Love

As I say in my book, "love is the attitude and willingness to take action to promote someone else’s spiritual and emotional growth". That sounds simple enough - but I often spend a fair amount of time deciding what that will be, today was a good example. In order for me to get clarity on the most loving action I need to release all self-interest and also realize that love, the loving response is very complex and includes all feelings. "So, too, is love not the absence of an emotion (hatred, anger, lust, jealousy, covetousness), but the summation of all feeling. It is the sum total. The aggregate amount. The everything." (Walsch).

Growth

I have been very aware of my own growth for the last several months, an illuminating and often challenging experience. I am attempting to become "all I can be" on all levels, spiritual, emotional, cognitive and physical, a daunting task at the age of 68 almost 69 and disabled. I am also becoming more aware of my impact on the people I meet and how I might cause the changes I would like to see. I frequently end up thinking of a comment by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton that I read many years ago, "Indeed, it is the most difficult thing in the entire human experience -- to claim your Self, your Life, your Light, your Truth and your God.

Love

During my recovery meeting today there was a lot of talk about having difficulty with the concept of God. I commented that many people believe that there is "something there" besides what a person can see, touch or feel. I suggested that they give that a name and believe in it. Personally I am comfortable with calling it Love, which then leads me to believing in relationships, connectedness, inclusion, respect, forgiveness and compassion. I like the comment by C. Jung, that "Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."

Having An Impact

As always, I have been doing a lot of reflecting on the life process and my place in it, today it’s about my role, having moved to MD from AZ. I moved here because I wanted to "change the world", a daunting task. I am very aware that I "have issues", that I am very human. During my reading about the historical Jesus, I find it very reassuring to find that he also had issues and knew he was very human. He certainly changed the world and I suspect that if I continue to seek guidance and stay humble, I can have an impact. In the words of Claremont deCastillejo "If we can resist the compulsive pressure of our logical thinking, without relinquishing our precious heritage of lucid thought; if we can hold our ground with our own hardly won ego personalities, yet bow our heads and say, 'Thy will not mine be done'; if we will but notice the reactions of our bodies; and heed the behaviour of the world towards us; if we can learn to listen to the voices within and to the whisper in the wind, with trust as well as with discrimination, we may be able to follow the road where the Rainmaker walks."

Spiritual Path

Within my spiritual path I have specifically and purposely avoided the renunciate’s path, choosing instead to be a functioning member of society who participates in normal activities without attaching or giving them much importance. My focus is instead, on the wonders of love and the eternal (some would say God’s Kingdom). In my book I call it "being in the world, but not of it". All around me I see people dissatisfied with life as it is and yet unwilling to give up their attachments and distractions. Being in the world gives me more of a chance to reach them and offer them an alternative.

Being Human

Today was one of those days when very little went according to my plan, the first problem being that I did not realize we had switched to daylight savings time. I spent most of the day feeling a little uncomfortable and having some minor post-surgery pain. During the day I kept thinking of various negative, judgmental and self-centered things to say - so I kept quiet most of the day and was fairly successful at that. Toward the end of the day I went through a couple of hours of anxiety over the possibility that my healing will go awry. All-in-all today was a very human sort of day.