When I was nineteen, I knew everything I needed to know about my spiritual self — that I was good. Only I didn’t believe what my heart knew instinctively because I was in too much pain.
Here’s what I wrote back then: “I tend to make problems for myself. I‘m not used to thinking and acting as if I were truly good. It’s probably due to hanging on to feeling bad. Intellectually I can say I am good, but why can’t I feel it emotionally? That’s what I’m searching for—the goodness in me.
“I speak of God—inside me and all around me and in other people—that’s what I want to see. Despite my pessimism, I am beginning to love myself, a manifestation of God, of a spirit within me, within this whole phenomenon of life. It’s just too much to ignore! I could go crazy over that, or I could be calm knowing the power of the truth.”
Forty-six years later, I marvel at what I knew and appreciate the truth in my youthful words: we are all okay. No matter how much pain we are in, we are good; our souls are bright and loving. It’s just that the truth is hard to know when we feel lousy.
Oh dear ones, listen to your heart. You are magnificent! Believe it! You are an expression of Her creativity—golden, warm, and loving.
Here is one of my all-time favorite prayers:
“When thus I lose myself in thee, my God,
Then do I see and know,
That all Thy universe reveals Thy beauty,
All living beings, all lifeless things,
Exist through Thee.
This whole vast world is but the form
In which Thou showest us Thyself,
Is but the voice,
With which Thyself Thou speakest unto us.
What need of words?
Come, Master, come,
And fill me wholly with Thyself.”
–Tukaram, a Hindu mystic of the 17th century
So here it is spoken plainly: “All Thy universe reveals Thy beauty…”
That includes us! We are Her universe! We reveal Her beauty! Isn’t that grand! Isn’t that miraculous!
Enjoy the day!