WHAT I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT GOD/LOVE THUS FAR

What I have learned thus far about love/God is that it is generated from within.

When we give love whether or not it is well-received or returned, it returns to us and blesses us.

When we give love and it is accepted, embraced, and given back, then it is magnified.

For me it means that regardless of the gender of two people, when love flows back and forth without conditions or expectations it is a time in which God's presence can be experienced.

When two people who consider themselves a couple love each other completely without conditions or expectations they are joined together with God (In My Humble Opinion). This may be a rare occurrence but not impossible if you are indeed grounded in Love/God.

This I have learned first hand through experience. I thank God that I have had the opportunity to experience it.

WHO MOVED?

Recently our minister asked me to do a reading at church service. It was about the fact that if we felt we were not in touch w/God, then who moved? Did God or did we?

During emotional down times it is harder for me to get into what I call the "God vibration" where I am feeling connected with God – feeling God’s presence and love in my life. But what we all have to remember is that God never moves away. And actually I think we don't either. We are never disconnected from the Source of our Being but we can have our sense of that blocked when our frame of mind is visiting the "lower" places it can go rather than the "higher" places.

How quickly we can loosen ourselves from that tar baby depends upon what thoughts we are allowing to take precedence in our minds. Yet knowing this does not automatically mean we can kick out the ones that are not serving us and cultivate the ones that will.

So today I am asking my higher Self, that Spirit of God within me to help me kick out the unproductive, down-spiraling thoughts and invite the productive and wholesome ones to take seed in my mind.

What goes down must come up and what goes up must come down from time to time. The “good” and the “bad” both pass but having a God-centered, loving frame of mind can enhance the stuff that feels right and good and eases the stuff that seems undesirable.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

EGO AND LOVE

“You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

-- Buckminster Fuller

How many times though, do we hang onto outdated concepts, worn out methodology, tried-and-failed solutions, and over-rated habits that once served our survival or were habitual in response to our experiences but now block at least to some extent our clear view of and openness to the flow of God's grace?

Why do we do that?

Because we don't yet know any better.

Because we are afraid to try something new.

Because the "old way" is a comfort zone even if it's dysfunctional.

We don't like to dismiss our past or disengage from it because it helps represent who we think ourselves to be. Ego is made up of these past experiences and our interpretation of them and an idea of ourselves that we have because of them. That usually means we sense ourselves as lacking in many areas. This idea of lack or low self esteem or ignorance of the love that we are and that we have available to us, causes us to allow ego to inflate to give us a false sense of being okay. So we try to get a feeling of being loved or okay from the outside in rather from the inside out.

To dismiss or let go of our past or our sense of self is to pronounce a death sentence for the ego. The ego likes to replay or even repeat our past dramas so it can play victim to solicit attention and pity which pumps it up. This is ego’s way of duping us. It likes to fool us so that we don’t move towards a fuller revelation of God within. In the awareness of God, ego begins to die. We don’t have to make effort. We just have to desire and surrender to the process. As ego fades into the background what is left of “us” is under the dominion of our Source. We have to function in this world, so some sense of our self or individuality is left but it is more influenced or directed by God’s will than ego. And God’s will is love. And love requires the surrender to what is. It requires our willingness to let go of our sense of what ought to be. This doesn’t mean we don’t have preferences or desires but we must be willing to give these up to God’s better judgment and to desire the higher good for all which, in my opinion, is love. Love and then do what you will for Love will direct your choices.

Job surrendered to the will of God and everything was given back to him. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his beloved son if God required that and God gave him back his son. When we give up ego, when we surrender to God, God gives us His Son more fully. That is, the Christ or Spirit within that transforms us. This is our “salvation”.