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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From the Depths of My Selves -- Rebirth and Daily Inspirations

“Each night a new layer of my “onion” becomes exposed and begins to peel away .... by morning I am consciously experiencing rips and tears within my self – pain and fear – shame and separation – as more of my past becomes current in my present .... fortunately, I am not alone – They are with me .... and each day becomes rebirthing into presence of those I left behind ....” My Journal (October 3, 2010)


Motions –
crisscrossing, repeating,
over and over the surface and depths of my mind –
energies exploding, then rippling upward and across
from the buried depths of what cannot be found or remembered.

Silence creeps unexpectedly across shallow pools
beyond and into deeper and deeper depths of selves.
Waiting , expecting,
knowing that something, someone,
will again touch the hidden triggers –
explosives –compressed, constricted,
volatile energies of selves
forced to remain while others continued forward and beyond.

Darkened depths,
cold currents of fluidly controlled space,
time wandering restlessly the surface above,
dangers seem imminent,
like walking tight ropes
above precipices of racing raging falls –
balance and unbalanced –
waiting for a shifting current of selves
and blinding flashes of sight, sound and feeling,
as more and more of me
rips their way to the surface of my mind.

Removing Movies From My Mind - Poetry and Finding Daily Inspirations

Stepping across aisles,
another row of seats
filled with memories, the “selves”,
the forgotten ones –
deeply abandoned parts of who I was to become ....
Hidden in the darkness –
the cinema that I believed was my life –
projected images, drama, sadness, silence,
hope, flights of happy relief,
suspended in dangles of questions
and contrived answers.
My life now staggers with Their revealing truths –
the vagueness becomes clearer,
the movies of my imaginary living are ending abruptly
and I must follow Their lead –
deeper and deeper
present with in my self,
Their comforting Presence –
hands, hearts touching,
closeness and beyond closeness,
Their quiet voices introducing me
-- more and more to “me” I have forgotten,
reminding me of Their present love
and my helpless past.
I experience massive waves of regret and fear –
And wonder --
wondering
if the stupor of the screen’s fabricated images
were not maybe a “better” way to go.
So much to re-experience.....
So much remains.
In our Presence together.

What Do We Really Want? -- Spiritual Awakening and Daily Insprations

“The problem with doing what we want is that we don't know what we want .... powerlessness .... but our Higher Power knows – and Their will for me is what I “really” want – but don’t know it .....what happens is my life today is what I “want” – even if my humanness disagrees – all there is and can be is God’s will ..... right at this moment, my humanness is anxious about today’s outcomes ....How do I receive and accept Their gifts for me today? .... “ My Journal (posted on Facebook Saturday, August 14, 2010)

(Responses on Facebook at end of article. Thanks to everyone for sharing)

The challenge for me regarding what I want is that everything I perceive is filtered through my human brain, which attaches a good or bad rating to each molecule, and each unit of perception ....

Going back to the metaphor of the Garden of Eden, the curse was the perception or “knowledge” of good and evil .... at that point the illusion of good and bad was programmed into the human brain, and when the perceptual question is asked, “are you a good witch or a bad witch?” (Wizard of Oz), the answer will always be we and they and it are bad – frequently disguised in the thought and experience of “just not good enough” ....

In the context of the concepts of wants and needs, I will never be satisfied, because my brain will assert its “knowledge of good and evil” and nothing will ever be good enough – I will never be content or truly happy .... the best I can hope for is to be inebriated on thought or some other brain altering substance ....

The “knowledge of good and evil” is ultimately the foundation of separation from my God .... the temptation in the Eden metaphor was that they would become “like God” – without “needing” God .... and separation from God, from themselves, and from each other occurred – They were “ashamed” --- before there was no good and bad – but now, they were naked, and they experienced the shame of being bad – not good enough – abandoned and separated ... and they damned themselves to suffering and death for their perceived “sins” .... actually there was and is no “sin” – only shame = the perception and reaction of deserved separation and loneliness....

