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Then, we appreciate our “life”? To be spiritual means to be in the particulars, to love those particulars. We cannot rightly appreciate other persons, their lives, or Creation, without appreciating the particulars of our lives. The particulars of our lives are the particulars of the Life of God. Spirituality and religion, for many, is another drug to escape appreciating the life they fail to appreciate. "God" becomes dope for self-loathing, then, that loathing manifests in the most selfish kind of confessions of self-wretchedness.
God lives with you and loves you within and through your life, now. If you are to be enlightened, it will be a waking up to your life, not some other life. Healthy spirituality and religion is about the sacredness of life. How can I speak of appreciating God and not appreciate the life God gives me? And that life, your life, has its own intrinsic worth.
Now, here is the beauty. The appreciation of your life and that of other persons appreciating their lives is one appreciation.— See, I am not teaching humanism, for humanism is based on dualism.—That is the irony. When you truly appreciate your life, you find that is not selfish. Appreciating your life is a most honorable, natural, and godly appreciation. Your appreciation is your acknowledgement of the wisdom and goodness of God, as well as the goodness of the life of every other being, in all existence.
Appreciating your life is saying to the Wonderful Presence, “Thank you! My Love, thank you for this life, my life, your life!”
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When you appreciate your life, you no longer have to try so hard to win others over, get persons saved or enlightened, or to get friends. No, you have developed a mysterious intimacy with your own life and, thus, with the life of all, with the life of God. Not some other life. There is no other life. There is not another life in heaven or nirvana. There is no I’ve-finally-gotten-enlightened life. Or, I’m finally saved life. No! Life. Wake up to Life! Waking up to that, you wake up to God, to Enlightenment, to Eternal Life, an Eternal Life that is the depth of this very life, my life, your life. Waking up to That, you are awakened to and by Love. Wake up! Now.
Spiritual Exercises
1. Do your daily prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading, …
2. What does it mean to appreciate your life?
3. What does it mean to return “home”?
4. Celebrate your life, today, in one little way.
5. Give God, today, gratitude for the life you are given. Ask for grace to accept your life and yourself, fully and gently.
6. Do you need to forgive anyone or yourself, to appreciate your life, now? Begin the forgiving, now.
7. Whom do you associate with who seems to appreciate your life most and seems to help you do the same? Give thanks for that person. Consider spending more time with that person.
8. If you are not joyful, consider what of your life you need to appreciate.
9. Are there persons in your life who do not honor your life? Abuse you? What do you want to do about that?
10. Reread and reflect upon the opening sagely word.
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