Our Cup Of Poison

Forgiveness is the key, to everything. Until we understand this, carve it into our heart, no real lasting progress can ever be made. When we think about it logically this makes perfect sense. Have you ever prayed and then wondered why you did not demonstrate? In order to fully demonstrate we must be free of self-condemnation and remorse, forgiving ourselves, which happens only after we have fully forgiven others, ridding ourselves of all resentment and condemnation toward them. Though repeated ad nauseum, this truth cannot be repeated enough: “simple but not easy, a price has to be paid. That price is the surrendering of self.” Search your heart, in the secret place of your consciousness is there any “justified” anger or an old resentment lurking that you feel is warranted for any reason? If so perform an act of forgiveness and mean it. If for any reason we cannot do this, by holding on to old hurts, real and imagined we are essentially raising a cup of poison to our lips, believing that by drinking it we are punishing those we hate/resent. We must put down the cup and forgive today, for our sake.

© Vincent Lee Jones Living In Spirit All Rights Reserved

#The Secret, #Wayne Dyer, #Serenity, Enlightenment, #Zen, #Emmet Fox, #How To Be Happy, #Golden Key, #Pope Francis, #Chopra, #Jesus, #Einstein, #AA, McRaven, Sayeh Beheshti,

 

No Longer My Job

There is a part of me, and I’m pretty sure you have it too, that keeps score, chiming in with its own sense of justice. When someone does something unthinking or illegal while driving the thought pops up “where is a cop when you need one” or something bad happens to someone we think deserves it and “serves them right” or “they deserved that” crosses our mind. In the same vein occasionally we think we know what’s best and actually wish something bad (serves’em right dontcha know) to befall someone are all examples of self centered thinking, thinking that ultimately retards our spiritual growth. It does not matter whether or not the offender rightly deserves to be punished, we can never engage in negative prayer or wishful negative thinking, for to do so invites resentment and morbid reflection to take up residence in our heart.

Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all our activities, thy will, not mine be done.

It would be less than honest of me not to acknowledge that when I have been cut off or watched someone do something stupid behind the wheel only to see flashing lights appear, the voice in my mind (sometimes out loud) chimes in with “ALRIGHT”  and when bad things happen to bad people, my first thought is often not of forgiveness. The wild justice of the carnal mind that the Old Testament addresses is alive and well in most of us, certainly in me. So, just for today I will ask for God’s help to pray rightly, to pray that the person driving selfishly arrives safely as well as all whose path they cross, to leave justice to God and ask to be shown the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love, that I stay out of the retribution business, remembering that all are connected in Spirit, that there is a little bit of bad in the best of us and a little bit of good in the worst and it is no longer my job to measure it.

© Vincent Lee Jones Living In Spirit All Rights Reserved

#The Secret, #Wayne Dyer, #Serenity, Enlightenment, #Zen, #Emmet Fox, #How To Be Happy, #Golden Key, #Pope Francis, #Chopra, #Jesus, #Einstein, #AA, McRaven, Sayeh Beheshti,

My True Face

One of the keys to freedom in life is when we finally understand that all our troubles are rooted in selfishness, born of thinking that we can show the world one face while hiding our true feelings and motives. Somehow we convince ourselves that our thoughts are separate from God, that He does not know what we are thinking, that only when I speak or act will He be aware or even pay attention. In light of what we now know about the Presence of God, this thinking is weak at best and downright delusional at its worst. The natural outcome of this thought process is to shut us off from the sunlight of the spirit as surely as burying our head in the sand cuts us off from sunlight and air.

I need to get a little personal here, so please forgive me. When this truth hit me years ago it sent me into a tail spin. All those things that I thought I had so neatly hid from God, in truth had been always open to Him. Fortunately I was saved, though new to the path at the time I had learned enough to know that I would be forgiven as soon as I asked, that the only unforgivable sin is to turn ones back on God and deny Him, and that sin is erased as soon as we turn to Him with an open mind and heart. As the truth and import of this rolled over me I found myself on my knees, asking God to remove from me my illusions that there is anything about me that He does not know or is separate from Him.

This marked the point in my life when “forgive us our trespasses” from the Lord’s Prayer became truly known to me. I began to accept His forgiveness in my life that day and the process of understanding how important it is to truly forgive others began and though this happened years ago, its lesson is as fresh today as then. Shalom.

© Vincent Lee Jones Living In Spirit All Rights Reserved

#The Secret, #Wayne Dyer, #Serenity, Enlightenment, #Zen, #Emmet Fox, #How To Be Happy, #Golden Key, #Pope Francis, #Chopra, #Jesus, #Einstein, #AA, McRaven, Sayeh Beheshti,