Learning How to Question My Thinking

I like to share about the (mostly) positive experiences that I encounter on my journey. The reason I haven't shared much lately is not that I haven't had positive experiences lately - it's that much of what I've been experiencing has been difficult to put into words. Something happened today, however, that was a real 'aha' moment for me, and I can very clearly see the hand of Spirit working in my life, something for which I have been praying lately. So here we go:

I have been living in sober living in Prescott Valley since February 8, 2020. Part of living here is paying the rent, which requires, in most cases, getting a job and earning money. It sounds fairly simple when I write it down in black and white! However, I found a bunch of obstacles to me gaining employment - lack of my own phone, lack of reliable transportation, lack of decent clothing, etc. But the real obstacle was my thinking, which was heavily influenced by a still-depressed mood. Put very simply, I wasn't feeling working, ya know? I really had trouble expressing what I felt to others, and I was often dishonest when asked how my job search was going. I had a lot of irrational reasons (fears) why I didn't want to venture into the job market. Once my rent bill would have hit $1000, I'd be asked to leave and be on the streets. A few events stayed my sentence of homelessness - I was offered a position by the owners of this house to wave a sign in front of their other business in exchange for rent credit; I filed my tax returns and received a good refund; our pandemic crisis occurred and I received a stimulus check, with which I bought a bicycle.

Somewhere along the line my mood and disposition improved and my fears lessened enough for me to stick a toe into the cold, scary waters of the job market. I had received notice that one of those dollar-discount stores in the area was hiring. I had applied to one of them a couple of months ago, but I don't think I passed their stupid pre-employment screenings about whether or not I'd snitch on errant co-workers. So I applied at another store online, and I thought I was applying at the one that is next door to the supermarket I frequent, because these stores all have 'dollar' in their name. 

Today I got a callback from one of the stores, and I set up an interview for tomorrow. Yay! I got my foot in the door! I called my sponsor and let him know, and I told him the name of the store. He said, "Oh yeah, that's over by Home Depot," I said, "No, I think it's by Safeway." And we left it at that. But, I got to wondering, was I wrong? I looked it up, and, sure enough, I was wrong - I applied to the one next to Home Depot, not the one next to Safeway. I of course let my sponsor know he was correct.

So how does this turn into a spiritual moment? Well, I've heard a couple of things regarding that - one is that anytime we go against our egoic (fear-based) thinking, that's spiritual. The other is that any time an alcoholic questions his own thinking, that's a spiritual experience. I thought about where I'd be tomorrow if I didn't verify my destination - at the wrong store looking confused. Worse, there's a good possibility that I would have used that mistake against myself, and lost any confidence I might have gained lately. Such is the nature of early recovery that we don't get over our own mistakes in sobriety right now as well as we will in the future.

So this is another save - an instance where I did the right thing (checked out my own thinking) and saved myself some trouble. But I can't take full credit! For the past few weeks I have been earnestly working the spiritual part of my recovery program that includes prayer and meditation. Skillful prayer and meditation opens the consciousness - it's that simple. There's a lot of progress when someone in recovery begins living in the solution rather than the problem, and I had been living in the problem - relying on my own thinking the majority of the time. That type of living makes life more difficult than it already is. When I begin practicing openness or openmindedness, and when I start practicing trust and willingness, all sorts of doors start opening up, and I'm grateful for that Truth. 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6, NKJV)

Namasté, 

Ken

Morning Manifesto 1/10

Thank You Source for another day to move closer to a true realization of my Oneness with You. As I move through this day, I commit to be of service to You and my fellows here on Earth. Thank You for granting me all I need and more to do Your will today.

As I move through today, show me what I need to do for myself to make me of maximum service to You and others. Grant me the courage to put You and me first - to treat my body and mind as a temple, and to nourish my Spirit with prayer and meditation. Show me how to be strong and steadfast in Your service.

