Or daughter S. She left around noon I think, must have stopped on route. I’m hanging out in the garage, very lazy. Finally read a bit of Lee and Meister.
Lord be with us, let us attend to you.
Impressions. Are children’s different from old folks’?
I have often heard it said that we choose our parents. Does Judaism believe that before the soul comes down, we are given a choice about who we are born to? Not sure what I was thinking when I chose mine.
It’s clever to tell somebody that they chose their parents. We often credit our parents for who we are and blame them for our problems. To flip this on us and say that we actually chose those parents shifts responsibility back on us.
But it’s not a Jewish idea. On the contrary, Judaism teaches that G‑d chooses who our parents are, where we are born, and when. You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your parents.
And yet, there is an authentic Jewish teaching that says something even more powerful. Indeed, G‑d chooses the details of our life, not we. But our soul agrees to those details. We are shown before we come down into this world what our destiny will be, what our challenges will be, how we will be born and how our life will end.
Like a paratrooper, we are made aware of the risks, told our mission, and given what we need to fulfil it. We nod. Then we jump.
Our soul’s acceptance does not excuse anyone who harms us, nor make us responsible for their choices. It means that before entering this world, our soul knew it had the strength to survive what others might choose to do.
But still, why would anyone agree to go through pain? Because up there, before we came down into this world, we could see the purpose, the meaning, the reasons behind the challenges.
Your soul was shown: this is your family, with all its complexities. These are your weaknesses. These are your victories. These are your dark moments. And this is the reason why.
The soul sees the big picture, and it all makes sense. That’s why we agree to it. But then we are born and forget it all. That’s why things don't make sense. But somewhere deep down we know life has meaning, even when we can’t see it.
We didn’t choose it. We were chosen
Five trips to Dr or ER this week too yesterday for C with L driving. She worn out and spent She thinks it is mismanagement of pain meds still. Not the docs. Lord help them all. Blessed healer and redeemer, your light is needed. IJN
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. But… Lee says on the morning five today,
“ The ordinary parts of myself
operate under the mistaken assumption
that I am here in life to test my value
as though it were an uncertain thing.
Yet this is not true,
for my value is assured.
And really, here in life,
the purpose of being is to appreciate the value,
not presume it is missing.”
JPG thinks I can’t drive standard. I’m pretty sure I can, but I’m too lazy to pursue the pretty little blue scion he found online. That seems to apply to most of my time; run me in boring old automatic.
But when I look back at photos, I recall automatic changes from year to year This morning, for example, waking up with sore hands I know it’s because I hold a cell phone too much which never happens 15 years ago
Let the automatic be between me and the lord, but not taken for granted Jesus lover of my soul, I must love Thee as well. Even ask a question what love is in my different meetings
Abide with me today I’m with my dear ones and with the whole world. I pray IJN.
What a beautiful sunny breezy cool day today day today And yesterday was so humid and gray and smoky
But if you should ask a good man, “why do you love God?”
“I don’t know. For God’s sake.”
“Why do you love truth?”
“For truth’s sake.”
“Why do you love righteousness?”
“For righteousness’ sake.”
”Why do you live?”
“Indeed, I don’t know. I like living.”
A master says, he who has once been touched by truth, justice, and goodness, though it entailed all the pangs of hell, that man would never turn from them even for an instant. He goes on, that man, whoever he may be, who is touched by these three, truth, justice, and goodness, can no more quit these three than God can quit his Godhead.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 1, from Lee van Laer, Substack Inner Christianity, today, Sensing God
Thank you for my loved ones. And for helping them with their problems. IJN. This was July 15 post
From Lee’s Substack, the morning five, 7/15/26, to help to become
My life begins in a lower place
that may seem difficult
but is actually a place rich in the food
that is needed for my being to grow.
I am surrounded by difficulty and struggle and tragedy
and sometimes it seems
as though grief is the foundation of being,
and not joy.
Sometimes it seems like the foundation
is rooted more in sorrow than anything else.
These are mysteries I cannot explain,
which I have confronted my whole life.
And yet somehow I sense deep in every cell of the body
that it is my duty to meet this with courage
and a resolve to affirm the goodness of being
and the goodness of life.
And no matter what happens, I will not give up.
I will not give up on my faith
or my love
or being.
For life asks me to participate in a super effort,
which is cosmological in nature and not individual.
To hear the call
that has been issued from the highest place there is
to rise up and meet this life with courage
in the light of grace and in a spirit of thanksgiving.
