Justified Resentments -- Murdering Our Selves

Resentment -- a poison we take, and then wait for the other person to die .....

Anger tells me about my pain and separation -- unpresence -- not about the ultimate truth of what is .... or what should be ....

In unpresence, everything -- every relationship, every life event, and every perception becomes tinged and contaminated by gangrenous resentment -- and shame - unpresent ....

My need is to be constantly improving my conscious contact with my God -- especially when my ravenous disease of humanness is engaged in the self destruction by conscious present resentment and rage ....

For example, Hitler killed millions of Jewish people .... and millions and billions continue to kill themselves with resentment .... maybe Hitler killed more people by having people destroy themselves -- after he no longer had the power to kill their body .... dunno ....

Very sad - grief -- what are we losing in our "righteous indignations" .... justified self murder ..

Love Found -- Finding Presence in Daily Inspirations

For Part One, click here: Love Lost

(This is my experience, strength and hope. Please do not misunderstand the energy or passion of my words to indicate any level of authority – except perhaps about my own experiences, strength and hope.)

The Journey Begins
Imagine for a moment, that we are on exploratory expedition, with the intent being to find a strange new place called “love”. Where would we look? What would be indications that we were close – or far away -- from our destination? What resources would we use to find clues and directions? Who could we turn to for help?

We could “Goggle” the internet using the word “love”, and \we would find many, many links to sites dealing with the subject. We would find tons of information and stories about, and descriptions of “love”. And I believe we could be no where closer than we were before.

Maybe the place to do an “internet” network search is in our own hearts.

Following our Hearts
Let’s start our pursuit with the consciousness that love cannot be found by or in our brains. It can be only be experienced in an area called our “hearts”, and then shared – experientially – through the medium of words and thoughts – which must be experienced also. Using our brains to experience and pursue love is like trying to see a sunset with our ears – it is not the medium of perception that can be used on sunsets.

Where Is Love Hiding?
There are several places where love becomes hidden:
1. The Trees of Distraction: what most people, including myself, have interpreted as love is the relief we have felt when a relationship distracted us from ourselves – partially anesthetizing our senses. Relief from the conscious or unconscious pain of being human and being separated is most frequently perceived by humans as “love”. In romantic relationships, for example, opposites attract because they distract.
2. The Forest of Intimacy: when relationships have gone on long enough or gone deep enough, the inebriation caused by the initial distractions of the relationship begins to wear off, and we begin to experience increased consciousness – and historical unresolved pain and fear. At this point, our brains conclude that the closeness and connection is not real or acceptable, and initiates a relationship destruct sequence.

So if real love is not the pleasurable feeling of relief from others distracting us; and if true love improves our conscious contact with ourselves to the point that we can experience overwhelming unhealed, historical pain; and if our unconscious brains are programmed to protect us from the pain of increasing consciousness with others, where are we left in the pursuit of love.

A Different Place
My first spiritual adviser taught me relentlessly page 417 in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous as the basis for relationships, living, and love:

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, thing, or situation – some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing , or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.

The writer later describes the effects of acceptance on his relationship with his wife.
His emotional illness had caused major disruption and disturbance of his perceptions and reactions – to the extent that the beautiful person he had married had become perceived as a flawed and unacceptable person. In his disturbance, he had judged, rejected, and abandoned her – he had lost his inner place of “love” for her.

As he began to heal with improving conscious Presence with his God, he was given a “new pair of glasses” – he was restored to his truer self, and in that experience he rediscovered the wonderful person he had met and loved before – and more.

In learning to live in unconditional acceptance, we begin to realize that acceptance is the truest “location” of love. And it is only possible when we are personally and consciously connected to our God’s unconditional acceptance -- love – of us. The new pair of glasses is beginning to see others – and ourselves – through Their eyes. We are all wonderful, exciting, and perfect in Their perception – and They know all our secrets – even the ones we don’t know.

