Daly Bread

“As my father has spent me, so I send you,” to set the world on fire.  It’s up to us to proclaim the Good News and bring Christ’s love into the world.

The thing that we share with God is our humanity. This is our true nature. This is who we really are. Humanity has been transformed and glorified. By our very nature we participate in the life of the Trinity. Just think of the dignity and sacredness of each and every one of us. But, we have forgotten who we truly are. 

How many times do we miss things because they are not expected.  What would happen if we really walked with Jesus? What would happen if “our hearts were burning within us” for love of the Lord? What kind of world would we have?

Once you have that encounter with Jesus there is no turning back, there is no quitting. 

No Jesus is not a hippie who did away with religion.

Evergreens in a barren land.

When we die before we die, we are surrendering to the Real, to union with God—now—and therefore later too. 

Surrender and letting go might sound like losing, but they are actually about accessing a deeper sense of the self, which is already whole and filled with abundant life.

Contemplation brings us to the place of divine fullness where hope lives. Contemplation is living in a unity that produces a deep non-rational, and calm hope. God allows us to bring “on earth what is in heaven” every time we can allow, receive, and forgive the conflicts of the moment and sit in some degree of contentment.

Sooner or later, life is going to lead us into the belly of the beast, into a situation that we can’t fix, can’t control, and can’t explain or understand. That’s where transformation most quickly happens. That’s when we’re uniquely in the hands of God. 

If you try to understand God’s grace by any ledger of merit, you will never understand it. 

The pattern of transformation, the pattern that connects, is always death transformed, not death avoided. The universal spiritual pattern is death and resurrection; loss and renewal. But, we want one without the other. 

If we cannot find some way to transform our wounds into sacred wounds, we will become cynical, negative, or bitter. This might be the major task of religion, because we will be wounded, sooner or later.

We are obsessed by thoughts as soon as we wake up, useless chatter all day. Setting expectations are invariably disappointments and resentments waiting to happen. 

If we can encounter one thing in its uniqueness, it can lead to an encounter with all of creation at the same time. The contemplative mind does not demand, is not needy, and is not easily offended. 

The finite manifests the infinite. The physical is the doorway to the spiritual. All we need is right here, right now. As above, so below. 

The goal of contemplation is to experience the unity of ourselves, with creation, with our neighbor, our enemy, and with God. Here and Now! God is in all things and all things are in God. God is not as transcendent as we first imagined, He is closer than you think.

Stay out of your thoughts. Rest in your base animal contentment. Feel nothing, emptiness. Stay at the cellular level, without shame or fear, long enough for the Deeper Source to reveal itself. 

We are addicted to our need to make distinctions and judgments and we act out of compulsive, repetitive, habits.

Contemplation is a way of observing yourself from a place of non judgmental compassion in order to live your life from a calm inner awareness and acceptance. It is a way of seeing yourself with the eyes of God. 

Your life is not really about you; you are a part of a much larger flow called Life Itself—or simply God.

In order to be truly conscious, it’s necessary to observe “self” or “me” from a distance, taking a broader view from our isolated self. We must learn to see from the view of the Indwelling Spirit. Then we see with eyes much larger and other than our own.

Growing up is more about education, psychological and emotional maturity, coming to grips with reality and developing a heathy social integration. Waking up refers to a much deeper enlightenment, and is much more than merely being  educated. 

You have to stay with your pain, no matter what it is or how hard it is, until you’ve learned its lessons. When you can consciously hold your pain, you enter a liminal space that will allow you to break through to a much deeper level of consciousness and awareness.

Your life is not about you; you are about Life. The eternal life of God is living in you and through you. The problem is most of us, don’t care; aren’t interested. It’s too overwhelming to grasp, but the truth of the matter is, you have never been separate from God except in your mind.