Knowing Everything

My mom has a picture of me as a newborn baby that sits on her antique victrola in her family room. The picture was taken only hours after I was born, and it has always interested me that my eyes are fully open, I am grinning, and I have a full head of very wild hair. When I look at that picture now the expression in the grin tells me I knew something important then, something I don’t think I know now.

Is what I knew then as simple as knowing nothing means actually knowing everything?

Doubts?

Is it possible that if individuals went deeper into their own experience of whatever spiritual path they follow there would actually be less hatred and intolerance of others, and an opportunity to view one another from eyes of similarity rather than eyes of difference? Perhaps it is the doubt that arises as a result of a person’s own lack of depth and commitment within one’s own practice that fuels fear and leads to a feeling that one must force one’s “truth” on others. We tend to think in opposite terms, that it is those who are very passionate about their religion who feel they must share the way with all, but I am now wondering whether it is actually a lack of passion, depth or experience that fuels this determination and leads to intolerance and exclusivity.

Centering

I often find it easier to center in my shortcomings and failures and give them more value and attention than my strengths and achievements. I have talked myself out of trying something by allowing the belief that I am not good enough and won’t succeed anyway to be my predominant motivator. So much time is wasted and progress is lost when I devote my energy to this kind of thinking. And there are times I don’t even realize that is what I am doing because the resistance is so well established as to blind me to my own closed thinking. I wonder why it is so much easier to default to this type of thinking, rather than to have a default set to the kind of thinking that tells me I am capable, talented and have much to contribute and share.

So many of us seem to slip into this false belief that humility is about berating ourselves and not seeing value in who we are and what we have to offer. Humility has nothing to do with devaluing one’s worth. Isn’t it far more important to appreciate the balance of our strengths and weaknesses, our rights and wrongs, and realize it is all a part of who we are, all part of the fabric that makes up the tapestry of a life? Yet instead of being balanced I can find myself centering more fully in devaluation, even to the point of making some pretty absurd statements, which I then find myself laughing at when I am able to step out in objectivity and really look at what I say I believe about myself. We are not all bad or all good, all strong or all weak. None of is without value, without strength, without gifts, without something to build and grow and give.

Now I will practice reminding myself this too applies to me.

Truth?

If there really did exist any one single truth or answer “out there”, wouldn’t we all be living it by now?

It seems to me there isn’t really one truth out there, and it is really only in our connection to the deeper experience inside of ourselves that we can truly find our limitless nature. We spend so much time looking for answers outside of ourselves rather than delving deeper within. Is this because it is more comfortable to go outside rather than face all that exists in those deeper experiences within? After all, there is gonna be some painful, scary stuff in those deeper places.

Does it merely provide comfort to think of a God in the sky who is watching and waiting and taking notes and caring for us so long as we are faithful and obedient? Because to believe God is inside each one of us, down in the trenches and the darkness and the mistakes we make may feel a bit like the blind leading the blind. We willingly take on the judgment and the self punishment and the guilt as an easy price to pay for our comfort level.

Perhaps the wisdom we are seeking out there is really within, in a deep connection we make with our own heart and spirit. Perhaps it isn’t about finding answers in one tradition but rather creating a more intimate connection with ourselves.

Thank you to Love

Thank you to Love for being unaffected by my mental elaborations. It is through Grace that I am returned from my wanderings.

Leaning on Love

Beings of Love must face the inevitability that at some point Love will manifest as the pain of loss, the devastation of disappointment, the broken heart. Whether it is the mother who hears the knock on her door that her soldier child has been killed in a foreign war, the loss of a beloved parent after a painful illness, the end of a love relationship (or the struggle through hardships of a love relationship), the pain of suffering caused by poverty and disease and hatred, or the disappointment of a dream not realized, existing as a devotee of Love also means hurting because of Love.

