The Book of My Heart - a love gospel

"I love you," is the most obvious thing God ever said to me. That it has taken 51 years to hear is incredible.

We all want something out of life. The most useful name for what we want is "love." But usually we don't realize that love is what we want and instead spend gobs of time seeking fame, fortune, success, victory. Inside this exterior seeking work is hidden our issues; needs for approval, self-esteem, self-worth, validation. Deeper inside the relatively superficial self layer is our fear. Oh, God, that fear is terrifying. Fear that I am really nothing; or worse than nothing: a worm, a piece of crap or that I am bad. That I might be truly bad terrifies me to see so I turn back to the world and work on my conquests hoping they'll hide my badness.

But if I make another choice and keep pondering the fear and what it could be hiding, I'll conclude (after months or decades) that it is not true. During my exploration of why I think I am a piece of crap, I am actually healing the infection and draining the pus by opening myself to whatever it is. As it reduces, I see something else. Slowly, I see goodness; mine and everyone else's.

At this point, I am free. I find myself off the hook, and I've let everyone else off the hook too. I no longer need any identifying labels: I am a marathoner; I am a Boston Qualifier; I am an Ironman; I am a parent; I am a millionaire. I no longer need conquests to define me or give me an acceptable sense of self.

The only victory I ever needed was the decision to turn inward away from the world and accept my pre-existant intrinsic good.

As I say this, I hear the gufaws of the audience. I stand alone in the spot light held up to ridicule. "Silly Spirit Flower," they say. "We are not afraid. We already know we are good people. It is you who are so deprived. Quit telling us that our conquests are meaningless illusions, children's play acting. Our victories mean alot."

Spirit Flower looks into the crowd and finds the one pair of eyes which admits it's pain. "Oh really?" she says. "Then why do you feel like a faker? If a marathon medal really meant anything, all my troubles would be over."

But I kept dropping the rocks of worldly validation until I finally spent enough time shining light on the fear. I melted its ice and became undaunted. I believed it less and less. Then, the inner good could be discerned, accepted, joined and loved.

All I ever wanted was to love myself; that inner good who is my true identity. My true identity is not window dressing. Sure I still run marathons, but my self love does not depend on how fast I was or even finishing. What ever I do, I do as that inner good. That inner good is my identity. Good is what I am, what I bring, what I give.

Life lived at the level of age group awards is futile.

Life lived as good is eternal.

Purpose

My life does not have a purpose.

"Spirit Flower," you say, "How can you say that? Jesus tells you what your purpose is in ACIM. AA tells you what your primary purpose is. When you were in the church, it told you what your purpose is."

But, these purposes come from the outside. I have not yet touched the place inside which will make it clear.

I sit quietly and pray, "God....(long deep breaths)....I offer myself to you....(long deep breaths)....may I at last utterly abandon myself to You...." I spend hours at this. I don't sit properly like a Buddhist or Hindu; my chakra's are not straight. The important point is that I seek inner silence.

I allow my life to be seemingly purposeless. Having a purpose in societal programming. Leaving a legacy is arrogance; yet we are programmed to leave a legacy. I allow myself to feel useless and not pursue usefulness. When I go to work in the morning, it is just to earn money. It is not a ministry and I am not trying to save the planet.

I am not that different than many people; except for I don't cover over this impoverished state of affairs. I don't watch TV and ignore it. I don't go to dinner and pretend like everything is ok. I don't get drunk, take drugs or have sex. I don't go shopping and forget my poverty by covering my body with scraps of attractive clothing. I don't have a religious profession or monastic family so I can cover my poverty with service to the church. I don't get called in to save anyone's life and prove my worth. I sit alone in my house and face the fact: my life doesn't mean anything. I am poor. I have nothing to show for myself. I'll die and no one will care.

I intentionally sought this poverty. I did this to myself. I consciously rejected everything that other people thought was good.

What freedom and joy I find in this poverty.

Awesome God Lesson

Last evening I was sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of tea. This is my customary location for spiritual reading (lectio divina) which I practice with the ACIM Text. Except for I noticed the barest little suggestive thought, I might not have been there. The little thought was preceeded by a louder thought, "you don't need to study." Then the little thought, "just take your cup of tea to the table and sit down." I chose to follow the little thought.

My ACIM Text is always open on the table. I glanced down at it.

• The ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness...raises control rather than sanity to predominance.

