Escape THIS Malicious Psychological Trap
Existence is wanting full consciousness of itself. “Real life is waiting for a phoney life that’s finished with phoney waiting to wake up! Repentance is to WAKE UP here and Now!”
Your idea of you doesn’t matter. Your idea of yourself is what is looking and as long as it’s a WHAT, you’re an object too!
The real WHO within YOU (unconditionally pure awareness or the Christ-child) wants the rest of YOU.
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You’ll NEVER get it as long as you’re witlessly trying to give it. And herein is the clue and Jesus said it. I promise you, look it up yourself. Get it and then give it and even then, don’t rush to conclusions about the heady need for approval.
Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said:
"The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.’” (Jesus said it and Luke notes it in Luke 17:21)
In YOUR midst means “IN YOUR MIDDLE!”
God’s going to use the absurd to get the goofiest of us.
Sailing - by Christopher Cross
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know of avoiding the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
What would it be like to fall asleep and never wake up? Now, this poses the next question: What is it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. And when you’re ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. And if you’re not, you’ll stay pretending that you’re just a poor little me. Not all seek meaning but those who do will find it. And it will disturb you because you never imagined it was actually seeking you. Fierce grace feels like fear oftentimes so let it pass. The experience you’re having which you call ordinary everyday life — pretending you’re not it — that experience is exactly the same as it. There’s no difference at all.
Who are you? Who is the one who can die and live to speak about it? Who died and is now living within you? There could be absolutely no fear whatsoever of death if there wasn’t already within you that willingness to feel the fear even a second longer. And what possible good could fear have? Well, none that you have intellectually thought to see. For you don’t think and then see. You simply see and awareness makes it so. Thinking makes everything merely conceptual. As a child you also did see but without what your mind terms thinking. You were then fully conscious. There were no airy abstractions, labels, theories or words to obstruct that one immortal sense that your reasoning relinquished and yet will recognise upon being like a child. What is the obstruction? You will know and when you do you will be willing. Surround yourself with no conclusions.
Sailing Click HEAR God refuses to be known by the intellect but is even now known by the heart. Who is the one who can die and live to speak about it? One who is never born and who can never die. The cause of death is birth. The cause of birth is life. The mother knows her baby is within her alive. The father knows the baby is alive without. The baby is alive and growing while both her mother and father are asleep. Who sustains the mother, father and the baby voluntarily while all three are involuntarily asleep? The One who keeps each heart beating and each lungs breathing? Who provides the oxygen? The electricity required for the neurological impulses to fire? It is a foolish thing for a fish to complain of thirst as it swims here and there in the ocean, isn’t it? The baby is unaware of when it is born but the mother certainly isn’t. And so it is with waking up from being insidiously lulled asleep sometime after childhood. It’s like climbing a staircase and after humbly accepting that the climbing is also part of the necessary descending, before we know it we’re aware that, all along, the way down is up and the way up is down. Falling upwards. Heaven was never a matter of distance. And here and now, we see dimly as though peering through a darkened glass. Yet before we know it, we’ll know as the baby is known before one leaves the womb.
He suffers most who suffers before it is necessary. Rehearsing tragedy is not tragic; the thought that one cannot stop however most certainly is.
Brennan Manning -- Our Image of God and Ourselves
Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable which means you are never unlovable. God loves because God is love. You can’t stop the sun’s rays nor can you stop the constantly lavishing love God MUST send inside you. The cliché definition of grace is “unconditional love.” It is a true cliché, for it is a good description of the thing. Let’s go a little further, though. Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualifications the receiver may personally hold. Grace is one-way love. Grace doesn’t make demands. It just gives. And from our vantage point, it always gives to the wrong person. We see this over and over again in the Gospels: Jesus is always giving to the wrong people—prostitutes, tax collectors, half-breeds. The most extravagant sinners of Jesus’s day receive His most compassionate welcome. Grace is a divine vulgarity that stands caution on its head. It refuses to play it safe and lay it up. Grace is recklessly generous, uncomfortably promiscuous. It doesn’t use sticks, carrots, or time cards. It doesn’t keep score. Grace works without requiring anything on our part. It’s not expensive. It’s not even cheap. It’s free. It refuses to be controlled by our innate sense of fairness, reciprocity, and evenhandedness. It defies logic. It has nothing to do with earning, merit, or deservedness. It is opposed to what is owed. It doesn’t expect a return on investments. It is a liberating contradiction between what we deserve and what we get. Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver. It is one-way love. But remember that grace is God. It is His idea so this deserving routine kind of breaks the branch it hangs on so as to shame folks back to pews. License to sin? None has ever needed a license to slap God across the face while shouting:
“How dare You concoct this overly inclusive grace and remove my entitlement towards feeling better than those losers who think they’re entitled to my hard earned tax dollars! For crying out loud! I’ve got to be better than someone. After all, I didn’t much like never being picked to stay on with the basketball team. Not my fault. I wasn’t athletic and yet those rubes held it against me. They could have at least given me a spot on the bench. You know! Made an exception in knowing I wanted in but just needed minor accommodations. Right?”
Right! The old boy kind of came around as he prattled on. “No one comes to the Father EXCEPT by Me.” Hmmm. I’d say we should begin reconsidering who we think isn’t fit for heaven. Those who are so arrogant to begin sifting the chaff from the wheat are sifting themselves from the wheat they believe they will pompously shake their heads at in a wonderful episode of heavenly gloating. Irony of all ironies.
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