What is love?

"Jim, will you examine for me (out loud) what love is? There are so many quotes and verses on love, and I would just like to hear from you about what your life has shown you on what love is. No hurry. Thanks so much for your insights."

-- text message question from a friend

So, K.F., "what love is." Hmmm... That really is a BIG question. I cannot possibly get it right, but you didn't ask me to; you asked me to examine it out loud. Here are my brief but very deep musings on the subject, from experiences of my life, especially over the last year, as I've been dropping deeper and deeper into this beautiful, yet daunting inquiry:

I have discovered love to be the natural expression of and response to knowing who and Whose we are, because in so deeply knowing this, we are clearly accepted exactly as we are, in all of our aspects and states, adored way beyond our mental comprehension, treated as precious in ways that totally defy description, but that keep us so exuberantly and so warmly wrapped in Mystery by His Majesty. Exploded by and then totally sourced by this overwhelming love, there is no effort in or performance involved in the loving of another - it simply flows through and pours out of us. With this clarity, we get to naturally overflow into a rich experience of "being" this love. When we're totally aware of our connection to God, the object of our love feels that awareness and is instantly appreciative; when we're not and we lose our connection, the other wonders where we've gone. It's our connection to Truth that's gone, not us. This connected place is a place that needs no words; it is a "state of being" that feeds and nourishes its entire surroundings without even really trying.

From August of this year, having written on the subject often throughout 2009:

"Many have asked me about the nature of the love they feel they receive from me when my connection to God is clear. They want to more deeply know it, and they'd like to more fully receive it, even while sometimes trying to possess it more exclusively for themselves, but they can't because it isn't mine or theirs to possess. I simply follow my Master, receiving Him completely and then giving what He's given me so generously - expanding, healing, and transcending my fear-based self as His love flows through me. What do I mean by this? Simple. As human beings, we try to love, so as to receive love, but therein lies the problem - we try and fail and resent the person we're trying to love for our own failure and their refusal to give back, when the only problem is that we are drawing from (and trying to receive from) the wrong (and severely limited) source. It is very clear when this is happening - you can usually hear the competition for oxygen in the room. There is only One Source of true and reliable love, and we all have equal access to it and equal opportunity to be a human conduit through which it can flow. We often forget, and then we can remember. It isn't about us and our loving ability at all; it is about our choice of remembering."

-- Yours Truly

And from March of this year, via another point of view - one that I happen to respect and share deeply:

"What, then, is love? Because it must be experienced in order to be meaningful, I can't define it for you except to say that it is the total absence of fear in the recognition of complete union with all of life. We truly love another when we see that our interests are not different or separate from theirs. This is always a union of higher minds and hearts based on loving intentions and never a forced or coincidental alliance of egos based on physical attraction or emotional neediness.

It isn't possible to evaluate or prove the existence of love in the usual ways. However, the fact that we are not able to 'measure' it does not make it less real. We have all had glimpses of pure, unconditional love, and there is unquestionably a part of us that knows it exists. We become aware of love whenever we choose to accept people without judging them and commence the gentle, peaceful effort of giving without any thought of getting something we think we need in return. This means, for example, that true love is not giving in order to change another's attitude from one of cold harshness to one of gentle lightheartedness or from ingratitude to one of total thanks to us. True love is a completely pure and unencumbered form of giving. It is extended freely to the love in others and is its own reward.

The word 'love,' as we generally and very loosely use it in our society, means something quite different from 'real love' as I am describing it here. The more common thing we experience is very 'conditional' love -- in other words, giving in order to get something back. It is a bargain - a trade agreement or carefully (and very suspiciously) negotiated arrangement. This is often fairly obvious in romantic relationships in which each partner is giving with the expectation that it will be returned in the very specific form that is desired. Conditional love is also what passes for kindness in most parent/child relationships. Here, the extension of love is contingent upon approved behavior and attitudes. Parents frequently seek an affirmation of their own worth through the accomplishments and behaviors of their child and through 'payments' of their full compliance and visible respect. Children often love their parents only when they get what they think they want, whether this be a new possession or approval and praise. Such love is neither dependable nor permanent, and its temporary nature causes us to carry the underlying fear that we are about to be abandoned into our adult lives.