This sentence caused me to pause. The ego is merely a part of my belief system. It is split off from the majority of my mind. But, my world consciousness pays attention mostly to the ego and not the rest of my mind. I paused thinking, "Wow. I wonder what I am keeping out of my awareness." It was awesome to think that I am just ignoring and distorting many things; probably the spiritual things. I wondered and began to enter contemplation...

At that moment, I got a call from a customer service representative from a local car dealership where I had recently purchased a car. She invited me to have my first service there. Now, I had already received a coupon from them for a free oil change, but every time I tried to use it, they said I would have to wait two hours. So I had thrown it away and gone to Jiffy Lube where I could get out in 20 minutes. When the dealer girl called me, I let her know what I thought of their service department and how the only way to use it was to rent a car and leave mine there all day and I wouldn't do it for an oil change.

After I hung up, I paused again. Wow! You would think I had been sitting in my kitchen with guns loaded and aimed just waiting for that dealer to call. I was surprised. How much resentment am I carrying, just waiting to fire at some unsuspecting person? I shared this with Jesus. I glanced again at the ACIM Text:

• By becoming involved with tangential issues, it (the ego) hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of your mind.

It went on to mention ego diversionary tactics as characteristic busyness. Suddenly I had a moment of clarity. My normal consciousness is taken up with tangential issues, characteristic busyness and diversionary tactics which the ego throws out like flac, which is how the ego keeps the spiritual out of my awareness and hides the real question. My whole world is made of the ego's tangential issues, characteristic busyness and diversionary tactics. This is how the ego separates me from God. I took my inventory (AA step 10) and made a list of these things:

1. Should I visit the monastery on Sunday?
2. How hot will it be for the 50k race this Saturday?
3. Will the guy from alcohol shipping call at 4 am.
4. I hate work, and I am afraid of everybody there.
5. How much money?
6. I can't.
7. I'm a failure.
8. I'll never be perfect enough for God to send a revelation.
9. That girl in kindergarten shouldn't have taken my pencil.
10. etc., etc, etc.

I gave all these things to Jesus (the list was long). I glanced again at the ACIM Text:

• When you make a decision of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your future effort; a decision that will remain in effect unless you change your mind.

And there you have it. I have never really made a decision of purpose. I just make decisions about characteristic busyness and tangential issues and diversionary tactics. I really have never had a decision of purpose that hasn't gotten lost each day or which I haven't changed my mind about an hour later. Example of a decision: don't eat any junk today. Changed my mind: well now I think a packet of cheezits would be ok.

The ego's thoughts are at the level of control not sanity: junk food will kill me, why ever eat it? To find sanity, I have to ask the question which the diversionary tactics hide: What for? What is the purpose? The ego's purpose is boredom and resentment. I can choose to ask Jesus everything and let Jesus guide me in everything. I can decide that I don't want to live an entire life stuck in resentment and busyness and issues. I can decide!!!!

But, I still wasn't able to focus on a decision of purpose. My wandered off and I began reading a book. I hope I get into decisions today. I'll have to ask Jesus and decide to follow guidance. I glanced again at the Text:

• Your gratitude to your brother is the only gift I (Jesus) want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother is to know God. If you are grateful to your brother, you are grateful to God for what He created. Through your gratitude you come to know your brother, and one moment of real recognition makes everyone your brother because each of them is of your Father.
• Salvation is a collaborative venture. It cannot be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the Sonship, because they are disengaging themselves from me. God will come to you only as you will give Him to your brothers. Learn first of them and you will be ready to hear God.

Now, I had to stop. No, I am not grateful. I want to hear God, but I want to throw away the rest of the Sonship. Jesus, we need to talk. I need your help.

Jail

• Listen only to God.


• I (Jesus) will substitute for your ego if you wish...I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance.

I learned a lesson this week in what really makes me insane; situations and institutions which are my projection of parental authority. Religion is for me an authority figure and I cannot stand it because it feels stifling, confining, like being in a paper bag, controlled, judged and censored. Any management system set up for the promotion of a spiritual theory makes the theory into a set of religious rules and social regulation; which utterly kills the direct action of Jesus in anyone's life.

Here is a picture of a fancy jail; but still prison none the less:

In the house where I grew up, the kid's rooms had lock bolts on the outside of the door, above kid height. I don't know how often I was locked in; but I remember one time vividly. In this case, my parents weren't home and it was my brother who had locked me in. I went berzerk. I went totally berzerk with throwing furniture and slamming my body into the door. Of course, this didn't help so I had to just sit quietly and wait. What a thing to learn at the age of 5; stay away from the restraint because it is not moving and anything short of silent sitting makes the situation worse.

