Love

My spiritual creed starts with a prayer: Father in Jesus\’ name remind me of

Your love for me and of my love for You.

And so, if God is love, then this prayer is answered. In every way my life becomes about remembering His love for me and mine for Him.

If I think He answered with a painful difficult situation to teach me, then I am seeing it wrong.

So, I have a problem with my knee which is probably a torn meniscus. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Did God send it as a difficulty for me to learn or is it an expression of love which I am seeing incorrectly?

I have no neutral thoughts. I see no neutral things. All the meaning I see is what I decided. So, do I choose a loving God or a tyrant?

What is the content of a torn meniscus? Not the form, the content. Am I filled with fear? If so, then I didn\’t choose a loving God but a tyrant.

You realize that society, history and the Judeo-Christian tradition teach that God is a tyrant.

I am forced to change my ideas of what I will do. I am an athlete, but the ego of running and racing is torn from me. Fitness becomes a quiet manifestation with no meaning in the world. Something which has no worldly aspect (ie, not where others can see and react), cannot be of the ego. Hence, it has the potential of being love.

Does it make sense that God is a choice? Yes. If I decided he is a tyrant, then that is what I think. If he actually is love, he wouldn\’t attempt to change me. He would wait until I wanted him; at which point He would send immediate help. Even so, it takes awhile for me to change my choices and beliefs, at least from my perspective.

No, the enlightened or special religious don\’t have an edge because of their position or religious validation. We all have an equal chance to live in God\’s love or not.

I want the content of my life (mind) to be love. And so, that is the help I am given.

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The Core of Happiness

Last night as I was riding my Nordic Track, I felt so happy to be one of the few people who get up off their butt and go do something. See, eating peanut butter out of the jar and laying on the bed are options. I certainly could rationalize laying about.

But there is this inner core, this something else, which wants a life of activity, health, fitness. As I exercise, I feel happy. Maybe its just the endorphins. Ok, I\’ll take them.

I ponder the feeling. I know that my efforts to stay in shape are a symptom of my choice for happiness. I used to get pissed off when people said happiness was a choice. Years later, and after being A Course in Miracles student for awhile, I find that I can choose happiness. I can choose the Voice for God. I can choose that inner something as what I identify with, and not my negative troubled ego self.

I don\’t think the God connection is hard wired. I think it is something you can make if you divert your attention to it.

One of my phrases for today is: \”Father my freedom is in You alone.\” This thought helps me surrender the illusion of the world and return to God as my reality.

Help

Driving home tonight, I was thinking about my decision to believe in a higher power; not just a benign higher power but one that helps me. That\’s when my break through occurred.

What help is it that I get? Not help in the material world, as in: pulling strings so I get what I want. I get help with my thoughts. I get help with ego renunciation and transcendence. That is, if I truly honestly want love based thinking, I get help. But still, I have to choose and decide to seriously take the help. I have to actually give up resenting that person and back stabbing them with my thoughts and words. Key word here is actual, ACTUAL.

Several times a day, I realize I\’m resenting someone. Right then, as soon as I realize it, I ask for the help and then accept the help and then ACTUALLY deny those thoughts and words.

I want my life to be about self transcendence. In that case, any bit of unfairness at work is a practice. What I want is not a great career but love based thinking. If a great career is a by-product of the spiritual work, so be it; but career success is not the goal.

Personal Power

I can make a right/healthy decision in the moment. But, maybe that desire doesn\’t go away, just underground to come back later. Then the only way I am ultimately powerful is to do something that eliminates that thought, develop a habit which becomes stronger than that thought, or ask for a higher power to remove that thought. Otherwise, I\’m doomed to eventually do that thing.

I need to change my momentum and keep it changed.

I want a different ruler in my mind than the one I have been allowing. I need to strengthen the consciousness which brings me success, peace, productivity, self love. That consciousness which is positive is there; I just don\’t choose it as my ruler. But I think I could. I am aware enough of my thoughts to begin a different conscious sorting process.

I went for a long run as usual for a Saturday morning (4h25 min). I thought that I want my life to be an experience of soul. What ever I do and however I think, I want it to be an experience of soul.

I learned how to just be today! I realized that I am.

That\’s it.

Stand Your Ground…

….on silence and on joy.

