Take five minutes
longer in bed to start the day with this practice of one of the Course lessons
(W78):
...select one person you have used as target
for your grievances, and lay the grievances aside and look at him. Someone,
perhaps, you fear and even hate; someone you think you love who angered you;
someone you call a friend, but whom you see as difficult at times or hard to
please, demanding, irritating or untrue to the ideal he should accept as his,
according to the role you set for him.
You know the one to choose; his name has
crossed your mind already.
(I love that line.)
You will review his faults, the difficulties
you have had with him, the pain he caused you, his neglect, and all the little and
the larger hurts he gave. You will regard his body with its flaws and better
points as well, and you will think of his mistakes and even of his
"sins."
This is very
different from those angry dialogues in your head, or going over and over any
point of contention, or picking at your sores. This is time spent differently.
Beginning with a conscious decision to look at someone whom events, or
emotions, have obscured to you, you choose to see past the grievances or the
guilt as you see it (of either of you), you lay down your resistances and
objections, and pay full attention to
him or her.
What you are
looking for is the spark of life and light in them that you have perhaps not
wanted to see. What you are offering now is appreciation, respect, compassion,
acknowledgement - a willingness, as it were, to hear them out. What you are
feeling for is a sense of their presence here with you.
The purpose of
this few minutes is to completely suspend judgement, unless it is to judge in
favour. Behind the barricade of expectations, accusations, wishes and labels that
you have piled up between you, there is someone as much in
need of unconditional acceptance, of being loved and delighted in, as you are. If you can
allow yourself to even for an instant glimpse what is true in them, you will
experience what is true in you. You can only see the light in them with the light in you. You don't even have to like them! As E M Forster said, Only connect.
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