Tag Archives: life

The Virtuous Way. The Spirit Way

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The Spirit Way

There is a way that is higher than the ways that prevail in our society, or for that matter, in any society that has existed throughout human history. This way is a higher, more virtuous way and the only way that goes with us beyond the grave. Truthfully, I believe it is the only way worth living.  It is the Spirit Way.

The Spirit Way

The Spirit Way says that…

I am not my body. However, I do temporarily reside in one.

I am not my job. Still, I get up and go to work.

I am not somebody’s wife, mother, sister, grandmother or friend. Yet, I carry out these roles.

I am not an artist, writer or teacher.  Nevertheless, I teach, I paint, and I write.

I am not my thoughts. I have thoughts, but I’m not my thoughts.

I’m not my emotions. I experience emotions but they are not who I am.

The Spirit Way says that…

I am loved. I am appreciated. I am valued. I am content. I am peace. I am abundant. I am spirit. I am life. I am light.

I am all of these and more because who I am, who you are, is an eternal energy being from another realm having a temporary physical experience in this finite realm that people call time, space and reality.

The Dead-End Way

But “reality” isn’t what’s real. It’s just a parenthesis in the expanse of forever, kind of like going into a pocket universe. Our reality is the small pocket in true reality.

The finite physical reality has its way. That way is based in fear and in the idea that there is lack. That way leads us to believe that we must constantly seek what we don’t have in order to be complete and know contentment. That way fosters competition, mistrust, hatred, wars, and destructions of all kinds. Eventually, it leads to a dead end and none of the physical things it accumulated, or impressions made upon others can go back into the spirit realm when we cross over.

The Spirit Way leads to Freedom

The Spirit Way, also known as the Way of Virtue, is the path to freedom. The freedom comes from knowing that nothing here is lasting and that we come from something much bigger and that we have a purpose that is beyond our temporary journey. So, we come here, to experience the physical realm.

When we transition into purely non-physical states of being, we take every important thing we picked up along this road with us. We carry all the love we gave and received the moment we cross over.

I’m remembering my dad when he was passing in and out of this reality and making his transition. On his death bed he was talking about love and how it’s the only thing that matters. The ONLY thing. That’s it. Love.

The Spirit Way is the Prerequisite to Miracles

I am a spiritual being having a physical experience and not a physical being having a spiritual experience. My existence in this world is contingent upon my spirit energy remaining in my body and animating it.

When we walk in the Spirit Way it may look strange or confusing to those who are alienated from the source of their existence or as the Bible puts it, to those who are afar off from God. In other words, they choose to do things based on the conventional wisdom of whatever age and culture they live in rather than on the timeless truth of the Spirit Way. They choose to be led by the finite understanding of fellow amnesiac travelers rather than being Spirit-led.

All of us are animated by energy and that energy is Spirit. The rules of the Spiritual Reality supersede the rules of the physical reality.  This is the perquisite to the miraculous.  The prophet Isaiah once said that God’s ways are as high above the ways of conventional wisdom as the heavens are above the earth. You can’t understand spirit things when your radio dial is set to only receive finite signals.

The Spirit Way and the manifestations it gives birth to are one and the same. As the Apostle Paul once said, we, “call those things that be not as though they were.” We understand that the world was “not made of things which do appear.”

Not by Might, Nor by Power, but by my Spirit….

So having said that, I now encourage you as I seek to encourage myself to stop trying to fix it or make things happen under your own power. Give it to God and let it go.

Follow the inspirations of the Divine Spirit, but don’t do anything because you are being urged by people or seemingly threatened by circumstances.

Surrender your ego. That means stop making it all about how you come across or about your needing something from someone. Seek God’s guidance and then trust it to be there and follow it.

Let the source of all that is, the Great I Am, untangle the knots for you and watch how beautifully everything works out.

Ships on the Sea of Life

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The Sea of Life

I’m teaching about ships this week and guiding students in drawing them. Therefore, my mind is own ships and sailing.

Just as sailors never know exactly what they will encounter when they set out on the ocean, we don’t know what we will encounter in our lives here on earth.

When the winds are right, the sailing is smooth.

If a ship’s captain did not have a destination in mind, make decisions in moments of clarity and know how to interpret the elements or know how to use his/her navigational equipment, the outcome could be devastating.

Your Ship, Your Life

Ships depended on the winds and currents for sailing.

External Forces

Forces are things outside us like storms at sea.

As you sail on your journey there are environmental forces all around you, winds, waves, currents, sharks, whales, pirates, gales, hurricanes, rain, heat, and cold. You get the picture. These forces are outside of you. They are beyond your control. They will hit your ship at times.

Effort

You can’t do anything about the external environment around your ship. You can’t control the wind, the storms, the currents or the waves, but you can lay in your course,  and you can hold true to your map and navigational instruments.
That part of your journey IS in your control. It’s the effort guided by intuitive inspiration. Remember, inspiration comes from the Latin word “inspirare” which means, breathed into.
Efforts are the things that are under your control. For example, on your boat, effort is how taut you hold the sail, whether you come about, or which side of the boat the sail is going to be on as you navigate the winds.

How we hold our rudders and stay our course is due to effort.