Miracle principal 4: \”All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.\”

ACIM text 7.IX.1: \”The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly, because your joy is His. This is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God, which is joy.\”

Have the courage of your convictions.

I believe in silence because that is where I hear the Holy Spirit best. Above all else I want my primary life relationship to be with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is where my guidance and comfort comes from. The Holy Spirit is my connection to God. Above all else, I can\’t go through life without my connection to God.

If you feel joyful, know that you are living the Kingdom, that Heaven has manifested in your heart. Stand by the joy. Don\’t let your ego or anyone else\’s trounce on joy. Gandhi said, \”Be the change….\” Ultra Monk says, \”be the joy…\” The change we need is joy. The world needs people who choose joy.

If I don\’t seem to have joy, know that my ego has trounced on it. But I use spiritual means to return to joy. Joy is my natural state. Joy is my God given life. Joy is what I am in the real world; beyond the dream, beyond the ego illusion we call this world. If I am the joy, I have left the world; but yet I am still available to my brothers in this world to join with me in Heaven.

I have spent most of my life in the doldrums. But now that I have felt joy, I intend to stand my ground there.

Joy is a choice followed up with spiritual action. It doesn\’t matter which spiritual action as long as it is the one given you by the Holy Spirit. Hence, silence. Go to silence and wait there. Listen to the silence for the answers. Stand on silence. Silence gives you the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit. The Voice for God gives you the path to joy. Insist on joy. Follow the path.

I lifted weights this morning; left me quivering. I went early to work. Walking through the parking lot, I felt gratitude. I said thank you. Walking up the stairs, I felt the presence of the Son of God. I said thank you.

Joy is a thing more awesome than words. I am a 50 something mature woman athlete. I firmly state: I get to be a successful athlete because of my spiritual workouts. Yes, I also do worldly workouts; but it starts with spirit. Without strengthening the presence of spirit, I have no mojo for athletics. Mojo is merely a reflection of spiritual joy; which is a far greater commodity. Spiritual joy means everything. Experiencing spiritual joy in this world is the only thing that matters.

If I feel joy, then feel gratitude to the Son of God, then I am sharing my joy and gratitude with everyone. Shared joy and gratitude is Heaven.

This evening I hope to try something new. My new set of micro-spikes should be delivered today (FedEx indicates they are in KC). I will have them after work. I will then go to an easy trail and do a snow run for an hour or two, return home and finish off the workout until I get to 3 hours. Then tomorrow, I need mental fortitude to do another 5 hours of workout. The purpose of this is to reel in that 50 miles of health and happiness, not destruction.

Don\’t Choose the World

Today I am in Kansas City instead of Oklahoma City. I plan to go for a two hour walk instead of a 24 hour run. My lesson for the day: “I love you Father and I love Your Son.” What better way to spend a day but in prayer, achieving nothing in this world but walking with Christ.

(Quoted parts from ACIM text 31.IV)

“The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they could have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go beyond it.”

Sin. Guilt. Pain. Death. And in exactly this order does the world accuse us and condemn us.
Metaphysical choices, not material world choices.
Spiritual help, not material world help.
Forgive yourself your madness: thinking the answer to pain and death are in this world.
Journey within. Seek Christ. Choose your brother is your Self; beyond the physical world illusion you made.

Coose the non-existance of sin as your reality. You cannot be a sinner because you exist in God and always have. The world of sin is an illusion made by the tiny mad idea that wanted to be special to God, but God would not grant specialness because He is Love, so the tiny mad idea made a bad dream of anger and fear of God. Your true reality is: you are a Thought of love in the Mind of Love.

“He has not left His Thoughts (us)! But you forgot His Presence and remembered not His Love. No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal be one with His…. In unity with Him do they (his Thoughts, us) abide, and in their oneness both are kept complete. There is no road that leads away from Him.”

There is no hope of happiness in the world. The hope of happiness lies in Christ, who is beyond the physical, but seen by anyone who chooses to let the Holy Spirit see for him. Seeing Christ, you need not accomplish one more thing in this world: no more trinkets and baubles, cookies and cake, war, drugs or sex, entertainment, struggle to win of any sort.

I win! I am nothing and nobody in this world. I exist in God and so do you. You win too! Christ is our reality.