Sunday, June 26, 2016

Catholic Hermit Delights in "Live by the Spirit"


From today's second Scripture reading from Mass, we have this truth:

"I say, then: live by the Spirit
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other, 
so that you may not do what you want,
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law."


These Living Words delight this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit!  They are sheer truth, and the recent death of my will is a marvelous assist in living by the Spirit.

However, my own thoughts, notions, ideas, intellect--oh, how my mind needs to be replaced by God's Mind.  For, my own intellect stirs ideas and notions--even if not "bad"--do frustrate and work against His Will.  God's Will is in union with the Spirit, of course.  His Will is the Spirit's and the Spirit's His.

So it comes to the point that my ideas and thoughts can essentially and do--oppose what God's Ideas and Thoughts are, in deed and in truth.  My own ideas can seem perfectly all right, such as thinking I should try to get Raphael to come and help finish this hermitage, so that I can sell and be out from under the on-going work load and financial constraints, in order to focus more on spiritual writing, simplifying, solidifying.

Yet when I live by the Spirit, when His Will has replaced my own will, which it did the Wednesday after Easter last, my thoughts and ideas, good and reasonable as they may seem, are not going to be realized if not His Thoughts and Ideas.

Even my spiritual director's thoughts and ideas, so bluntly and even unexpectedly humorously stated, are not so easily accomplished if at all, without some manual labor help or a miracle.  "Get the damn house done and get to your writing!"  my spiritual father wrote a couple weeks ago.  

Well, yes, I want to!  In fact, there was a health consideration that was looking to be very serious, and my mind generated thoughts accordingly, and made calls to empty out the last of the coffers, to sell off stuff, to hire Raphael to come and finish the place, to hire the neighbor boy to assist in what time I might have remaining to do so.

But, no, these were not God's Thoughts and Ideas--not His Mind.  Raphael was to come last Monday noon.  He never came; he's not responded over the ensuing days to four phone messages.  A Lowe's cabinet employee made yet another error and ordered the wrong kitchen base cabinet.  The installer had to leave for he could not proceed.  Who knows how long it will be before he can return--perhaps a few weeks after the correct cabinet comes in at least a couple or three weeks from now.

So I can't even finish the kitchen--probably not until some time in August.  For then once the installer has a free spot in his busy schedule and cabinets installed, then we wait for the countertop measurer, then we wait for the countertops.  In the meantime, there is no sink.  Yes, I'm most thankful for a bathtub at this point, although it is painful on the back and the increased area of pain and potential difficulty, leaning over to wash a bowl and a spoon in the tub.

The way in which my mind was so sure, given a trip to ER by the EMS a couple weeks ago due to horrific pain, that God was preparing to take me out of this temporal realm, had to face it that my mind was not in syncopation with God's Mind.  God's Will is in me, yes.  But His Mind has not yet replaced mine, obviously.  And in a similar way in which the flesh can be opposed to the Spirit, our own minds, our intellects, can be opposed to God's Mind and Intellect--His Omniscience.  

So in similar effect as when our flesh opposes the Spirit and we cannot do what we want, if our minds and thoughts, our intellects are not His Mind, His Thoughts, His Intellect--we will not be in cohesion in powerful union of His Mind and Will.  Again, the will and the intellect take center position within our souls.  When God's Will replaces our wills, and His Mind replaces our minds, we can grasp how the effect can be--what power in prayer and action, in interactions and in beingness results!

The other statement of the above Scripture that is so delightfully significant and invaluable is that if we are guided by the Spirit, we are not under the law.

Duh, as teenagers used to say when something is obvious.  If our wills and our minds are replaced by God's Will and His Mind, we are totally living in the Spirit.  His Will reigns; our ideas and thoughts no longer oppose His Ideas and Thoughts for His Mind has replaced our intellects.

We no longer are under the law.

This is significant because it places us so in the Spirit, in the center of God's "Soul", so to speak, that we will not be needing the law of minds.  We will do and think and speak in the Spirit, from the center of God's Will and His Mind.  Rules of minds of mankind, good as they can be, and helpful, are superseded by the existence in the Spirit.

All the more, the formulas and all the details of ways of doing and the laws of Church traditions and concern over this interpretation of this or that canon, or the need for some to criticize others who they think are not living in accordance with this or that law of mortal minds, no matter how inspired the minds may be--not necessary when God's Will and God's Mind have replaced ours.  We then live by the Spirit.