When we are giving true love, our concern is not with our own or anyone else's 'behaviors' or with reciprocity of attempted goodness. We feel natural and unrestricted because we recognize that love is our naturally flowing state. We are not aware of any lack or limitations. We don't question the possibility of devotion, and we are not preoccupied with time. We are only conscious of now and all of the opportunity and richness that it contains. When we are extending love, we are free and at peace.

We all say that we want to have less conflict, fear, stress, and depression in our lives. And deep within our hearts we do really want this to be so. But on the level from which we function most of the time, we rarely can choose peace over conflict and happiness over fear because of the sacrifices we believe these choices must entail. We also believe that there is satisfaction in revenge, that we can be right (and good, and happy) by proving someone else wrong (and bad, and miserable), that to humble someone who is being difficult will give us 'a little peace and quiet' (and maybe even a little sweet retribution). We've truly lost our minds (and become totally out of touch with our hearts) when it seems logical to us to be stern with our children in order to teach them gentleness, when we think that there are people who deserve to lose because of their bad behavior and that the pain they receive is just and appropriate, when we try to increase love with one person by callously excluding another or others, when we mistake guilt and obligation for attraction, when we believe that pain can be pleasurable and that taking is getting. Then we are stunned and puzzled and very frustrated as to why this approach to life does not bring us good health and peace, and yet we see no reason to change our basic beliefs.

It is obvious that we need an experience which will bring clarity to our minds. The experience we all need more of is real love. In order to move more deeply into an atmosphere of genuine love, we must identify less with the 'body' and more with our love-related 'emotions' and 'spirit.' These are the set of feelings and awareness that speak to us of what has always been within us, but what our shabby ego/intellectual self-image has not allowed us to fully see. To recognize it we have to bring it forth boldly, for only by boldly extending what is good in us can we know and believe in the good within us, and that we ourselves are truly good. However, to 'bring it out' does not always mean to 'act it out,' but rather to bring it actively into our hearts and minds as belief and then to choose actions and attitudes consistent with it.

A preoccupation with the body and its pre-wired attitudes, behaviors, feelings, needy thoughts, and obsession with their short-term gratification does not allow real love to flood our mood, because the body is merely what is different and separate, needing something that is often 'at the expense of' another. In order to love, we must recognize what is the same within us, that which reunites us with a flood of shared emotion."

-- Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., in Teach Only Love


We started a new Love Machine yesterday at Taft, and I felt this flood of shared emotion among its participants, this stunning sameness in the recognition of the human condition, this bold reuniting around the commitment to remembering who and Whose we are under all circumstances. It was a reminder of what real love feels like, buried in the avalanche of human pain and suffering. It fuels me for today, to remember who and Whose I am, and to allow for that awareness to flow naturally, rather than try to manage or succeed at it with my family. I can be a real pain in the ass when I try to get some attention for me and my feeble humanity, especially when my "need" for it seems to be spiking, when I'm feeling sorry for myself, or when Im trying to manipulate others so that these needs get met or at least not trampled on. It never goes well when it's about me or when my effort comes from me. I have a very honest wife and children as my mirrors. They spot my feeble trying and my selfish nonsense in an instant. So I get to practice again, and today's a new day, and it's not about my renewed efforts toward them, but about the remembering, receiving, and allowing from Him.

In each moment, start with YES, and end with THANK YOU!

"We see what we are ready to see, what we expect to see, and even, strangely, what we desire to see. There is some kind of mutual influence between subject and object, says the Heisenberg Principle - so much so that researchers in the medical world have to use placebos and 'double blinds' to guarantee the results of their studies, and this is true equally among educated and uneducated subjects. Who would have thought the effect was so profound? Some who do not expect to get sick, don't; and some who do, do! Thus, you must never start with the negative or begin with an attitude of 'no.' If you start with no, you usually get some form of no back. If you start with yes, you are much more likely to get a yes back. It could be called Nonviolence Class 101.

Once you have learned to say a fundamental yes, later no's can be helpful and even necessary: without them, you have no protected boundaries or identity. Our modern world has coined a word for people who cannot say no: 'co-dependents.' No one ever taught them how and when to protect themselves with a necessary no, and that a no can be just as sacred as a yes. The value of no was in fact probably the import of so much teaching about the 'avoidance of sin.' Learning to say no to yourself gives you a sense of boundary and identity in the first half of life, but too many people make it an end in itself and then, by the second half of life, became highly judgmental. Such forms of religion end up obsessed with purity codes rather than compassion, justice, and a clean heart born of fire.

