Free Will and Choice vs Spiritual Intimacy and Acceptance: Grieving Losses of Self

Yesterday, I chaired a meeting of my spiritual support group on a very challenging subject that I have been listening to and experiencing for several months: Choice and Free Will vs Acceptance.

Where Did Choice Begin
I grew up in a very fundamentalist, Pentecostal religious church community, where we considered ourselves the “only real Christians”. As the oldest child, I believed I was responsible for my family emotional welfare, and for following the “rules” of our religion very rigidly and judgmentally.

My church had a very strong belief in “free will” and the personal responsibility for all of our actions, feelings, and thoughts – everything was considered a “choice”. There were really no mistakes or accidents. Even simple errors were where one did not “choose” to be careful or cautious enough. Everything that we said, did, thought, or felt that was not in line with the church was “sin” – and without “salvation”, we were on our way to the final and eternal abandonment and abuse of a literal burning hell.

As a child, I remember being terrified at night before I went to sleep that I might have a negative thought or feeling about someone just before I went to sleep – before I could repent – and I would die or the Rapture would take place and I would be damned to hell or to the “Tribulation” – a period of major abandonment by God, and abuse by Satan and the anti-Christ. Certainly not “visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads”.

The concepts of free will and choice were and are very critical to beliefs that are focused on controlling people’s behavior. Shame – the hemorrhaging pain of perceived abandonment and rejection by God and others -- is by far the most effective motivator sick humanity has ever created. Without “free will” and choices, you cannot legitimately threaten and damn people to a literal burning hell – total and final separation from God and others. The imaginary “God” of religion would be unjust, and cruel – like the humans who created him.

I Wanted to Be a “Good Boy”: Choice Failed
From this abusive and neglectful background, I went out into the world, to earn “God’s” affection and attention by trying to be a “good boy” – trying to follow the rules, and trying to “give my life totally to Christ” -- operating from the insane delusion that I had within me the ability to chose and execute my predetermined decisions.

Fortunately for me, my life began to fall apart in 1985. Humpty Will fell of his wall of free will and choice and into the abyss of “hell” – the seemingly eternal torment of perceived separation and excruciating loneliness away from my God, from my self, and from others. All the intellectual horses, and all of religions men could not put me back together again. And I am grateful today that they couldn’t. But it hurt like “hell” – literally – for several years – for an infinity of eternities. I felt so incredibly and utterly alone, worthless, and bad.

Choiceless Hope
In 1987, I was severely depressed, terrified, drinking heavily, and so lost and seemingly forgotten and abandoned that I wanted to die. Someone sensed that I was struggling and suggested that I attend a Twelve Step spiritual support group. What I remember was they talked about their feelings and pain and sadness – it sounded just like mine – and they were seemingly not hurting now like I was. They laughed, they cried, they smiled, they were friendly – and seemed accepting in a strangely non judgmental way. And I experienced for the first time -- a sense of hope – a sense of unconditional acceptance – a sense of loving Presence.

After a couple of months of attending these meetings, I got a spiritual advisor, and he began to teach me the spiritual principles of the program. Before this, it had just been so comforting to be with people who did not seem to judge or criticize me – and who understood because they had experienced the same “things” that I had.

The Primary Spiritual Principle: Powerlessness
The first spiritual principle my spiritual advisor taught me was Step One: We admitted we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.

I really struggled with this principle. From my religious background, we were not powerless – God gave us a free will and we made choices for which we would be held responsible. In the depths of my “sickness” I had actually used that fantasy and lie to create fragments of hope that someday I would feel different. If I had no choice – if I were truly powerless – I was hopelessly and helplessly lost. Powerlessness really made no sense within the virus laden programming of my brain.

But with his patience and support, I began to experience consciously what he was saying. I became consciously aware of how I would “decide” to do or say something healthy and positive, and I could not will my self to actually do or say it. My conscious intentions and my actual perceptions, reactions, and actions did not match. I was humanly powerless to control and direct my life – powerless to be happy or unhappy – powerless to control the outcomes and results of my words, actions, and behaviors.

