Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 229, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description H

Love, which created me, is what I am.

In her original Gentle Healing Year 1 tip for Lesson 229, Regina wrote, “Today, while observing awareness presence in meditation, notice it is love.  Notice it is incapable of being anything but love.  It has no judgement in it, no comparison, and no resistance.  Also, notice it is what you are.  This means, of course, that you are love.”

After I read this I thought, ‘What?’  I have never experienced Love in my awareness watching awareness meditation!  Am I doing it wrong? I have noticed the lack of judgement.  I have felt gratitude and even peace, but I don’t remember experiencing love, per se.

I called Jacquelyn.  I asked if she thought I was doing the awareness-watching-awareness meditation wrong?  I have not had the experience of Love in my meditation!  Jacquelyn asked about my experience.  In my meditation, I noticed that there was an awareness that saw my body as just another object in the room.  It didn’t make any judgements, it (awareness) just watched.  There is a stillness that seems to be looking.  Also there is a sense of allowance, as if everything is acceptable.  And peace seems to permeate everything.

Jacquelyn said, “Remember love is not a feeling, it is perfect allowance.  It is the blue sky in Gina Lake’s book, ‘In The World, But Not Of It.’  It is the essence of what we are.  It is the open acceptance of everything.  It is the soft edges around everything.”

I was wondering why I wasn’t having warm feelings or a feeling of personal attachment or deep affection that I associate with love, in my meditation. I looked up the “blue sky” analogy in Gina Lake’s book.  “The clear, cloudless sky, like divine nature, is always there, whether there are clouds or not.  It is pristine, ever-present, immutable, and untouched by the clouds that pass through it.”

Then I re-read Regina’s love experience as she described it in her tip.  “There were different feelings and a few thoughts that occurred during the Love Meditation, but as I concentrated on awareness in a relaxed manner, it was easy to see that I am the love that allowed the experience that occurred during the Love Meditation.  There were a few thoughts; there were feelings; I am the openness (love) that allowed them.”

Maybe I am experiencing love during my awareness watching awareness meditation.  It’s just not sappy, but I am beginning to recognize it is what I truly am.

I invite you to this same looking today. Today, notice that awareness is love and you are awareness as you practice awareness-watching-awareness.

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 228, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 40-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation for today:

Am I the Body?

God has condemned me not. No more do I.

You are not what you think you are. What you are is so much grander than that which can be conceived by the human mind. Just as you cannot cling to one rung of a ladder and move up the ladder, you must let go of the conception of yourself as a separate identity in order to learn the truth of your being.

You can readily see how you identify yourself by making a list of “your” attributes. It might look something like this:

I am young (or I am old).

I am smart (or I am not very bright).

I am attractive/not attractive.

I am frugal/a spendthrift.

I am punctual/always late.

I am kind/mean.

I am spiritual/fun at parties.

Just looking at the list reveals the triviality with which we regard ourselves. If we knew ourselves as the great truth, the insignificance of these little conceptions would be especially apparent.

We talk often about how our true nature is changeless and eternal. Look at the list you have compiled and ask yourself whether the characteristics of truth can be found within it. Are any of the items on your list subject to change or extinction?

Don’t you find that the things on your lists all have opposites? Indeed, haven’t you ever felt you were just the opposite of the attribute you give to yourself at this time? That is, if you believe you are attractive, wasn’t there a time when you felt unattractive? If you believe yourself to be smart, wasn’t there a time when you felt like you weren’t very bright? In fact, isn’t it your experience of feeling the opposite at one time or another that leads you to choose the attributes you now use to describe yourself? Said another way, how can you know you are smart (or why would you identify with being “smart”) if you never felt not so bright? How can you know you are attractive or why would you identify with “attractive,” if there was never a time when you felt unattractive?

Regardless of whether you identify with “good” attributes or “bad” attributes, can you see that the tendency to identify with any attribute distracts from discovering the truth of what you really are?

Today, look to see where/when you identify with a particular attribute and ask yourself why it is important to you to be perceived in this way? Ask yourself whether you are willing to be perceived in the opposite way? If not, why not?

By learning to see our self describing attributes as mere preferences as to how we like to think of ourselves or how we would like to be seen by others rather than facts, we begin the process of letting go of the idea of ourselves as persons or body-mind-personalities and we make room for true Self inquiry.

Today, make room for the understanding that “my mistakes about myself are dreams. I let them go today. And I stand ready to receive Your Word alone for what I really am.”