I spent most of my life trying to determine what God’s Will was. My brain – dominated by right/wrong, good/bad filter programming assigned the thought label of God’s Will to what I did and what occurred that seemed to be good or right ..... frequently this was just a judgment based on the results of outcomes .... when others seemed pleased – good or right .... if others were displeased – wrong and bad..... and I would punish myself accordingly .... I have never “needed” a “God” to create a hell for me suffer in....

For me, as all of the Twelve Steps converged on Step Eleven, I began to experience that as my conscious contact with my God improved, I began to see my self, and my life from their eyes .... as that occurred, I began to lose incrementaly the effects of the good/ bad mental programming filter .... with the “knowledge of God’s will for me” came an increasing awareness that all is good, and that my human self, without my God’s conscious Presence could not live that awareness ....

The material world and its inhabitants – including myself -- do not operate comfortably within such a radical “mental awakening” .... intimate Presence with God, for me, must be practiced as a life style, or my humanness will make outcomes appear life and death, right and wrong ... and I will ultimately be miserable no matter the outcome ...... when I have gotten the outcomes I “wanted” I was still restless, irritible, and discontented out of fear that I would lose my outcome and/or that the next outcome would be “bad” – “unwanted.”

“Having had a spiritual awakening, as the result of these steps ...... we practiced these principles in all affairs.”


Responses on Facebook to the original post:

Drollene B: If we need a lot of things to make us happy, we can cut down the possibility for unhappiness by paring down the list of needs and downgrade them to wants. If we have a long list of wants, thinking having them would make us happy, we can cut the criteria for happiness by downgrading our wants to preferences. If we have only preferences, we can always be happy. I think it's something to strive for. I'm not there yet.

Joseph P. Where we've been wrong is in the belief that we exist. At least in some concept of separateness and individuality. Such is the egoic illusion. The space in which this phantasmic self exists is merely holding a place in time and space better used as a channel for God's love, comfort, Light, forgiveness, peace. There is no MY will, only God's will and the opportunity to fall into harmony with it.

Gary S, Keep it simple.

Courteney B. Keeping my need/wants vs want/needs is what i strive for. when we get something we want we may not be ready for it, as it's 'our' will, not gods. we then may have to ask for it to be removed and clean up another mess, been there myself. :)

Drollene B. Okay, Gary, here it is, simple: Need nothing, want nothing, be happy with what comes when it comes.

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Step Eight of the Twelve Steps: Self-Forgiveness and Daily Inspirations

I chaired a Twelve Meeting on the Eighth Step of the Twelve Steps this past week .... These are my notes and reflections.

Step Eight: Self-Forgiveness of Harms

We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Equivalent of 4-6 Steps: dependent on 1st three steps

1. Make a searching inventory of how we have seemingly harmed others;
2. Admit to God, our selves and another human being the exact nature of our harm: our fear, woundedness and powerlessness.
3. Become entirely ready to have God remove our guilt and shame for our harm of others.
4. Column 4 of 4th step: our part (where we had a part)
5. Difference from AA: exaggerated responsibility vs little to no responsibility.

Goal is forgiveness of our selves: goal is not to restore and repair relationships -- addiction to outcomes requires we not enter amends unless we are spiritually prepared.
1. Problem is the punishment and injury we inflict on ourselves for our perceived harm to others: forgiveness is to stop abandoning our selves for our harms of others – to see ourselves through God’s eyes.
2. Others must ultimately deal with their own resentments and pain: most non-recovering persons do not have the spiritual tools to do so.
3. Step One and Two are critical: acceptance that we are helpless to do otherwise –without establishing a conscious contact relationship with God.

Willingness must produce spiritual readiness: otherwise related discomfort –shame and resentment toward ourselves and others -- will sabotage efforts, on some level.

Perceived harm – not just real harm: having a negative attitude toward someone might feel like harm, but not actually be. (see notes 8/9/09)

Definition of “harm”:
1. Anything I did that I feel or felt guilt for doing. (perceived and real)
2. Separation from another: abandonment, abuse, neglect, betrayal.