Never underestimate the absolute importance - and the difficulty - of starting each encounter with a primal 'YES!' to what God is so obviously doing (and we don't have to fully understand it yet). Isn't this what we consistently see in great souls and those who make a real and lasting difference? To start each encounter with a distrusting, guarded, suspicious 'no' is largely what it means to be unconscious or unaware. You eventually become so defended that you cannot love or see well or appreciate much, and so defensive that you cannot ever change. This is a form of blindness that often passes for intelligence, prudence, or even 'good judgment' in some circles. Negating personalities often 'hide behind the thickets of the law' or the rules of conventional wisdom. For some unfortunate reason, complaining, rejecting, or fearing something strengthens your sense of ego and makes you feel like you are important and powerful. But in actuality you contract back into your small and guarded 'false self,' and from there, unfortunately, it becomes harder and harder to re-emerge."

-- Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now

"Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit. ... If you real desire is to be and do and experience good, there is no need to wait for the right circumstances or feelings before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are. ... Man is made or unmade by himself in every moment. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation. ... The man who sows wrong thoughts and deeds and prays that God will bless him is in the position of a farmer who, having sown tares, asks God to bring forth for him a harvest of wheat. ... As the physically weak man can make himself stronger by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts and unruly circumstances can make them stronger and more congenial by exercising himself in right thinking, by simply choosing correctly, no matter what. It is all perfectly designed, and no duty is more urgent than that of seeing this and remembering to give thanks."

-- James Allen, in As A Man Thinketh

Yesterday was a day that elicited strong feelings once again for this new book I'm reading, The Naked Now, as well as memories of one of my favorite old classics, As A Man Thinketh. I referred and suggested both often yesterday, and offer brief samplings here, on the subject of choosing your beliefs, based on what you KNOW is God's design, thereby aligning yourself with divine wisdom and generating right perceptions, right feelings, right actions, AND right results, by definition. Remember God's conversation with Mack in The Shack as Sarayu:

"'I am afraid of emotions,' Mack admitted, a bit perturbed that she seemed to make light of it. 'I don't like how they feel. I've hurt others with them, and I can't trust them at all, it seems. Did you create all of them or only the good ones?'

'Mackenzie.' Sarayu seemed to rise up into the air. He still had a difficult time looking right at her, but with the late afternoon sun reflecting off the water, it was even worse now. 'Emotions are the colors of the soul, its very language; they are all spectacular and incredible. When you don't feel, the world becomes dull and colorless. Just think how The Great Sadness (his 4-year 'stuck' response to his daughter's death, which is only shrinking his own life) reduced the range of color in your life down to monotones and flat grays and blacks.'

'So help me understand them,' pleaded Mack.

'Not much to understand, actually. They just are. They are neither bad nor good; they just exist. Here is something that will help you sort this out in your mind, Mackenzie. Paradigms power perceptions and perceptions power emotions. Most actions are responses to emotions just as most emotions are simply responses to perceptions - what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false or based on falsehood, then your emotional response to it will be false and misleading too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that keep checking the truthfulness of your paradigms - what you believe about yourself, other people, and the world. The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly, vs. distract or impede you. But even then, you don't ever want to trust them more than you trust me.'"

-- William P. Young, in The Shack

Remember, L.C., if you're not "feeling" valued, basing it on a "perception" of what someone else did or said, or didn't do or say, then you know you are believing and living in a "false paradigm" that has flowed downhill to your feelings. It's that simple, because the clear TRUTH (and you KNOW this) is that you are ADORED by your Creator and Perfect Father, who is the only trustworthy mirror. Getting reminded of the right paradigm will shift your perception of what occurred which will alter the feelings associated with it, and voila! ... transformation. And yes, it is that simple.

On being a mystic - it takes being present

"Now do not let the word 'mystic' scare you off. It simply means one who has moved from mere beliefs or belonging systems to actual inner experience. All spiritual traditions agree that such a movement is possible, desirable, and available to everyone. In fact, Jesus seems to say that this is the whole point! (See, for example, John 10:19-38.)

Some call this movement conversion, some call it enlightenment, some transformation, and some holiness. It is Paul's 'third heaven,' where he 'heard things that must not and cannot be put into human language' (2 Corinthians 12:2,4). Consciously or not, far too much organized religion has a vested interest in keeping you in the first or second heaven, where all can be put into proper language and deemed certain. This keeps you coming back to church, and it keeps us clergy in business.

