Sunday, December 28, 2014
Lesson 362: “This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.”
One of the most basic ideas of the Course is living in gratitude. If we can’t remember any of the philosophy or we are still stuck in getting to deeper levels of forgiveness, let’s forgive this about ourselves. Then, let’s sit in gratitude because this is the only way to love life. We can dread what we perceive before us, we can dread doing the dishes, or particular parts of our jobs and parts of parenting. Sometimes the idea of living in a perpetual state of gratitude seems completely off the wall.
When we live in gratitude it is the quiet knowing that we are in love with all we see. For me being “in love” is a little different than my traditional ways of simply “loving.” For me when I think “in love” it’s the active form of love. When I am “in love” it’s like the beginning of my most joyous relationships with someone who is a great match for where I am emotionally. This is where I first gleaned the notion of this exquisite feeling of the most amazing and high feeling and also being totally excited about this kind of relationship.
I think we all have some idea of when we have felt those amazing moments when we felt incredible, intense and lasting love. We may feel that way in nature or with our kids or our spiritual community. What is useful here is to understand what I am talking about. You or the person next to you may have different times when you felt the highest love you knew how to feel. But what we need here is the simple knowing that you have some reference for in what context you felt such exquisite love. Just hold that memory in your mind and then think about how it would feel to apply that feeling of being “in love” with everything. And let that love be active. This is the kind of love that is exuberantly joyful. Allow this feeling to come through your heart and pay attention to how to connect that feeling of being “in love” to whatever we see.
What I think of gratitude is this willingness to hold everything in the circle of the earnestly loved within our hearts. When we feel gratitude always we are making the effort to not separate anything out from this field of loving. When we include everything, we truly shine emotionally and energetically because we radiate this perfect love. We make this basis of all of our perception and activity.
And of course, we have a back up plan. When we are willing to live in love and in gratitude, this makes our whole life a gift of joy and peace. We will actively live love. When we include our willingness, all of our work is done. Then, we let ourselves shift into God’s alignment because we are not blocking the way. If we have the willingness but we don’t know how to shift, we simply ask the Holy Spirit for the guidance. God can bring us to gratitude if we can’t do it alone. Know we are always blessed because God gives us answers when we forget how to be in love.