What is.......is.

What is.......is.

How often do we say, "What is, is." While we might say that, we so often don't really believe it and then, with hard work and determination, set out to change what is to what we need it to be, rather than what is. And yet, What is....still is.
 
"If you understand...then things are as they are.




If you don't understand, then things still as they are."




There is freedom in deeply understanding that what is...is, and let it be so. When someone close to our personal consciousness or family suffers or dies, we learn, or don't what it means to accept "what is...is." Inspite of what you have heard, no one in the real world of people that you ever really knew, came back from really being dead. Life ends for everyone and everything and in that we learn or fight "what is..is." If you are lucky, you get old and die now that you are here. We, as humans, can spend weeks, or months or years railing against the "what is-ness" of any particular situation but that is our problem and doesn't change a thing. We can progress quickly, with acceptance or kicking and screaming all the way, through the four, five, six or seven steps of grief. We can spend six months in shock, four in denial, two in bargaining with the deity to reverse what is, a few in anger and then over years, accept what is and was from the day "what is" paid us a visit.



My dad has a habit of noting, "well that's the way it is and I'm not going to worry about it." It seems to have served him well into his 91st year. This is a man who tells me he once took my brother and himself for a ride in the car and thought of ending the "is-ness" of his handicaps and mental disabilities due to birth a premature birth and subsequent medical disasters, but running into a tree. Whew...my brother is older than me so I appreciate that dad was able to put some space between the thought and the event. My "is-ness" would never even have made it to a "was-ness" if he had done that. History would have been different and of course, produced more "is-ness" for others.



The mind is a terrible thing at times...it needs to be wasted on some ways of being. There is magic in facing what is. Somehow, it disarms the beast and puts some space in there where we can start to accept how things are rather than rail against how they are and can't be and we won't accept it. A simple way of being in such times is to have the ability, ok fake it until you make it, of simply noting "Is that so?" when confronted in life with what is. "Is that so?" Such a simple thought form and yet so disarming to the emotions and sudden change "is-ness" can inflict upon us if we are lucky enough to spend substantial time on the planet. Reality for some and those that love them, is that they don't get to spend much time here, or leave too quickly and the skills of accepting what is are learned, or not, early in the cycle.



Whenever I suffer the panic or anxiety I feel at times that my mind and subsequent chemistry can provide me with on various topics, it is due to resistance to what is. All negativity is some form of resistance as Eckhart Tolle notes in The Power of Now.



Just ask yourself when you are angry, or bitching, or nervous, or anxious or in a panic..."am I resisting something?  Is there something I am not accepting?". We are resisting what is. The plain and simple, what is, of many topics and circumstances.



 A middle age nurse, friend of my sister, tells everyone how excited she is to get her new motorcycle. She's that kinda woman, and now she is dead leaving four children behind. That is what is. My nephew, wearing his headset and walking along the railroad tracks can't hear the train and he was killed. I didn't want to write the word "killed" rather opting to say it in a more gentle way, but I'm practicing here noting what is. A brother-in-law, who all his life was very careful about what he ate, never smoked, drank only good red wine and prayed every day, died relatively young of cancer, go figure. What is...is. These "is-nesses" can be magnified and multiplied tens of millions of times, no billions and the degree to our mental and spiritual health thrives is the degree to acceptance of what is.
I'm not speaking of complacency to what is and needs to change. I am speaking of those life things that simply cannot change no matter how long it takes us to admit it.



When a pastor (I no longer am as that is what is,) I am sure I noted how amazing it must have been for Methusaleh, in Genesis, to live to be 969 years old.  It never happened, but I have since thought it is not so much amazing as a human disaster. That's a lot of psychological baggage over  that much time! How many loved ones do you accept died this way or that? How many children? Would one be married to the same person for 700 years or how about 900? (Of course in that culture, as long as you could afford them, multiple wives were the norm). How about 900 years of multiple wives! How many funerals and how many stressful weddings and stonings? Only a human with a highly developed sense of accepting what is could possibly survive the psycho-baggage of a life that went on and on like that. One would truly have to get help by joining ON and ON Anonymous...:)



Some simple awareness skills can help. When life does what it does and is what it is and everything in us screams NO, learn to think and audibly say YES. "Yes, it is so " goes a long way in the mind giving you space to accept what is. Learn to say things to yourself such as "I am divorced now." "I am no longer this or that." "My father, mother, sister, brother, child, has died." "That career is over." "I have changed." Say it and disarm it. This is when we most want to say NO but the magic of acceptance comes from facing the beast and disarming it with knowing that it is so. We do it over and over and each time we give the mind space to process the events and give us some personal growth in it's place.