An endless river of grace and goodness
has been sent to assist each creature in this effort.
And I search every day for the right way
in which to align with that river of goodness,
to help it to flow into being here.
For no good was ever so freely given
as that good which is earned.
And it is the effort that makes a difference
here on this planet
and in every tiny crevice of the cosmos.
This effort to be
and to help the goodness of creation flow into being.
So as I breathe in,
I say yes to life.
And as I breathe out,
I say yes to life.
And I remember the words of the 23rd Psalm.
Yea,
though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil.
In this effort to be
the sensation fills the whole body with grace
and every cell and molecule here is called.
And today, no matter what happens,
I will remember in every cell and molecule of the body
to align with that force
and help it to become.
Lord have mercy.
I guess the moments whipped by too fast and then it was bedtime.
Lord help us all especially to walk closer to you Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in then. IJN
So what would you have me do?”
The devil looked at me in sheer astonishment. “Why, write,” he said. “That’s what you do best anyway.”
“What am I going to wrote about?”
“Well,”the devil replied, “for starters, you can write about God.”
“I don’t want to write about God,” I replied. “I just quit God.”
“You can’t quit God,”said the devil, “any more than you can get rid of me.”
“Yeah, but I’m tired of God,” I said wearily. “He’s been having me work long lifetimes, no paid overtime. I wanna divorce, or whatever it is you get when you don’t have a relationship with God anymore.”
“Flaubert,” admonished the devil. “You can’t really mean that. You love God. God loves you. His Son is your BFF. And you can’t get rid of God.”
“I just did,” I pointed out. “I walked out. I quit.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” said the devil, and he proceeded to explain.
Lee van Laer Substack, The Flaubert Report, today, Getting the God Out
Thank you for your support
Lee again, Substack
And the sensation of the soul
informs the sensation of the body in such a way that conscience,
which has hidden itself for all these years,
forms a more intimate contact with the ordinary body
and begins to contribute the sacred substance of its most essential nature
to the ordinary parts,
who now awaken in a different appreciation and understanding of love.
It brings me to the place
where I begin to see why death is necessary,
and encourages me to form a prayer
for everything there ever was, and is, and will be.
A prayer that has its roots in both bodies now.
A prayer that says,
Lord,
I call to Thee from the depths of mine iniquity.
I have not delivered myself sufficiently unto Thee. I know not how.
Come then Lord and bring your goodness into being here
that I may receive it,
and here in this body of flesh and blood
make it my own
and bring it forth into the light of your glory
in every moment that there is.
As I sing and pray,
Lord, have mercy.
…eternity, which doesn’t really mean forever. It means a place in us and in being and in the cosmos that exists independent of time, but not independent of glasses.
So, it exists independent of time, which means that it will come, but now is. And that’s exactly what he says. We move into it from here, and we live within eternity.
What does that mean in an inner sense?
Well, it means that I’m here now in this moment and in no other moment. All of the past and all of the future are here with me in this instant because they’re conceptual constructs that I gather around myself that also arise here in the now.
If we but sensed it properly, we are always in eternity: this place outside time.
Preposterous, perhaps, when we think about the fact that it’s going to take a few minutes to boil the egg on the stove; and yet it’s true that we are always here now.
It’s a mystery.
If I penetrate the attention; If I focus the attention on the body and I sense myself in such a way that all of me is here now, perhaps I can begin to get a taste of what it would mean to live in this place where there is no time, but only now,
Stop for a moment and sense yourself here. Here in this moment, with every cell and the molecule in your body alive here with you.
Sense yourself as though this were the only place there ever was, here and now.
Sense the stillness here.
A Vision of Identification
There is a trick the mind plays that is so constant, and so seamless, that we almost never catch it in the act. It is this: whatever we happen to be experiencing at any moment, we take to be ourselves. Not something we are having — something we are.
When I am angry, I do not stand somewhere watching anger move through me. I am angry, entirely, with nothing left over to do the watching. When I am worried, there is no quiet corner of me apart from the worry. The worry has the whole house. This fusion has a name. We call it identification — being so completely absorbed in a thing that we vanish into it. The word is not perfect, but no better one exists. What it points to is a quality of attachment, a being-lost-in, that runs underneath nearly everything we do.
And the striking fact about it is not that it happens occasionally. It is that it is our ordinary condition. For most of the day, on most days, we are identified with whatever has us at the moment: a mood, a grievance, a conversation, a queue that is moving too slowly, a remark someone made that we cannot put down. We do not have these experiences so much as we become them, one after another, all day long.