This is not usually the result of ill will on anyone's part; it's just that you can lead people only as far as you yourself have gone that way. As we will see later, transformed people transform people through the way they live. From the way they talk so glibly about what is always Mystery, it's clear that many clergy have never enjoyed the third heaven themselves, and they cannot teach what they have not actually experienced. Theological training without spiritual experience is deadly. We are ready to see and taste the full sunrise now and no longer need to prove it or even describe it."

-- Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now

"Martha, Martha, you worry about the the thousand things. So few are needed, indeed only one."

-- paraphrase of Luke 10:42

"These well-known words come from Jesus to his dear friend, Martha. He is the house guest of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Martha is doing the reasonable, hospitable thing, the one expected of her gender - rushing around, fixing, preparing, and as the text brilliantly says, 'distracted with all the serving.'

Martha was everything good and right, but one thing she was not. She was not present - most likely, not present to herself, her own feelings of resentment, perhaps her own martyr complex, her need to be needed. This is the kind of goodness that does no good! If she was not present to herself, she could not be truly present to her guests in any healing way, and, spiritually speaking, she could not be present to God. Presence is presence is presence. How you do it is how you do everything. Jesus challenged her at the daily, ordinary, human level because that would reflect her same pattern at the divine level. For her, this was indeed 'the one thing necessary.' So much of religion involves teaching people this and that, an accumulation of facts and imperatives that is somehow supposed to add up to salvation. The great teachers now that one major change is needed: how we be in the present moment. Then all the this-and-thats will fall into line naturally. This is true! This is so important that Jesus was willing to challenge and upset his hostess and make use of a teachable moment.

Jesus affirms Mary precisely in this way: how she is being in the moment. She knows how to be present with him and, presumably, to herself. She understands the one thing that makes all other things happen at a deeper and healing level.

What is true for Mary and Martha is true for us as well. 'Only one thing is necessary,' Jesus says. If you are present, you will eventually and always experience the Presence. It is so simple, and so hard to teach. To people who have never experienced it, it can even sound like a cheap affirmation. I urge the Martha in all of us: please don't make that mistake."

-- Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now



With this passage and this message, Jesus was not saying that our learning, organizing, preparing, and studying work is not important. He was not saying it is wrong to be diligent about our human, worldly responsibilities. Christ was saying we should get out priorities right. We are expected to fulfill our spiritual responsibilities first, which include presence in each moment to what matters most, and to let our mental and physical work flow naturally from that presence with God.

Oh Henri!

Obviously, I just can't get enough of what this guy has to say - it just totally resonates with my soul.

"Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love."

"Sometimes I think of life as a big wagon wheel with many spokes. In the middle is the hub. Often in ministry, it looks like we are running around the rim trying to reach everybody. But God says, 'Start in the hub; live in the hub. Then you will be connected with all the spokes, and you won't have to run so far or so fast.'"

"We seldom realize that we are sent to fulfill God-given tasks. We act as if we were simply dropped down in creation and have to decide to entertain or endure ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do."

"You are confronted again and again with the choice of letting God speak or letting your weary wounded self cry out. Although there has to be a place where you can allow your wounded part to get the attention it so desperately needs, your commitment and vocation is to speak from the place in you where God dwells and resolves everything."

"When we are spiritually free, we do not have to worry about what to say or do in unexpected, difficult circumstances. When we are not concerned about what others think of us or what we will get for what we do, the right words and actions will emerge from the centre of our beings because the Spirit of God, who makes us children of God and sets us free, will speak and act through us."

"Gratitude... goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy."

"Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my mind's eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly."

-- all of the above from Henri J. M. Nouwen

I love what I am learning about friendship, and it is so much more than I ever knew.

I love that I don't have to work at it, but instead can allow it to connect and flow from the hub.

I love that I am so totally clear about what I have been sent here to do, and am so well supported in doing it.

I love that I have safe places to cry out my pain and unresolvedness, but I love even more that I have a God Who is real.

I love the spiritual freedom He has delivered me to, and that I need not concern myself with such petty things as audience size, fame, rank, reputation, status, etc.

I love that I can be thankful for everything, not only for the things that are obviously beneficial and good, but that I am also able to examine everything through His lens and eventually find the goodness in all things.