Replacing Choice With Spiritual Intimacy: Acceptance
My spiritual advisor later added to the First Step, a second spiritual principle: We came to believe that a Power Greater Than Ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I am sometimes uncertain what my advisor actually said, and what I heard God say through him. He was definitely a “sacred messenger” of a “power greater than me. At one point in his own struggle, I told him what I had heard him tell me. He said he had never said that – but that it was true and very helpful with what he was dealing.

Over the last nearly 23 years, I have come to hear and experience that I do not have choices of any sort. I seem to be able to decide to do certain things – like get a drink of water – and do it. But I have to be cautious not to accept the implications and temptations of such experiences regarding my willpower.

Let me give you a metaphor of my intimate experience with my God and choice or free will:
Imagine that you have an electrical appliance that has been built properly with all the right wiring and circuits and components to do what the appliance is supposed to do. So you go to the appliance, and you start pushing buttons, turning knobs, etc… trying to get it to work. And it will not work. So you go to the instruction manual to try to find a “solution”, and you start by reading the troubleshooter section of the instructions. Very likely, the first question it will ask you is, “is the appliance plugged into a working electrical outlet?” Is it connected to a power greater than itself, and greater than yourself.

And when you check, you realize that it is not plugged into the active presence of the electricity. When you plug it in, the appliance works perfectly. You had to first accept yours and the appliance’s “powerlessness” to operate without an operating connection to a higher power source.

Choice Creates No Choice
My “will”, in my experience, is this way, too. Everything is there to make decisions and choices – except the Power or caring loving Presence to make it work. And to the extent that I believe and try to practice choice and will power as being mine, I unplug my self from my God’s loving energy – and my life does not work.

I can only be as connected to my God as I am consciously aware of and consciously experiencing that I have no power – at all.

Spiritual Intimacy Empowers Living
In the story of Jesus, some people were one day complimenting his work, and he responded, “It is not me who is doing this – but my Dad is doing the work through me.” Even Jesus had to admit that in his human form His power came from His Father – He was actually powerless without His Father. Taking any credit for Himself for what he did – His choice -- would have separated Him from His spiritual source – his loving, caring, and very Present Father.

Free Will is Not Free
I find it interesting to re-experience the story of the Garden of Eden. Humanity was tempted with the concept of “becoming like God” – which I experience as being able to operate and function with “free will” -- free of the necessity for an intimate connection with God. The fall of humans was one of separation from God created by the attempt to “be” without being in intimate conscious contact with God. Everything that has been and is mankind came from this illness of the soul. We are only as reconnected with our God as we are accepting and experiencing of our own personal powerlessness.

My experience of my God in spiritual recovery has been one of realizing, in the intimacy of Their loving Presence, that they have no judgments or criticisms of me. I do not need Their forgiveness because they are not offended by me or anything I have done. I have unlimited access to their Presence and Power – limited only by my attempt to choose my own life.


Someday, We Will All Give An Accounting
In closing, I would like to share an experience I had some months ago: I was meditating, as I do every morning, and I found my self in my “mind” at the Great White Throne judgment, in front of my God. For those who have not been religious, religion teaches that one day -- probably when we “die”-- we will stand before God and give an accounting of every sin we have committed. Kind of like, “he is making a list, checking it twice. Gonna find out who has been naughty or nice.” (Santa Claus)

So, in my vision, I am standing before God to give an accounting of all my sins. God has this huge book in front of Him, and he turns to my page in the book. He turns the book around so I can read what’s on the page. As I look, I can see that the page is blank – there is nothing written on the page. God then said, “This is not the problem. You have never done anything ‘wrong’.” And then He reached over and picked up a smaller book, which had on the outside of book the following words printed, “The Book of Will by Will”. And God said, “This is the problem. You have to forgive yourself before you will let yourself in.”

