Letting Go of Looking for Love

. . . we have and are everything

We can only search for something if we know that something is missing. I wake up and search for my glasses, because I need them to see. I know what they are and I know what they do. How else could I miss them? Why else could I search for them?

In a similar way, if love is missing from our life, then we know what love is - it is that which is missing. If we say that God is missing, then we have defined God. And if you can define God, then you know God, and if you know God . . .

. . . then God is not missing.

Absence is always the outline of what is missing.

Critically, unlike a physical object, which can only be in one place in our experience (my glasses were not on the bedside table but were in the living room), abstractions like God or love are in the mind.

Therefore, if we know they are missing - if we behold the absence of love or God - then they are not missing. They are here. They are in the only place they can actually be, and they are there in all their fullness. We can pretend otherwise, but we can't make what is untrue true (e.g., T-3.II.6:2).

We are seekers who have already found what we seek and have chosen to forget this. In the midst of Creation we long to live in the midst of Creation. Everything we want and need is given, without qualification or condition. Ideas do not leave their source, period (T-26.VII.4:7).

Seeking - like every aspect of our spiritual practice other than gratitude and joy - is a form of distraction, a willful effort to avoid looking at the actual problem. It is looking away, rather than looking towards. It is avoidance rather than acceptance.

So what is "the actual problem?" What is going on in our lives that makes us unhappy and unfulfilled? Given everything why do we insist on pretending we both have and are nothing? We are like children at a birthday party who close their eyes and cry that there's no party. Why?

Here's the deal: it doesn't matter why. The most helpful response to that child is compassion and patience. Patience because high emotions subside with time and compassion because we've all been there. And eventually we do open our eyes. You can't hide from the real world forever.

How grateful I am for those who waited with me while I screwed my eyes tight and insisted I was a victim! How happy I am to have shared the way with those who assured me all was well, and who were there with open arms when I took my first faltering steps in the Vision of Christ.

It is okay to open our eyes. It is okay to gaze with gratitude upon all that is given, which is all there is, and to know with calm and quiet certainty that the Giver remains fully present to us as the gift.

We are children of Creation; we are life remembering itself; we are the mind that knows itself unfractured and whole. "Thank you" and "how can I help" are the only prayer to which we are called. We make that prayer together, and in doing so, remember we are one with our Creator.

Thank you for sharing this way with me and for reminding me we are not many but one.

Love,
Sean