Competition With Me

FRI., FEB. 10, 1995, 6:50 AM
FARM, STUDY

You sit here in a position that has become familiar, and you wait for a title, suggesting the theme for the Teaching of the morning. Yet the competing thoughts and concerns crowd in. You’ve already made a phone call for hay. Thoughts about the man coming to assess the crib also are in your mind. And still you persist, for you know I am with you, and that this is a day for this kind of interaction.

I can’t say that you are supremely faithful in this “discipline.” It is a good week, when you’re here at home, that you have four times of learning from Me. Then I note that you have nearly two file drawers full of these Teachings, representing a goodly amount of earth time given to Me… and I have to admit that not many of My servants surpass you in accomplishments like this. You know that this is both a compliment and a critique. You do persist in a “spiritual discipline” that brings you knowledge and satisfaction… and close relationship with Me, the Holy Spirit… but you also are distracted by thoughts and actions which compete with this “timeless time” that is Mine to claim.

I have a few truly dedicated servants who prefer to be with Me, in some variety of ways, than being “earthly.” This is commendable, but when such earth lives are over, the “evaluation” often is that they didn’t gain as much as the could have from this unique earth experience. So I want your time and attention, but in order that you might be more aware and more appreciative of this earth experience, in all of your dimensions. The spiritual is certainly important, and it unifies and coordinates the others, ideally, but in this earth time you are having a unique opportunity to mesh the spiritual with the physical, mental, and social, within a tangible, and sometimes harsh environment. Sometimes I ponder the decision to have each of you come into the earth without this “prior knowledge.” ( 7:21 / 8:33 )

These chores you just have completed take some time, but they are part of this lifestyle that is pleasing to you, and to Me. They involve responsibility to and for other creations of Mine… some, like the little bull calf whose world is your pasture and who’ll never know much else of the world. You provide for them, and then they become part of your “provisions.” You are more directly related to this balance of life than many of your fellow Americans, but you are much less related than more than half of My present human creation.

For some of these, who live in a perilous harmony with the earth and its “provisions” the work of staying alive is in direct competition with a concern for Me… but no more so than for many who are now commuting to work, to a desk piled with papers, to which attention must be given. The “simpler life,” while demanding in some ways, allows for more contemplation of Me and My blessings, even as these sometimes seem meager. Remember the time of philosophical thinking while you were a paid gardener during your graduate school days. I’m disappointed, often, when you don’t focus more on Me and My relationship with this earth scene as you garden and do other mundane chores. That is time when competition with Me can be minimal. You can accomplish and meditate, all in the same time span.