Types of harm: factor in determining actual amends.
1. Active (lying, stealing, physical threat or harm .....)
2. Passive aggressive (e.g. sarcasm, “pushing buttons”)
3. Passive (e.g. silence, and ignoring of others)

Versions of harms: all harm ultimately is determined by perception, reaction, and memory. (for example, sarcasm – real or perceived?)
1. Real – black and white, clear (eg. Stealing, physical damage, verifiable actions .....)
2. Perceived by me.
3. Perceived by the other person.
4. Perceived by both by both of us.
5. Reviewed and verified or not verified by sponsor.

Types of amends status:
1. Ready
2. Not ready
3. Never

Spiritual Process:
1. Step One – powerlessness, so not because we were bad.
2. Step Two – need to have a close and conscious relationship with HP/God that can bring our forgiveness of ourselves. – restore to sanity with improving conscious contact with God.
3. Step Three – take the necessary action to trust God with our perceptions, and reactions of harm.

Barriers to amends that needs to be addressed:
1. Past harm from the other person, and current resentments.
2. Fear of abandonment, rejection, and abuse by other – and our selves when amends made:
3. Possibility that we will be reharmed by the other person
4. Lack of clarity regarding what is appropriate amends in each case.
5. Shame and guilt for what we have done – pain and fear.

Preparation:
1. Metaphor: alcoholic not to go into bar 1. unless has a clear and legitimate reason to be there, and 2. unless spiritually in a good place.
2. Some one addicted to outcomes: same for preparation for making amends.


Readings: from The Courage to Change
1. Page 101 – exaggerated sense of responsiblity
2. Page 162 – 3 categories of amends
3. Page 242 – dealing with guilt
4. Page 263 – the list and the 4th step

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Journalling --October 31, 2009 -- Spiritual Enlightenment and Daily Inspirations

Nearly twenty-five years ago, I was in counseling with an Episcopal priest, who gave me an assignment to write a letter to God. In the next session, I read and we discussed my letter and my relationship to “God”. For the next session, the priest gave me the assignment of writing a letter from God to me.

It seemed very strange and awkward, but I was in enough pain to be willing to do anything he asked. At the next session, we processed my letter and my experience and insight in writing the letter. As I was reflecting on my writing, it occurred to me that the amazing experience that I had with this assignment might be “useful” as a daily spiritual activity.

Almost every day since then, I have done this very thing – a “letter” to God about what was going on in my life, my feelings, and what I was struggling with – and a “letter” of what I felt God saying to me. It has been a wonderful and life changing experience of spiritual enlightenment – of increasing conscious Presence with a loving God, whom I have learned to call “Mom and Dad”. I would like to share some of this experience with you here.

October 31, 2009
Mom & Dad,
Good morning! Everything is moving in on me with this cruise coming. I feel anxious, pressured – afraid that I will not have prepared coverage for K’s practice adequately. Please help me and lead me. What do I need to know and do today?

Listening. Always, always learning to listen. We are “hear” – hear and feel our breathing Presence within you.
Your course swings in and out. Questions trigger inner undisclosed wounds – energies stored in stasis chambers (of your brain – near your heart. Connection and separation – swinging in and out – listening for our voices – through the darkened walls of your mind.
The entrance to new places emerges from the debris of old experiences – mangled pieces of discarded selves – like the valley of dry bones (Bible) – and as you stand – open – in our Presence – the “bones” begin to come together and life begins to regenerate inside of you. Living tissue – blood vessels full of spiritual Presence – flowing – throbbing – then beating smoothly – life flowing and beating as you become – alive – loved and nurtured by our caring and unconditional Presence.
Lifeless becomes lifefull.
We are here.

"A merry heart doeth good like is medicine,

but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

Proverbs

(Inspirational life quote from a meditation book):
“Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.” Florence Scovel Shinn
“We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us.”
Seems to me that if “spiritual” means higher Presence, then energy from intimate closeness with you fills the mental voids (of my brain) created by past injuries of separation.

As a human, you want to “know” things – clear, dependable, usable information. Nothing that is knowable is real – they are only thoughts – fixed patterns of neural energy within the brain. Thoughts are created out of space and time – which are also, “not real” – only perceptions of the brain.