This is how control authorities feel to me. So...all of civilized life is to me a big prison. If you have money, you can pretend to be comfortable. If you stay away from the walls, you can pretend they are not there. This doesn't work for me because I am a person who withdrew from society and worked spiritually on re-programming my brain. So I clearly see that this world is a big prison. I see the walls. I feel like I am in a straight jacket.

My choices are to learn extreme patience, never moving against the restraints in order to avoid becoming berzerk. Or, I learn that this world is an illusion; that there is a world of the spirit which is accessible to anyone if they do the work of deflating their ego and seeking spiritual help.

Spiritual help does not come from an earthly spiritual director, guru, teacher or minister. Nothing short of Spirit can give spiritual help. Any indirect contact is necessarily corrupted.

Listen only to God.

Laws and Teachers

• Laws are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the law maker believes.
• Your worth is established by God...
• If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me (Jesus), I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God.
• I (Jesus) will teach with you and live with you if you will think with me, but my goal will always be to absolve you finally from the need for a teacher.

This Blog Reality

This place right here, this blog, is an awesome place to be. I am alone; an ego talking to itself. I am with my God; an existence in communion with the Universe. What could be more wonderful? Here, I don't have to worry about being judged: so what if I didn't interpret the meaning of a Text correctly. Here, I cannot judge: no one else is here. Here, I can freely muse and pray. Here I am free: able to release conditioning and programming and be what I really am.

I am not a girl or a boy. I am not a friend or spouse or enemy or daliance. I am neither rich nor poor. I am not of any race. I have no religion. I think I am human, but I do not know what that is. I have words and a language. I have a history: look there is a long scar on my right arm. I do not know what that means or what having a body means.

But I have mentioned "my God." It is this idea which needs to be probed. Is it my knowledge? Is it memory? Is it wishful thinking? Is it the last vestage of society's programming? Here...it is possible I was never born and can dismiss what I see and say. I can dismiss it and just be silent and still.

The dog and the Light

• Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning.
• As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death.

A mainstay of my ego's thought system is the belief that I am a pile of crap. Listening to this message has made my life unhappy. Uncovering this message took quite a number of years. Even uncovered, not believing it is still difficult. It affects my behavior towards others. It has developed into an angry rabid inner dog. Whenever I deny that this message is true, no matter what seems to have happened in the ego world, then I am defending Atonement.

ACIM Atonement says that the bad dream never happened; whatever tiny mad idea that thought I had left God was immediately undone. None of us ever sinned. This ego world is an illusion, a bad dream; including our physical bodies. No one is a sinner. We are just stuck in this bad dream.

The Atonement is a difficult concept. I have not explained it here (go read the ACIM Text if you want to know). I only bring it up because it is my way out of the hateful ego world. I am either doomed to a consciousness that thinks it is a pile of crap; or using my mind to defend the fact that this never happened. I am really not a body but a Thought in the Mind of God.

I look at it like this. In my consciousness there is a vast expanse of light. There is also a small area which thinks and acts like a rabid dog. Unfortunately, I spend almost all my time being the rabid dog. I keep myself wrapped in chains and behind bars so I don't hurt anyone. But, most of the time, I think I am the growling dog, snapping at the bars of my cage and dripping froth from my mouth. I want to attack everyone. I hate everyone. The dog hates God for making it thus. I hate the dog and feel guilty and feel like the pile of crap. This is my tiny mad idea. But this is just a tiny portion of my being. The rest, the vast expanse of light is available to me. When I am alone, I return to the light as who I truely am. ACIM is a mind training course. I am training my mind to know itself as light, not as the rabid dog.

I can return to my Beginning if I am willing to give up my dog habit. Being the dog is just a habit. No matter what the dog does, it is a dream. This mindset is defending the Atonement. The Atonement is truth. Accepting Atonement returns me to light. My Beginning is light. If I defend it instead of believing I really am the dog, I am free. I wake up.

Not-going-along

In real life I am a law abiding taxpayer. Perhaps the purpose of this blog is to give me a place where I can break the rules. I am already marginalized, but I rarely say what I want; there is always someone to dis-believe Truth. So here, I can just say it and not care.

The spiritual world really does exist and anyone really can focus their awareness there instead of here in this crummy ego world. Just do it.

August 2, 2008 - A Start

• To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.
• The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by me (Jesus) in Christ's service.
• All shallow roots must be uprooted.
• Only perfect love exists.
• Offer miracles.