Acceptance
If I have choices, on my own, I am a “sinner” and I will damn my self to my own personal and eternal hell. When I have no choices – no free will – no will or power separate from my God, I become reconnected to Their Presence – and I am and I do what is sane, loving, and healthy for me to do – naturally and intuitively – as the beloved and cherished child of my Mom and Dad, the “God” of my experience, strength and hope. I can live freely in Their free and loving acceptance – Their intimate Presence – without choices and without “free will” to harm me.

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The Courage to Be Humanly Conscious and Spiritually Awakened

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger -- misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good, that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding, and that there is always tomorrow.

Dorothy Thompson

In January, 2003, Liz was diagnosed with a reoccurrence of colon cancer -- the second time since her original diagnosis in 1995. It was beginning to affect her back and left leg. causing incredible pain, and difficulty walking. The picture above was taken two to three weeks before she died -- in 2005. She was on her way to a support group that had been a major part of her life for fourteen years, and lunch with her friends. I really don't remember if she was actually able to go to lunch -- but that was her intent when we left the house.

I took the picture -- and lots of similar pictures -- because I was so impressed with her incredible courage. I don't believe I could have done what she did.

Courage -- I think it's about perception and our relationship with a God of our personal experience and relationship. Courage is seeing into life and its myriad facets of events, circumstances and outcomes -- and seeing a meaning and purpose that cannot be seen with human eyes -- it can only be experienced by a human heart filled with God's Presence.

Courage is believing the unseen -- and living each moment -- each breath -- in the currents and waves of the unknown and uncontrollable -- opening ourselves to feel and experience and risk being fully human -- and loved fully spiritual.

We are the chosen, the called, the awake and present -- we are meant to live "heart wide open" -- to become "rivers of loving life" to others by being human and spiritually present -- all in the same moment.

Conscious life takes courage -- it requires God's Presence -- it involves a willingness to grieve and hurt and be sad -- and to risk joy and serenity, and closeness with God.

It take courage to do more than just believe in God -- instead to actively live in intimate Presence with God.

There will always be a tomorrow -- I believe Liz "knew" that -- even if it is means leaving --

and going Home.

Courage -- remembering not to forget.

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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? Growing With Grief

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 the Grief of Co-Dependency

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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Answers and Solutions -- Grief and Twelve 'Steps

When I stopped trying to analyze and explain everything and started living the (spiritual) principles, actually using them in my everyday situations, the (Twelve Step) program suddenly made sense – and I wanted to change….

Does analyzing my situation provide any useful insights or is it an attempt to control the uncontrollable?

I have heard that knowledge is power. But sometimes my thirst for knowledge can be an attempt to exercise power where I am powerless.

The Courage to Change

Answers create the illusion that I can control a situation or outcome. If I understand it, I can control it. And for some, this seems to work. Knowing that what is going on is normal under the circumstances, and sorta knowing what to expect in the future, gives many enough relief that addressing the problems and changing becomes unnecessary. Or just thinking about the answers may be able to anesthetize enough of the brain to make solutions unnecessary.

For those people, the road to spiritual ecovery ends here. “Just the facts, please!”

For others, the answers do not give enough relief, and actually increases the level of conscious pain, fear, hopelessness, and helplessness. If we know what the answer is and we are still messed up, what else can we do?

Twelve Step spiritual support groups have the incredible capacity to give both answers – understanding and information-- and solutions – actual spiritual healing and change. And I have to remember the difference, or my disease will try to make the answers be my solution. It’s like taking a Tylenol for a brain turmor – it only treats the symptom, and never addresses the cause.

For me, it has been critical to see solutions as a spiritual process and practice of spiritual living to use in place of my thoughts and intellect. This process starts with the experience and admission that I am totally unable to control the outcomes of my life – including my own perceptions, reactions, attitudes, and actions. This has to be experienced and not thought or reasoned, or I am again trying to solve my problems with answers and not with solutions.

From this experience of powerlessness, I am moved toward conscious contact with a higher Power or Presence, who begins to heal and reprogram my brain: consistent contact with meetings, spiritual advisors, other recovering people, and spiritual readings and literature.