It’s up to you to hold the rudder a certain way so that both the currents and the winds affect your journey. It’s up to you to be attuned to the elements of the sea, signs and subtle changes.
 A good sailor knows how to optimize the direction of the wind, the flow of the currents and the aspects of his/her boat and put these things together in a way that takes him or her where they want to go.
Favorable winds are God’s grace, and they can propel us forward if we are sensitive to them and their timing.
You can live your life divinely guided, inspired and with purpose.

Set the Destination with Clarity

What do I mean when I say purpose?

 

I mean living a life that propels you to becoming the highest version of yourself, a life that fills you with inner peace, contentment, and joy, that allows you to use your unique skills, talents, vision, and voice to impact the world around you in a positive way. For each person this will be different.

 

You have to decide what kind of person you want to be. What do you want your life to be about? Your guidance system? When you set your course, do it in moments of clarity. When there is confusion and turmoil, don’t lay in a course.

Old time sailors used to set their courses by the stars. If you don’t have a guiding star, a pole star, you will not be able to keep your course. You will be blown off every time the wind changes directions.

 

 

In life, it’s the same way. If you have no idea what your guidelines are, the kind of life you want to live, where your boundaries lie, or the kind of person you want to be, there’s a good chance that the winds are going to blow you all over the place and that pirates, thieves from other ships, are going to overrun your life, hijack you and take you places you never really wanted to go. Then one day you wake up in a holding cell on somebody else’s ship.

If You Don’t Set Your Intentions, Someone Else Will Call the Shots for Your Life

 

So, if the clarity is not there, wait it out. Just do the best you can with the understanding that you have. When you seek clarity, even if you’re standing still, you’re still moving in the right direction because you’re not going off course.

 

 

There will come times when new clarity comes to you and helps you make course adjustments and hone your direction. That’s fine. It’s okay to change course in the light of clearer understanding.

 

 

There will come times when other people may want you to make a quick decision that has a big impact on your life. If you’re not clear on it, if you don’t have peace about it, it’s okay to just wait. Remember, their boat is not your boat, and you are only responsible for your boat. Your purpose in life is not to make everyone else happy.

 

 

That’s an impossibility. Because happiness can only come from within and since you are an external force in their lives, you have no control over their ships and they have no control over yours, unless you surrender it. If you surrender your ship to invaders, even benevolent ones, you will never reach your destination and become the self-actualized version of yourself.

 

 

So, seek clarity and once you find it, plot your destination, set your intention, make adjustments in light of new clarity, stay the course and sail toward your purpose, your calling.

https://youtu.be/QAue4_TbvLE?si=nOBkXnus6di0vG4k

 

 

 

 

Lessons from Squirrels

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Learning from squirrels.

I am thinking about the little squirrels that live in my yard. Each autumn I watch them store up food for the coming winter. They store food for one year at a time, not ten years at a time. I once heard a minister say that to constantly try to “keep” everything was to have a poverty mentality, some fear that you might need it someday and therefore, it was to say that you don’t believe I Am is enough. But I Am is El Shaddai, more than enough.

Thoughts from the Tao Te Ching:

Putting a value on status will create contentiousness.

If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal.

By not displaying what is desirable, you will

cause the people’s hearts to remain undisturbed. The sage governs by emptying minds and hearts,

by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.

Practice not doing. . . .

When action is pure and selfless, everything settles into its own perfect place.

Dyer, Wayne W.. Living the Wisdom of the Tao (p. 9). Hay House. Kindle Edition.

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WHAT JESUS HAD TO SAY ABOUT IT:

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

King James Version

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Placing too much value on status really does create contention. When you exalt someone because they are pretty or born wealthy or famous or smart, you immediately stir up strife, especially if you undervalue the people who are there for you every day, making life happen.

Virtue. Restraint. Integrity. 

Those words seem to have fallen out of favor in our mainstream culture, at least here in America. I love my country so don’t take this the wrong way, but we are an abundantly blessed nation, and we are an abundantly WASTEFUL nation. We have sheds, storage units, houses and garages filled with clothes we never wear, purses we never carry, shoes we never walk in, furniture we never sit on, dishes we never eat out of, toys our kids never play with and books we never read.

LIVE abundantly, not hoard abundantly.

I believe in abundance. I believe we are meant to have all that we need and want in this life, but abundance is not equivalent to waste. There’s a story in the New Testament where Jesus talks about a man who had immense wealth and instead of using his excess for good, he just decided to build more barns to house all his belongings, then he died and took nothing with him. The whole point in having belongings is LIVE abundantly, not hoard abundantly. Live is an action word.

The first shall be last.

I notice that the Tao Te Ching talks about not showing off one’s stuff and not pushing to get ahead. This goes so against the way our society has been set up through the years. We’re taught to work hard and push our way to the top, but what if the top is really the bottom? Jesus talked about how when a person comes in and seeks to have the seat of honor that he will be removed and the seat given to another. What if trying to be “first” became unimportant to us?

I teach and inevitably every time the kids line up to go anywhere there’s that one kid (sometimes more) that will run and push to be first. I always send that kid to the back of the line, pick some child who simply lined up and put that one at the head of the line and then I’ll say, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” The kid who pushed and tried to be first will always say, “What does that mean?” I simply smile and say, “You think about it and figure that out.” Maybe, the answer is found in the idea that he who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. So, whatever we do, if it comes from a place of pure selflessness, it is God’s way and that therefore, it will work out just as it should.