I love that I can choose to "be" thankful even when I "feel" angry, judgmental, even vengeful - that my feelings are very important, but that they are not the end of the story. Through Him, I get to choose the victorious end of every story.

And I love you, Henri, for capturing and living my heart so powerfully, decades before me, lighting my path for Him.

When I like a book ...

... it's because I see myself in it. And God, do I see myself in The Naked Now, by Richard Rohr. And I have actually had several vivid experiences of that which is described so beautifully below in my late 30's and several times over the dramatic and hectic delivery into my 40's, and I've never really looked back until now, when these words made it so poignant, positive, powerful, and purposeful to do so. What a deliriously joyful distant memory and current reality.

"If you surrender to the fear of uncertainty, life can become a set of insurance policies. Your short time on this earth becomes small and self-protective, a kind of circling of the wagons around what you can be sure of and what you think you can control - even God. It provides you with the illusion that you are in the driver's seat, navigating on safe, small roads, and usually in a single, predetermined direction that can take you only where you have already been.

For far too many people in a first category, no perilous life journey is desired or necessary because they already think they have all their answers at the beginning, because, after all, 'the church says, ... the Bible says, etc.'

A second group tries a different approach. They choose to whistel in the dark, look the other way, or just keep busy - seeking various ways of being important, or as Jesus put it, trying to 'build bigger barns.' For them, life becomes a series of manufactured dramas, entertainment, or diversionary tactics intended to help them avoid the more substantial questions. Here, what some call intensity is frequently an avoidance of what I will call presence - intimacy with ourselves, with life, and with others. This avoidance is symbolized by what we call the consumer culture, which in our current economic situation appears to be falling apart.

This group also represents a large percentage of humanity, especially in the developed world. Governments encourage this pacification by distraction, what used to be called 'bread and circuses.' They know it will keep us small, content, manageable, and uninterested in 'weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith' (Matthew 23:23) that have attracted all great souls.

A third group does seek various forms of transcendence and spirituality, but in a mixture of mature and immature ways. One major theme in this book is that, unfortunately, so much religious seeking today is a rabid pursuit of immature transcendence, dualistically split off from any direct experience of union with God, self, or others - what Owen Barfield would have called 'the desert of nonparticipation.'

If it is authentically experienced, Christianity is the overcoming of the split from God's side once and for all! Sadly, most remain split inside of a heady set of formulas and religious jargon, a place where deep constant hope cannot be found - to say nothing of joy. We need to leave the desert for a much better land, a 'final participation' that can be partially enjoyed now, and then fully for all time.

Mature transcendence is an actual 'falling into' and an 'undergoing of' God, as James Alison so brilliantly names it. God is literally 'done unto us,' and all we can do is allow it, as both the similar prayers of Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane make clear. What we actually fall into is what Christianity would call both 'an abyss' and an 'utter foundation.' What a crazy paradox! But in God, they are not opposites.

When we do 'get there,' we almost wonder how we got there. We know we did not do anything nearly as much as we know we were done unto. We are both being utterly and warmly held as well as falling helplessly into a scary mystery at the very same time - caught between profound desire and the fearful question, 'Where is this going to take me?' It has been said many times that, after transformation, you seldom have the feeling you have found anything. It feels much more like Someone found you!

You find yourself having been grabbed, being held, and being Someone's beloved. At first, you do not even know what is going on or what is happening to you. All you know is that it is a most wondrous undergoing, but an undergoing nevertheless. You know you have been 'had' (see Jeremiah20:7-9 or Isaiah 6:4-7). You are in Someone Else's grip and embrace. How else will anybody ever freely and rightly give up control of their lives? They just won't. They'll even use religion itself as a disguised way of taking control, like trying to control God by their right religious words, gestures, or behavior.

Finally, if you allow yourself to stand before the One mirror for your identity - you surrender to the naked now of true prayer and full presence. You become a Thou before the great I AM. Such ultimate mirroring gives you the courage to leave all other mirrors behind you. 'Human approval means nothing to me,' Jesus said. 'Why do you waste your time looking to one another for approval when you have the approval and love that comes from the One God?' (John 5:41-44). Henceforward, as Teresa of Avila said, 'You find God in yourself and yourself in God,' a discovery that precedes, outdoes, and undercuts all of the best psychology in the world. Think of the thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours you can save in therapy and self-improvement!