From here, and with help, I begin to identify actions that will encourage and support my surrender to my God’s loving will for me: breathe, do the dishes, shave, get information, ask for help, etc…

And then I continue repeating this process, continuing to inventory and monitor my levels of emotional balance, and ability to love and serve others. When there seems to be a problem, I promptly admit it and improve my conscious spiritual contact with my God.

For those who experience more intense pain and motivation, there are more intense spiritual diagnostic tools in the Fourth through Ninth Steps.

The ultimate question is how important is it – how uncomfortable is it. This will be deciding factor regarding how satisfied we can be with answers, and how motivated we will be to live the solutions.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.

Zen Proverb

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Accepting Truth Through Daily Inspirations

Our basic recovery concept that never loses its power to work miracles is the concept called acceptance.

We do not achieve acceptance in a moment. We often have to work through a mirage of feelings – sometimes anger, outrage, shame, self-pity, or sadness. But if acceptance is our goal, we will achieve it.

What is more freeing than to laugh at our weaknesses and to be grateful for our strengths? To know the entire package called “us” with all our feelings, thoughts, tendencies, and history – is worthy of acceptance and brings healing feelings.

To accept our circumstances is another miraculous cure. For anything to change or anyone to change, we must first accept ourselves, others, and circumstance exactly as they are. The, we need to take it one step further. We need to become grateful for ourselves or our circumstance. We add a touch of faith by saying, “I know this is exactly the way it’s supposed to be for the moment.”

No matter how complicated we get, the basics never lose their power to restore us to sanity.

Today, God, help me practice the concept of acceptance in my life. Help me accept myself, others and circumstances. Take me one step further, and help me feel grateful.

Melodie Beattie The Language of Letting Go

Take the wizard’s view and welcome all losses, even the ultimate loss of death… Just loosen your grasp a little.. and remember: whatever you hold on to is already dead, because it is past. Die to every moment and you will discover the gate to unending life.

Merlin, The Way of the Wizard by Deepak Chopra

To know the truth about any condition heals it. Jesus said, And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)

Emmet Fox

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Mystic Dreamers Bring Life Out Of Darkness -- Daily Inspirations

Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities.
Sue Atchley Ebaugh

Our dreams beckon us to new heights. All that we may need is the courage to move toward them, taking the necessary steps to realize those dreams. Trusting that we will be shown the steps, one at a time patiently waiting for the right step and right time is all we need to do, today.

Our dreams, when they are for the good of ourselves and others, are invitations from God to spread our wings, to attempt new heights. Those dreams are part of the destiny designed for us. They are not happenstance. Our gifts are unique. Our contributions are ours alone. Our dreams reflect the contribution we are called on to make in this life.

Our opportunities for fulfillment are varied and not always recognized as for our good. Again and again we need to turn to God, be patient, and trust that we are being called to offer something very special to those around us. And everyone of us is inspired in particular ways, with particular talents. Our recovery is clearing the way for us to burst forth with our talents.

I will be grateful for all that I am, for all that I have. And I will remember, what I give today to friends around me is mine only to give.
Each Day a New Beginning (Hazelden)


I realize sometimes that I am just an instrument, a channel, a conduit for a spirit far greater than myself. There is something truthful coming through me, partly because I am so emptied by the (Way of Darkness) that I am not sitting around controlling things anymore. The (Way of Darkness) is an immense experience of divinity for people. We all have it because we are all creative at some level of our being. This is the experience of cocreation. We realize that, “My God, we are creating with God and God needs us to create.”
Matthew Fox


The intersection between our material and spiritual existence is the mystical power … the point where the axis of God meets the axis of humanity. The modern mystic is someone seeking to embody that point in his or her own experience. … The seeker in us is always seeking more truth, knowing that the search goes on forever. The mystic in us, on the other hand, is trying to practice what we’ve learned of it – right here, in this moment, whatever we are doing.
Marianne Williamson

The space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows;
It is empty, yet has not lost its power.
The more it is used, the more it produces;
The more you talk of it, the less you comprehend.
Tao Te Ching


Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind, that ye may verify with you living what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2

For the Article, click here: Mystic Dreamers Bring Life Out of Darkness.

