Action

 You may find it hard to talk about your beliefs, but as St. Francis of Assisi says, you don’t have to use words.  Use action.  This avoids hypocrisy.  I can be pretty good with words and this helps others on my blog since they don’t see how I act.  But action is for those who do see me.  And some of my best action is when I am selfless and no one sees it.  Oh, forgot.  God sees.  Oops!

Evolution

 There is a spiritual evolution as well as a physical one.  The spiritual evolution takes place in the short time of our physical life.  What is it?  As Jane Goodall says, we have to evolve from the ordinary, everyday humans, into saints or mini-saints.  Well, that is a tall order.  But just as physical evolution is slow, so is spiritual evolution.  We may not even notice it developing, but it will if we have a daily spiritual practice and spiritual reading that helps direct our daily lives.  Slowly, we move from being all about “me” into being for others without worrying about results or payback.  There can be setbacks, as we aren’t perfect.  But setbacks help us to stay humble.  

Preoccupations

Why do I forget Spiritual Powers in my life?  Preoccupations take up too much space.  It is not the same as something “really important.”  There I would call upon my Power, my God.  It is preoccupations that I make bigger than they merit.  Why?  Ego of course.  I have to attend to this and that because I need to prop up my ego.  The ego never gets excited about God stuff because God stuff sets the ego aside.  The self, falsely, only calls upon spiritual forces, when the self feels like it is in the foxhole, stuck.  Then the ego makes a deal and promises to pray better…tomorrow, or later.   

Give To Keep

If you want to possess something try giving it away.  Say what?  Yes, I keep my faith or grow in it by trying to share it with others in one way of another.  I try to keep to the contemplative life by telling others about it in teachings now and again.  In Recovery Programs, people keep their sobriety and grow in it by sharing it with others.  They “give away” what got them sober in the first place.  You are diminishes by simply holding on.  Faith and Recovery become merely dry and so many people thirst for a better life.   

The Journey

Retirement is not a stop altogether.  Life is a journey with change and growth.  Retirement is the outer garment we wear as we journey.  We are always on the way, but retirement is being on the way in a different pace, manner, surroundings.  There will be new paths opened to us.  We go down them at a slower pace, measured energy, wisdom from the past.  Retirement is like going away from what we know, its old surroundings, pace and practice, routines.  It is a somewhat connected path, but new at the same time.  It takes a getting used to type of life.  But it is life.  It is movement.  Just less frantic.   

The End

Why does death have to be seen as the “end?”  Why can it not be seen as the fulfillment of a life well-lived in the deepest sense?  Such a life probably planted some good seeds you don’t even know about.  People say things at your funeral that they never told you in person, wonderful things.  Plus, the end implies there is nothing after.  The ego cannot take extinction.  If I have been trying to surrender a too big ego, then death is not so much seen as the end followed by oblivion.  I don’t think about oblivion.  In my faith there is the next step.  But even if you have no such faith, the end a of life well-lived in love and service really will live on in others who benefitted from your spiritual practice flowing over into relationships and the work you did.  So don’t waste your energy on fear, whining or such, but on the deeper path in which much died in you so that you could live a fuller life.   

Surrender

If someone gives you the seeds of a spiritual practice, nothing will take root until something dies in you.  Without surrender you are simply too shallow soil.  As a child, a faith tradition is easy to accept and practice.  Not much to give up yet.  But the practice has to mature as you get older.  What gets in the way, and needs to die is the too big ego, self-will run riot, self-centeredness to name a couple of things that come with those double digit years of age.  A mature spiritual practice is not all about you and your feeling good.  It is about service to others, commitment to daily meditation and some reading or aural listening.  It connects you to your deeper self, soul, and your truest identity.  That is then expressed in service to others whether they see it or not.