Our experience in life is what it is teaching us: that the whole business of reaching for what we do and the way we do it is incapable of producing the perfection that our heart is looking for.
What is it about seeing a great performer, a great athlete, a great mind that makes them seem so special? Is it what they have been able to bring into their lives as a result of what they love? Or is it the love itself that the person has become an expression of? And I would tell you that by and large, our immature minds are attracted to what the person has won -- achievement, authority, possession -- that we equate with perfection.
But for those of us who want to be true friends of truth, who want God's life -- and said more simply, who want to stop hurting ourselves, the people around us, and the planet that we walk on -- it requires something new to mature in us. And it's a slow maturation because the difficulty is that our present nature doesn't know what else to do. For what do I reach? What do I hold in my heart? Where do I start? Because the first exchange a person makes is with the idea of becoming something big: "I'm leaving behind these empty futile wishes to become someone special. Now I'm going to work so God knows I'm special!" All in vain... unless a person is stirred to see it's all in vain. Then something different starts to take place inside the center of a human being.
That stirring is absolutely no different than the almost imperceptible stirring that takes place in the smallest seed that sits beneath the surface of the earth. That little seed within you is what it is because God has seeded it in you to be touched by Him.
We've all felt that touch. Some of us feel the stirring in our hearts. Some feel it in the mind. Some feel it in the body. Our task is to feel that touch in every part of us! So that we as a human being become an instrument that is an operational part of the concert of the Consciousness that produced the seed, the stirring, and its flowering at once. That's what we're here to do. And the good news is, I don't have to be smart. I don't have to be strong. I don't have to be wise. I just have to learn to be honest.
I can start to use my attention to understand that if I give myself over to what parts of me are tempting me to think about, which is to fulfill desire in one way or the other -- that if I do that I know where I'm going; I know what's ahead of me. And it's not what I want.
So instead of doing that, I'm going to do something I've never done before. I'd rather remember You, even if the remembrance is only that You are there and I am here. And even though for a long time that's what it's like, still I have faith.
You can walk outside on a beautiful day, and you have a choice as to what you think. You can think about everyone that you know who has done you wrong, how everyone that you ever met is talking behind your back and plotting to steal all nine dollars you have saved. You can spend your time thinking about that, or you can spend your time remembering that you've been given a life with beauty in it, that you've been given a life that has a well from which you can draw an absolute infinite stream of wisdom and kindness and goodness -- not of your own, but through which and by which you can walk through your days -- and never have to suffer the consequences again of being the victim of something inside of you that wants to think about what it wants to think about. You can recognize that you're about to be drawn into a fight, or dragged along with these negative thoughts... or you can choose to look at the light, and think, "You know, that's beautiful light... and I don't care if I don't even feel it because I can give myself to what I want to give myself to." That's the beginning of remembering what one loves. Why? Because what loves you gave you the ability in that moment to remember it.
You don't know the connection is there, but it whispers, "You know what? It's so much better to remember Me. It's so much better to think about Me. And if you'll think about Me... if you'll meditate, if you'll use higher principles, and if you'll use your mind properly, use your attention to go into these things, I will connect with you in ways you don't know are being connected in your soul. And then when you need Me, I'll be there. Something will come through to you because you are willing to give to Me what it is that I've always wanted from you, which is love."
And then you get that love back!