The necessity and importance of “love” is that in its truth, experience and thought forms -- creates a bridge from thought to our Presence – an emerging consciousness called intuition – spiritual enlightenment, awareness that exceeds the facility and use of words. Words are only as real as the presence experienced through them. Eventually – as you move and become closer to us, words will dissolve into the nothingness that they are – and what will be left is an intimate connection which can be best described from this side as “love”.

Love is greater than faith, because it is the highest level of faith. Faith is most frequently thought. Belief means one thinks a certain statement to be true. Love means one experiences such an intimate connection with us that thoughts and words disappear and all that is left is conscious Presence, closeness, unconditional acceptance and companionship – with us – to others. There are no longer explanations – thoughts and words – because you have transcended matter –becoming spiritually Present – intuitively “knowing” things that your brain can not know or process.

Flow.

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Illusions Of "Control" and "Knowledge" -- Daily Inspirations

……..the human repression is able to have a remedy. All it takes is having the control of it…….. and to know…….. Voltaire

“Control” and “know” are interesting concepts in modern and non-modern thought. They assume that we and our brains have abilities and freedoms that contradict severely the history of the disease of being human.

If we have control – if we chose – why would we choose to suffer and die horrible lives – or survive the experience under the anesthesia of blinding distractions and mental obsessions? Why would we inflict such incredible pain on ourselves by harming others? We are one – I cannot hurt you without destroying me.

The concept that humans can somehow achieve control over themselves and their lives and outcomes is really unsupportable by observable human experience.

What the masters of sleight of hand, and mirrors and fog try to use to confuse and shame us is the periodic ability of humans and “heroes” to seemingly rise above instinct and disease to do and become the extraordinary – or ordinary. Because the brain does not always reject desirable behavior or action does not prove that if we try hard enough, we can achieve control. Humans can fly – if they have a plane or jet pack. Otherwise, they are ground dwellers.

And some days we manage to be unconscious enough to achieve the illusions of happiness, when really our brain has simply suppressed our ability to feel pain.

If we have control, we should never have to be unhappy, sad, or disappointed again. Show me someone for whom this is true – who is emotionally conscious and not medicated by some drug or outcome.

“Know” – a human derivative of the illusion of “control”. Knowledge is the creation of the cerebral functions of the brains neuroprocessor – the cerebral cortex. It is believed by the brain that what it perceives, it knows as facts, and understands, and therefore it is able to control behavior, reactions, and outcomes. The problem is that the cerebral cortex operates at the “pleasure” or pain of the primitive part of the brain. So it “knows” only what it is allowed to know. The primitive brain automatically and involuntarily controls the operations of the brain in order to maintain stability. We know nothing – we only have perceptions – and reactions – that are controlled without our conscious input into their occurrence.

Hence, the power and significance of the First Step of the Twelve Steps: “We admitted that we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.” We cannot control or know anything.

When we truly experience this truth, and connect with a higher Presence (Step Two), we no longer need to know or control – we are restored to a “sanity” – an emotional balance and a spiritual awakening – that no longer requires knowing or controlling – just the consistent maintenance of an improving conscious intimate contact with Them. The rest becomes history – and Presence.

Problems Are Gifts of Spiritual Enlightenment -- Daily Inspirations

There is no such thing as a problem
without a gift in its hands.

Richard Bach

My brain has two basic categories of life events: what it wants, and problems. It is programmed genetically, socially, and emotionally to avoid problems, and to pursue what it “wants” – to control outcomes. The “belief” seems to be that if everything in my life went as my brain “wanted”, we would be happy and ok.

Fortunately that is not true. If everything and everyone’s being the way I wanted was the meaning and answer to life, I would be severely short changed – and hopelessly lost.

In my experience, I don’t really know what I want – because I can get people and circumstances to be my way, and still be miserable. There is something else – there are “more” – and not more desirable outcomes.

Problems, to me, are reminders that I don’t have what I “want” – and problems are directions toward finding what I am really looking for. They remind me when I am not happy, so I can seek change. And they remind me which path to stay on toward spiritual enlightenment.

