Intimacy

“This intimacy itself will allow you to see your ‘self’ as an integral part of all that exists within your world rather than as the small and insignificant personal self you generally accept as your ‘self.’  By eliminating the personal, the universal becomes available.  As the universal becomes available, you will have no desire for the personal.  Even so, you will find that what you consider your individuality or uniqueness is very much intact, but that it is different than you have always imagined it to be.  (A Course of Love, 22.23)”

Affirmation:  “I would encourage intimacy today.”

Reflections:

1 – Moving Away from the “Little” Self

This passage is an excellent statement of what we will gain when we give up focusing so much on the personal, or “little” self.  We will still retain individuality and uniqueness, but we will also be part of the unity of our world, and we will be in relationship to others, always.  We have been so self-centered that we have forgotten our brothers and sisters.  And we would not do that.

2 – Transcend the Personal Self

The universal will be joined in unity and relationship, two words that are used repeatedly in A Course of Love.  The personal self will be deemphasized, as we reach outward to other people.  We will not denigrate the personal self, but we will transcend it.  And then we will know the universality in our experiences.

3 – A New Uniqueness

We will come to know a new individuality or uniqueness in ourselves.  This change will help us to both honor ourselves and others.  We will not lose anything thereby.  On the contrary, we will know the best of all possible worlds, for our perception will have been cleansed, and we will have moved into knowledge granted us by God.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would know this new “uniqueness” today.  I would move away from, just turn away from, without resistance, the personal self that has been too much turned inward to a self-centeredness.  When I reach out to my brothers and sisters, I reach out in Your will.  But that does not mean that I neglect myself.  All in good time.  To give and receive are one.

Be with me as I explore this new uniqueness of self.  It is something that I don’t know enough about, yet, and I implore You to show me.  May I still recognize myself in the true sanity of the real world, and may I not be jolted out of my accustomed world into a new and strange place.  I ask for a gentle Awakening.  Thank You for those glimpses of the Awakening that come to me from time to time.  I ask that all of my brothers and sisters experience the same, in gentleness and in love.

Amen.