A Give Away
Notice how thoroughly the language gives this away. We say “I” to almost everything that passes through us. Every thought that drifts across the mind, every flicker of irritation, every wave of self-pity — we stamp each one with “I”, as though it were the whole of us speaking. A thought arrives and we say I think this. A dark mood settles and we say I am unhappy, as if the mood and the self were the same thing.
We would never say “I” to the chair across the room or the traffic outside, because those are plainly not us. But the inner world gets no such treatment. Whatever shows up there, we claim instantly, and so we are pulled along by it. The reason we do not see any of this is built into the thing itself. To observe something, you have to stand at least slightly apart from it. You cannot examine a window you have your nose pressed against. And in identification there is no apart — the state fills the entire field, leaving no vantage point from which to look at it. That is precisely why it escapes notice.
It is not hidden in some obscure layer of the mind; it is too close, too total, too much the very medium we are looking through. We mistake it for simply being awake and getting on with life. A man convinced he is one single, continuous self, fully in charge of what he thinks and does, has no reason to suspect that he spends his days being swept from one passing state to the next, with each one briefly persuading him that it is the whole of him.
The Unnoticed Cost
The cost of this is quietly enormous. Identified, we repeat ourselves endlessly — the same reactions, the same offences taken, the same grievances rehearsed, day after day, because there is never anyone home to interrupt the machinery. And it drains us. Anyone who has spent an afternoon worrying knows the peculiar exhaustion of it, the sense of having been wrung out by something that accomplished nothing. We were not thinking; we were being worried, and it fed on us.
So how does one begin to see it? Not by knowing about it. Knowing and observing are different acts.
You can know perfectly well that you dislike someone and still never once observe the dislike at work — the crowd of unpleasant thoughts, the small satisfactions of contempt. Observation is something more active: attention deliberately turned inward, onto what is actually going on in you right now.
Divided Attention
The first real move is to divide in two. To stop being entirely the angry one, and become, even faintly, someone who is watchingthe anger. There is an old description of this: a man is first one, then two, then one again. While he is identified he is one — he is simply his state. The work of waking up begins the instant he becomes two: an observing side and an observed side, no longer fused.
The moment that gap opens, however briefly, something genuinely shifts. The state begins to move away from him a little, into the middle distance, because he has quietly stopped saying “I” to it. A small practice helps. When you find yourself caught, try naming the event plainly, from the outside, as though labelling an exhibit: this is called being insulted. This is called being kept waiting. This is called being disappointed.The naming requires attention, and attention is exactly the thing identification cannot survive.
Another hot day. E on phone said Y and J in Portugal enduring hundred degree weather with no AC. AC isn’t big in Europe apparently. He will also pick them up at the airport tomorrow night about 9 o’clock after picking Ian up about 9 AM. What a day! That has to be 10 hours of driving back-and-forth to Atlanta. God give them all strength for all the travels. Must be love
Bless A and give him many more years
Heal L and move her to help herself.
Thank you for our blessings.
58 anniversary tomorrow. Flowers delivered today 95 to 97° today and still hot at 8 PM
Keep us cool, Lord
Please give S a safe trip to Boston and home and healing.
And C just said she and L at hospital with niece L. Must be really bad. Lord be with them, heal and comfort IJN
…And I see the way in which this life is part of a great song
that exists everywhere at all times.
I sense the way in which this vibration is present everywhere.
And the sensation advises me
that the magnetism of attention and being
has drawn me together here to be.
To dwell within sensation,
to dwell within being,
every cell and molecule participating as together in community.
They sense the sacred nature of this life
and the glory that arrives.
The glory arrives at every moment throughout creation.
It never hesitates.
and yet sometimes my own heart is made of hesitation.
I can let go of that. …
Lee van Laer Substack, the morning five, today,
To serve the purpose of the soul
With such beauty smacking us upside the head, can only say thank you God for the quiet wonders of the world
For solutions and calm in frustration of electronics
God keep me on track. And help my loved ones and all other suffering ones. IJN
Rainy morning. Short early walk with Red. Fond goodbye to young Henniker who moves to GNG today. “ we already have a trail to Grandparent’s house “
A read Ruth1, 2 I read more Hedge Knight I enjoy being read to very much
Thank you Lord for small pleasures like being read to and piano playing on request Thank you for another sunny day and the prospect of Two Lights for landscape and special food IJN
Lee van Laer, Substack daily five today, to receive goodness:
I breathe it in with praise and thanksgiving. I breathe out with praise and thanksgiving.
