A key lesson in life essential to learn is simply and plainly this: “What I want does not matter in the least”.

it is only a very few who ever get to the level of this lesson in any meaningful way.

Now, this alone will not solve anything; will not bring you any closer. As a matter of fact this can cause despair or depression in certain personality types. The ennoi can seem a gaping nigh impassable dark abyss.

However, if and when one finally learns to decouple what one wants from the illusory “achievement” of happiness, the key is turned and the secrets to the eternal universe are unfolded. True happiness abides in the eternal here and now! Gratitude for everything then cannot be very far behind!

How can I tell you about spirituality? Of course I can’t. I can’t at all. Not in the least bit. It is not a tellable or knowable thing, of course. And, of course, if I try I will provoke you anyway. Apartheid much, holy ones?

Well, what can I tell you then? I can tell you this: the ones who are barking up the wrong tree are the very ones who wholeheartedly insist upon devotion to that very particular tree. How do I know they are barking up the wrong tree? Well, simple. Barking up any particular tree is wrong.

They are fundamentally misled about the very nature of barking itself. Barking is an eternal joy. Barking is everywhere. It is an experiential joy. But you can’t tell them. The theory is the belief is the practice and all three! and more are dogmatically wrapped up into the one tree which contains all to them. They only see the signs and signifiers and perks of being in touch with all, being specially touched indeed. The nuts don’t fall far from the tree.

Moreover,‘tis the written down. And be careful in a self-preserving way to approach them with any of this. Protecting that precious specifically devoted bark is a bite.

Consider those in a church who look around and assess the character of those in proximity and take comfort. Pity those who find strength and feel “fellowship” or succor there. For consider that working with such poor material that they will weave. They will accept and extrapolate these “facts” and “observations” before them and surmise things and fear things and “know” things of the moral and spiritual deficiencies and depravities of the world outside. (Including, of course, practitioners who believe differently elsewhere).

For, verily I tell thee, any with any degree of integrity in the interface of the spiritual and the physical will not be found near an organized established religion; they will avoid it and go quietly and humbly but not willingly when obligated. Pity those who see “integrity” and “spirituality” and “goodness” and even “reality” confined among the ranks where it patently is not.

Beware those who act to order the world around them to embrace and assimilate to this “standard” and, ultimately, to enforce and mandate upon the world around them their “superior” “values”. Keep a healthy and wary fear of those who strive to conserve this dichotomy. Have utmost compassion for women who fall prey to the delusion and acqueise and are willing welcoming party to the conservation of an altogether other dichotomy of misogyny which lives and breathes life in such environment, bindings bolstered by some ersatz ‘word’.

How am I grateful?
Let me not count the ways.

For they are many and as multitudinous as the ways that I love.

Let me reminisce . . .

There are sundry, numerous and specific ways in which I my ego would make the world to be. But I don’t allow myself to dwell on any of them. The world as it is, is already partly a creation of my making, just as it is an equal share of all the creations of all the perspectives of all the people, very few of them American, actually. And even less of them white. I consider both of those facts a good thing. A goodly half aren’t even men. And I consider that a very, very, very good thing. Because the world is as we created it – some in opposition to others, some in spiritual agreement, some on a quest to eliminate the world of rivals, through proselytization or through sheer meanness and control of the “rules” or through a more direct means of violence or through the more indirect means of neglect and belittlement – I am of the certain belief that the world as is is as it is meant to be created by such a varied and kaleidoscopic creativity of force. So I don’t even aspire, dream, or try to change it, except by deliberate unceasing incremental exemplary ways of being and doing. My faith is boundless. My love and energy have no limits. I don’t pray in groups or alone in the traditional ways of aspirational or directed and/or targeted or even bespoke prayer. I am a living prayer. I am spirit and not earth-bound or physical at all.

Want to effectively blind yourself to spiritual radiant reality? Open your physical eyes in a physical church.

Here’s another way of describing the sacred purpose of life.  To awaken to and to experience what’s already there:  the universal spirit, whom some appropriate and identify as Christ.  To allow that spirit to flow.  To live experience the unknowable subtleties to the fullest.  To allow oneself to be happy.

For Americans and lesser-privileged westerners, there is more.  And more specific.  One must encounter those who would beyond doubt place Richard Rohr in hell. One must develop subtle ways to engage.  One must learn from these engagements and encounters, accidents and incidents.  One must tolerate the committed faith and stubborn emotional intellectual knowing of their condemnation.  One must not antagonize or torment.  One must learn to engage with subtle respect.  One most oppose them with everything one has, drawing upon every reserve and resource, but without becoming or playing the role of enemy.  One must learn subtlety from this experience.  One must learn the art of gentle persuasion and tirelessly practice its nuances. One must hope to educate and thus little by little to dissuade them, to disabuse their delusion, perhaps to bring them to purpose or at least to soften them up a bit for the next incarnation. One must develop patience, one must practice happiness.  The successful one has honed the art of joy.

And in the end, [‘when the love you take is equal to the love you make’], when one has inevitably aroused the ire and the projected hate and intolerance of the emotionally faithful all too many times, one must not despair at the apparent dearth of avail.  For one has tried one’s best.  Sustained, that is the very exemplar of devotion.  The world and its wicked ways has been changed, even if in imperceptible ways.  Be joyful.  It is success.

We are all [or have the innate wherewithal to be] a cosmic prayer wheel.

We are put on this earth to smile; & yet our cycles of lifetimes are a school, the curriculum karma, the tuition dharma. Detach and graduate!

Any time you have ever looked into a pair of eyes with pure love, it is a pure eternal love that is joyfully celebrated and lives forever — indeed is magnified many times over — in the eternal joy of Kingdom of Heaven. And this is despite anything that might have ensued afterwards – be it awkward, cold, cruel, regrettable, you name it, that you might think might have occurred, or come out of it, or took place, you name it (And you know you do). In other words, no matter how badly (or goodly) you think it all turned out, it didn’t. That complication of negativity, doubt or fear is of no consequence in the eternal store of treasures where it really counts. Why would anybody ever, then, hold themselves back? From purity, that is. We all should hold back from brash physical assertiveness, a quest for possession masquerading as a caring protectiveness (with or without 2nd Amendment gunnery), or whatever presumed noble goodness else. You know, all the euphemisms and projections of control, especially of the overly manly sort. No amount of violence can change this. How does that grab you?