Self-Care

Today I spent the day exercising, cooking vegetable soup and meditating, activities of self care in order to take a break from the struggles I mentioned yesterday (my credit card company, fraudulent activity and my e-mail account). Admittedly they took actions which complicated my life. I wanted to return to a feeling of peace, balance and equanimity. I now realize that the various companies took the actions that companies do and I will simply work with them and allow whatever outcome happens, rather than exerting energy to control the situation. "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." (Claremont deCastillejo)

Balance

Today I got drawn in and became lost in the day-to-day issues around my credit card company, fraudulent activity and my e-mail account. For the first couple of hours it was amusing, then amusing and irritating then just irritating. The details do not matter but these events are all trivial and necessary for a modern life which does not support ideals like love, silence, quiet time, connection or spirituality. In the words of Daniel A. Seeger: "To understand better the value of silence in daily life, and its relation to this spiritual transformation for which we yearn, it is useful first to consider the limitation of language, of words.......It is next useful to contemplate the limitations of logical reasoning." To get my balance back I plan to involve myself in cooking, working in the garden and meditating, activities which do support the ideals I value. As he goes on to say: "It [inner silence] is to establish an inner peace, an inner harmony, which will allow us authentically to contribute to the establishment of an outer peace and an outer harmony in the world at large."

Spiritual Awakening

Yesterday I wrote of what Saint Faustina Kowalska calls "tribulations", life’s difficulties, and the spiritual awakening that resulted. She describes the situation well when she wrote "When a soul has come out of these tribulations, it is deeply humble. Its purity of soul is great. It knows better without need of reflecting, as it were, what it ought too do at a given moment and what to forbear. It feels the lightest touch of grace and is very faithful to God. It recognizes God from afar and continuously rejoices in Him. It discovers God very quickly in other souls and in its environment in general. The soul has been purified by God Himself. God, as pure spirit, introduces the soul to a life which is purely spiritual. God Himself has first prepared and purified the soul; that is, He has made it capable of close communion with Himself. The soul, in a state of loving repose, communes spiritually with the Lord. It speaks to God without the need of expressing itself through the senses. God fills it with His light." As I move through life I feel a strong sense of joining, communion and presence with everything and everybody. I feel it with the plants when I work in the garden, the vegetables as I fix dinner and the people when I join in a meeting or gathering. Like John Travolta says in the movie Phenomenon "We are all made of the same stuff". We are all also connected.

Life

I have encountered and had to overcome several speed bumps in my life, each resulting in a deeper understanding of life’s situations and an eventual spiritual awakening. My first years were spent growing up in an alcoholic home with a father that took his rage out on me. During those same years my teachers tried to demonstrate that I was retarded and made efforts to get me out of their classrooms. To be fair I was very uncooperative and not the least bit pleasant to be around. This all changed dramatically when I decided to get to work, got a Ph.D. and became an assistant professor. I was respected and treated with considerable deference. I then became disabled and recently developed a serious speech impediment which has certainly added to my experience and pushed me into that spiritual awakening, giving me great joy. Today I encountered a computer problem which I then tried to explain and, because of my speech impediment, was dismissed as not understanding. I am still a bit angry but also shifting into understanding and compassion. All this has been difficult but also beneficial, having resulted in a miraculous awakening. "The Lord explained that it was needful that he [George Fox]’should have a sense of all conditions’. How else should he learn ‘to speak to all conditions?’ Then followed the critical experience: ‘I saw the infinite love of God. I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings" (John Yungblut)