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Remaking our World Through Daily Inspirations

The world doesn’t need supermen or women, but super-natural people. People who will turn the self out of their lives and let Divine Power work through them. Let inspiration take the place of aspirations. Seek to grow spiritually, rather than to acquire fame and riches. Our chief ambition should be to be used by God. The Divine Force is sufficient for all the spiritual work in the world. God only needs the instruments for His use. His instruments can remake the world.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may be an instrument of the Divine Power. I pray that I may do my share in remaking the world.

Twenty Four Hours a Day (Hazelden Publishing)

Love Lived -- Finding Daily Inspirations and Presence Part 3

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

Much more can and will be said about love and loving, but for now I want to conclude this present series with something fairly simple – yet very powerful – to me.

To me, love is an unconditional acceptance, and sometimes even an enjoyment of others enabled by my conscious contact with my God. It is limited by the severity of my “humanitis”, but restorable by reestablishing and improving my conscious contact with my God, with my self, and with others.

So we decide that we “want” to love. And we are realizing our powerlessness over loving – that our relationships have become “unmanageable” –frequently or periodically uncomfortable. We experience consciously our own weaknesses so we can consciously experience our God’s empowering Presence to love. And now we are ready to surrender our wills and our lives over to care of our God’s love by loving others. What do we do?

For twenty-five years I have journalled – very nearly every day. My journaling began in a very troubled time of my life, with an assignment by a minister counselor to write a letter to God. After we had read and discussed it, he said, “Now I want you to write a letter from God to you.”

I was amazed at the assignment – and even more with the experience. I had never listened to my God in that way before. And from that time to now, I have written – journalled – to my God – my feelings, and my thoughts, and my reactions and my questions, and then I have taken a few deep breaths – listened with my heart – and began to write what I heard Them "say". It has been very powerful in my life.

One word that I have heard thousands of times over those years from my God was “Listen!” Our relationship – my conscious contact with Them – has been built on attentive listening as an “act of faith”. Listening – not really to just words or thoughts – but to Their loving caring Presence – Their still small voice in the middle of massive avalanches and sunamis of emotion and human consciousness. I have learned from Their listening to me how to listen to Them, to my self, and how to listen to others. And I have been loved, nurtured, supported, and cared for by my God. They have taught me, I believe,
the highest expressions of unconditional and conscious love – intimate Presence – that I am currently capable of.

As I was sitting in my spiritual group this morning, I was listening to Them, and They reminded me of four types of love-listening that I have given and been given:
1. Simple physical presence and visual attention.
2. Mental presence or listening to and hearing the others thoughts.
3. Emotional presence or empathically listening to others feelings through the medium of my own feelings.
4. Spiritual presence or listening to others from a place of conscious intimate connection with our God, with ourselves, and with other human beings.

When others are listening to me, I experience an heightened level of my God’s loving Presence – and theirs. When I am listening to others, I experience the same, and also an intuitive use of silence, words, and nonverbal gestures to communicate our presence.

Maybe along with any Valentines, cards, flowers, etc… maybe we can add the loving gift of an attentive ear, and a listening heart – not just on this particular day – but everyday – and with – nearly -- every person in our lives.

“Sincerely touching the soul of someone else can tap the well of happiness within each of us.”

Each Day a New Beginning

The first duty of love is to listen.

Paul Tillich

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 touch of warmth or 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 visible?

Love seems to be an attempted mastery over increasing human consciousness – the feverish awareness of past and pending 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.

And 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 do not have a 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.

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Grief -- How Do We Find Daily Insprations Within Inspriations Life Quotes?

Let's start with this inspiring life quote. How do we experience these words as a door to increasing daily inspirations, and spiritual enlightenment.

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.

