Daily Devotionals and Meditations...

I receive emails from my Mom daily where she shares her devotionals with me. I may begin posting a few of them here for everyone else to see. Where these are designed for the Christian reader many have good messages.

This one in particular I get the sense that it can be used to stress humility. And maybe we just aren’t as completely awesome as we’d like everyone else to think. Long story short, we can see the importance of not putting ourselves above the Force or others.


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That was great, thank you. I'm far from a Christian reader, but with a few substitutions the message made a great deal of sense to me. To put others first to achieve something greater... to prioritise the wider Force over our own small desires. "For it is in giving that we receive".

Your mum writes really well please thank her from me if you mention sharing them!

Just wondering why anyone must making themselves smaller to make someone biggers. Seems a little foolish to me.

Perhaps it's their way of emptying their cup, so to speak...

MJ Hannigan wrote: Just wondering why anyone must making themselves smaller to make someone biggers. Seems a little foolish to me.

Because some people concentrate more on themselves than on others....

And others concentrate on others more than themselves....

OK Christian Jedi, what is a verse that tells you to 'take care of yourself'?

It is a balancing act, a fact some seem to miss...

Some of us are just to the side of perfect balance, some of us are in danger of totally falling off balance....

It is a good reminder to stay humble...

I can appreciate the content of Mom's writing.

Mom goes straight a sharp point of ego: who wants to decrease? fear of loss of power . . fear of loss of prestige?

The ego (the self-centered world view) shrieks in terror . . . if i loosen my attachments to these aspects of self . . what will become of me . . i will be nothing!!!!! LOL . . I am laughing at the ego . . here. . .

The humility to loosen the false self
The paradox of give to receive (or die to live)
The empty teacup . . totally open

Stay humble? What does that mean?

MJ Hannigan wrote: Stay humble? What does that mean?

Oh yea, sorry....

I didnt say WHO I was talking about....

Life in the Force, renewed life, changing life, that is what Jediism offers us. But sometimes what is offered we think we do not want, clinging to the old safety blanket we have carried for so long that we do not realize just how uncomfortable it is. As joyous and fulfilling as the life promised can be it can be hard to let go and move into the new unseen space of life in Jediism, but that's what is asked of us… to let go and be renewed today and every day. May we embrace all anew today and each day.

Blessings y'all


Adaptation of a blessing from Kathryn

Reminds me of the following from the The Dalai Lama

"I am always cheerful! I think, the result of my own practice and training. In my lifetime, I have lost my country and have been reduced to being totally dependent on the goodwill of others . . . Of course these are trajic incidents, and I feel sad when I think about them. However, I don't feel overwhelmed by sadness. Old familiar faces disappear, and new faces appear, but I still maintain my happiness and peace of mind"

Points to reflect and meditate on…

1) What are my desires?
2) What motivates my desires?
3) Are they beneficial to those I serve?

The Creed
I am a Jedi, an instrument of peace;

Where there is hatred I shall bring love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

I am a Jedi.

I shall never seek so much to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

The Force is with me always, for I am a Jedi.

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Points for Meditation:

1. In what ways have your thoughts, even about the Force and your faith, been ways of judging according to appearance and not righteousness?

2. In what ways have you settled for thinking about the Force instead of living Jediism?

Resolution: I resolve to find one way today to practice Jediism seeking the Force instead of merely the appearance of righteousness or my own way.

Happy Friday!


Reflections…
Each week and day is new and exciting. Opportunities for discovery, truth and the joy of living wait at every turn. The only choice we have to make is how we decide to perceive those opportunities and what decisions we make as we face them.

This has been a great week for me. I stood against greed and oppression, loved my family, helped a friend through a difficult turn, watched youth grow… and a myriad of other wonderful things. Each step brought me closer to today; and this moment sets in place the events of my future. How awesome is that!

Points for meditation…

1) In what ways do your thoughts and how you perceive events affect your outlook on life and your spiritual happiness?

