WHY I STOPPED THROWING BOMBS

These days, I feel a bit like Johnny Spiritseed.

I’m probably pretty much the same moron I’ve always been, and get upset sometimes at the way the powers-that-be do their best to beat down the people they should be serving; but I am now always able to remind myself that this is an anger I should probably ignore, as it has the capacity to rankle my heart, the very opposite of what I want.

I used to throw a LOT of bombs, politically; I have pretty distinct opinions about the way I think things should be, and I will still occasionally inflict them on others.

But I am now usually ashamed afterwards. And that’s a good thing.

You see, one day when responding to some opinion that I considered an outrage, I heard distinctly…VERY distinctly…these words, out of the mouth of God straight into Dumbo Dave’s ears: “People will never change when you are yelling at them. You have to remind them of the kind, loving, and giving people they really are, instead”.

Hm.

There was no thunderclap, mystical white light, or falling off a horse involved (you get the reference, Christians)…just the clear voice that is impossible to mistake for anything else.

That kind of thing can completely change the course of a feller’s life…

It’s clear to me these days that there is a greater and better purpose wrapped up in everything that recently happened to me in my health, home, and creative life.

And now I am immersed in the lessons I needed by taking God up on his word. All I had to do was say yes, and it was, as the saying goes, ‘off to the races’. Or Hawaii, in my case. 

I have such gratitude to those who have followed my scribbling about it all, for supporting and praying for me. I am the recipient of the kindness and advice of many other travelers who see things more clearly than I; people write to me nearly daily with just the right guidance, at just the right time…and so my life has become more useful than I ever thought it might be.

When I experienced the gift of surrender, God told me I didn’t even have to do anything but say ‘yes’ at the obvious times and deal only with what was laid before me (that is not a chicken joke!), and that circumstances for those people and situations I was led to would change for the good.

This has been completely true!

Not from my own doing, either – stuff just HAPPENS! Almost like I’m just a correspondent reporting to you, so you would know that the promises of God are indeed true, and are like a reward for simply saying yes to that still, small unmistakeable voice, which is in all of us; that little spark of divine spirit we are free to ignore or heed.

But my advice is to heed it.

Here are a few of the changes I’ve noticed in myself that I got FOR FREE…

My awareness, as such, has risen to heights I would never have imagined, without my even trying; my vices, such as they were, have largely evaporated of their own accord, and I have been incapable of re-activating them because they all seem so drab compared to what happens to me every day.

Not that it’s ever easy, but wow, is it ever better and more fascinating than what I would have come up with!

My fears are virtually non-existent as well, as God always seems to step in just when needed; and I have come to expect this because it happens all the time, and after all, these are God’s atoms now so I am off the hook .

When money gets sent to me, that I don’t lose (doh!), I have no doubt it always gets where God wants it to go, for whatever purpose that may be even when it’s unapparent to me.

Okay, even the money I DO lose; but I am totally okay with that, because I live kinda simple anyway. 

But it’s as though I’ve been given the entire world, and can walk it without fear of anything or anyone, knowing that seeing and treating people the way God does, no matter their station or personality, is the operating principle of it all.

And when we do that, we become the Divine speaking directly to the Divine in others, instead of an Ego battling another Ego for some kind of imagined supremacy. When you see that happen time and again, and the way it changes every interaction, the appeal becomes more than obvious…

I just see it as the kind of service that I wish I had engaged in much sooner, because it has proven to me, beyond the ability of my Ego to doubt it, the power and love of my Creator.

And I can’t top that.

I want to end with one of my favorite insights about the value in service to the rest of the world.

It is counter to what our current leaders tout, though, so depending on your own philosophy you are free to take it in or not…

When Mother Theresa was asked what she did in the slums of Calcutta each day, she said:

“Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; this is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world.

Seeing and adoring the presence of Christ, in the distressing disguise of the poor…”

(Da pics: We share our food and groom each other at the Animal Rescue Farm. And me, in shocking blue!)