A GPS Prayer

God, grant me the Presence to accept and love others without their having to change, the Presence to be changed by your acceptance and love, and the Presence to know the difference between love and distraction. Amen

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Love Lost -- Finding Presence in Daily Inspirations

The paradox is that looking for love is not the way to find it. Abundant love will find us when we make the decision to attentively and unconditionally give it to all the people God has invited to share our life. Our primary purpose is to know and give love. In God's Care

As human beings we are looking for love – frequently, “in all the wrong places” – but we are still looking – because we are really so incredibly alone. The complexities and detail of modern culture with its blasting medias, ultra- virtual video and computer worlds and with its frenzied and pulsating artists of entertainment –have created alternate universes of numbing irrelevant thought—a culture no longer dependent on chemicals to be stoned out of our minds.

We are separated and alone – disconnected – and basically stripped of the emotional and spiritual securities of any real Presence that would enable us to unconditionally offer and receive loving connections to others.

So – alone, in this massive darkness – we humans tend to grope for any fleeting brushes with warmth and human presence – finding that every rose of hope has thorns of disappointment and ultimate abandonment.

The obstacles, in my experience, are the absence of clear experience of what “love” is, the inability to maintain a steady and conscious spiritual Presence beyond physical form and sensation, and the confusion about what human relationships are really about.

Our culture seems to use the term “love” with unconscious ease – as if everyone knows and has agreed on what it means. As I have listened to my own inner voices, and the inner voices of others, I have heard the word mean everything from “I like you” to “I need you” to “I will like you if you will give me what I need”. It seems to be used like a magic word that should somehow immediately create closeness where none to little actually exists.

It is seemingly a word of attempted mastery over the stifling darkness of separation, and over the emotional starvation for human and spiritual Presence. For me, without my God’s higher Presence, human presence has been only a mental fantasy, a legend or a fairy tale. But what exactly does “loving Presence” mean? Where and how does it exist? How do we find the invisible in the blinding glare of what is only visible?

Love seems to be an attempted mastery over increasing human consciousness – the feverish awareness of past and impending abandonments by others, our selves – and seemingly by God. We “fall in love” as a moth is drawn to a flame – we are starving for intimacy and become filled with the euphoria of distraction – and are finally burned by loss of the beloved delusion.

When consciousness blinks briefly into existence on the screens of our minds, we shut it down with the most convenient and available distractions we can find. And we are powerless to stop – the genetic programming of our primitive, reptilian brain is simply doing its unconscious best to protect us from harm and pain. We have no conscious choice.

Disconnected from the “loving” and caring Presence of our God, we are damned to incredible separation and loneliness – wandering the darkness and silence of human existence – attempting to hope for and experience a “love” that does not ultimately destroy and maim our human hearts – even more.

See Part Two.

For article, for other articles, click here: Part Two: Love Found. and Love Touches Hearts.

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Going With the Flow of God's Presence -- Daily Inspirations

The chief of pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.
Jean Nicholas Grou

Life happens. It happens to us. And it is perceived through the mental filters of our brains which produce different and varied reactions and conclusions.

Filters operate by resisting certain aspects of light or sound – or mental and emotional experience – in an attempt to produce a desired reaction. Our brains are masters of this principle.

Based on our past experiences, certain sensations and perceptions are resisted by our brain in an attempt to protect us from pain. In the process, it ultimately does just the opposite.

Pain is actually produced by resistance. If I start swing my arms in the middle of a large room, I experience no pain. If I start swinging my arms in the middle of a doorway, I am going to feel pain – as my hand and arms connect with the resistance of the door frame.

A key to serene living and spiritual enlightenment is to reduce the level of resistance that our brains use to control neural energy and perception.

The first step in lowering my brains natural resistance is to become aware that my conscious, rational, logical brain has no ability to control the level of my impulse brain’s resistance. No amount of thought or will can remove the resistance my primitive brain is exercising over the neural impulses of my brain.

Sometimes it “seems” like thought brings relief, but it is not by reducing the resistance that causes the pain, but anesthetizing the brain’s conscious perceptors of pain.

Second, ours brains need spiritual enlightenment – the insertion of God’s higher Presence into the neural processes of our brain. God’s Presence gives a security that allows our brains to relax its control, and begin to find an emerging and incomprehensible peace.

Last, we need to break the cycle of resistance that our brains are using to protect us, by take specific and deliberate action that releases the constricted neural energy that is holding up the walls of resistance.

