The place of the cross in our life is the place of death and resurrection.

How many times are we asked to take our place on Golgotha
and die again?

Every time a "collision of duties comes along 
where obligation is pitted against obligation,
will against will" (Carl Jung),
where we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.
When that is the case, up on the cross we go
to be damned and be done with it,
bearing, again, the agony of the damned
and suffering consciously, willingly through it,
dying and rising again to die and rise again--
with a gleam in our eye
and a spring in our step.
Understanding and embracing what the deal is,
taking our place in the endless line from Calvary
to the empty tomb over and over 
throughout the time left for living (and dying).

We have to know what we know.
We have to listen until we hear.
Probe, question, examine until we understand.
Comprehend. Make connections. Realize. See.
We drop into the emptiness, stillness, silence,
and wait for the truth to become clear.

We know what we seek.
We wait for the epiphanies. 

The silence is filled with answers.
Do not run from knowing.
Enlightenment is awakening
to the truth of who we are,
and how things are,
to what's what and what is called for.
The click of knowing is the sound
of things falling into place.

We have to find our focus,
our grounding foundation,
the essence of who we are and what we are about.
What makes us US, defines who are are,
always have been and always will be.

We have to recover the face that was ours before we were born.

Don't we?
Don't you know what I'm talking about?
Doesn't it ring true with you?
We know who we aren't, don't we?
We know who we are NOT, am I right?
That's a start. It's a help.
And now we know what we are about.
Let's seek out who we ARE!
From this time forth, and for ever more.

I write. I'm a writer.
I ask questions. I make inquiries.
I get to the bottom things. I investigate.
I am a loner, a lone wolf, a hermit, a recluse, a solitare.
I don't trust people. I have been used, abused, lied to, betrayed.
I seek a safe, reliable, place to be.

What are the things that characterize you?

We owe it to ourselves to know who we are before we die.

Circumstances will take our life away from us
if we let them.
Did someone just say, "Donald Trump"?

Our circumstances, our attitude, our "vim, vigor, and vitality,"
impact the quality of our life to the exact degree that we allow it.

We take our life back with regular immersion in emptiness, stillness and silence--emptying ourselves of thoughts, emotions,
memories, moods, etc. Everything and anything that creates difficulty and adds to our burden.

The Jon Kabat Zinn YouTube Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction exercises are a great tool to use in creating an internal space free from anxiety, fear, chaos and despair. Just counting our breaths provides a quick shift in attention, which, alone is a refuge from inner cycles of angst on "the heaving waves of the wine-dark sea."

Enough overwhelming ourselves in scenarios we produce without end! Listen to Baroque music and watch the wind blowing through the trees.

Knowing, doing, being, sincerity, spontaneity, authenticity.
Imply compassion, curiosity, sensitivity, balance, centered, grounded, oneness, peace, tranquility, serenity, integrity.

Describes a baby with all its needs met.

At what point did they no longer apply to us?

What would we need to change to bring them back into play?

What's keeping that from happening?

I don't see wanting on the list.

Needing isn't there.

What else is missing?

"Peaceful abiding, here, now" isn't there, but
it probably is a by-product of the combination
of the words that are there.

Who in you experience comes closest to being 
a living example of these terms in action?

They apply to my ideal of the Buddha and Jesus,
but it would take living with them to know.

Would they more likely apply to women or men?

I think they would apply to babies equally across gender lines.
If that is so, when do we begin to separate? Would we separate?

Can we consciously live to have these words apply to us in all times and places?

Why wouldn't we? If they were ours naturally at the start,
why wouldn't we be able to gravitate back to them now? Let's do!

Jesus was all about salvation--but not as it is presented to us.
Salvation rightly understood is about dying to the right things
that we might live in the service of the right things. And who is to say what is right?

Meister Eckhart, who was probably--in my opinion--murdered before being sentenced for heresy in 1328, said,
"The final leave-taking is leaving the God (of Christianity)
for the God (who is).

The God of belief or the God who is to be known? Which will it be? Salvation hangs in the balance (we might say, "On the cross).

The Gnostics were all murdered in the genocide that was early Christianity for proclaiming a gospel at odds with the way the Church of Rome, and Irenaenus, Bishop of Lyons, understood, proclaimed, the gospel, evidencing what Jesus had foreseen with his "those who lose their lives for my sake will find it. Raising the questions, "What is the death worthy of resurrection?" and "Who is to say so?"