My only real problem in life is separation from my God’s higher Presence. When we get separated from each other, I begin to fear, and hurt, and fight what is.

Problems are problems because they bring my pain and fear into conscious experience. Problems are gifts of life – solutions – because they remind me to reconnect and stay connected to my God, to others, and to myself – to find the hope, love, and joy of spiritual enlightenment in conscious Presence.

We need to have “problems” today – undesirable and uncontrollable life events – so we can receive the spiritual healing gifts of spiritual enlightenment, and loving Presence.

Embrace the undesirable. Treat them with daily inspirations and life’s precious moments. They will bring us to spiritual enlightenment -- back to our precious selves.

Comments from Facebook:

Lesa : The times in my life that things have been "my way",I have been happy. The happiness wasn't in having what I thought I wanted but in feeling God cared enough about me to make me happy. Proof a higher power was there and active in my life. Were my desires actually God's will and so I was satisfied and happy when they manifested? I believe so. …Just thinking aloud...

Will: For me, the closest to happiness that "my way" has produced was distraction -- a loss of conscious contact with myself through mental thinking or obsessing about outcomes .... which my brain interprets as "happy"-producing because happiness is perceived as the absence of and relief from pain ..... ultimately it wears off, or I build a tolerance, ... See Moreand I am off in search of more outcomes -- like an addict or alcoholic would be off looking for more "stuff" to consume ..... For me, the conscious experience that my God cares for me has to be disconnected from outcomes .... material outcomes are my mood altering drugs and not expressions of their love and care..... Presence -- a conscious intimate connection beyond words --- although frequently present within the words of others ...... experience vs content .... "Proof" for our brains requires something that can be measured and perceived intellectually in units of perception ...... The proof of my God, for me, "passes all understanding" ..... and is very confusing to my brain .... the "standards of measurement" for spiritual Presence transcends the digital intelligence of my brain .... the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts...... it must be restored to a spiritual sanity that They alone can give…. They teach my brain to participate in the experience, and stop losing itself in thought …..

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Questions Can Bring Daily Inspirations

Questions from a young friend who is preparing for the ministry …… part of an ongoing “conversation”:
1. What has the power over life and death?
2. What ultimately controls this thing?
3. What can we do to safe guard against using this power in the wrong way?



1. Life and death are illusions created by the illusion of “sin” or the perception of separation from God. We are not disconnected from God – we are just holding our breaths. If we just “breathe” They will be all through us.
2. The illusion of sin separation breeds and feeds on control of outcomes. Only surrender within God’s Presence releases its hold. Only God’s Presence empowers and enables surrender – the end of our instinctive compulsion to control. In God’s Presence there is no control – all is as it is meant to be.
3. We – of our selves – are unable to safeguard against using this illusion of need, and dependency on outcomes -- power. When we are intimately connected to God, we simply don’t try to use it. All is experienced as well – “now and in the hereafter”.


There is the thought and myth of “Jesus” or God, and there is the experience of and intimacy with “Jesus” or God. The Bible speaks of people "crying Lord, Lord", and He would not respond because their “hearts” were far from Him. They were thinking and talking Jesus, but not loving and intimately interacting with and experiencing Jesus’ Presence. And they were doing the best that they could do. They were not consciously feeling their pain and separation, so their thoughts – religion – was working for them…… The blessed feel fear, and sadness, and anger -- the absence of deepest peace -- consciously, and turn to the Person, the Presence that is “Jesus” or God. (Look at the Beautitudes: Matthew 5)……
The rest can only mentally "cry Lord,Lord" and stumble blindly about in the darkness of their brains’ madness.

Addendum:
The overwhelming fear that I have experienced, and seen in others is the excruciating terror that we are alone – abandoned – never to be loved or good enough – shame….. My experience in spiritual inner healing is that we can find the “truth” about our selves by finding and improving our conscious intimate contact with a Presence greater than our selves. There is no magic wand or secret button – it starts by being fully human – experiencing our powerless. And then listening to our God’s Presence in the content of others’ words, in spiritual literature, and in the events that occur in our lives. Spiritual connection begins with content – words, events, things – and by listening from deep inside our selves, we begin to absorb our God’s higher Presence from within the content. Maybe it is like the metaphor of”panning for gold”.

