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By Attorney Steve Grow
July 25, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Some notions to help your life go swimmingly

1. Gently allow yourself to recognize and accept that God exists in, within and around every child (and former child) including you, and that neither you, nor anyone else, is God. You need not use the word “God,” or any other specific word, or any word at all. Feel free to make up your own little nickname that you need not reveal to anyone else or even to leave God quite nameless in your own mind. God is swimming around with you in your little fishbowl right now. Really. Realize that you need not allow anyone—not a church, a clergyman, a friend, a parent, a teacher, a doctor, an employer, a political leader, an “expert,” or “leader” of any kind, nor anyone or anything else—fool you into believing that God isn’t already in your fishbowl or that you somehow aren’t already good enough to swim with God. God imposes no prerequisites. Come as you are and keep your money in your pocket, so you and God can spend it wisely as you swim along together. Have you ever noticed how some fish try to swim between you and God and keep you apart? Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to find God in a small fishbowl than in a large ocean? You certainly don’t need to amass a large ocean in order to find God.

2. Gently allow yourself to recognize and accept that no mental or electronic image, or occupation, or schooling, or position, or rank, or ritual, or physical, intellectual, religious, or political structure, or food, or medicine, or thing of any kind—can fully express or capture what God is, much less control or even hurt God.

3. Gently open yourself to being contacted by God from within your fishbowl, and welcome the resulting internal relationship, even when you sometimes feel pain for a time. What’s a little pain between best friends?

4. Gently realize that God guides you (usually) through wordless nudges and realizations and hunches, like a good parent fish shepherds his child as they swim along together. Sometimes God reaches out to you through another child (or former child) in which He resides. Realize that God in my fishbowl is reaching out to you in yours as you read this.

5. Cling not to anything or anyone, and you shall become free, alive, happy, prosperous, all of that. You will swim freely and so will all other children (and former children). Don’t cling to anything your mind conjures up or that anyone tries to implant within you. Recognize that other children (and former children) sometimes throw shark viruses into your fishbowl. Don’t panic. The shark virus may swim away or become your friend. Or, you may have to confront it with courage and expel it from your fishbowl, or even kill it. Never throw a shark virus into your own fishbowl or into the fishbowl of any other child (or former child).

6. Gently realize that resentment, anger, hatred in all forms, real or even imagined violence and cruelty, or revenge, or degradation of yourself or of another, fear, worry, overwork, images of what you think you “should” be—all of that, are just not good for you. They cloud and churn up the water in your fishbowl so that it is harder for you to see where you swim and to feel the presence of your great friend, God. Allow yourself to realize and accept that your own emotions, thoughts and mental activities can throw up powerful blindfolds that cloud your tank. Gently realize that as you release resentment, anger, hatred in all forms, real and imagined violence and cruelty, or revenge, or degradation of yourself or another, fear, worry, overwork, images of what you think you “should” be—all of that, your fears also recede, and the waters in your fishbowl become more clear and calm and you will come to swim effortlessly.

7. Blessed are the curious. Wonder and you will be shown. Learn to recognize and trust the light within you even in the face of an army of “experts.” All children (and former children), and some armies and crowds of children (and former children), swim in darkness from time to time. Notice that. Forgive them their blindness that your own fishbowl may remain clear and bright and their fish bowls also might slowly clarify and brighten. Gently accept and do not hate the clarity and light within you that shows you things, or the clarity or light within anyone else’s fishbowl, even if the things you or they initially think you see, strike you as surprising, disgusting, unpleasant, fearsome or weird.

8. Honor, cherish and protect all children and former children. Blessed are those who resist bullying and cruelty with calmness and patience and show others how to do so. Greater love hath no fish than the love that is willing to bail water from his own fishbowl into another’s—that the other might live and breathe and thrive.

9. Resist gently any temptation you may feel to pretend that you, or anyone, or anything else, is (or needs to be) just now—other than it is. If ever you wonder whether to sit it out or swim, wiggle your tail a little.

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10. Do your best to keep your fishbowl clean. Recognize that innutritious (or too much) food, or any unneeded medicine, or drugs, or alcohol, or other chemicals can pollute the waters in your tank and might even kill you. Never ever break, drain, or throw anything poisonous or dangerous of any kind into your own fish bowl or that of any other child (or former child). Monitor your own fishbowl for harmful things, and expel them over the side, being careful they do not fall into another’s fishbowl where they might harm another child (or former child) or any other living thing.

May you always swim effortlessly in the company of God within your own fine, clear, bright and clean fishbowl.

Your fellow child (or former child), your friend and fellow swimmer,
Steve Grow