Remind me today to look past appearances, and, like Mother Teresa, to look for you in all who come into my presence and my consciousness, knowing that You really are there. Also, teach me today what a precious bit of Creation I really am, despite what my brain might say to me. Let me grow this day into the realization that I am Your Beloved, and guide me every moment toward this realization.

I trust in You with all my heart, and lean not on my own understanding. I acknowledge You in all situations, knowing you guide me on my path. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Today, through Your Love, strength, courage, and wisdom, I, like Winston Churchill, will never, never, never give up!

And so it is!

Namasté,

Ken

11 Signs of Enlightenment

Thanks to Source working through Facebook, I ran across a blog post by Matthew Ferry, and I liked his material so much that I posted a link to his blog on my links page. (By the way, check out my links page sometime). Matthew posted his 11 signs of enlightenment, and I've posted them below - slightly revised: He wrote it in third person, and I changed it to first person so that it becomes an affirmation. Another 'by the way': I will contact him and ask him permission to publish this.

Here are 11 tell-tale signs you are experiencing enlightenment in day-to-day life (revised): credit https://blog.matthewferry.com/11-tell-tale-signs-experiencing-enlightenment-day-day-life/

• I am happy because I exist and it is my natural state. Circumstances are no longer the source of my happiness.
• I am at peace with the way things are and eager for whatever is next.
• I have begun to see that people are innately innocent and that their selfish actions are a natural result of survival programming.
• I acknowledge that we are all just doing the best we can in a world that is mysterious and challenging.
• I am inexplicably driven to forgive everyone for everything.
• I take steps to release the illusion that I can control anything.
• I experience the freedom of knowing that my opinion and perspective are not important, valuable, or needed and the world goes on with or without my commentary, opinion, insights, observations, or point of view.
• I am beginning to acknowledge that the world is an expression of my perspective and programs developed through familial, cultural, religious and geographical influences that I had no choice in.
• I am starting to see that the only thing I am against is my perspective about what I am experiencing in the world.
• I [am starting] to lose my urgency. Nothing feels very important. I feel compelled to do the things that I enjoy.
• My stress begins to disappear. When it returns, I might find it interesting rather than urgent and distracting.

Thank you Matthew. As I've written before, my recovery began the moment I was truly done with living life as I knew it. Now, at that point, one either changes or one dies. I'm grateful that I began to change. I'm grateful today for my wholesale dissatisfaction with life as I used to see it, and I'm grateful to be moving into a perspective that works for me. 

The very neat thing about these 11 Signs is that I can use them as a guide to note my progress. There is nothing listed above that's about perfection, and nobody on the Earth plane lives in perfection. We embody perfection, but we don't live perfectly. Enlightenment, to me, is simply learning to live life from the inside out - to endeavor each moment to live from the perfection that resides within, rather than reacting to the circumstances that surround me (which are really only the result of me and others living imperfectly).

My path toward Enlightenment consists of mindfulness, meditation, prayer, and practice - I practice being how I want to show up today. Because of this, I no longer have much use for protecting myself (my ego) nor worrying about if I'm going to get what I need. I know that I am already abundantly equipped to make this journey. 

I used to live each day with the goal of just getting through the day - surviving without too much hurt, or, if I was hurt, blocking the pain with alcohol, drugs, and other addictive behavior. It is a depressing way to live. Today my purpose is to enjoy life and to be a blessing to those around me. It's not always easy, but it's a lot simpler than reacting to circumstances. 

I am grateful today for the privilege of being on this journey.

Namasté,

Ken

Prayer: An Inside Job

Prayer is an important part of my recovery, and an important part of recovery for a lot of people. I have learned that prayer doesn't change God's mind, it changes mine. Prayer is really about endeavoring to align my will with God's will for me. 