Breathe – wash the dishes – take out the trash – shower – vacuum the floor – make a phone call – go for a walk -- act as if God is taking care of everything, and do the next right healthy thing.

Spiritual enlightenment is about becoming fluid and loving, beginning to live daily – each precious moment – in the flowing, loving Presence of our very Present God.

Learn to Go With the Flow of God’s Presence.

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Laughter and Tears -- Spiritual Enlightment and Daily Inspirations

I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes: nor would I be content with converting my tears…into calm. It is my fervent hope that my whole life on this earth will ever be tears and laughter.
Kahlil Gibran

A story is told of a man who died and woke up in a beautiful bed, in a magnificent bedroom, in huge mansion. As he looked around in amazement and wonder, he thought to himself that he was hungry and some pancakes would taste good. Immediately the door opened, beautiful servants brought in the most wonderful, perfectly cooked and warm pancakes with the best syrup he had ever tasted. The orange juice was hand squeezed and perfectly sweet and tart. Everything was wonderful.

When he was finished, he thought how he would like to get dressed and go see this place. Immediately servants came into the room with just what he wanted to wear – and extremely comfortable. He was helped to get dressed and escorted downstairs, through the house, and out onto the grounds. And as he proceeded, everything he thought of that he wanted immediately was brought to him.

This went on for several days, and he began to become a little uneasy about all the immediate attention and every want being met as soon as he thought it. So he spoke with the head butler, and asked him to stop everyone from giving him everything he thought he wanted. The butler told him that it wasn’t possible to stop doing this. The man became upset, and angrily said, “Heaven just isn’t the way I thought it would be!”

The butler smiled and said, “Who said you were in heaven?”

The human illusion is that if we had everything we wanted, the way we wanted it, we would be happy. So we struggle and scheme and contrive, trying to get control of our circumstances. And when it doesn’t go our way, our lives are ruined and seemingly hopelessly lacking. But it is not our circumstances, but the wounded filters of our brain that are causing our unhappiness.

“I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes...” “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Bible) The material world seems to possess the control over our happiness since having material wealth seems to give us control over outcomes. And the insanity of humanness is the belief that outcomes determine our happiness.

A heart that can laugh – and cry – can love and be loved – can experience the higher and caring Presence that overrides human circumstances and outcomes. To be able to experience the humanness of living gives us the chance to experience the spiritual, intimate, and totally amazing.

The greatest hope and gift we can have is that we will never lose our laughter -- and our tears – to be fully and consciously human.
If we lose our human consciousness, we become dead to God’s loving and life changing Presence. We become the “undead” – no one home – feeding off of others and ourselves -- without ever knowing that we no longer exist.

Today, let’s take time to laugh – and let’s take time to cry – and in being fully human allow God to become fully Present – giving us Their fullness of love and caring joy and peace. This is a day of celebration that we are consciously alive – and we are not alone.

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Finding Wonders of Daily Inspirations in Darkness and Silence

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Helen Keller

I have always been impressed with the wisdom and depth of Helen Keller's words. Here we have someone who was blind and deaf -- absent of the two main physical sources of sensation and awareness -- who was able to "see and hear" way beyond what is normal for human beings. The depth of her vision and insight, and her ability to hear our humanity in her dark and silent world reminds us that we do not have to be limited by our humanness.

"Everything has its wonder" -- in every situation there is the unknown. Our human condition can paint pain and dread on to the canvasses of our brains. We can expect only the worst -- only what our shame and separation describes as "what we deserve!"

"I wonder what horrible thing is going to happen to me to day." Prerecorded, programmed messages on the filters of our brains that tells us, "it's coming -- and it's going to be bad!"

How do we get from here to "wonder"?

My shame and guilt are the results of separation and experiences of abandonment from others. They have programmed our brains this way. To change this, we must become connected -- intimately -- to a higher Presence -- a "God" of our life experience. In this relationship, we can begin to take on "God's Vision" of what is, and who we are. His (and Her) views of life and of us are very different from ours -- full of wonder and expectant joy -- wondering what we are going to do next -- like a parent watches their infant, toddler -- child.

