The Eyes of God

To see others as God would see them - this is my intention. To accept others, to love them, as God accepts and as God loves - this is my choosing.

I don't know whether or not I can do this. I only know that I choose to do this. And I sense something within me that feels that allowing, that accepting. Not always. Definitely not last week! But today, yes, I can sense it within me. It is a quietness, a serenity of sorts. It is a witness, but never a judge. It is an observer, but will not interfere in the process of the other.

When I do feel it, so faintly, yet there, it seems to me to be something hard won and easily lost in the heat of the moment, in the maelstrom of my human emotions.

Over the past few days I have spent a goodly amount of time in precious solitude and in blessed silence as the snow has lovingly whitened and cushioned all the world around me in a gentle embrace. And in this peaceful space I have delved as deeply as I am able into the place within me where my base is. Down to the foundation I have gone, to check for cracks and any other signs of damage or weakness. I would offer such solidity to the world, such a surfeit of certainty, of calm, of awareness that seeks nothing, asks for nothing, needs nothing.

I once wrote that true love was not possible in the presence of need. Thus, do I seek that sure solid foundation of being in trust in self in the world, so that there is no need, so that true love, the love that God is, is possible for me.

The key here, for me, is that this love asks nothing of the beloved. No alteration is required, no change, no progress, no agreement.

So I've been holding that possibility of complete acceptance of illness, say, or pain, or disharmony, discomfort.... Complete acceptance is not complete at all if it is present within me only when life is easy. For me, this love has to include every colour on the wheel, every nuance of light and dark that exists in all of creation. For me, it has to include the sinking down into depression, as well as every joy I've ever known. So it is that the darkness of early December in these woods that surround me has made of itself a fitting accompaniment to my musings.

That's the thing about seeing through God's eyes! There is that love that is absolutely infallible, unending, unalterable, unconditional. When we say, unconditional love, we often feel it. But can we feel it when our hearts are being broken wide open? Can we feel it when we are also feeling pain in our bodies? Can we feel it when we face loss or loneliness?

I remember the morning after I had heard that my brother was dead, sitting on the couch, staring at nothing, barely breathing in the moments of not wanting to know, not even wanting to exist. And I said to myself, "This too is God's love." And I knew it was true. Didn't like it! Didn't want to know! Yet I did know. I knew that in the totality of God's love, my grief was held and loved and offered back to me in perfect truth.

In the depths of depression, that is the gem, the gift that the depression offers to us, again and again and again until finally we accept it. That very suffering, the darkness, the dead feeling, the unmoving, unfeeling numbness of it - that is the gift - that truth held and loved and offered back to us in perfect truth. "You are this. Accept it."

I don't know if any who read this will agree with me, but for me, this is now the way forward. I ask myself to embody the love of God, to see with the eyes of God. All is accepted. All is perfect whole being. Everything.

I'm not going to tell you that I've got it down pat. Far from it. But that is where I now find myself, gazing at that as a goal for myself, naming that as my intention.

Be. Know. Trust.