Staying Intimate with God Through a Listening Heart

God sends no one away except those who are full of themselves.
Dwight L. Moody

This is a cute quote, with some very experience-provoking ideas.

I would hasten to note that in my experience, strength and hope, my God has never sent me away -- ever. This concept of being sent away concerns me because our shame and guilt can grab this up and lead us into fear and separation – while God never changed or moved His and Her unconditional love and Presence.

One spiritual awareness to have here is it is possible to be in a state and mental condition where God cannot reach us – because of our unconscious resistance and unavailability.

Another spiritual awareness is that this occurs when we are mentally “full of ourselves” -- when there is no room for God’s Presence within our lives. There is “something” that can exist inside of us that blocks God’s intimate and caring love from entering our heart and lives.

This “something” is our wounded selves trying to protect us from harm, and in the process, harming us with separation from God. These wounded selves from our past are trying hard to protect us. They are like an auto-immune disease – like arthritis – where the body’s natural defense systems, in an attempt to protect the body, actually attacks and harms parts of the body.

Frequently this characteristic – self-protection by wounded selves – is angrily referred to as the “ego”. Our ego is a collection of lost past selves that have formed together inside our brain in an attempt to protect us from separation and abandonment, and in the process actually causes separation and abandonment in the process. Our ego fills our brain with fear and anger, which separates us from others, from our God, and from ourselves.

For this diseased process to end and God’s loving Presence to begin to flow into our hearts, we must address the woundedness of our ego. First of all, our ego selves need to be accepted and not resisted. They are our heroes – as misguided as they are. They have fought to keep us safe in insane and abusive situations.

They need to be nurtured with increasing higher Presence, back into loving health and sanity. They were created in the pain and in the fear of abandonment – and more abandonment will make more determined to protect – at any cost. They need to be given high doses of God’s Presence through spiritual enlightenment – daily inspirations, the experience of precious moments with others and God, and the spiritual support of spiritual coaches and guides.

There is an unlimited supply of Presence and love available to us from God. We must empty our selves of the wounds and infection of our lost selves –ego – and be restored to a growing openness to the God of our personal spiritual experience.

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The Courage to Be Humanly Conscious and Spiritually Awakened

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger -- misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good, that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding, and that there is always tomorrow.

Dorothy Thompson

In January, 2003, Liz was diagnosed with a reoccurrence of colon cancer -- the second time since her original diagnosis in 1995. It was beginning to affect her back and left leg. causing incredible pain, and difficulty walking. The picture above was taken two to three weeks before she died -- in 2005. She was on her way to a support group that had been a major part of her life for fourteen years, and lunch with her friends. I really don't remember if she was actually able to go to lunch -- but that was her intent when we left the house.

I took the picture -- and lots of similar pictures -- because I was so impressed with her incredible courage. I don't believe I could have done what she did.

Courage -- I think it's about perception and our relationship with a God of our personal experience and relationship. Courage is seeing into life and its myriad facets of events, circumstances and outcomes -- and seeing a meaning and purpose that cannot be seen with human eyes -- it can only be experienced by a human heart filled with God's Presence.

Courage is believing the unseen -- and living each moment -- each breath -- in the currents and waves of the unknown and uncontrollable -- opening ourselves to feel and experience and risk being fully human -- and loved fully spiritual.

We are the chosen, the called, the awake and present -- we are meant to live "heart wide open" -- to become "rivers of loving life" to others by being human and spiritually present -- all in the same moment.

Conscious life takes courage -- it requires God's Presence -- it involves a willingness to grieve and hurt and be sad -- and to risk joy and serenity, and closeness with God.

It take courage to do more than just believe in God -- instead to actively live in intimate Presence with God.

There will always be a tomorrow -- I believe Liz "knew" that -- even if it is means leaving --

and going Home.

Courage -- remembering not to forget.

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Listening to Faces: Remembering My Illness of Co-Dependency

Understanding where our need to control came from is a beginning. Most of us, at least before recovery, were insecure. We wanted to protect ourselves from abandonment, ridicule, physical and emotional harm. The only way we knew to do that was to insist others fulfill our needs. We strengthened, day by day, a trait that hinders us now…

A Woman’s Spirit

Yesterday I spoke at the psychiatric hospital where I first began working with co-dependency. It was a weekend family program for families of patients in an intensive outpatient chemical dependency program. I experienced their faces – stressed, worried, frightened, unsure of what they were dealing with and what they were supposed to do. But courageous enough to expose themselves to the information and assistance that was being offered them.

As I listened to their faces, I remembered my own beginnings of recovery – becoming aware of the cycle of destruction that had so mutilated my living:

1. I was hurting and wounded – and uncertain what was wrong or what could be done – why I was so abandoned and alone.
2. I believed that I had to control the situations, and circumstances – the relationships of my life – or everything was totally hopeless and unbearable.
3. To survive, I had to believe that I could control the outcomes of my life – if I tried hard enough I could change things, and make people love me.
4. As I believed I could control the outcomes, I became convinced that “I Am Responsible”– when bad things happened it was my fault.
5. Because I am responsible, I had to do something – to fix, change, and control what was happening.
6. When I did “something” to try to control the outcome, I appeared to be either successful or a failure, depending on the outcome.
7. When it seemed that I was successful, I became even more convinced that I could control the outcomes – if I “just” tried hard enough – I was even more convinced that I AM RESPONSIBLE for what happened.
8. When I seemed to fail, I believed that I was bad, not good enough, deserving to be punished, and I separated myself from others, from my God, and from my true self.
9. Shame raged – the incredible separation, loneliness, and abandonment – disconnected from love, acceptance, and Presence. And I would try harder than ever to control the outcomes of my life – the endless separations – trying with everything I possessed – to please someone -- to be just maybe good enough – to anybody.

This vicious, vicious cycle continued until I could barely crawl across the landscape of my life -- mangled, beaten, tortured – alone.

The more I force things, the tougher my life. Helen Neujahr

If someone had not offered me the light of their love, I would have certainly continued to die – infinite times -- in the hell of my own self degradation and shame.

• The healing began with someone telling me I could not control others or myself. Alone I was powerless – my life was totally unmanageable – especially on the inside. I could not be responsible for the outcomes – the perceptions, reactions, or actions of others – or my self.
• I could only begin to be healed inwardly myself – if I connected personally and intimately with a Higher Power, who could begin to restore sanity to my bruised and insane brain. I was taught how to connect and listen and experience a Presence Who had no rules, or conditions or restrictions for Their loving me. They were as available as my conscious pain made me willing and open to receive.
• And then I was taught how to “act” within this new relationship so that I could increasingly surrender my illness, and the outcomes of my life to Someone who had all the needed solutions, and cared infinitely about my condition and circumstances.

I am a child. Today I have spiritual Parents. Their love, guidance, and unconditional Presence nurtures and supports my living, loving, and healing. I am not alone. And when I hurt – and I still do -- I listen and They are present -- to love away my pain – and make my life an increasingly better place -- by their loving and caring design.

It is not the passionate appeal that gains the Divine Ear so much as the placing of the difficulty and worry in the Divine Hands. So trust and be no more afraid than a child would be, who places its tangled skein of wool in the hands of a loving mother, and runs out to play, pleasing the mother more by its unquestioning confidence than if it went down on its knees and implored her help, which would pain her the rather, as it would imply she was not eager to help when help was needed.

God Calling

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