The whole body and all of its cells and molecules rest here in praise and thanksgiving.
Prepared to receive this day and the goodness that is in it as a sacred thing.
Lord, I call to thee from the depths of mine iniquity.
I have not delivered myself sufficiently unto thee.
I know not how.
Good talk with I, planning his day and his life the topic, writing it down in his notes. He walked into town. I went to Dr. we went to GW bins-Yuch-and Gorham mid town trail. Visit with L. He played piano for us. Cooked leftovers dinner in 20 minutes, including the special steak and stuffed baked potatoes made by L and C. Quick barbell workout. Finished his daily chore, dusting. He is very amenable.
Thank you Jesus for such a full and fine day. So satisfying. IJN
… is not equilibrium. Big talk on walk with I and Red At dog park during unsettled weather. Lord, I feel so unsettled generally, even occasionally afraid of dying. L says C is slipping cognitively and I feel like that’s me too. this is the longest day of the year, but life and time seem so short
Jesus guide and abide with me and my suffering kin. IJN
Lord boost our patience and gratitude for this day and its events. Help me see and correct my unbecoming actions before it’s too.late. IJN
flaubertvanlaer@substack.com from Lee van Laer’s substack, The Flaubert Report, today
I Want Them Back
We were gathered together in luminous room 24, myself and the enlightened one.
“Oh illustrious enlightened one,” I said. “Why then wilt thou not enlighten me?”
On enlightenment, the Tathāgata then proclaimed the following:
“Full enlightenment is bad for people.”
I looked at him in sheer astonishment.
“WTF,” I said. “How so? That can’t possibly even be.”
“It turns out,” said Lord Buddha, “that sitting around in the absolute bliss of infinite attainment of being is kinda, like, well… counterproductive.”
“Counterproductive?”
“Well, yeah. You know, after I attained full enlightenment, as you know, I began teaching people.”
“While I was still stuck down there in hell trying to get my passport renewed, mind you.”
“Damn.” Lord Buddha slapped his knee. “You never told me about that. I would have sent a Bodhisattva. Well, anyway, turns out I was a way great teacher. Who knew? And before you knew it a whole bunch of folks had attained enlightenment under my direction. But it turned out all they did after that was sit around on their butts in full lotus poses, telling everyone how great enlightenment was.”
“You don’t say. That might explain all that Buddhist art.”
“Yeah, I mean, you never see Buddhas doing anything, do you? They just sit there. It’s not like Soviet statues. You know, workers of the world unite and that kind of stuff? I mean, in those statues people are always getting things the fuck done. Hammers and guns and agricultural machines and stuff. But not these enlightened buddhists I produced. They did Nothing. Nada. Nichts. In fact for them the whole point was Not Doing and Contemplating the Nothingness of the Eternal Void. That kind of crap. It turned out enlightened people were about as industrious as cabbages. And, I mean, there is in fact a physical limit to how much just sitting around doing nothing you can do. It began to create traffic problems.”
“Traffic problems?”
“Yeah, they were everywhere. Sitting in aisles and on streets and stuff. In hallways. You couldn’t get into the kitchen for example, because your husband was fully enlightened and he decided to be blissed out in nothingness right there in the doorway. Stuff like that.”
“I see,” I replied. “But what does this all specifically have to do with me? I mean, I’m little; I don’t take up that much space. I can’t even sit in a proper full lotus pose because I’m a dog. So it seems to me I’m, like, a very low-risk prospect when it comes to enlightenment. If you enlightened me people would hardly even notice.”
“Oh, they’d notice all right,” said Lord Buddha, waving one serene index finger at me. “They’d notice. An enlightened dog would stick out, because there aren’t any. Now are there?”
“Tell me all about it.”
“Yes, well. The fact is, it turns out people weren’t meant to be fully enlightened. Not while they’re alive, anyway.”
“Wait a minute… what are you telling me here?“
“People are created… the whole universe was created… to work towards enlightenment. Not to just have it. If you don’t work to get it, it’s worthless. And once you get it the whole journey is, like, over.”
“So you’re, like, done? It’s all in the work, not the achievement itself?”
“That’s right. Done.”
“That’s pretty irritating. And what about all your Bodhisattvas?”
“Done.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Don’t you see?” said Lord Buddha.
