A Reality Gut Check
Expanded & Continued
Diving Deeper into
"A Reality Gut check ~ I was getting a little (or maybe) to satisfied with myself."
"I proposed various questions about this to the AI app Claude and I find the feedback to be insightful and helpful (IMHO)
The spiritual implications of making a solemn vow to
""God/HP/Yahweh/Him/Her/The Power of the Cosmos"" to turn over your will & your life over to him on a daily basis allows for the relationship to be there and available upon my a momentary thought
The Ground That Holds You
A solemn daily vow to God — by whatever name you know that Power — does something quietly radical. It doesn't just initiate a relationship. It keeps the door permanently open, so that the Divine becomes available upon a momentary thought, a breath, a simple Thank You.
The mystics across every tradition recognized this as the central work of the spiritual life. Meister Eckhart said that if the only prayer you ever offer is gratitude, it is enough. Brother Lawrence found God equally present in the noise of his kitchen as in formal prayer. The vow is that kitchen — the ordinary, daily act that makes every moment a potential point of contact.
When distraction pulls you away, the covenant holds even when your attention doesn't. When the difficult states arrive — fear, anxiety, loneliness, anger — the vow doesn't promise their dissolution. It promises something more honest: that even in darkness, the thread back remains. Not always to strength, but as Teresa of Ávila knew, to the knowledge that God is on the journey too.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov didn't promise the bridge would widen. He pointed to what remains available even on the narrowest passage. St. John of the Cross showed that desolation itself is not abandonment — it is a deeper intimacy, stripping away every consolation until only naked faith remains.
What the daily vow ultimately produces — sustained by prayer, deepened by the Steps — is a gradual loosening of the bondage of self. The Sufis called it purification of the nafs, until the qalb — the heart — becomes transparent to the Divine. Thomas à Kempis cut to the bone: humility, not sophistication, opens the door.
The fourth dimension is not reached through greater understanding. It is reached through the daily, humble, repeated act of surrender — the vow renewed each morning, the Thank You in gratitude, the thread found again in darkness.
As Rumi said: "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
That field is what you are learning to inhabit — not through scholarship, but through the honest daily work of a soul turning itself over.
Click Above
Etty Hillesum
Since people have been telling each other for centuries that man is basically an egoist, one begins to believe it and actually becomes egoistic. There are so many sides to a human being that it would be nice to try something else, just for a change from boring and unproductive egoism.
מכיוון שאנשים אמרו זה לזה במשך דורות שהאדם הוא אנוכי מטבעו, התחלנו להאמין בזה והפכנו באמת לאנוכיים. יש כל כך הרבה צדדים להוויה האנושית שזה יהיה נחמד, רק לשם שינוי, לנסות משהו אחר מאנוכיות משעממת ועקרה.
بما أن البشر مستمرون بالقول لبعضهم بعضا لقرون أن الإنسان هو أناني بالأساس فيبدأ هو بالإيمان بذلك ويصبح في الواقع أنانيا. هنالك جوانب عديدة للكائن البشري وإنه من اللطاقة أن تجرب شيئا آخر فقط من أجل التغيير من ملل وأنانية غير منتجة.
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