A word about health challenges. We have a lot of say over the state of our health. Genetic factors also do over which we have no control at our level for the moment. In health, what is can change if we change. Most people think Sugar, Caffeine, Alcohol and Nicotine (SCAN) are the four main food groups and one should have lots of each every day. I see what is in those people all the time. They won't say NO when they should. But whatever...when illness comes, or the predictable problems of old age, are we not better to accept it, doing what we can, but knowing the nature of life is to have it end and change forms? A skill we adopt or a maybe better said, a way of being we can be when ill is to not identify who we are with the illness. One might have cancer, or diabetes, or a disease, but that one is not that cancer or illness. "I am being challenged in my health by cancer, but the I that is me is doing just fine." That's a step towards not too closely identifying the problem with being who we really are and it can be an easy, just do it thing, or a struggle to get out of the head and into the "is-ness" of whatever it is we are challenged with in life.



"What is...is." A mantra for living in the real world of drama, events, tragedy and what is. A mantra that can disarm the beast and open up space for us to be.



If you understand...then things are as they are.



If you don't understand...then things are as they are.

DenniscDiehl@aol.com    

Ambassador Big Sandy 1976 Reunion

This just in from the Big Sandy Class of 76 Reunion Planning Committee:

Hello Dear Friends!

Will you help us find fellow classmates of the Ambassador College Big Sandy Class of 1976? We entered as freshman in the Fall of 1972 and it seems impossible to believe its been 35 years since we graduated! Well then, - I'd say, it's time to party again!

We're in the beginning stage of organizing a college reunion!
We're including everyone who was part of the incoming class of 1972 or who joined our class in the years of 1972 through 1976. We are looking forward to reminincing with you who have shared many of the same memories of the wonderful years we had together in East Texas. (If we can still remember them!)

Many more details will follow in the next few weeks and months -- but in the meantime -

Save this date: 2nd weekend in August (Aug 12th - 14th).
Place: Dallas, Texas (Charles Melear is helping us locate a meeting place and we'll provide all the details in the next few weeks.)

AND, we need your help to locate our classmates. If you know of fellow classmates who were part of this class -- please direct them to: http://www.ACReunion.info for more information and updates that will be coming soon!

Can't wait to see you all again.

Much MORE to come...

Warm Regards,

Tony Hill, Jolinda Schreiber, Scott & Connie Ashley,
Jennifer Halprin, Angie Kelley & Paula Jo Frazee

Your AC Reunion Planning Committee

More information and pictures of AC students from all three campuses can be fond here:  AC Reunion Site

"Blah, Blah, Blah"

"Blah, Blah, Blah"

Enlightenment is not like a sudden realization of something mysterious. Enlightenment is nothing but awakening from illusions and returning to the reality of life.
--Uchiyama

Enlightenment is the ultimate and final disappointment. Treading the spiritual path is painful. It is a constant unmasking, peeling off layer after layer of masks. 
It involves insult after insult.
--Chogyam Trungpa

 

Waking up is a continuing process. No one wakes up once and for all. There is no limit to wakefulness, just as there is no limit to aliveness....The surprise within the surprise of every new discovery is that there is ever more to be discovered.
--Brother David Steindl-Rast

So what is it about some who have had our common WCG/COG experience, either as minister or member that allowing others to have their own experience is an invitation for derision?  Some who continue to stay, pray, obey and pay seem incapable of allowing those who won't stay, can't pray, obey?-no way, can't pay and won't stay their own experience.  As well, some who can't stay abuse those who have and we can't seem to rest until they utter the words, "you're right, I agree and quit too...thank you."

I'm not speaking of our normal human tendency to want to explain our perspectives newly acquired or held on to firmly as ever, but rather the ratcheting up of what I call "snark" or just simple insults and derision towards those having a different journey or experience.  No two people process the same experience the same way or for the same reasons.  As I tell my massage students, "you can have 100 people go to the same school, sit through the same classes, meet the same people who have the same way of thinking and you will still get 100 different ways of doing massage, and it is ok."

