and usually in a very short time we will not even recall the event that seemed so strenuous at the time.

 

When we can store these events away and learn to create the calmness that this approach to life will elicit, then we can begin the move that leads to our Life of Abundance, for we will understand that, indeed, God will never give us more then we can hold, and even more, God desires for us only the good things that life has to offer: beauty and joy each day of our life.

 

I commit to use various forms of prayer and meditation to increase my awareness of my conscious contact with the God of my understanding.

 

The key to gaining a sense of control over our life comes from spending time with our Source, our Soul, and coming to feeling comfortable with that Source, our Best Friend, our God, the Eternal Wisdom of the universe.

 

Not just when we feel like it, but each day.

 

Every day.

 

Always.

 

We will begin to see that God is not just our Friend, but our Lover, the One who never lets us down, is always ready to listen and talk (yes, to talk) with us, guiding us gently but firmly if we but open our inner eyes to see.

 

Note I said inner eyes, for our soul has eyes that sees all level of vibration, not just the narrow spectrum that our physical eyes see, but all the spectrum, including the “God” spectrum, or that level of vibration that is in contact with our Eternal Wisdom, and can receive and respond at that level of consciousness.

 

Usually that level of consciousness requires a quiet time to be processed, time when we can be away from the sounds or too often the cacophony of everyday existence. This is often difficult to do, but once we set up such a space and time we will find ourselves looking forward to the time of silence that this time needs.

 

Finding the time is a matter of priority. We can always find the time for something we need to do or deeply desire, and this is one of those moments where we have to choose: do we want a life of the Joy of God or not? Is this TV show more important? What is our goal in life? These questions right now seem trivial and the answer obvious, but our actions over time reveal our inner answer. Too often the answer winds up that other matters are more important, as other items crowd in and block out that time we thought we had reserved for that quiet time.

 

I know a young man with a young and busy family who are always on the go, but found himself in too many situations that he deemed harmful for himself and therefore harmful to his family. He had to rise at 6 am to start the family day right, so he set his alarm for 5 am to have the quiet time he felt he needed to be able to treat his family in the right manner.

 

It can be done if we deem it important enough.

 

IF we deem it important enough.

 

That is the key to finding happiness in life. We have to put that point as the highest priority in our life, for if we find true happiness in our life, our family will be happy, our job will flow more smoothly, and all of life will change.

 

Praying only for the knowledge of my God’s desires for me

 

Does God have desires for me? Interesting question. In truth, God’s only desire for us is that we be happy. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? God desires us only to be happy? How about all the rules and regulations set up by each and every religion. They fill book self after book shelf. The Bible has book after book detailing every moment of the religious life for the everyday person, most of which were ignored by the average person.

 

Why do I say that the only thing God desires for us is that we be happy? Because God is Love, Love personified. All those we love, our children, our parents, all that we profess to love, do we not desire for them to be happy? Now it is true that seem to know what they should be doing to be happy, whether or not it will actually make them happy.

 

To be happy means that we have to follow the two great commandments of God: “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) All those volumes of rules laid out before us are summed up by Jesus: “Love God and Love your neighbor.” Those words sum up God’s desires for us. Only by loving God and our neighbor can we find the Joy of Life that is ours to grasp.

 

And my willingness to carry that out.

 

Ok, we see that we have to love God and our neighbor. Should be easy, right? Not so, not so. Our humanity keeps getting in the way. This is why we need this kind of 12 step program, to help us achieve a level of joining with our God so that we Create our world around us to bring us the Life of Abundance our Soul seeks to find.

 

Step 11. I commit to use various forms of prayer and meditation to increase my awareness of my conscious contact with the God of my understanding, praying only for the knowledge of my God’s desires for me and my willingness to carry that out.

 

Meditation

 

Oh God of our Soul, the Whisperer of Joy and Abundance in our lives, we thank you for all the joys that you have brought into our lives, and all the joys that lay before us. We know that we are just transitioning here from this world of physicality to the world of the Spirit, where these words will blossom into an eternity of Joy and Love. We ask to have the scales of blindness removed from our eyes so that we may see the Joy that you offer to us everyday of our lives.