Françoise and myself had a discussion this morning over coffee or in her case tea about a friend of ours who is very interested in his subject and is giving two evening courses in two languages twice a week. In addition, he has yet to find the right of accommodation or himself. He also has to go long distances to in the giving of himself.
His health has also suffered due to the need for a fairly invasive operation after which he had to be supported by friends in order to rest. This is a person with much to give, a person who is by no means beyond his prime but from where I stand there is a chance that he may succumb to an opportunistic disease. If you see it in a water system and you put up the pressure, the weakest link will fail first. Spirit-driven people will go on far beyond what their body should normally have to cope with.
Time for ‘me’ time.
I’m so far out of touch with people who have to go to work so I won’t comment on that, but I think what we all have to learn is to apply discipline and to allow periods where we pay attention to our own needs. If I was a car, I wouldn’t drive 5,000 miles without servicing it. We should not disrespect our body, and as I have said before, so called ‘doing nothing’ does not happen. We can use this time to allow ourselves to re create and repair.
In other words we should be self-serving. This has nothing to do with being selfish; it has to do with self respect. To this end I did not turn on my computer until quarter past ten. Normally it goes on pretty much as soon as I get up.
Kerry , a campaigner, was talking about Maui and at what point and how you ‘wake people up’ to what is going on. ‘There are so many things going on that the people are unaware and if you want to change consciousness if you want to change where the people are or were in 2020 I have to say you’re not going to change consciousness until people realize what the hell’s happening. Every time they are lied to and they buy the lie the situation becomes more irredeemable.
This is actually very interesting material for discussion in general. We may want to get on our favorite hobby horse about whatever it is but first of all we have to establish, through discussion and listening, where the person actually is in their mind and whether they even see there is a problem. They are not going to respond immediately if you tell them about solutions to the problems that they do not even know exist. You are more likely to put their backs up.
I do this sometimes when in a moment of enthusiasm for example when I see someone wearing a mask, I want to tell them to take it off and they don’t need it and so on but they do not see it as a problem, they see it as a solution. <rant on> It may be that we just have to let people go because if we focus on them too much, they will just slow us down. They will never get it. I have to address what is really going on which in my view is fifth generation warfare against us useless human beings. <rant off>
Another example is a woman scolding her child. You may see this as an unreasonable way of dealing with the child when they could be an underlying problem but to her she sees it as the solution. That if you scold the child you will somehow solve the problem. So long as she believes that no dialogue can take place. I hate to bring in the dreaded BBC panacea question ‘how does it feel’ but we need something like that as a starter.
But even before that, someone has to trust you as a person which is why general conversation should pre-seed any directed moral conversation like this. If the woman who scolded their child had just had a row with her partner the last thing she wants is someone else telling her what to do.
I admit that I don’t go with follow my own rules. I wrote to the community fundraising executive of the Children’s Air Ambulance Service yesterday making many comments on their website and telling her that I did not really understand their mission in life. I said you could say it was fairly hard hitting. The problem is that when I have never met the person I suppose I could call them up and say I’m going to send a letter but in fact I don’t have the time to do all this. No one pays me for anything I do and that’s the way I like it because I am not beholden to anyone.
Maybe we can best hope to sow seeds and as it says in the Bible some will fall on stony ground and some on fertile ground. That is what Jesus did in his travels. He made his statements and left; people either picked it up or they did not. He did not run after people asking them because they heard what he said. That would be seen today as a sign of weakness.
It reminds me when I speak to people about something they say ‘ pardon?’. In some cases they genuinely did not hear me but in other cases they say pardon because the material that I’m offering doesn’t fit with their preconceptions. What I do sometimes is the way to silence, they mentally reprocess what I have said and give me an answer so they did hear after all
Pray in secret. Why?
As some of you know I read a study book called My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (Pub 1927). It’s one of the old fashioned uncompromising books on the words of Jesus and their implications for our behavior. Some of his instructions are rather annoying but then I have to look at why I am annoyed.
Today’s quote is from Matthew 6 verse 6 “when you pray, going to your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your father who is in the secret place; and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly”.
My goodness this is so far away from modern thinking where we are almost encouraged to advertise our good works for instant publicity. This verse talks about discipline, keeping the mind clear for important things, giving time to our creator and cutting out irrelevances. I did not say ‘stop having fun’.
The most opposite to this instruction is someone who wears their heart on their sleeve, who cannot focus on anything from more than four seconds, and lives every hour from sensation to sensation and from one text message to another, If we manifest the love of God in a sacred private space anything we do in public will be marked with the lasting imprint of the presence of God.
It doesn’t matter what you say to people so much as the person who says it and where they ‘come from’ or in others terms their ‘presence or aura’. This will be felt in the soul of the receiver although they may not be aware of it at the time.
—–VIDEO LIBRARY—–
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