“See what? You look perfectly fine to me. Serene, happy, filled with everlasting joy. Relaxed, content, fulfilled. What’s your beef?”
“It’s boring,” said Lord Buddha sadly. He cast a dejected stare down at the ground. “I mean, everything done. Nothing left to attain. No mountains to climb, no rivers to ford, no inner poisons to purge, no lusts or desires to conquer.”
“I should think we’d all be better off that way. No?”
“I liked conquering emotions and vanquishing desires,” complained Lord Buddha. “It made me feel powerful. It was fun.”
“I thought the whole point;” I said testily, “was to do all that and then finally get some rest, instead of perpetually chasing from one end of the cosmos to the other on an endless series of missions to correct an infinite number of situations that appear to be egregious mistakes on the part of various and sundry cosmological beings. Like Gurdjieff indicated in that tedious book of his. Not, by the way, necessarily limited to mistakes by Archangels,” I added. “From everything I’ve seen I think God does indeed bear some real responsibility for all this repair work that’s needed. I think he’s flat-out dodging the rap there. This is, after all, his back yard.”
“You’re probably right. But in my own case, there’s nothing to do now. You can’t imagine how frustrating it is, to feel perfectly content with all and everything there is, without exception.”
“Nonsense,” I pointed out. “You’re managing Bodhisattvas all day long. Tending to the ill. Expounding the Dharma. Gathering the Sangha. Gongs, meditation sessions, Tai chi. All that stuff. I mean, you’re one of the busiest guys I ever met. Have you even seen the line of people out there waiting to meet with you?” I gestured dramatically with my paw.
“Yes, yes,” agreed Lord Buddha. “But once you realize everything is an illusion… it all seems so… so futile, you know. So pointless, so very mundane. I mean, if none of it matters, then what does matter?
“So you’re telling me that complete and absolute fulfillment is completely unfulfilling?”
“Yes,” admitted Lord Buddha. “Life has lost its meaning. I can’t even enjoy a simple spin around the wheel of Karma any more. And, I mean, as the Buddha I suppose I can handle that. If I have to. I mean, if it’s part of the job, it’s part of the job. But if even the dogs were to discover life actually had no meaning…” He sobbed.
“There, there,” I said, slobbering on his ankle a little to cheer him up. I rolled over and offered him my tummy to pat; he took me up on it. “It’ll be all right, really. I still love you. All dogs still love you. What would happen if that took place?”
“Dog love, Flaubert is the foundation of the entire cosmos. It would literally collapse if you were all enlightened.”
“Yeah, but I’m just one dog,” I said. “Just because you enlightened me wouldn’t mean all dogs were enlightened.”
F“But that’s just it!” shrieked Lord Buddha in a completely unBuddhist manner. He leapt from his chair and literally rent his garments in anguish.
“Stop that!” I said in alarm. “Saffron Buddha robes are expensive!”
Lord Buddha proceeded to wail.
“If I enlighten you, you then will inevitably want to enlighten all other dogs! That’s how it works!”
“Holy guacamole,”I said “you mean…”
“Yes! Enlightenment is infectious! It’s contagious!”
“You’re overexcited,” I replied. “Calm down.”
“And knowing you,” Lord Buddha said sulkily, “You’d do it. Before you know it dogs would no longer even be offering tummies to pat. They’d all be sitting around in full lotus positions.”
“Half at best,” I said comfortingly. “Dogs are anatomically unsuited to the full lotus.”
“Flaubert, Flaubert, Flaubert,” Lord Buddha sobbed. “I am SO SORRY!”
“There, there,” I responded. “I understand.”
“I hate you for being like that,” said Lord Buddha. “You are far too forgiving. I’d like it if you would just for once get mad at me.”
“How can I get mad at you if I love you?” I asked. “Isn’t our relationship more important than full enlightenment? I mean, if I were that way, how would you feel about it?”
“Like crap,“ admitted Lord Buddha, wiping away tears with the hem of his robe. “That’s the other thing. I’m not enlightening you because I’m selfish. I love you the way you are. Without all the enlightenment stuff. You’re already good enough.”
“Well, gee, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about me lately,” I noted. “Everyone else keeps telling me they wish I was different. Less of a pain in the ass; especially satan, he says that a lot. The only one who doesn’t is Jesus, and He doesn’t count. Besides, I thought full enlightenment purged you of all lower creaturely impulses and emotions such as greed, lust, avarice and selfishness.”
“Unfortunately,” said Lord Buddha. “It does.” He sniffed. “But I want them back.”