"Even in darkness and silence" Maybe more accurately, in darkness and silence we begin to experience depths of true wonder. Many times we become so distracted by the blaring noises, and blinding lights of our world, that any possible wonder is drowned out by sheer overstimulation.

Actually, my experience is that we need to return and be returned to the basics of darkness and silence so we can find wonder, Presence, and hope. Out of this spiritual darkness comes a different light that only our hearts can see -- a still small voice that only our hearts can hear -- in silence.

The irony is that the human brain is programmed to avoid and condemn darkness and silence as if it were an evil plague. It's time to receive spiritual enlightenment and Presence that recreates our being in the dark and silent womb of unknowing -- the wisdom and intimacy that is born out of not knowing.

As we begin to live in this new perceptions -- with these new spiritual senses -- we begin to see and hear past what the brain defines as what is, moving into contentment and serenity, and eventually into love, Presence, and expectant wonderment.

"What's next! Something wonderful is getting ready to happen!"

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Self-Forgiveness Begins with the Spiritual Enlightenment of God's Presence

Sometimes the past is so painful to think about that your only salvation lies in complete surrender to the mercy of God. Only in Him are you given the strength and courage it takes to keep on walking when every step is hard. But, finally, after what can seem like an endless journey in the darkness of your own regret, you come upon the light again. You have no doubt who has set you free, for only One who is author of forgiveness would give you still another chance.
Marianne Williamson

The past can be painful, whether the outcomes were desired or undesired. In my experience, accomplishments frequently reminded me that I was expecting a certain event or series of events to make me happy, and when they failed, I was left even more hopelessly lost.


Ultimately, I am forced to surrender – to stop buying the illusion of my possible control of what is, and of how I will perceive and feel as a result. I am powerless – I cannot control what is or how I react to what is – the past reoccurs on the screens of my mind as if current and happening. These inner images are programmed to continue repeating themselves indefinitely if not changed.

I am left no choice but to turn to the loving and merciful Presence of God – to change and spiritually heal my experience and perceptions. In His (and Her) Presence I am given the sanity of strength and courage to keep putting one thought, and one feeling – one moment and one breath at a time – in front of the other.


My journey seems endless because it is recycling my past -- over and over again -- with greater and greater darkness – repeating abandonment and separation. The Light – God’s loving Presence – begins to glow – and the walls of my inner prison begin to dissolve. I am being taught and reprogrammed to see me with God’s eyes – and They hold nothing against me – They are teaching me to experience Their truth – and I am able, with their love and caring, to forgive and admire myself – and love me with Their unconditional love – and admiration.


We really are Their children – created out of their infinite love.

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Taking a Good Look -- Remembering to Live in Precious Moments

Every now and again, take a good look at something not made with hands – a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream.

There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace

and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world.

Sidney Lovett

This inspirational life quote is a reminder of some simple truths of spiritual enlightenment. First, we need to stop-- ever so often – maybe, more often – and remember, that we have forgotten something. The material world screams at us in no uncertain terms to pay attention to its useless chatter and clatter. And our brains react with screaming fierceness – “we have to avoid the present moment – human consciousness is not acceptable.” Together the material world and our brains whip up storms of illusion and confusion that keeps us from remembering – to remember – to stop and experience and reside in just this precious moment.

Take a look – open the eyes of our hearts – take a good look – at something – experience fully our experience of who we are – in something we are not – in something that is not demanding our attention – but in something that carries the subtleness of life’s inexhaustible mystery – within each precious moment – within each atom of human and spiritual experience.

Nature – natural -- not made by man -- uniquely transcendent compared to all the illusions we can create – “what is man that thou art mindful of him” – touch the face of God in moments of Their handiwork – because there are gifts hidden in their simplicity.

Wisdom – spiritual enlightenment – where our brains begin to clear of the wreckages of our pasts – where a higher Presence begins to glow in the darkened synapses of our brain – clarity of experience and intimate Presence adjusts our perceptions and reactions – and we are free to be more wholly present – in life’s precious moments. Wisdom is where human experience and God’s Presence join to become consciousness and intimacy into being.

Patience involves the absence of obsession with material outcomes because we have the guarantee of God’s Presence that all is planned and prepared for our best. The neural energy of our brains diminishes and we are no longer driven to control what will not make us happy anyway. Holding their hands – we have no need to be responsible for our outcomes, only for our presence within Their Presence.

