Allowing

A few days ago I spoke of facing life most days with gratitude and acceptance which then allows me to minimize the impact of any serious problems. This morning I felt disgruntled at the way things are and the challenges I deal with daily. Allowing myself to feel that way is an important part of loving myself as is letting the feeling pass. I felt disturbed for a while and now I am back to feeling grateful. "Allowing" is a fun way to face irrational complexities!

Discernment

This morning after the Friend’s Meeting for Worship Maria and I had some weighty or significant initial conversations with four people. I call the conversations weighty or significant because there was a definite connection with each of them and the "fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control) were present, meaning a divine presence. I can’t help wondering where the encounter will lead or why it was significant — and I suspect I’ll find out when the time is right. "Discernment is a gift from God, not as a personal achievement. The gift is not the result of training, technique, or analysis. Like other gifts of God, its origin is mysterious and gratuitous." (Patricia Loring)

Day To Day

Today the main issue I am dealing with is learning to sleep on my back rather than my stomach and I need to remember the Buddhist comment "first the laundry, then the ecstacy". My shoulders and back do better and have less pain and strain if I sleep on my back. I also am just more peaceful in that orientation though it is not my preferred position. I am accustomed to dealing with issues that are more complex, esoteric and potentially far reaching. However, I also need to attend to the simple, straight forward matters as well. When I address the simple life issues that seem trivial, I am better equipped to do things I think important.

Acceptance And Gratitude

Recently I have had several examples in my life of what it’s like not to accept life the way it is and I realize that I would feel a lot worse if I did not approach my life with gratitude and acceptance. I need not like the limitations of getting older and being disabled but if I accept those limitations I can work with them and minimize there impact on me. Fighting with them only results in my feeling worse. I can also always be grateful. Today I can be grateful for being largely free of pain but even on days when I have pain I can be grateful that my condition is not worse. I am reminded of the Buddhist comment that "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional".

Courage To Change

When I began my recovery back in 1985 I was thirty-six and still using behaviors I had learned as a child growing up in an abusive alcoholic home. Those behaviors included things like perfectionism, hyper-vigilance about what others thought of me and self-hatred. Behaviors which had originally begun as survival tools and which I had melded into my lifestyle but which no longer served me well since they caused anxiety. I began attending recovery meetings in order to change those behaviors, realizing that change would require courage since part of me still believed that those behaviors were a necessary part of survival. I am very grateful that through the love and support of many people I found the necessary "courage to change" and today need to recall how difficult that was, as I assist others in the process.

Simple Life

I have been reading Marcelle Martin’s Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey. In the chapter I am reading now she describes the simple life of the faithful and I find that she is describing much of the life I lead. I choose this type of life because it fits me, not because of some sort of adherence to the way of faith. We have many pieces of very simple and basic hand made antique furniture which I bought at auctions (cheaply!) And refinished. Most of those pieces have been ugly and are now beautiful but scared a bit and showing some road marks, reminding me of the owner. I am very grateful to be leading a life of love.

Listening

My wife commented today that I had more challenges up ahead in response to my saying that my work with the spirits had been one of support and encouragement for the last few days and relatively easy. It’s true that I am clearly not done and that there is much to do for the world to become a loving, spiritual place of being. I feel a strong need to be open and listen. "It requires even more discernment to discover whether the ministry called for from a particular individual in a particular instance requires prophetic speech, humble and hidden activities, bold and dramatic action, professional service or some, novel and previously unimagined course." (Patricia Loring)

Being Rather Than Having And Doing

Tonight during meditation I began by focusing on the feeling of unconditional love, then enlarged the scope to include "being" as opposed to doing and having. After blasting the spirits and everything around me with healing, Loving energy I sent them the message of being and urged them to "pass it on". That all felt very good and solid, in a fluid sort of way! With all the talk and advertisements about black Friday and the daily emphasis on "doing" our jobs, I urge balance. "To attain excellence, you must care more than others think wise, risk more than others think safe and dream more than others think practical".

Life

Today I just performed my normal daily activities and was an example of being grateful, unattached, present and flowing free through life. I serve as an example to the seen and unseen entities I work with and contact. I certainly have daily challenges, more than some, less than others, that add texture to my passage through life but I live with them and am grateful for the rest. Today I went to a recovery meeting, exercised, talked to people I mentor, cooked and ate — not bad. "The happiness we discover in life is not about possessing or owning or even understanding. Instead, it is the discovery of this capacity to love, to have a loving, free and wise relationship with all of life. Such love is not possessive but arises out of a sense of our own well-being and connection with everything." (Kornfield)

Meditation

Tonight during meditation I was focusing on that powerful, overwhelming feeling of unconditional Love when the words I read from Richard Pries many years ago flashed through my mind: "Nothing [worldly] matters very much and very few things matter at all". I identify that wonderful feeling of Love with God and eternity. I just sat with that awareness and feeling for a while. I find it very comforting that the various forms of money, power and prestige which I encounter daily have little or no long lasting value. When going through my day I sometimes ask myself "would I care about this if I were on my deathbed", especially if some trivial thing seems important to me.