So suffering must become love. That is the mystery.
Katherine Mansfield


“Everything in life” – I experience that everything in this room, every thought and reaction in my brain, every event that has occurred or is anticipated has God’s energy and meaning all in and through it. Nothing is wasted. And everything is personally meaningful by higher design.

“Everything in life that we really accept” – I experience acceptance as the insertion of higher Presence -- through daily inspirations -- into every thought, experience and event of my life. This provides the sense of meaning and purpose for “everything in life”

The opposite of acceptance, for me, is control. As I breathe and experience
Control, I experience separation and abandonment from my past, the expectation – within my brain’s programming – that this pain will continue. I experience a constriction of neural energy aimed instinctively at “controlling” the pending outcomes of my life.

Constriction of neural energy hurts – “suffering” – mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. In the absence of Presence, my brain resists what is, and I suffer. The solution for me is acceptance -- the loving and caring Presence of my higher Power.

Everything in my life that I suffer must go through change. For me, daily inspirations and meditations – including inspiring life quotes -- have created filters of caring Presence through which the sewage of my past can be changed from pain to love. Love for me is the intimate and unconditional connection and participation with my higher Presence, others, and ultimately myself.

“This is the mystery.” This is an exciting sentence. I experience my life beginning to change without my understanding and intellect -- exceeding all the expectations that my brain can produce.

My child self calls this “magic”. There is a personal energy swirling around and entering my brain that is creating a better “story” – the exciting adventures and stories of my life. Everything is enormously unpredictable, and as I surrender to Presence, and listen to their voices, wonderful unexpected “things” happen – within my perceptions and reactions. And life is incredibly never the same.

Life and spiritual healing begins with suffering – because I am human. Life mysteriously arrives at spiritual enlightenment and loving Presence, through the practice of daily inspirations – the experience of inspiring life quotes – each moment, each breath of my day.

With each new day I put away the past

and discover the new beginnings I have been given.
Angela Wozniak

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Reaching Our Grief

For more articles, please click here: Finding Daily Inspirations.

Consciousness Hurts Without Higher Presence -- Grief and Daily Inspirations

WARNING!

At lunch, I was telling Kathy about this article, and she jokingly said it should come with a warning label. So here it is:

The Surgeon General has determined that this article may be hazardous to your mental and emotional unconsciousness. It is recommended that you do not read this article while operating your life or any mechanical relationships. This article may cause mental irritation, cognitive disorientation, and interpersonal disruptions. Use only under the supervision of a qualified spiritual guide.

There Is a Threat

Last night I met and talked with a special friend who is really struggling with his experience of his life and himself. He helped me become much more conscious of my self -- which is, in my experience, the foundation of human and spiritual consciousness.

The biggest threat to the quality of human life on this material and mental plane is actually consciousness. As long as we can maintain a “comfortable” level of unconsciousness through distraction, thought, food, and sometimes chemicals, life can be reasonably manageable and livable. We can “do the time”.

But once our level of consciousness rises above a certain point, we are really in major trouble. We start seeing “dead people” (metaphor), and we are seemingly the only ones doing so, so we must be bad, really messed up, or just deliberately stupid.

Actually “None of the above” is true.

What’s “Wrong”?

We don’t “understand” what is “wrong” with us – and it has to be wrong because it gets in the way of our accomplishing “necessary” or at least normal life outcomes. And it separates us emotionally and physically from others who do not also “see dead people”. We feel abandoned, alone, weird – evil, not good enough -- deserving to be judged, condemned, and punished.

Our brains respond to our verdict by subjecting us to inhumane punishments of self abandonment and self abuse, in an attempt to rehabilitate us into normally unconscious members of the human species. Birth and death are the established reference points. The “successful life” is when the in between is just one giant blur.

Consciousness is totally unacceptable and wrong because it seems to threaten the entire survival structure of humanity, and of our brain’s functioning.

So, what our brain does is proceeds to try to destroy consciousness as it would a bacteria or infection.