We are not alone. And we must learn to replace thought with God’s Presence, so we experience how special and wonderful They perceive us to be – and we will begin to see our selves the same.

Inspirational Rememberings of Mother's Day

Over the years, for Mother's Day, I have done picture collages, with inspirational words for Liz, my daughter, daughter in law and for Kathy. I would like to share some of these with you.

Your devotion to your calling and gifts has left you without the physical presence of infants, toddlers, and children. But your loving devotion to others has loved and parented thousands of children who would otherwise not have had a parent’s or grandparent’s presence to love them. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY Will

Your heart listens and touches and feels where voices are speechless and mute -- and your daughters experience every beat of y0ur love. The are the beautiful children of your courageous struggles to be your most beautiful self.

Caring presences touch deeply,

leaving seeds of new beginnings.

Will W.

Dr. Kathy T., MD -- Mother's Day

Your devotion to your calling and gifts has left you without the physical presence of infants, toddlers, and children.

But your loving devotion to others has loved and parented

thousands of children who would otherwise not have had a parent’s or grandparent’s presence to love them.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

Will

Caring presences touch deeply,

leaving seeds

of new beginnings.

wwass

Returning to the Secret Garden of Lost Selves -- Daily Inspirations

I was in a spiritual support group today where the topic was Step Five of the Twelve Steps:

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs (the nature and symptoms of our emotional illness).

This step is the continuation of Step Four:

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

In Step Five, we reach out to our God through the flesh and blood of another human being, and together we move away the debris that blocks the door to the Secret Garden... Will W.

For the complete article, click here: Returning to the Secret Garden of Lost Selves.

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Fear Opens Our Hearts to Spiritual Enlightenment

Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short of God and his will for us.
Billy Graham

I struggled the greater part of my life, trying to determine what God’s will was for me. I didn’t realize until the last fifteen years that I was wanting to know the terms of the contractual relationship that God was seemingly offering everyone. If I could determine “His” will and do it, God had to give me what I wanted – primarily to be loved and cared about.

To know and fulfil God’s will had become my will, and it was failing miserably – no matter how much I tried to sacrifice and martyr myself to please “Him”.

Anxiety was a given. I was not measuring up to my expectations of how I believed I should please God, and I knew – from religion – to expect my impending judgement and my imminent destruction.

Over the past twenty years, I have begun to learn and experience certain “truths” – at least for me.

First of all my God, as I experience Him -- and Her -- has no rules by which They judge and punish me. Their love is unconditional and constant --irregardless of my actions and thoughts. My problem is my judgement and punishment of myself based on the rules that I have been programmed to believe they have for me.

Second, God’s will is exactly what I would want, if I knew myself, and what I wanted as They do. In the purest sense, God’s will and what I really want are the same.

Third, God’s will is a natural result of living in intimate closeness and love with Them. Their intent is for me to know and experience my truest selves, and with their loving support, to live increasing complete in that spiritual enlightenment.

Anxiety is the beginning of spiritual enlightenment, because it reminds us that we are still not yet completely connected to our God’s higher Presence and love. It is the beginning of a “faith” beyond thought, and hope beyond understanding – not the opposite. To conscious feel anxious is to become present and available for their love to flow into our hearts and being.

The maintenance of spiritual presence and spiritual enlightenment requires the following: experience our feelings – especially anxiety; increasingly connect ourselves to Their loving Presence through daily inspirations and precious moments of experience and hope; and consistently take the action necessary to stay intimately connected to their loving care.

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Turn on God"s Love Light -- Spiritual Enlightenment and Daily Inspirations

Every day my eyes would automatically open as the sun began to rise. I’d lie there and not just look at the dawn, the dawn would enter me. The imprint of sunshine – of a new day following the darkness of night – made its way into my cells.
Marianne Williamson

Light – spiritual enlightenment – precious moments illuminating the darkness – experiencing daily inspirations – bursts of God’s Presence – as we spiritually awaken to spiritual healing -- from painful darkness.

