Thursday, July 16, 2015
Lesson 197: “It can be but my gratitude I earn.”
This lesson says, “Deny your strength and weakness must become salvation to you.” It’s funny to think of how insane it is to take weakness for our way to salvation. I cringe when I even hear the word ‘weakness’ because it generally denotes what we would not want to feel and have. When we are weak we are not in our power, we are not making and having the ideal life because our state of mind is necessarily in a lesser state- lack of strength. We would not generally consciously choose weakness because it is a state we associate a lack of power.
Here Jesus is telling us that we are in fact choosing weakness when we aren’t choosing God. This seems like the worst dead end. When we choose a dead end this is because weakness leads us to nowhere as it inherently is lacking in every way. Let’s watch our minds and be mindful about choosing what we want to wear in our day to day mentality. We have to see that we need some way to get us to the salvation we seek. But choosing weakness is never going to get us to this goal because weakness has no power.
This lesson says, “It does not matter of another thinks your gifts unworthy. In his mind there is a part that joins with yours in thanking you.” When we try to make sure we get the proper thanks for our gifts to others, this is an ego driven act. The ego and our sense of neediness and lack is what is evident when we make an outline of the kind of response we want to make sure the other person has in response to what we have given them. This is when we give with the agenda that it is a bargain with the other person who is expected to follow through giving something that our egos deem acceptable.
What we want to do is be gentle in our own hearts. When our egos are running the show they get very rigid and specific about what they want in return. What we want to do is be ever so kind to our inner self. We want to really check in with our intention. What is the gift truly about? Are we giving with the express desire to get something back? When we give this way, our hearts are not operating from a whole and full perspective. When we give with a desire to do something helpful for the other person, first check in to see what other intention might have seeped into this gift of our service. If we want to give from a heart of fullness and gentleness then we can release that ego drive to try to get something in return.
Let’s try to get honest with ourselves about what might be our ego’s underlying intention to get some return energy or gift. When we do this, this is always setting us up for some upset if the other person doesn’t respond in the way our ego wants them to. This is then going to rock our inner calm and grace because we are then rocked in our core. We don’t want this to happen because we want to live in our own peace.
This is why when we check into our intention and see that our egos want us to hear a certain response, just remember that this is simply an expression of our unmet need. What we need to do is tune into our own need then and make the space and time to take care of our own need. When we realize we are feeling needy, the thing to do is see it for what it is and then find ways to meet it with God’s Love. We have a never ending source of God’s Love from His commitment to us. All we have to do is find some way to do this and accept this Love into our hearts. We can visualize it or meditate on it or feel the warmth of God’s light filling our hearts. But then just see that it is ever so important that we use God’s Love to fill whatever neediness we may feel. If we don’t do this, we are surely set up for some major emotional drama when we try to interact and give to others when we are doing this with unmet neediness in our own hearts. Be willing to be gentle with ourselves in this process but also be sure to take responsibility for meeting this need so we don’t suffer. Also when other don’t happen to respond in a certain way to our gifts, we don’t feel the need to respond with resentment, starting a cycle of attack with the other person.