Auto Immune Disease

A physical example of this form of self-punishing – self controlling -- process is auto-immune diseases. Auto immune diseases are where the body – at the command of the brain -- treats healthy living tissue as if it were actually infected cells, and proceeds to harm and destroy itself. A common example of this is arthritis. The brain has instructed the body to abuse and destroy a healthy part of the body – perhaps as some form of unconscious reaction to shame and a need for punishment -- in order to get control of outcomes – to limit one’s level of consciousness – and to maybe give a means of “redemption” from the shameful pain of being conscious.

Myths of Grace and Redemption

Notice how organized religion has built such an elaborate thought system of sin and forgiveness – resulting in the story and belief in the human sacrifice of one man to “pay” for the sins or misdeeds of the world. Organized religion has successfully created a myth of God built around man’s own illness of shame and separation by attaching “free will” and choice to our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Religion has established staunch resistance to human and spiritual consciousness as if it were an infectious organism.

The “business” of organized religion is to sell grace – the delusion of undeserved favor by a judging and conditional “God”, and redemption – forgiveness for the symptoms of being human from a “God” who supposedly sees our weaknesses as valid justification to abandon and abuse us.

Grace is a fantasy because my God has no conditions or rules – only love, affection, and Presence. They give me everything I am able to accept – that I can accept that they believe I deserve. They perceive, from Their perspective, that, as Their child, I deserve everything They can give me.

Redemption and forgiveness really has nothing to do with my God: it has to do with my shame/separation based perceptions of myself, and how I condemn and punish myself.

A religious explanation used to explain Jesus’ experience of separation on the cross from His Father, has been that “God could not look at sin – and Jesus represented all sin.” The truth is the only sin my God sees – that Jesus’ Father saw -- is through our eyes looking back at ourselves in the extreme moments of painful separation.

Reactivity to Consciousness

About now, the part of the brain that is responsible to maintain a livable level of unconsciousness is probably, in some readers, becoming activated, and there is a resistance of emotional energy forming. Probably it will erupt to the surface as some form of rage or anger, or blank irritated numbness. The brain will begin punishing and harming some of you to keep consciousness from increasing. And if this occurs you are totally and absolutely powerless – and totally perfect. You – like all human beings – are absolutely doing the best that you can – always have, and there is no room for judgment or criticism.

And to some, maybe, a light will come on that you can live with, and you will be enabled to hear what I am sharing.

Self-Destructive and Helpless

My friend’s human mental illness is destroying him – from the inside out – and today, at this moment, he is totally powerless to stop it. I feel an aching feeling inside me – the consciousness that he is “us”, and that if nothing can change he will continue dying the most horrible death a human being can experience: his own conscious self destruction, as a result of horrendous and terrorifying separation -- from his unconditionally loving God -- from the incredibly beautiful and gifted person that he is -- and from the care and love of friends and family who treasure and adore his childlike energy and spirit.

I feel my ache inside as I think about him.

Is there no hope? As Scrooge asked the ghost of the future, “Can not these words be sponged from this stone?”

Is There Hope?

The honest answer to this question is twofold: First, I don’t know. I have seen many people who suffered from my friend’s mental and spiritual “auto immune” disease, and die unmercifully.

And I have experienced people who found a spiritual Presence in their torment that began to lift them out of the pending tomb of their impending doom. What frequently stops me in my tracks is I don’t know which category any individual fits into. If someone is in the first category, my efforts to “help” can actually do more harm than help.

Do No Harm

Doctors have the Hipprocatic oath that they take which partly says simply, “Do no harm.” I struggle to not inflict people with more consciousness than they can manage and use to heal their separation and abandonment.