Solace – relief from pain and grief. “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted”. Their Presence comforts us. We are able to flow through our current and past pain and fear and sadness – and find rest. “Come unto me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give your rest.”

When I first began to experience rest, I experienced being a very young child, being held by a very attentive Parent and being gently rocked – safe, nurtured, and unconditionally loved and admired. The cares of my mind’s woundedness flowed out and away, and being replaced by a loving stillness – far beyond my brain’s capacity to create.

All of these gifts – nature, spiritual enlightenment, confidence and serenity, and restful spiritual healing – all these are part of the massive and emerging assurance – the personal experience that we are not ever alone – never abandoned or rejected, except by our own injured brains.

Gifts – from someone who likes us and loves us – without conditions or possibility of rejection – precious moments of God’s love becoming spiritual enlightenment.

No longer alone in our world.

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What Happens When We Stop Falling? Finding Daily Inspirations

A baby learning to walk falls a lot.

Kathleen Rowe

What happens when we stop falling? Have we “learned to “walk”? Have we “arrived”?

I am fascinated by my own desire to finish something – to step out from behind my human stream of being, and find my self at a predetermined set of coordinates – fixed and whole. And yet I am lost. Erected road signs claim to show the way through life to some desirable and earned place of happiness and completeness. And yet I am not -- there.

My brain seems so foolish. It is programmed to project any version of reality that hides my truths – to keep me away from understanding what can only be experienced – to mislead me away from who I really am.

A child -- learning to walk-- is confronted with a physical force – gravity. Something is sucking him or her toward their own feet – the basic and simplest place on top of this giant sphere of existence – the ground of all human beingness. Wandering around the universe of new sensations and experiences, the child is repeated thrown to its knees – to a place of pain and fear --- and then hope – the belief that someday they will be able to negotiate a working relationship with what they perceive to be freedom.

And the child falls – again and again. Until – something seems mastered – and the ordeal has produced its desired end. And now the child races forward to new experiences – forgetting the struggle that occurred to become – in motion.

I experience that to stop falling is to stop growing – to settle into the world’s glittering illusion of dreams. To fall is to reexperience the truth of my human state: without lasting intimate connection with my God, my self and my others -- I am powerless. Areas of my self are disconnected – in this breathing life. So I should always be falling from my own human graces -- toward a state of being that is “more me” – than I was before.

If this is not happening, I am not becoming. I am disbecoming – losing and leaving the existence of my living selves – aging into the oblivion of what my brain paints as the beyond – to finally stumble – back -- at the last -- into the stream of where I must become – and die into the life I leave behind.

The gift of falling is being given to me today, and I am growing – more and more consciously present – and I am faced with my deepest darkest truest selves. Together, with my God’s loving Presence, we are shedding the darkness and becoming a different light.

Maybe “walking” is overrated.

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Listening to Faces: Remembering Codependency and Daily Inspirations

Understanding where our need to control came from is a beginning. Most of us, at least before recovery, were insecure. We wanted to protect ourselves from abandonment, ridicule, physical and emotional harm. The only way we knew to do that was to insist others fulfill our needs. We strengthened, day by day, a trait that hinders us now…

A Woman’s Spirit

Yesterday I spoke at the psychiatric hospital where I first began working with co-dependency. It was a weekend family program for families of patients in an intensive outpatient chemical dependency program. I experienced their faces – stressed, worried, frightened, unsure of what they were dealing with and what they were supposed to do. But courageous enough to expose themselves to the information and assistance that was being offered them.