I heard of a child who was chronically punished for being unacceptable by being placed in a small closet underneath the stairs. Her mother called it the “Mean Kid’s House”.

The child and her siblings would work hard and sometimes they would be given a little money. When her siblings had a chance, they would buy candy. But the child from the closet would buy candles. The candles were so she could have light in the darkness of her “Mean Kid’s House”.

Darkness is the absence of loving, caring, unconditional Presence – from others, then causing a sense of separation from God, and ultimately separating us from ourselves. Sometimes it is as physical as a closet, but more often it is a dark and sad place inside of us.

We all live or have lived in the “Mean Kid’s House”. Shame, guilt, fear, loneliness, and sadness – mental and spiritual darkness – have surrounded our existence and experience. A conditional world had abandoned us in order to avoid themselves.

Many of us created imaginary friends, selves, lives to fill the darkness with blind hope – actually temporary mental painkillers fashioned in painful desperation. Nothing changed – and we remained hopelessly damned to the empty stale and blinding silence. The only voices were the voices within our brains – and even they became progressively more and more abusive.

To escape, we must begin to find “candles” – sources of light, love and Presence. “Candy” is nice. But loving Presence begins to shatter the darkness with new inner sources of hope and healing. Our lives begin to change – spiritual enlightenment begins to burn – beginning as just a spark, and becoming radiating beams of warming Presence and spiritual healing.

Our God knows the way out. We need to find and follow Their loving Light out of our darkness and into Better Places by Their loving design and care.

The imprint of sunshine – of a new day following the darkness of night – made its way into my cells. And one morning it was as though I heard the voice of God, telling me as I witnessed the dawn that “Such is the work I will do within you.” I too would experience a new dawn after the dark night of my soul. God would give me a new beginning. I knew it then. And as I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep, I thanked Him with all my heart. And my heart was healed.
Marianne Williamson



In the darkness shall be the light, and in the stillness, the dancing.
e.e. cummings

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GOD'S LOVE Through Us, Through Others -- Spiritual Enlightenment Through Daily Inspirations

Let God love you through others, and let God love others through you.

D.M. Street

In the Bible, there is a reference to how “God became flesh and dwelt among us,” referring to Jesus. And Jesus said, “these things that I do shall you do – and greater things.” To me, these references describe the need, and the resources we as human beings have for a “flesh and blood” connection to God’s higher loving Presence – spiritual enlightenment. The challenge with this spiritual awareness is how to get past each other’s humanness to access the spiritual Presence we all possess. Many times we are distracted by what is often referred to as “ego” -- a barrier to seeing and experiencing the God Presence within each of us. There is a resistance that forms inside of us when we are not consciously experiencing my own humanness and weakness – and God’s Presence. In this state, a separation occurs within ourselves, and a separate protective and artificial self appears – our ego. In its protectiveness, this ego version of our selves actually sabotages our ability to experience of God’s Presence through others. In protecting me, my “ego” actually destroys the possibility of having the intimacy and closeness that is available and present. This ego protective self does this in two ways: 1. First it distorts what others are communicating – verbally and nonverbally – recreating the separation and abandonments of my past – in the present. My “ego” replays the “tapes” of my wounded past within my current relationships as if it is occurring right now and with this specific person. It actually creates a hallucination of perception with corresponding distorted mental reactions and reactive actions. 2. Second the ego self rejects others – in the attempt to protect me – and actually creates the separation and abandonment that it is trying to prevent. To reverse this process, we must begin to let God love us – through others – especially letting God love our protective ego selves. As I experience consciously my ego, and turn this wounded part of me over to God’s love through others, an energy begins to flow into me – a higher spiritual Presence – an emerging spiritual enlightenment. We are able to begin reliving our past and have different outcomes. To continue this process, we need to also begin to let our God love others through us. The energy that flows through us to others creates an equal and greater level of loving Presence for us than we have given. Let’s receive God’s unconditional loving Presence through others, and consciously send the same loving Presence to others through ourselves. Life will never be the same – it will be a better place by Their design.

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