Morning Prayer 18/100. Be quiet
Be quiet
I remind myself to be quiet.
More and more sounds surround me as my hearing hears less and less. Ironic that I often “need” to reply. Since I am human, my most common reply mode is speaking. Likely true that I often talk a lot without saying much.
“Be quiet” is the best advice I can give myself. When I slow down my voice, I allow my mind to slow down. When my mind slows down, my awareness shows up.
Being aware of what I am saying doesn’t count. I don’t seek awareness that arises when I am quiet. Or ask for it or analyze how to get it or list reasons I should receive it. I just accept it. Quietly.
My silence knows many forms. Sitting in our sun room. Walking Alex early mornings. Runnin and letting surrounding noise — even my footfall — go unheard. Meditating for 108 breaths before anyone else awakens.
I realize (and cherish) both inner and outer silence. The inner silence is when neither my mouth nor my mind are chattering. The outer silence is when I let go of hearing/listening to the noise around me. BTW, the sounds of nature — birds and wind and rainfail and thunder — are anything but noise.
How do you let go of noise?
Sweet Voice I hear with my heart,
I hear you best when I am silent.
I hear you in the silence and I hear you from the silence.
When my mouth and my mind are quiet
your voice comes through more clearly.
I thank you, God, for letting me find ways
and times and places when you and I bless me
with quiet.
I thank you for letting me hear your voice
in sounds that bring peace and comfort,
calm and ease.
I thank you, God, I can be quiet.
And so it is.
Amen.
Love and blessings,
08/03/2015
Morning Prayer 17/100. Forgetful
Forgetful
Forgetful thanks to my intense attention to a work assignment, I overlooked posting yesterday’s Morning Prayer. Or, what is now today’s Morning Prayer. About being forgetful. Spiritually forgetful.
So often I begin a day by reminding myself to pray frequently, to pray at the spur of the moment, to pray without planning, to pray for no reason, to pray and then to pray some more.
So often, about 8 o’clock in the evening, I figuratively pinch myself for not having prayed as much, as often, as spontaneously, as freely as I intended.
The human world gets in the way of that praying. Correction: that’s my human world that gets in the way, the human world I create and live in. My human world that includes all the wonderful, testing, exciting, trying, joyful, stressful elements I bring to it. It is my creation. Maybe I didn’t build the house Cindy and I love and live in, but we do create the comfort and the concern from our home. Maybe I didn’t charter Dell Computer, but I do manifest the stress and the delight I take from my work there. Maybe I didn’t design the body costume which my mind directs, but I do generate the fitness, the health, even the discomfort of my current sinus condition.
And I let all that “stuff” that I create as my human world get in my spiritual way. No doubt about it.
Here’s the good. The response to being forgetful is to be forgiving. Rather than the oft-used adage, forgive and forget, how about if you forget, forgive yourself.
Spirit and all that is spiritual pay no attention to time. They’re not going to disappear if I forget to pray or post or merely be still and know Spirit. Forgetting once (or several times) doesn’t penalize me by taking away future opportunities. Those opportunities are always there.
Don’t forget that!
Good Friend God,
When I forget what’s on my spiritual to-do list
I take relief that you do not forget.
You are always and all at once the Presence I AM.
You continually bless me with Christ Spirit
that reminds me to forgive when something is forgotten.
You bless me that my thoughts are my reality, my experience,
and you help me not forget that truth
by allowing me to know and share my thanks.
You gift me the power to pray with you by myself and with others.
As you set no prayer quota, forgetting now does not reduce
how many prayers we may yet share.
You grace me that this human world of people and situations
shows me that living out loud my love and faith
is The Way.
Thank you, Good Friend.
And so it is. Amen.
07/30/2015
In: Christ Spirit, Energy, Forgiveness, Happiness, Inner Peace, Joy, Life, Oneness, Prayer, Praying, Unity Principles · Tagged with: Divine Spirit, Faith, God, Joy, Love, Prayer, praying, Principles, spiritual simplicity
Morning Prayer 16/100. Interruptions
Interruptions happen.
This morning after meditating and as I was writing in my prayer journal, I listened to Flute Meditation Radio on Pandora. Free Pandora. Suddenly a voice that could have been from ’70s A.M. radio was selling hot tubs in my ear.
That interruption snapped my attention from the spiritual to the human worldly. Unavoidable because his voice was in my ear, then in my head. That got me thinking. Another human worldly process.
Interruptions
Interruptions to my spiritual be-ing happen with some frequency. Whether from outside or within me, those human worldly thoughts, ideas, images, worries, wants, memories often knock on the door of whatever I’m doing spiritually. They almost never say, “Excuse my interruption.”
I may be praying or walking with God or reading or contemplating. Doesn’t matter. Interruptions happen.
Yet, here are two good things the hot tub salesman led me to realize before his 30-seconds were done:
- I get to choose whether I wrestle with the interruption, get upset by it, feel bad about it, resent its intrusion OR simply let it float right out of my mind as I return to my spiritual be-ing.
- I can consciously manifest the reverse: spiritual interruption. As often as I choose to, I can invite my spiritual awareness to interrupt my human doings. That is my choice, too. Plus, I’m pretty sure that the more such invitations I extend to spiritual interruptions, the sooner they’ll become my habit.
No, thank you, I’ll pass on the hot tub.
Living, loving Spirit,
I welcome every interruption you send my way.
And I am thankful for the gift you give me
to let me be undisturbed by interruptions
to my conscious time with You.
You give us infinite blessings
to know Oneness. They are more powerful
than any intrusion from the human world.
You give us the power of infinite ways
to interrupt our unnecessary worry
and thrill to the Oneness.
Every interruption, then, may bring us blessings.
And so it is.
Amen.
Love and blessings,
07/27/2015
In: Commitment, Happiness, Humor, Inner Peace, Joy, Life, meditation, Music, Peace, Peacefulness, Spirituality · Tagged with: Divine Spirit, Energy, Oneness, Peace, Prayer, praying, spiritual simplicity
Morning Prayer 15/100. A field beyond
A field beyond
A field beyond all ideas of right and wrong is where we are all meant to be.
Rumi’s 13th Century poem simplifies the beauty of the perfect existence from which we are created and for which we are created. There is the true existence that does not know the opposites of good/bad, light/dark, right/wrong. That existence is the Truth which we may name heaven, eternity, good, joy, peace, oneness.
We may know it as a field beyond except the word “beyond” may suggest it is unreachable. It is not. The entire poem which Rumi scribed is this:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.
We have the power to lie down in the grass of that field. The field is beyond human ideas that things are right and wrong. It is not beyond our grasp, not beyond our awareness, not beyond our consciousness. It is simply beyond our human impositions.
Our power of prayer takes us there. The power of prayer allows us to realize that definitions of right and wrong are human impositions. The power of prayer shows us the meaninglessness of “each other”. We are not “other”; we are One.
Sweet Spirit,
lead us to the field beyond human limitations.
Lead us to awareness that we impose limitations
upon ourselves by seeing through our imposed lenses
of “right” and “wrong”.
Lead us to the consciousness out of this languaged world
full of ideas and perceptions and phrases
that shadow our true vision of Oneness,
of true unity.
Thank you for giving us the prayer vehicle that takes us there,
carries us to the field beyond.
And so it is.
Amen.
Love and blessings,
07/24/2015
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