During times of pain it is essential to be mindful and conscious of drawing closer to Love, to renew devotion to it, to lean on its strength to pull us through the darkness of despair. The biggest mistake we make is to turn away from it, believing that as the source of pain in our life the only way to find relief is to cut it out. The only thing this accomplishes is to magnify and extend and deepen the darkness and pain, rather than soothe or heal it or protect us from the depths of sorrow.

Love is all things … it is our healer, comforter, strength, and constant companion. Turn your face toward Love when you are hurting, turn your face toward Love when you are lonely and feeling despair, turn your face toward Love when you are confused and lost, turn your face toward Love when you are disappointed or feeling worthless. Walk through the darkness because Love will always walk with you, beside you, and even carry you when you are too weak to walk yourself. Though at some point devotion to Love will mean sorrow, it will never mean abandonment, for Love is always available, and is always present and waiting for us to discover and experience the gentle space of embrace in its open arms.

God, Words and Meanings

Many people nowadays are abandoning words because of overuse, misuse, meanings that they do not feel connected to in their hearts and minds. Even as I am currently reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now I notice the word God is absent. And so it leads me to wonder about words and communication and what they mean for each one of us. I notice in the comments section of my last post that each commenter brought their own perspective to my Valentine poem, and I certainly had my own perspective when writing it, and part of that perspective wasn’t even in my conscious awareness until later on in the day.

On the subject of words, I am stubbornly refusing to abandon words such as God and Love and other words because these words mean something to me, mean a great deal to me, and though my communication of my own meanings and understandings is not always clear even to myself, I know these words are important and so I do not want to abandon them merely because their use by others doesn’t match with mine.

God is a pretty charged word. It has had meanings and definitions throughout time and history that have led to behaviors involving the grandest of altruism and also the worst of hatred by mankind. It is a word with so much “baggage” attached to it that many people seem to have abandoned the word altogether, feeling they simply can no longer communicate their intention or meaning using a word that has had so much associated with it, and certainly creates an immediate reaction in the mind and heart of a reader.

If someone asks me to define God, I might be able to partially figure out a “definition” for God, though really how do I define God at all with words…maybe it is my own ineptitude, maybe it is that my experience of God is something I am not yet able to put into words. Yes, the part I do know for me is that God is Love. So then what is Love? Is Love all that is good and altruistic and wonderful? Yes, it is found in the kindness toward a stranger, the wish for peace, the desire for the common good, the embrace of a lover. But it is also found in the heartache of a mother who just found out her son was killed in Iraq. It is in the heartbreak of a lover who has loved and lost. It is in the worry a parent has for a child, and the concern a child has for an aging parent. It is in the truth, which is not always something comfortable to hear. It is in the Light of joy, and it is also in the Darkness that we each carry inside of us.

At least for the moment I am thinking that to create a God that is separate from ourselves is to inevitably create a judging, condemning, harsh entity whose expectations we will always inevitably fall short of. I don’t sense God as something separate from myself, though I do have to allow for the possibility because it isn’t something that can entirely be known by anyone, and to truly have an open mind means to be open to any and all possibilities. If God created all things and is all things and is in all things, then God is in each one of us, the good parts AND the bad parts.

I am reminded of the scripture verse that says, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be open to you. I wonder if to continually seek God is to actually find God, and to believe one has once and for all found God is to not really have known God at all.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Question about Faith

Does feeling conviction in one’s own faith require thinking (and proving) everyone else is wrong?

Flu as Illusion

This version of the flu is a pretty vivid illusion/dream. Five days into this dream, the details have been impressive so far. A compromised airway sent me to the emergency department on Wednesday when air couldn’t make it past my spasming swollen throat. Through the Mojave experience of fever, the coughing, the haziness of time, it has certainly all felt real. It doesn’t “feel” illusory to be gasping for air, or coughing so severely as to be in a total body spasm, or to have a fever that feels like the worst desert summer, or to have a retching stomach, etc. But then again, doesn’t every nightmare “feel” real when we are having it? I think I’m ready to “wake” up from this one. Somebody please pinch me, or perhaps send a snow cone

P.S. I have a vague recollection of writing the post dated yesterday, so thank you to those of you who commented!