Guiding Thought

I love myself for the Truth within me. The Truth within me Knows me for who I am—Pure Love, Only Love, beyond all valuing of the world. In Love all are equal, for we are One. This is how Truth Knows me—Pure, One, and Free. This is my Truth; this is our Truth; this is the Self I love.

Reflection

I do love myself for the Truth within me! I can feel that in my heart, radiating outward, and I can feel it deeply in the fibers of my muscles, in the marrow of my bones.

There was a period of time when I was doing a lot of physical-emotional work; the language we used in one of the processes was, “Where do you feel that (anger-guilt-sorrow-etc) in your body?” The body holds onto those emotions and as we feel something, the body reacts to the feeling. At the time, I had a lot of subconscious anger–the kind just under the surface: seething, fuming–that is hard to put a finger on consciously. But when prompted, I could identify where the anger was located in my body (bicep to bicep, right across the chest…), and work through it from its physical side, instead of relying on my brain to figure it out.

It occurs to me that in that work, we never did the flip-side; we never asked where joy or peace or motivation or enthusiasm was located. Now I am doing it, and now I have something new to pay attention to!

This Guiding Thought is a little sneaky. Do you see it?

It starts with the hook, the feel-good moment, “I love myself for the Truth within me”–you can see from my first line that I swallowed it. Who could be opposed to that? If it stopped at simply, “I love myself”, some people could object; the little voices of self-negation, self-loathing, self-hating, would be able to object. But those voices can’t object to “I love myself for the Truth within me“. Someone might be able to deny the Truth within them…temporarily, which would lead to disagreeing with this statement. But anyone doing this work recognizes the Truth within them to some degree–and wants to love themselves! Gotcha. Hook, line, sinker.

Then, instead of going into more about loving myself, it goes into how the Truth within me sees (Knows) me. Pure Love. Only Love. Beyond all valuing of the world. And this feels so good. By what standards can the world judge Pure Love? The Truth of who I Am is so much bigger than anyone or anything in and of the world will ever understand. Finally. Someone sees me for me.

Then this feeling, this Self-valuing gets extended to everyone. This is the check on any narcissistic, selfish, little-self propensities.  In Love all are equal, for we are One. I love myself for the Truth within me, and I love you for that same Truth.

The last line is what I was referring to as being a “sneaky”. This is my Truth; this is our Truth; this is the Self I love. It starts saying “I love myself for the Truth within me”, referring to the little self, capturing the attention of the ego, drawing it in, giving it a boost of the attention of love. Then in the last line >kaboom!< it’s not the little self at all; the Self I love is the only Self I AM, the Self of Pure Love.

But by the time I get to the last line, my little self is already invested: I do love myself for the Truth within me! I can feel that in my heart, radiating outward, and I can feel it deeply in the fibers of my muscles, in the marrow of my bones. 

Even the little self wants Pure Love, the Truth of itself.

From A Course in Miracles, with my insertions in parenthesis, and my emphasis in bold:

There is no living thing (even the little self) that does not share the universal Will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own. The Christ in you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows His Love. But only if His Son is innocent can He be Love (and this is why we have a little self in the first place: feelings of guilt have usurped our natural Pure Love, and we be believe in our guilt more than our Love). For God were fear indeed if he whom He created innocent could be a slave to guilt. God’s perfect Son remembers his creation. But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is.