When I Listen, God Speaks -- Facebook and Inspirational Life Quotes

I am new to Facebook, so I am learning how to communicate within its contexts. I find myself listening to others’ words, and experiencing a higher consciousness of my self – especially when I share my own perceptions, and reactions – experience, strength, and hope. I have decided to share with you the gifts others have given me, with the hope there may be gifts in the Presence of these words for you.

Gratitude:

Not especially looking forward to working tomorrow...I
suppose I should be grateful I'll be getting time and a half. God, help me to be
a good employee and not lose my temper at work tomorrow, and help me tonight to
enjoy being at home!

Yes, you should – be grateful!!!! NOT!!!

For me, when I "should" on myself, I am not grateful but suppressing my conscious contact with my own feelings, and pretending that it is gratitude. For me, gratitude begins many times with consciously experiencing my discomfort and fear, connecting consciously with my higher power -- literature, others, meetings, journalling, meditation -- and then taking action -- next right or necessary thing, acting as if -- WHILE consciously feeling my feelings, and my God's Presence. It takes "practice" -- in my experience -- to make this a spiritual way of "living", but it happens.

Consciously feeling my feelings -- consciously connecting with my God -- consciously acting in trust, while feeling my feelings -- and then a higher Presence occurs -- an improved conscious relationship with my God -- and intuitively I experience that I am being loved and cared about – which is gratitude -- without needing reasoning or logic – without resisting my feelings.

Thanks for your honesty.

Aging:

“Depending on their outlook, people's old age will
dramatically differ, especially in terms of the richness and fulfillment they
will experience. Everything is up to our attitude, how we approach life. Do we
look at old age as a descending path to oblivion? Or is it a period in which we
can attain our goals and bring our lives to a rewarding, satisfying completion?”
Wisdom for Modern Life - Daisaku Ikeda

I experience that aging begins with the constriction of neural energy to control outcomes and relationships, which progressively cuts down my brain's capacity to maintain the biological network of my body, and hence it progressively deteriorates -- aging.

To slow down or modify the process, I experience a need to reduce my brain's constriction by improving my conscious contact with my higher power's Presence. The constriction is the result of separation from my higher power caused by my attachment, fixation, and dependency on outcomes as a means of control and perceptual "survival".

Humility:

" A conceited person never gets anywhere
because he thinks he's already there. "
Rev Run

Maybe: A humble person never gets anywhere because he/she IS already there.

Outcomes:

It's amazing what a good night's sleep can do for you -- things
nothing else can…. I waste more time trying to force myself to stay awake and
get something finished than I'd gain by just going to bed, getting at least a
little sleep, and then tackling the project again. But I forget that --
everytime.

I struggle with the" same" thing. I am working on becoming consciously connected to the parts of me that are resisting each other and producing conflicted outcomes. My experience is that there are lost selves attempting to return "Home". Really -- maybe -- a better outcome than reaching an externalized goal.

Mistakes:

“If you have made mistakes, even serious ones,
there is always another chance for you. What we call "failure" is not the
falling down but the staying down.”
Mary Pickford.
I need to remember
this. Until I am willing to do something badly, I will never make progress. Like
working with my new airbrush.

Maybe -- there are no mistakes -- only misunderstood outcomes. With my higher power, there seems to be no waste. Everything seems to be deliberately planned and used to bring me to better and better versions of my self. I see mistakes when I can only see the details and not Their loving, caring destiny for me. The bestest gift of any painful event is the intimate closeness I can experience when I dare to feel consciously my exposed sadness and fear -- in Their Presence.

The "Right One":

Hope this might be true.
On this day, God
wants you to know...
that the way you know you have found the right one is
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with the person. Having neither to
weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they
are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift
them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the
rest away.
Dinah Craik

I experience the term "the right one" as the addictive obsession that drove my disease of codependency until recovery. "The right one" was always someone outside of me who was going to fill the gaping hole in my soul -- do for me what I could not do for myself.

I was taught that I am "the right one" for me, when I am consciously connected to myself and to my higher power's Presence. I am given a "new pair of glasses" with which to see others in the external world, and it allows me to experience the available closeness, accepting unconditionally any separation, while loving and admiring the godself in every person. I do not have to reject or abandon others for my or their humanness .

If I am not my own "right one", there can be ultimately no real connection and closeness with others. To ask someone to be "the right one" is ultmately to doom them to be "the wrong one.

Forgiveness:

Interesting, since I had a moment today where a lot of
old resentments came bubbling to the surface. And yes, forgiveness can be very
hard.
On this day, God wants you to know...
that although forgiveness is
very hard, it is necessary. Holding onto anger and old hurts hardens your heart
and hurts only you. Ask for help in letting go of the anger. Ask to see the
situation through the eyes of compassion. Allow yourself to feel the lightness
of forgiveness.

Maybe forgiveness is not really hard for us to do. Maybe it is impossible! The normal act of forgiveness I experience for humans is actually suppression and denial of feelings to a point of numbness -- which is then called forgiveness. Really it is a growing sesspool of decomposing selves. And I am powerless to stop it.

Resentment for me is the constriction and resistance of feeling to protect me from experiencing separation -- abandonment and abuse -- that occurred in the past, and that I am anticipating in the future -- instinctively, at a primitive brain level. No amount of logic or reasoning can reach this part of my brain. So I am helplessly flailing about in desperate anger, trying to avoid the pain and dismemberments of my past.

For me, spirituality --conscious intimate connection with my God -- is the only way my primitive and rational brains have begun to reconnect, and I begin to stop inflicting the harm of my past on myself -- over and over and over again.
The Twelve Steps are spiritual guide -- for me -- for going back to my past and having my God “change my outcomes” – inserting Their Presence. Resentment is a symptom of my wounded separation, and when this separation is replaced with conscious Presence, I do not have to forgive -- I no longer have the pain and fear that produces resentment.