There are certainly many characters in the movie of waking life who experience or manifest more or less stormy weather – more or less anger, more or less depression, more or less compulsive behavior, more or less upset. Such differences may have little to do with enlightenment and everything to do with genetics, neurochemistry, brain function, hormone levels, and conditioning. Some bodyminds have stormier weather just as some cities have stormier weather. It's not personal.

Joan Tolifsen

I doubt anyone can be insulted back into the perspectives of another. Humans just don't work that way.  I doubt name calling or even the glittering generalities we try to apply to very complicated situations change the minds of many on whatever the topic might be. EVERYONE PROCESSES EXPERIENCES DIFFERENTLY and that also is OK.

I had always wished The Plain Truth of the WCG had been called The Present Truth as even the Apostle Paul, who I have issues with, called it.  Plain Truth is seldom plain or permanently true.  Truth is dicey at times if not at most times as it gets filtered through the minds of men.  My mistake was allowing others to filter my own desire to "know" through their perspectives.  Not uncommon. The whole Bible is an effort on the part of many divergent types to coerce the beliefs of others through their real or imagined experiences which they personally view as "The Truth."  

We do have to be careful with "God says," "We know...," "Jesus actually said...," As the Apostle Paul said...,"  and so on.  Most can't get their minds around the idea that maybe it is others doing the saying and giving credit to people who never really said that.  Nuther story I suppose.  If we are not careful...

"When we speak to God, it is called prayer.

When God speaks to us, it is called schizophrenia."

One of the interesting things about blog comments is how often remarks have little or nothing to do with the posting.  How rare it is for someone to say, "Interesting, but this is how I view that topic."  It just rarely happens.  How often there is no really intelligent discussion about the topic, but rather charge and counter charge. Snark and counter snark.  

I recall on particular responder from Britain who simply could not function without damning everyone not on his team to hell.  He never met me and we certainly never had lunch together but my insincere and "hireling" self was just worthy of his truly God inspired revelations, which of course, did not go in my favor..  I believe he was a one man church of truth and claimed only his wife and kids as members as they did not go to any real church.  However, that's his journey. That type of person demands others validate it and get more and more strange the more and more they don't.

A couple days ago my counselor, a man who really did make a difference in my own journey out of literalism and into reality popped up behind me at the grocery store.  He was the one who told me years ago,

"Dennis, you outgrow your boxes quickly. We are all born in the box our parents came in and yet few even explore the one they came in.  YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES.  Stay in the box you are hanging out of at the moment and everyone will reward you. They will be happy. They will love you and life can go on for them. YOU, however, will be on anti-depressants the rest of your life.  Or...you can keep going and explore the bigger box you are now actually in.  However...you will go alone."

And that's how it went and goes. I reminded him of what he said and he lit up.  Something had happened to him since I last saw him. He looked rather bad. He did not have the spark that I remembered. I didn't ask, but it was obvious he was also on his own continued journey and perhaps it had gotten difficult.  I did not, however, press him or tell him he looked like hell.  It was just interesting to see his own humanity poking through his well educated and able to inspire others self.   I told him I have quoted him to thousands and that seemed to encourage him.

Sooooooo, just some thoughts.  More "blah, blah" I suppose.   I don't personally have a need to be right.  I don't care if anything I might observe in my own journey helps or is even agreed with. I do need to be free to seek and look.  I will never again allow others to tell me how it all is.  Coming to some interesting conclusions, true or false is my right, and yours. This is my journey.  Others have theirs.  Some do, however, seem unable to share anything deeper than their scorn or snark.   And I suppose that also is their journey. 

I don't expect much to change in blogging or postings on topics that may cause some to think and others to simply react.  But something to think about perhaps that will bring the quality of the opportunity to exchange experiences and even pain up a few notches for the benefit of others who really may need a positive way to process the experiences, all different, we have had with the same religious experience.

PS  Not bothering to check speling, punktuation or tiepoz.  Whyle important...its the thawt that cowntz  :)

I can't do it here because the computer spell checks most words, but I understand that as long as we spell things with the correct first and last letter of a word, the mind recognizes the word and we can read it just fine.  So at least God programmed us to still get the point no matter the mistakes along the way in print or in life. 

DenniscDiehl@aol.com