Spiritual Approach to Improving Consciousness

The spiritual process that I have learned and lived over the past 23 years is as follows:
1. First, I must have an increasing conscious contact with my wounded self. This means I have to experience – more and more consciously – the pain and fear, which results from my shame and separation. Without this improving consciousness I cannot have the needed motivation, willingness, and direction to move closer and closer to my God. I will not have an experiential awareness that without Them, I am totally powerless.
2. Second, I must have an increasingly conscious and intimate contact with my God. The “mechanisms” of will, and healthy decision making in my brain cannot work without a steady and strong flow of intimate Presence from my God. Most frequently for me, my God communicates through others who are also struggling with painful human consciousness.
3. Third, empowered by my God’s loving Presence, I must begin to actively participate in Their caring and unconditional will for me. The most basic form of this for me has been learning to just “breathe” – deeply, consciously, and deliberately. Living consciously and deliberately in the care and Presence of our God – our unconditionally loving Parents -- this is living faith.

Grief and Loss

My life experience is that grieving life losses -- known and unknown – is life threatening for the very reasons I have been describing. When we touch that inflamed and wounded parts of our selves, the resulting pain drives up to increased consciousness. Our brains try to regain control, and not only disallows our healing, but wounds us even more. To have healing from our God’s love, we must maintain a steady flow of their caring Presence. Our level of conscious contact with Them must be equal to or greater than our conscious pain in order to heal and regain our lost selves.

WARNING!
I am going to repeat Kathy’s warning label here:

The Surgeon General has determined that these articles may be hazardous to your mental and emotional unconsciousness. It is recommended that you do not read these articles while operating your life or any mechanical relationships. These articles may cause mental irritation, cognitive disorientation, and interpersonal disruptions. Use only under the supervision of a qualified spiritual guide.

Thanks for reading.

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Grief -- How To Find Daily Inspirations in Inspirational Life Quotes

Daily inspirations – especially through inspiring life quotes -- involve finding openings within the material world through which intimate energy – higher Presence – can flow, and spiritual enlightenment – transformation of the neural processes of the brain – can occur.

The spiritual world is all around us. We are blinded by the broken neural programmings of our brains. The past – the separations and abandonments perceived and recorded in the neural network of the brain – forms a reservoir of unprocessed sewage, which leaks constantly into our current perceptions of and reactions to current life events.

Developing the skills of finding daily inspirations through inspiring life quotes begins to build a spiritual treatment “facility” in our brains and hearts, which begins to process the sludge of the past. We begin being restored to clear, flowing spiritual experiences of higher Presence – spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakenings form more and more collections of Presence-filtered neural pathways, which eventually create warm flowing light – spiritual enlightenment. Daily inspirations and inspired life quotes maintain and increase this spiritual enlightenment.

How can this work? Consider with me the following inspiring life quote:

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become love. That is the mystery.
Katherine Mansfield

What do you hear in these words? Take a few moments to breathe deep, and absorb the energy and Presence of the words. My God or higher Presence (or whatever name you use) speaks wherever, and whenever I am listening. This has been my experience over the years.

The starting point is to slow down -- admit and experience the darkness of my brain – its inability to hear a higher Voice. My brain operates in digital data called thoughts, which are formed with words. Thoughts cannot hear or experience Presence.

The darkness is created by the wounding experiences of my past that exist in my brain for which there was never spiritual healing, and therefore are current and reoccurring.

Next, I breathe deeply – in my powerlessness – and connect with my higher Presence – or “God” to most. I have learned to use my breathing to slow down and nurture my brain, allowing it to quiet its chatter.

At first, hearing this higher Voice was like a faint rustling in the background of my thoughts. As I have practiced, this connection has become clearer -- yet wordless and intimate – an experience of personal Presence. What I hear is like a still small voice – someone very close by – speaking softly to my heart – the emerging spiritual part of me that begins to connect softly to my brain.

Then, I take the action to trust this Presence by writing down, or sharing with someone else what I am experiencing. This actions seems to bring my human experience of unknowing, and my spiritual experience of a personal and caring Presence together into a growing spiritual enlightenment. I experience a peace and serenity which exceeds the neural capacity of my brain to understand. It becomes living, dynamic, flowing, and life changing.

Daily inspirations through inspiring life quotes open my heart and my brain begins to experience spiritual enlightenment.

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