Who is to say what is right and what is wrong?
How are we to know who is right and who is wrong?
Who says so?

We each make up our own minds--and realize by living out the foundational truth of how things are: The bread of affliction is the way of life. The cup of suffering is the cup of salvation. This is so no matter how we understand what is life and what is death.

Being here, now is being nowhere else but here, now.
How long can we be here, now?
What is with drifting away?
We drop into here, now,
and we drift away.
And we can drift constantly.
What holds our attention?
What do we dwell on?
Desire? Dread? Fear? Anger? Anxiety?
Where do we go when we are not here, now?
How often do we frequent the same place?
What is the attraction? The fascination?
Our favorite mental escape is to where?
What are we telling ourselves by going there?
What are we saying?
What do we need to hear?
Drift into listening.
What do we need ourselves to know at this point in our life?
Do a walk-a-bout with ourselves,
listening and making inquiries.
See where it goes.
Asking all of the questions that need to be asked.
Saying all of the things that need to be said, heard.
Repeat the exercise as often as needed to say what needs to be 
said, heard.

I want you to join me in a pact
to no longer allow our personal gain,
benefit, profit, advantage to govern our choices
and direct our life.

We are no longer in it for what we can get out of it.

Instead, we are going to live in the service of
what is called for in each situation as it arises,
devoting ourselves to doing what needs to be done
in the service of what is called for no matter what
for the rest of the way.

And we are going to commit ourselves to knowing
what is called for by learning to live intuitively,
by teaching ourselves to drop into the emptiness,
stillness and silence and wait there for clarity
and realization to arise out of the silence and lead
the way to what needs to be done with the gifts 
of our original nature, our inherent imagination,
our innate virtues (The things we do best 
and enjoy doing most), and our intrinsic intuition,
in doing the right thing, at the right time,
in the right way and in the right place as only we can do it
throughout the time left for living.

Will you do that with me?
If you will,
we will create "a brand new world, Golda."

How about it?

Courage for the work,
heart for the task at hand,
rising to meet what's coming
in seeing what's what
and doing what is called for
in each situation as it arises
in the service of our original nature
our inherent imagination,
and our intrinsic intuition,
one day at a time,
beginning here, now.

I have faith in my intuitive ability
to know what's what and what is called for
and what needs to be done about it,
in each situation as it arises--not by thinking about it,
but by not thinking at all,
and simply trusting myself to drop into the emptiness-stillness-silence, waiting for knowing to arise on its own accord from the impulse of my original nature to guide me in acting spontaneously in response to the moment and doing what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done in each situation as it arises, throughout the time left for living.

Living intuitively out of the silence is grounded in not wanting what I want to happen, but waiting to see what does happen and what I do on response. Imposing may way on my life generates forces at odds with the flow of life resulting in the production of heaving waves upon the wine-dark sea, requiring a lot of emptiness-stillness-silence to return things to peaceful abiding  here, now.

Which is the way of the Buddha and the Christ and their kin and ilk. 

I have recently updated my eBooks on Amazon Kindle, "The Tao of Jesus V" and "A Handbook for The Spiritual Journey II." I enjoyed writing, and enjoy reading, both books, and am sure I will not do better in what remains of my time left for living.

This Trump mess sullies what remains of my time, but I look at as a challenge worthy of the best of us to stand in the midst of the junk Trump is and is generating, and to look at it as a resplendent opportunity to rise to the occasion and allow it to be for us as the Cyclops was for Ulysses.

Just as Joseph Campbell said, "It took the Cyclops to bring out the hero in Ulysses, so it may well take Trump to bring out the hero in each of us--at the very least, he is well suited to bring out the best we have to offer in dealing with him and his junk as they call to be dealt with.

That will certainly spice things up for the remainder of our days. And, I think that in looking back on it from "the other side," we will be proud of the ways we dealt with the challenge, and the way we went out on a note we never would have been able to hit otherwise.

Taking stock is a meditative practice
of dropping into the emptiness-stillness-silence
on a daily basis throughout the day,
to tune in, turn on and realize what' what,
here, now, and what that calls for,
and what needs to happen in response,
when, where and how,
align ourselves with the direction and flow
of our life all day long.