You can give love to anyone — if you set aside ego and its judgment
By Sally McKirgan
Feeling loved and lovable is a wonderful experience. Close your eyes; go within and ask yourself: Do I feel loved right now?
Most of us don’t. If you do, you needn’t read further. We feel love when we give love. Think of someone you love right now. Think of that person, animal or object in your mind’s eye. Look quietly for a few minutes. What do you feel? Warmth, sweetness, perhaps sadness if that person has departed this earthly frame. Do tears come to your eyes with gratitude and appreciation? When we give love, we have love. It is always there waiting for our acknowledgement.
You can give love to someone you’ve never met or a person on the street, in the store, someone you see or someone you think of. I enjoy going to the store and seeing love in everyone, even the driver who cut me off.
Love is in you. It is always available; just change your mind from whatever it is thinking to love. You can’t judge someone and love them at the same time. If you are not giving acceptance, you don’t feel accepted either. If you judge someone, you are judging yourself.
I’m trying to love a political figure I disagree with. Anyone come to mind? I find I can’t get to love if I look at the body. Love in this instance has to come by looking beyond the personality or offense to what is beyond the body. Look for the Light in them. Keep looking, and ask your higher self, aka Holy Spirit, “Help me see the light in this one.” Our eyes judge, but there is a way of seeing when we ask to look with spiritual vision. Asking is important because when we “ask” we move from the ego’s way of seeing to another way. We leave the ego. The ego speaks first with judgmental thoughts. There is another way of seeing, but we need help. The ego won’t help; it might try, but its thoughts always have a “yes but” aspect to them.
Quiet your mind and ask for help. It will come, maybe not in the next minute, but sooner or later you will receive a thought that is not of the ego. Trust and have faith that this will happen. You are in charge of what you think. No one is forcing thoughts on you, even if they try; there is a part of your mind that holds on to truth.
Yes, it is a challenge but you are worth it. Peace is worth it. There is nothing like experiencing the calm within, being above the fray of trying to figure things out or deciphering what it all means. Where the ego is concerned, there is no true meaning because everything is picked apart, vilified or exalted, which means nothing is loved for its innocence or its essence. In case you haven’t noticed, the world is insane — so the only sane thing to do is: choose peace.
Sally McKirgan, formerly of Ashland, lives in Olympia, Washington, and still misses Ashland. She recently published a book of inner peace essays from the 12 years facilitating the Inner Peace column called “The Gift of the Great Rays, Inner Peace Essays, A Course In Miracles and its Promise of Freedom,” currently available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. She facilitates an ongoing Zoom study group of “A Course In Miracles.” Contact her at mckigan1239@msn.com.
Want to contribute? Send 600- to 700-word articles on all aspects of inner peace to Richard Carey (rcarey009@gmail.com).
