Over the weekend, Michael and I were driving to Grand Junction, CO, to see my family, for my Mom’s birthday celebration (She turns 84 today, and my big brother, who was murdered when I was 14, would be turning 62 today! He was born on my Mom’s 22nd birthday!)
When we drive, we always listen to audio programs. We were listening to “50 spiritual classics”, by Tom Butler Bowden, in which he gives a synopsis of the 50 books which he deems most important to spiritual development. It’ was great! While we were listening, I was impressed how even the mystics present their material AS IF the way THEY attained enlightenment is the only way to do it! Even “the TAO”, presents itself as “THE” way! Well….I don’t think there is only one way, so they are doing the same thing that religiousness does! They present it as if all people have to be like Gandhi, or be like some Maharishi or other. If that were the case, and we all have to be an aesthetic in order to be “right with God”, we would all be celibate, so humanity would cease to exist!
It seems to me that process is just part of what society has had to go through in order to get where it is; It had to follow some particular subscription or other! It was part of what precipitated societal evolution, to become more highly evolved now that it was then! It caused us to ask more questions, and, thus, served us all, as we received more answers! And yet, wouldn’t it be a shame if Oprah Winfrey gave up everything in order to be an aesthetic like Gandhi? We wouldn’t have the orphanages or schools that she has built! Shame on God for being so extravagant; “He” has recently created two more Hawaiian Islands and also a brand new planet! “He” needs to become enlightened and quit all that extravagance! Ha! As if expansion and creation into a temporal world is wicked and evil! It seems to me that we are all trying to learn HOW to be able to create and expand, and some people only get far enough to feel happy if they are doing only chanting and sitting around smiling! Of course I mean no judgment by this “thinking aloud”; Gandhi served HIS mission in HIS TIME! It was very important that he be exactly the way he was; And it in no way implies that we all have to be like that in order to be evolved and god-like!
My path is my path. Your path is your path! What you need to go through in order to learn what you need to learn is exactly the right thing and the right way for YOU!
I was just “thinking aloud”…..
Also, a student asked me today if learning how to love was part of the program. This was my response to her, about her husband;
It is definitely part of the program to learn to have fulfilling LOVE RELATIONSHIPS, because you will discover that there is nothing wrong with your partner; There are only OUR responses that don’t serve us! When we realize that our responses to everything are based on our JUDGMENT, and that is the opposite of LOVE, Then we can lay down our judgments, and extend LOVE instead! We have to see that before we can be upset by anything, we must have judged it as somehow being “BAD”.
If we lay down thinking that any experience is “BAD”, then we can see that it is all just a part of how we learn, and grow, by discovery! Nothing, ever, is “BAD”!
Then, you will each start loving each other again, because you will no longer think the other person has to be like you want them to be before you can actually LOVE! In fact, if you are thinking they have to be a certain way before YOU can be happy, then you are NOT LOVING at all! You are being selfish and demanding, then, not loving.
In point of actual fact, Love never even has to be returned to us from any outside source, in order for us to feel fulfilled; Love, itself, is it’s own reward! This is because LOVE is expansive, so as we are doing it (giving it), it grows inside us and fulfills us from the inside!
Please understand, that this does not imply that we MUST choose to STAY with out current partners; We still get to decide. But it will end with a feeling of sweetness
instead of judgment, that we have learned all we can learn from THIS relationship, and you will then bless it instead of hate it and curse it!
Does this make sense to you? You may need to ponder it, and we will talk more about it, no doubt…..
Happy LOVE DAY!
By Janeen Detrick
No comments yet.