As I listened to their faces, I remembered my own beginnings of recovery – becoming aware of the cycle of destruction that had so mutilated my living:

1. I was hurting and wounded – and uncertain what was wrong or what could be done – why I was so abandoned and alone.
2. I believed that I had to control the situations, and circumstances – the relationships of my life – or everything was totally hopeless and unbearable.
3. To survive, I had to believe that I could control the outcomes of my life – if I tried hard enough I could change things, and make people love me.
4. As I believed I could control the outcomes, I became convinced that “I Am Responsible”– when bad things happened it was my fault.
5. Because I am responsible, I had to do something – to fix, change, and control what was happening.
6. When I did “something” to try to control the outcome, I appeared to be either successful or a failure, depending on the outcome.
7. When it seemed that I was successful, I became even more convinced that I could control the outcomes – if I “just” tried hard enough – I was even more convinced that I AM RESPONSIBLE for what happened.
8. When I seemed to fail, I believed that I was bad, not good enough, deserving to be punished, and I separated myself from others, from my God, and from my true self.
9. Shame raged – the incredible separation, loneliness, and abandonment – disconnected from love, acceptance, and Presence. And I would try harder than ever to control the outcomes of my life – the endless separations – trying with everything I possessed – to please someone -- to be just maybe good enough – to anybody.

This vicious, vicious cycle continued until I could barely crawl across the landscape of my life -- mangled, beaten, tortured – alone.

The more I force things, the tougher my life. Helen Neujahr

If someone had not offered me the light of their love, I would have certainly continued to die – infinite times -- in the hell of my own self degradation and shame.

• The healing began with someone telling I could not control others or myself. Alone I was powerless – my life was totally unmanageable – especially on the inside. I could not be responsible for the outcomes – the perceptions, reactions, or actions of others – or my self.
• I could only begin to be healed inwardly myself – if I connected personally and intimately with a Higher Power, who could begin to restore sanity to my bruised and insane brain. I was taught how to connect and listen and experience a Presence Who had no rules, or conditions or restrictions for Their loving me. They were as available as my conscious pain made me willing and open to receive.
• And then I was taught how to “act” within this new relationship so that I could increasingly surrender my illness, and the outcomes of my life to Someone who had all the needed solutions, and cared infinitely about my condition and circumstances.

I am a child. Today I have spiritual Parents. Their love, guidance, and unconditional Presence nurtures and supports my living, loving, and healing. I am not alone. And when I hurt – and I still do -- I listen and They are present -- to love away my pain – and make my life an increasingly better place -- by their loving and caring design.

It is not the passionate appeal that gains the Divine Ear so much as the placing of the difficulty and worry in the Divine Hands. So trust and be no more afraid than a child would be, who places its tangled skein of wool in the hands of a loving mother, and runs out to play, pleasing the mother more by its unquestioning confidence than if it went down on its knees and implored her help, which would pain her the rather, as it would imply she was not eager to help when help was needed.

God Calling

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Love Found -- Part Two -- Finding Presence and Daily Inspriations

For Part One, click here: Love Lost

(This is my experience, strength and hope. Please do not misunderstand the energy or passion of my words to indicate any level of authority – except perhaps about my own experiences, strength and hope.)

The Journey Begins
Imagine for a moment, that we are on exploratory expedition, with the intent being to find a strange new place called “love”. Where would we look? What would be indications that we were close – or far away -- from our destination? What resources would we use to find clues and directions? Who could we turn to for help?

We could “Goggle” the internet using the word “love”, and \we would find many, many links to sites dealing with the subject. We would find tons of information and stories about, and descriptions of “love”. And I believe we could be no where closer than we were before.

Maybe the place to do an “internet” network search is in our own hearts.

Following our Hearts
Let’s start our pursuit with the consciousness that love cannot be found by or in our brains. It can be only be experienced in an area called our “hearts”, and then shared – experientially – through the medium of words and thoughts – which must be experienced also. Using our brains to experience and pursue love is like trying to see a sunset with our ears – it is not the medium of perception that can be used on sunsets.

Where Is Love Hiding?
There are several places where love becomes hidden:
1. The Trees of Distraction: what most people, including myself, have interpreted as love is the relief we have felt when a relationship distracted us from ourselves – partially anesthetizing our senses. Relief from the conscious or unconscious pain of being human and being separated is most frequently perceived by humans as “love”. In romantic relationships, for example, opposites attract because they distract.
2. The Forest of Intimacy: when relationships have gone on long enough or gone deep enough, the inebriation caused by the initial distractions of the relationship begins to wear off, and we begin to experience increased consciousness – and historical unresolved pain and fear. At this point, our brains conclude that the closeness and connection is not real or acceptable, and initiates a relationship destruct sequence.

