I wrote my first manuscript when I was a neophyte on the spiritual path, about 1979, and called it One Voice in Many. I have just found it again, in a beat-up file folder among records of long-ago classes I taught. It was typed on an old portable Olivetti typewriter, before the day of computers! What a surprise to meet myself again as I was perceiving the world back then. Some of it is naive, but some is quite fresh and simple.
What is unconditional love? It’s not just acceptance and tolerance, especially when things are comfortable. Spiritual love, Being for Being, is always unconditional. We are created of the same stuff and how can a Being not love itself? Only when we think we’re separate is there lack of love and conditional giving and receiving. Do I consider myself a trustworthy person? Yes. Do I trust others unconditionally? Not always. . . If I don’t trust another I must believe they can do something to hurt me, I have stopped relating on the Being level. I doubt.
In my imagination, I step forward to commit myself in service before the enlightened beings. “Will you accept me?” I say. “Will you accept us?” they echo back. I see it is the same, we are the same. “They” will never tell me something I am not already telling myself.
I give my whole self, all my talents, even my burdens. They drop the burdens—those bundles I have been so hesitant to part with. They simply don’t exist in their light and higher frequency, for they are lies and cannot exist at all. I am truth. We are truth. There is no difference in I and WE, MY and OUR. It is not MY higher self, but OUR higher self; we exist as aspects and unity at once.
I can be a source of love and reassurance to others that they too are sources of love. I am as healthy as I am loving. I am as inspirational as I am loving. I am as inspired as I am loving. We DO receive as we give. Teach and be taught, love and be loved, inspire and be inspired, hoard and have nothing, steal and lose what you have, fear and stand still.
Copyright by Penney Peirce; Photo by Nick Brandt