Dec 30 2016-Fruits of the Spirit: Writing Begins Again!

As I prepare to greet my 62nd new year, I want to acknowledge a couple of spiritual gifts that life delivered to me this past year.
This year has been among the most challenging, and spiritually eventful, periods of my life. Training for Cycle Oregon 2016, and, ultimately, participating in it with my wife, Sharon, brought to my awareness the need to let go of a worn out aspect of my ego, which pertained to its competitive nature. There is a huge back story to this, and I will not try to cover it here.
A second great spiritual upheaval occurred in relation to our book club, where we hosted a meeting around a book by Sheila Hamilton (she is a five-time Emmy Award winning journalist and the author of “All the Things We Never Knew.”), who wrote about the mental illness, and subsequent suicide, of her husband “David” in 2006. After having Sheila in our home, and sharing her book, and life experience, with our group, I felt compelled to write about my life, and put words to the unspoken thoughts and experiences of my life during relevant periods of my life. This inspiration resulted in over 70 pages (small, single spaced lines) being written, and writing my story resulted in a more complete understanding of the blocks to “love’s awareness” that existed in my mind/heart during my childhood and early adult years. A cathartic event resulted, revealing a long ignored “voice” that I was called upon to finally listen to. I had to look at and listen to my history completely, as there were early periods in my life when there was nobody to listen to me when I needed it most, and thus some damaging marks were left on my soul, which were then healed through the powers of present moment awareness. Healing can be instantaneous, or it can be a lifelong process, but refining the powers of awareness is also a lifelong process, as well. Children would be well advised to begin early the study of themselves.
My resistance to life was substantial, creating friction each step of the way on my life’s journey, until I learned how to yield to my “higher nature”, through the examination of all of my “inner demons”, and the subsequent reorganization of my inner emotional and spiritual universe so that it could be more in resonance with love’s awareness and activity. For my “Christian friends”, the “blood of Jesus” did not help me heal myself, it is the power of my awareness, and my awareness alone, that brought me to my present moment of healing. I have bled more than enough to atone for my “sins”. My blood is worthy enough, if I respect my life experiences, and am willing to look at my shit, and be healed from it. I am compelled to remove the “log from our own eyes”, before criticizing the “splinter” stuck in the eye of another. Jesus does not do that for me, “Jesus” commands that I do that for myself. I no longer wonder why people claiming for themselves the “fruits of the spirit” , or ‘born again” mentalities continue to live a life almost devoid of that pure connection. THE TRUTH IS, If I don’t do the inner work, I don’t get the results. PERIOD.