I remember the first time I read this lesson. I DID think “there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another.” Back then, if a mother had told me that she loves a bug in the same way she loves her daughter, I would have either been appalled or simply unable to imagine it. But today, I am that mother.
The only reason it would be difficult to understand how a mother can love a bug in the same way she loves her daughter is because one has a misunderstanding about what love is. Don’t get me wrong. I have a more intimate relationship with my daughter, a longer-lasting relationship with my daughter, and a human-to-human relationship with my daughter. All of that is different than my relationship with a passing bug. But the love is the same.
How does one describe love? Love is openness. It could be described as embracing, accepting or allowing. It is joyous or compassionate, depending on the response that is pulled forth from it by the appearance. It has no lack in it, no need. One could say it is patient, although that is simply an aspect of its openness and allowance. Judgment is an impossibility for it. 1 Corinthians 13 is a reasonable description of love. I will post it in the comment section below for those who aren’t familiar with that scripture.
If one contemplates love deeply, one will see there are no differences in love, just as today’s Course lesson says. Therefore, a daughter and a bug are alike in the heart of love.
How does one realize love? Today’s lesson has two good pointers:
1. “Escape from every law in which you now believe. Open your mind and rest.” – Remove attention from thought and sit in awareness-watching-awareness. When you watch awareness, although you may not realize it, you watch love. Through watching it, resting in it, being nothing but it, you will become intimate with it, and you will begin to experience everything through it instead of through the mind’s interpretations.
2. “And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief…” – Begin to question your way of thinking in every way you can. Learn to see that you have made up the ideas (laws) by which you now live and judge. Drop every idea you have made up, and you make space for love to shine through.