2) Do you see the Force at work in your life and the lives of others? Or are you fighting it, trying to bend it to how you would have it to be.

3) How wonderful was your week?!?!

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
― T.S. Eliot

Meditation is very dualistic in many ways.

“The best way to meditate is to not try, the best mind is no-mind, the best way to reach enlightenment is to not strive for it.” - Edwin

You should be discovering who you really are. However, you will never discover the true you by thinking about something, or anything for that matter.

There is a difference to be observed between "you" and "what you think about". In fact the very sentence says it: "What you think about". The "you" is considered to be separate from your thought. Your thought is supposed to be a tool for the "you" to help you accomplish things in life. Unfortunately, even though we feel that we control what we think about, it is the opposite. Thought controls us.
An easy way to demonstrate this is to try to not think anything for 30 seconds.

Try it !


If you fail, you need meditation... :lol:
If you succeed, can I become your student? :ohmy: You have mastered enlightenment! :woohoo:

Enlightenment starts with becoming lighter from the burdens of thought. "the thinking disease" it is often called.

Because the mind is constantly racing thoughts through our mind, we think that we are what we think. Even though we become what we think it is not who we are.
The real You is obscured by all those thoughts and emotions. By meditating, we learn and train our mind to not constantly identify with thought, to create space between who we are and what we think or feel.

In time, thoughts and emotions will be separate from our deepest self, a state commonly described as enlightenment.

Be still an instant
There is a quiet place within
Bring nothing
Just Be
An instant

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.
One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him lying there
and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him,
“Do you want to be well?”
The sick man answered him,
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.”
Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.

Now that day was a sabbath.
So the Jews said to the man who was cured,
“It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”
He answered them, “The man who made me well told me,
‘Take up your mat and walk.’“
They asked him,
“Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?”
The man who was healed did not know who it was,
for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there.
After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him,
“Look, you are well; do not sin any more,
so that nothing worse may happen to you.”
The man went and told the Jews
that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus
because he did this on a sabbath.

[hr]
Points to reflect on…

• 1) When is the” Greater Good” served?
• 2) Are you excused from the laws of man if it is to help one in need?
• 3) Should those that help others out of love be persecuted for their actions?
• 4) Would you help another if you might get in trouble for it?

And another thing that I find curious... surly Jesus must have known the law and waht day it was. So why would he leave the man by slipping away in the croud knowing that the man would have difficulties? Just curious...

Covenant (law), a promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action; a formal alliance or agreement made by God with a religious community or with humanity in general

Fellowship, a term (translated from the Greek koinonia) referring to individual who are in communion with each other. This basic meaning of the word communion predates its Christian uses. In Ancient Greek, κοινωνία could apply to a business partnership, to fellowship of life in marriage, to a spiritual relationship with divinity, to comradely fellowship between friends, to a community or society.

[hr]
Point to reflect on…

• A Covenant of Fellowship… how awesome would that be!?!?

April 8th 2014
Mini-sermon...

Relationships are a choice?!?!

Every day I have a choice to make, to dwell in the darkness of my own fear and worry, or to dwell in the light of the Force. It must be a conscious decision on my part. It takes effort, and time. It is not something I can just fall into. To be in relationship, any relationship takes effort, takes tending. Just so with my relationship with the Force. Not that it will change, but in my humanness, I could. On my own I can do nothing and the longer I move through life on my own the greater the risk of turning my back on that life giving relationship with the universe and all it entails. I would never not tend my relationship with my spouse, my family or my friends and my relationship with the Force is even more important. It is all life giving from which all relationships should spring. But I find myself like so many others; grumbling often times about this or that and the seed of discontent comes in to bring darkness, death, separation between all that is and myself. Thankfully we have our brethren and sisters in the Force which help us in our times of need and want and continually provide a compassionate shoulder. Guard the door to my soul that all my choices will be for the best and in the service of others.

Relationship it is a daily choice.

May the Force be with you all…