The human idea of love is very different from the love of God. Our ideas about love miss the mark by quite a bit. Since our ideas about love are mistaken, we can also misunderstand a lesson that uses the word ‘love.’ Therefore, let’s take a minute to look at ‘love’ in order to get more clarity about it.

Love is best defined as openness. That’s what all-embracing allowance is: openness.

Other words that help us understand the meaning of love are non-judgment and non-interference.

To illustrate, let’s consider the space the room where you are sitting now (or the space outside, if you are outside now). If you contemplate the space around you, notice it is open, allowing, non-judgmental, and non-interfering. For example, if two lovers decide to make love in the space around you, the space does not try to stop them. Its openness naturally allows that. Likewise, if one person violently murders another person in the space around you, the space does not try to stop that either. Its openness is as open to murder as it is to making love. The openness of space is so naturally open, it can’t be anything but open. Judgment and interference are impossibilities for the space around you.

God (our true nature) is like the space around you. God is completely open. God cannot be anything but completely open. Love is the perfect openness of God.

Consider love as perfect openness as you review these phrases and sentences from today’s lesson:

God does not forgive because He has never condemned.

His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness.

God is the Love in which I forgive myself.

I have already been forgiven.

Optional Practice: If you’d like to add an extra practice today, take some time to notice your natural openness. You won’t find your natural openness in the mind. The mind obviously judges, rejects, condemns, etc., but there is a part of you that is always perfectly open. That is your true nature.

You might start this extra practice by spending a few moments contemplating the space around you. Notice its intrinsic openness. Then, close your eyes, and notice your intrinsic openness. Notice that all of the sounds in your environment are allowed by your openness. Notice that all of the sensations in your body are allowed by your openness. If the mind begins to chatter, notice your openness allows the mind’s chatter too. Your openness is completely natural for you. It’s an openness you cannot close. In that way, you are like the space around you.

If you notice your inherent openness for even a fraction of a second today, you have taken a giant step toward realizing your true nature.