I don't write much about prayer - believe it or not, it's a little too personal for me to write much about publicly. Prayer comes from the deepest part of me, and the way I pray and the content of my prayers is unique to me. I know a lot of prayers from different faith traditions, and I'll usually run with one set of prayers for awhile, and then move on to another set, and so forth. Sometimes I really get into the Psalms from the Hebrew Bible, and then I'll ignore them for awhile.  I pray for others' highest good, and it aligns my thinking into looking for their highest good. For instance, say there is someone I know whom I don't hold in very high regard; if I pray for that person's highest good, it causes me to look for it in them, and that can help bring it out. If I don't, then that person just remains a schmuck in my mind, and I can't do anything for them.

One of my favorite prayers, and one I've recently been practicing lately, is the Prayer of St. Francis (of Assisi). It has special meaning for me because he had PTSD (my opinion). St. Francis, before he was a saint, fought in the Crusades. In the Crusades, he had some experiences that deeply affected him. When he returned from the Crusades, he went crazy and nearly killed himself. This is when he had a religious or spiritual experience that caused him to live the life of a monk. The Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church came out of his practices and his band of followers. His story is really interesting. Following is the prayer that is attributed to him:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace - 
that where there is hatred, I may sow love;
that where there is injury, I may sow pardon [forgiveness];
that where there is doubt, I may sow faith;
that where there is despair, I may sow hope;
that where there is darkness, I may shine light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be comforted, as to comfort; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love;
For it is in self-forgetting that one finds, it is in forgiving that one is forgiven, and it is by dying to self that one awakens to eternal life. Amen

This is a wonderful prayer with which to start the day, because it prepares my mind to be a selfless healer, and it tells me what I need to be about today. But for the past couple of days I've prayed it and started crying, because I realized that I could also turn it inward. I can apply this prayer to those things which I still harbor inside that are injurious to me - remnants of shame and self-hatred, despair, doubt about who I Am, darkness, and sadness. I can use this prayer to help heal myself. 

I've been in recovery nearly three years, and it has just been the past couple of months that I've started to really enjoy living. In this post, "Why Even Bother?", which was written a little less than a year ago, I wrote about surviving without having an automatic joy for life and living. It's not that I've been unhappy this whole time and just been faking it; it is that I've had to put in a fair amount of conscious, consistent effort to stay at a level where I can function comfortably. So, I've been chugging along comfortably, but lately, I've noticed a feeling deeper inside where I'm really starting to like living for the sake of living. I feel like I could have a day where I accomplished absolutely nothing, was of service to no one, and be perfectly ok with that - to just take some time to just be here now. It's a nice change; it's nice to be just for the sake of being. It's nice to feel like being here, without necessarily having to do something to make living tolerable. Being alive is starting to feel...natural. Wow!

Motivation brings more motivation, and success breeds success. Feeling better, healthier, makes it easier to do the things that make me feel healthy. I feel my world expanding, my consciousness expanding, and I'm getting eager for more. And prayer is a big part of that. 

One person once told me, after I had been praying for them, "Your prayers are powerful." I don't think they meant my prayers; I think they meant prayers are powerful. I've known that prayer can be a powerful thing. When I was a young boy, I swallowed 3 pennies. Boy, did that hurt! I couldn't tell anyone, of course, so I prayed and asked God to relieve me of the pain, and it instantly left. I've had other occasions where prayer has been very effective, and I know it's been effective in the lives of others. But something inside - doubt, perhaps? - has caused me from time to time to stop praying, or stop believing in prayer. 

Now I'm getting excited because this recent shift is telling me that I can do more and be more than I've ever been and done before. My faith tradition tells me that I already have every quality of my Creator inside of me - it would be impossible for me to not have it (or you or anyone else) - and that my job is to do whatever needs to be done to let everything go that is not me, that is not allowing the Light within to shine brightly. And St. Francis' prayer really seems to fit that purpose, if I turn it inward. It would be a lovely thing if I had all the faith in the Universe to believe without seeing, but I don't - sometimes I need to see. That's ok today - all I need to know today is that I am loved and supported, whether I'm feeling it or not.

So, like a teenage boy with a new car, I'm eager to take this new level of faith out on the road and see what She'll do. I'll keep you posted!

Namasté,

Ken