Holistic Healing

I just had a blood test and found out yesterday that my thyroid was functioning normally, which is remarkable since it has been underperforming for over a decade. I was fatigued and then diagnosed with hypothyroidism since blood tests showed a high level of thyroid stimulating hormone and low levels of T-3 and T-4. Since then I have had my thyroid and its hormones tested repeatedly and adjusted medication levels. Seven weeks ago I stopped taking my thyroid medication and began practicing healing touch on my thyroid several times a day. I would fill myself with God’s loving energy which I then, using intent, sent through my hands into my thyroid. It apparently worked and I have done the same with a leaky heart valve, a prostate problem, a possibly cancerous lesion, several cuts, burns and cysts. I have also, successfully, helped others with the technique. "For my own part, if dropping a T.V. set produces more channels, why not watch them?" (Sylvia Fraser)

Shadow Side

In my recovery meetings recently there has been a fellow who is probably in his mid-fifties, overweight, outspoken and with only about four months of recovery. He is also very self-centered and does not listen well. When he speaks, no matter what he actually says I hear the hidden message of "won’t someone please listen to me!". As he mentions whenever he shares he has actually been working on recovery for thirty four years, about as long as me but I have not relapsed. I mention him because his presence bothers me — He represents my "shadow" side, the part of me that I would rather not admit to. To use another common phrase "There, but for the grace of God, go I". On most days I look at him with a mixture of irritation, love and compassion. "Doing shadow-work means making a gentleman's agreement with one's self to engage in an internal conversation that can, at some time down the road result in an authentic self-acceptance and a real compassion for others." (Zweig and Abrams)

Struggle

In my recovery meeting today people talked of their struggles, difficulties and challenges. Many also lovingly and laughingly spoke of how they made "lemonade of those lemons", through a simple change in attitude. In part due to meetings like this and in part due to the mystical connection I wrote about yesterday, I have learned to view the many difficulties and struggles in my life as sources of growth. Through those struggles I have learned about the power and texture of love. "Fear not, nor be dismayed at the appearance that is darkness, at the disguise that is evil, at the empty cloak that is death, for you have picked these for your challenges. They are the stones on which you choose to whet the keen edge of your spirit. Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned." (Richard Bach)

Connection

I am immensely grateful for my mystical connection with God and, through that connection, with everything else. I now have one foot and understanding in this transient earthly reality which I wake up to every morning. The other foot and understanding is focused on the significance of each event within eternity. Each view, separately and together brings me joy. For example I understand and enjoy the fact that one of the large oak trees in the our backyard has a loving sense of a family connection with the English ivy plants around it. The tree and I both know that the same ivy will shorten its life, but that, in the eternal view, that loving connection is more important than a few years of life. "Without needlessly multiplying such testimonies for data, we can say with considerable assurance that mystical experience is consciousness of direct and immediate relationship with some transcendent reality which in the moment of experience is believed to be God."(Rufus Jones)

Service Work

I am one of the "stray dog spiritual seekers" I spoke of yesterday, always looking for understanding and a home. I have found both in the entity I call God and now spend my days attempting to bring that feeling and reality to as many others as possible. Finding that has changed my life immeasurably, allowing me to become an integrated, fulfilled whole. For me, the "others" that I carry the message to includes living humans and those that have transitioned on. "I take the spiritual life to be a life of which aims to discover human wholeness, the integration of all aspects of our humanity - body, soul, mind, emotions - and the connection of the self to all of creation."(Paul A. Lacey)

Challenge

This morning my wife and I attended a Friend’s business meeting where the Ministry and Council Committee presented their annual "Spiritual State of the Meeting" report for 2017.  In that report one of the main points which concerns this faith community is the desire to be "open" and "inclusive" when it comes to other members of the diverse community of "spiritual seekers", an approach that my wife and I welcome. Recently we have been selected to be Co-clerks (leaders) of the Thursday evening meeting for worship, giving us an exciting and daunting task of being open and inclusive of diversity while also staying loosely within Quaker ideals. To put these ideas in more relaxed terms, I would like to welcome and attract some of the "stray dog" spiritual seekers with their passion and diversity. I know they will make me feel uncomfortable at times and challenge my love for them, but that is how I grow. "In the Dhammapada he [the Buddha] teaches that in this world hate never dispels hate. Only love dispels hate."