So if real love is not the pleasurable feeling of relief from others distracting us; and if true love improves our conscious contact with ourselves to the point that we can experience overwhelming unhealed, historical pain; and if our unconscious brains are programmed to protect us from the pain of increasing consciousness with others, where are we left in the pursuit of love.

A Different Place
My first spiritual adviser taught me relentlessly page 417 in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous as the basis for relationships, living, and love:

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, thing, or situation – some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing , or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.

The writer later describes the effects of acceptance on his relationship with his wife.
His emotional illness had caused major disruption and disturbance of his perceptions and reactions – to the extent that the beautiful person he had married had become perceived as a flawed and unacceptable person. In his disturbance, he had judged, rejected, and abandoned her – he had lost his inner place of “love” for her.

As he began to heal with improving conscious Presence with his God, he was given a “new pair of glasses” – he was restored to his truer self, and in that experience he rediscovered the wonderful person he had met and loved before – and more.

In learning to live in unconditional acceptance, we begin to realize that acceptance is the truest “location” of love. And it is only possible when we are personally and consciously connected to our God’s unconditional acceptance -- love – of us. The new pair of glasses is beginning to see others – and ourselves – through Their eyes. We are all wonderful, exciting, and perfect in Their perception – and They know all our secrets – even the ones we don’t know.

A GPS Prayer

God, grant me the Presence to accept and love others without their having to change, the Presence to be changed by your acceptance and love, and the Presence to know the difference between love and distraction. Amen

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Love Lost -- Finding Presence and Daily Inspirations Part One

The paradox is that looking for love is not the way to find it. Abundant love will find us when we make the decision to attentively and unconditionally give it to all the people God has invited to share our life. Our primary purpose is to know and give love. In God's Care

As human beings we are looking for love – frequently, “in all the wrong places” – but we are still looking – because we are really so incredibly alone. The complexities and detail of modern culture with its blasting medias, ultra- virtual video and computer worlds and with its frenzied and pulsating artists of entertainment –have created alternate universes of numbing irrelevant thought—a culture no longer dependent on chemicals to be stoned out of our minds.

We are separated and alone – disconnected – and basically stripped of the emotional and spiritual securities of any real Presence that would enable us to unconditionally offer and receive loving connections to others.

So – alone, in this massive darkness – we humans tend to grope for any fleeting brushes with warmth and human presence – finding that every rose of hope has thorns of disappointment and ultimate abandonment.

The obstacles, in my experience, are the absence of clear experience of what “love” is, the inability to maintain a steady and conscious spiritual Presence beyond physical form and sensation, and the confusion about what human relationships are really about.

Our culture seems to use the term “love” with unconscious ease – as if everyone knows and has agreed on what it means. As I have listened to my own inner voices, and the inner voices of others, I have heard the word mean everything from “I like you” to “I need you” to “I will like you if you will give me what I need”. It seems to be used like a magic word that should somehow immediately create closeness where none to little actually exists.

It is seemingly a word of attempted mastery over the stifling darkness of separation, and over the emotional starvation for human and spiritual Presence. For me, without my God’s higher Presence, human presence has been only a mental fantasy, a legend or a fairy tale. But what exactly does “loving Presence” mean? Where and how does it exist? How do we find the invisible in the blinding glare of what is only visible?

Love seems to be an attempted mastery over increasing human consciousness – the feverish awareness of past and impending abandonments by others, our selves – and seemingly by God. We “fall in love” as a moth is drawn to a flame – we are starving for intimacy and become filled with the euphoria of distraction – and are finally burned by loss of the beloved delusion.

When consciousness blinks briefly into existence on the screens of our minds, we shut it down with the most convenient and available distractions we can find. And we are powerless to stop – the genetic programming of our primitive, reptilian brain is simply doing its unconscious best to protect us from harm and pain. We have no conscious choice.

Disconnected from the “loving” and caring Presence of our God, we are damned to incredible separation and loneliness – wandering the darkness and silence of human existence – attempting to hope for and experience a “love” that does not ultimately destroy and maim our human hearts – even more.

See Part Two.

For article, for other articles, click here: Part Two: Love Found. and Love Touches Hearts.

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