Praying for our will to die and God's Will be in us, and to then beseech the Lord to replace our intellects with His Mind--so important!  Even if our wills have died, and His will is in us--that is a major grace and worth all the suffering leading up to the death of our own wills.  Having yet our own thoughts and ideas, then, are irritating and oppositional to what would otherwise be supreme flow of God's Mind and His Will informing and guiding us.  

In my case, the only glitch in this latest episode of temporal life has been that my thoughts were excitedly geared to the surreal aspect of impending physical death.  It has been a marvelous experience, and perhaps some sort of test by His Real Presence.  For what I thought and even what a CT Scan indicated and ER and primary care physicians thought, ended up not being the reality.  The PET Scan results were normal.  Liver lesions, nodules and lung lining nodule evidently benign.

And I faced yesterday and today the immense disappointment of not, at least by that type of illness and death, to be soon on my way to the other side.  Once more, I am realizing that God's Mind has not yet replaced my mind, even in the bit of resentment and frustration now, of having to deal with another area of increased pain.  

Ought I try to find out if the tear in the upper quadrant of liver will heal on its own, or if somehow was it a misread scan, or if this higher level pain in the liver region is from the always-painful back?  Perhaps it is radiating pain, and that causes the pain to then locate in liver region, and then radiate to the intestines, causing all kinds of painful distending, debilitating the body with distracting--pain!

Another option, of course, in praying for God's Mind to replace ours (or mine, anyway), is to practice cooperating.  Maybe just not seek answers as to why the one scan showed a splayed and frayed upper liver quadrant, as the ER doctor described?  Let God's Mind give whatever answers if any needed.  I suppose none are.  The Will of God and Mind of God working in union with the Son and the Spirit, really do not need to tell me information of some bodily ailment, one way or another.

Just live by the Spirit in the Order of the Present Moment.  My own ideas were to find out what was wrong, and of course the doctors said I must be referred for a Pet Scan and lung nodule specialist to deal with the lung as more sizable a nodule and the liver to be dealt with later.  We live among others who are more under the law and not living by the Spirit, and that also can encourage the opposition that we may be praying for in desiring our minds to be replaced by God's Mind.

God's Mind does not think as our minds do.  God's Mind was not running off in all directions, excitedly planning a huge end-of-life sale, of trying to hire people to help finish the work quickly, in figuring out where to go to die, in thinking of how to "get to my writing" and deciding perhaps doing videos to share aspects of my mystical life and insights of His Real Presence to anyone, if anyone, who might wish to read or watch.

God's Mind was putting me through an exercise, dramatically showing me how I have a ways to go to let loose my mind, my thoughts, my ideas, my interpretations, my living under the law, and how it is to live by the Spirit.  A mystic-hermit-parent (what I wanted on my tombstone) would not be thinking of such details, making such plans.  Rather, God's Mind would be simply listening and then returning to do what it could do, in the present moment, and letting God's Will and God's Mind cooperatively unfold whatever changes, if any.

And God's Mind, such as today, would not be kind of put out, teed off, with the "thought" of having to remain in such major manual labor work-mode, here, and with having to assimilate more and more bodily pain, and being rather tired out between work and pain, to "get to the spiritual writing!".  God's Mind would be accepting of the Order of the Present Moment and not even be put out with the disappointment of staying in the temporal for who-knows-how long.

It is all right.  I had at one point exclaimed within, "Cruel!  Cruel!"  But it is all right that I am not soon to have my mystical marriage consummated with physical death, not yet.  This is a significant lesson learned, that if I want God's Mind instead of my bungling thoughts and ideas, or even those of others in the world, I must relinquish my mind fully.  And I must live by the Spirit in the Order of the Present Moment, even to the point of perhaps not pursuing anything more about the liver's splaying and fraying area.  No need to think on it with my mind.

God's Mind can do all the thinking for us.  And until we let His Mind do so, we will not be living by the Spirit, not fully.  Our thoughts will off and on, without notice, be in opposition at times, with His Mind--even if His Will has already replaced our wills.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love God above all things and one another as Jesus loves us.  Pray that His Will and His Mind replace ours, as that will assist us so much in living by the Spirit Who is Love, and no longer under the law of minds.


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