Bits of Me Here and There

Last week a molar had to be pulled, cracked all the way through the root! While in the dentist's chair, I mused about what would become of it, this tooth that had been with me for 70+ years. I thanked it and said goodbye in my mind. Would it be in some landfill? Then I thought how parts of me are scattered hither and yon. My tonsils left me when I was 3. A tumor left in my early 20's. My uterus left when I was 37. I said goodbye to my gallbladder in my 40's, etc. They are long gone in some way or the other, rotted in a landfill, burnt to ashes, or ...

Other parts of me are scattered around in other ways. The words I've spoken, words recorded, and words written, leave a global trail. One day we will see them all and evaluate them. No excuses will be accepted. 

What if we made a covenant with ourselves to from this day onward to be aware of ourselves and the trail we leave, and promise to leave a positive, uplifting trail?

Just A Gaze

This morning I read about a scientific study that proved an experience of mine, and probably of yours too. You know how it is when you can feel a person starring at you, and you turn to discover they are actually starring at you, or a person turning around when you are starring at them? It actually makes neurological reactions that can be detected. It seems it is a real thing.

In meditation I was shown an expanded understanding of this. It involves our connection to The More. God, Divine Presence. As we deeply turn to God in prayer and/or meditation, God "feels" our gaze, and, if we go quietly into the silence, we can feel God's Gaze being returned. That changes everything, or at least it has for me.

Unhinged from God, people flail around. We can see that most everywhere today and also historically. The evil done by people is done when the people are not connected to The More. Connected people - those whose gaze turns to God and God's Gaze turns to them - are peaceful, compassionate, kind, etc.

Meditation is one of the keys. I can only imagine what a different world it would be if/when a large number of people would daily meditate and open and keep open that incredible Connection.

Oh Divine Presence, lead us to Connection with You. Show us how to encourage others to Connection. Show us how to encourage meditation. Lead us to be the difference the weary world needs. 

Violence

It seems that much of our world has plunged into violence. It is heart-breaking! We see horrors of war and butchery, a huge amount of deaths of the pre-born (60+ million since Roe in America), shootings and stabbings on the streets,  drugs flooding in from Mexico and China that kill, trafficking of children into sex trade, cartels controlling so much, people in China being imprisoned in their apartment buildings to starve or die from lack of medication, a shift toward totalitarianism and Marxism, etc, etc, etc.

So, why? Richard Rohr sent out the following statement this morning:

The root of violence is the illusion of separation—from God, from Being itself, and from being one with everyone and everything.

That seemingly simple statement puts it succinctly, and I think accurately. As the people of earth get more and more untethered from spiritual roots, they get farther and farther from living and acting from spiritual understanding. Everything goes when nothing matters.

BUT everything does matter. Some are alienated from the truth of who they are. They are lost and in pain, and act out with reckless abandon. 

We are actually spiritual beings. We are accountable for our words and our deeds. 

We need somehow to communicate that God, The Divine Presence, Creator - is everywhere, in everyone, in every single thing. All is sacred. We are intertwined. We need to honor life, to honor our planet, to honor ourselves and everyone.

We can turn the mess around. We can wake up to the Truth, model it, teach it, be it, share it, shine it. Love our neighbors as ourselves - love yourself, and out of being at peace in your own heart, share that love with every speck of this planet and all upon it. 

Shall we try to save this planet before it descends farther?

Message from Coptic Manuscripts

The Coptic Manuscripts, that were found in Upper Egypt in the 1940's, give us some insights that had been lost and buried for preservation from the authorities that sought to burn them all. I am reading a new to me book on them, although I have read them and books about them over the years. The excerpt below from thoughts about some words in The Gospel of Thomas struck me this morning.

As John the Baptist said, “One can give only what one has received. Nothing more, nothing less”. Do not let yourself be guided by those who do not have the experience of which they speak. Intuitively, we know to beware of those who eagerly offer “good advice.” As the Indian sage Nisargadatta said, “Those who know what is good for others are dangerous people.” You can bear witness to your faith, but never graft it on another. When this is seen as the luminous truth it is, it becomes an awakening force in itself. All that you can say is: “That which is alive in me is also alive in you.”

The truth in these words struck me deeply this morning. I have pondered and criticized those who are incongruent, inauthentic, just plain phonies. I think this does come from "teaching" what one does not actually know - or perhaps just know a smidgen and try to puff up the ego. 

When one Knows, there is a luminosity that speaks for itself. The light that has been quickened can touch another and seed the quickening in them. It is not what we say, but the energy of Divine Light upon which the words rest. It is not what we do, but the Divine Energy that does it through us. Once seen and experienced in another, we know it is in us too, and we seek to know it more.

Seek the luminous words, deeds and presence. We know it, when it comes to us. Seek to be a contagion of the luminous for others. The weary people of earth are starved and thirsting for it.