Posted by The inner movement from head to the heart often requires an outer journey. For many fear can keep us in our heads, while the God of our hearts invites a journey downwards. This journey can take our whole lives. On this journey we are drawn, more fully and deeply, into our hearts – the place of connection, relationship and longing. On this journey to our hearts we can encounter Love and experience something of Love’s divine character. We discover that Divine Love is the profoundest Love.
On this journey of our consciousness into Love, God respects our freedom. God never forces. As awareness journeys downwards deeper into our hearts, we experience a God of gentleness, tenderness, and infinite patience. This Love respectfully and faithfully heals us into a clearing vision and true experience of who we really are.
Love wants to move within us, unrestrained by fear, to sweep us ever deeper into the Love life of God. It is us who limit God and all that God would want to do. All we need do is ask Love ever more fully into our lives – into our hearts and into our conscious minds. As this happens we come to truly understand that fear is not divine.
God would have us experience the liberty that is the absence of fear, a liberty in which we are re-introduced again and again to our own hearts. Love knows our hearts and would never act in ways contrary to them. God keeps our hearts safe. We reveal God as Love when living out of the liberty of a human life that is being love-filled and growing in fearlessness.
V
And so I walk again and I curse You!
‘Who are You, what do You want of me?’
‘I thought I knew what I wanted. Answer me!’
Tears of anger and longing flow,
Enough to ease the tension in me.
The walk is now prayer.
Awareness moves downwards.
–
I come again to the valley with the river below.
Now the rocky edge is too far from the river.
The River within seeks the river without.
I know deep down what needs to be done.
Will I be faithful?
–
Through the cool of the Eye of the Needle I descend,
In search of the river, in search of my heart.
At the bottom of a gully I come to an expansive cave
Formed by water and wind, water long gone on its way down.
Is this close enough to Love?
I see what the water has done,
Worn down the rockface, propelled trees and boulders in its wake.
Sometimes Love can be unrestrained,
It can show its strength,
It can leave its mark.
The water has shown the way down
And feeling the River’s pull anew,
I now see a new path to descend.
–
As I begin again a new resolve claims me:
‘If it’s what I really want to do, I’ll do it!’
I feel the force of this resolve, it is real
And I embrace it.
–
Prayers form my descent:
‘I am a man of courage! Help me not to run from myself, from You.’
‘Help me to see what I really want.’
‘Please uncover what might be hidden.’
‘If I really want it, I promise I will do it!’
The going down takes its physical toll,
And all the while I feel the River’s draw.
On and on I push engaged in a Holy Quest,
A task of faithful endurance,
Of faithfulness to Love and to myself.
–
I see it emerge from behind the trees: the river.
I come to its bank.
It is smooth, engaging, graceful.
Light reflects on its surface.
I feel the movement of the River within me.
I lay on its bank, far from the bridge, and I wait,
Too exhausted to think.
–
Time passes.
I feel like a kid again.
Down the river people jump from Tower Rock and into the water.
Playfully I entertain the same idea.
I feel like a kid again.
‘I would’ve done it you know’ I say.
‘I would’ve done it if I really, really wanted to.’
Love knows and Love revels in my faithfulness.
Peace and joy flow from the gut.