Most people in our whimsical culture live in a hall of mirrors, and so we find ourselves with fragil and rapidly changing identities, needing a lot of affirmation. we see this especially in so many young people. Their identities are built on feelings, moods, and ideas that are easily manipulated by everything around them, including advertising and its selling of superficial images, including even by the church. You have been given something so much better, so much more joyful and reliable and substantial than that! Divine presence, and the faith, hope, and love that accompany it, are a gift - you cannot control or secure it - but nevertheless a gift that can and should be asked for (Luke 11:13). Asking for something from God does not mean talking God into it; it means an awakening of the gift already within ourselves. You only ask for something you have already begun to taste! The gift has already been given. Most people, quite sadly and with disastrous consequences, do not know that the gift is already theirs, without them needing to do anything to earn it."

-- Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now

To taste the sweetness, you must risk yourself.

"There is a difference between believing (or hoping) that God is holy and gracious, and having a deep sensory experience in the depths of your soul of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. The difference between believing that God is gracious and actually tasting that God is gracious is as different as having a rational intellectual belief that honey is sweet and having an extravagant experience of its sweetness as it covers your tongue and drips down your throat."

-- Jonathan Edwards

"The Bible insists on using experiential and sensory language about redemption, resurrection, and salvation. It calls us to 'taste and see' that God is good, not only to agree with the idea and try to believe it."

-- Timothy Keller

And how do you get to taste and see that sweetness and brilliance vs. merely believe in it, dream about it, hope for it? You must totally risk yourself. You must trust Him and the Void - that vast unknowable - more than you trust yourself. This is obviously why so many don't get to actually experience Him - they want Him to come to them right in the midst of their fearful and needy (and yet so strange) know-it-all-ness and right and rigid self-protection, not realizing that He has given them both the ability and the permission to protect themselves from Him, and it is THAT which must be let go of.

"Live. And if you live, God will live with you. You are protected, to be sure. But if you don’t take outrageous risks (where it's clear to you that you need Him), God will seem to retreat and become only a subject of philosophical speculation ... Everyone knows this, but few can actually take that first bold step, perhaps for fear of being called insane."

-- Paulo Coelho, in Veronika Decides to Die

"And one of the greatest risks is total honesty, and no one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into the eyes (and soul) of another (especially a child)."

-- Paulo Coelho



"It is living in the totally naked NOW, the 'sacrament of the present moment,' looking it straight in the eye (like into the eyes of a child), that will teach us how to actually experience our experiences - whether good, bad, or ugly - and how to let them transform us from moment to moment. Words by themselves will invariably divide the moment; pure presence lets it be what it is, as it is, and our whole future depends on learning this. When you can risk being fully present, you will know the only Real Presence. I promise this is true. And it is almost that simple."

-- Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now

How you'll know what you're focused on - simply notice what you notice

"The Light that is Jesus obliterates darkness without effort or strain; if you find yourself frustrated and either harshly 'cursing' or stressfully 'trying to fix' the darkness, then you have lost your way and have become part of it."

-- Yours Truly

It's important to remember who we're really dealing with here, what's really and readily available, what he's already done on our behalf. If we think we're dealing with a bad person or a dangerous situation "out there," and we're caught up in darkness and melodrama, and it's something we feel that we personally have to fix (or make sure gets fixed) or else, then we've totally forgotten who is ready and willing to indwell us right "in here," and have, in fact, become quite dangerous to others ourselves. Remember, and please ponder this prayerfully, when light enters darkness, darkness shudders and then simply ceases to exist. There is no effort or stressful trying required. The light doesn't ever have to focus itself on the darkness; it doesn't have to do battle or struggle or work at it; it simply need "be" for darkness to instantly evaporate.


From Matthew 6 in The Message:

14-15"In prayer there is a direct connection between what God does and what you do. You can't get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, with all that you are, you cut yourself off from God's part, and all that He is.

22-23"Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and frustration and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!"


From 1 John 1 in The Message:

5This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there's not a trace of darkness in Him.

6-7If we claim that we experience a shared life with Him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we're obviously lying through our teeth—we're not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God Himself being the light, we also experience a brilliant shared life with one another...


What we are observing reveals what we are believing and emanating. Light reveals light. Darkness reveals darkness. Notice what you notice, ... and, if you have since genuinely and sincerely inviting His light into you, ... notice again.