Georgia O’Keefe. Lake George Reflection.
Love that transforms can only come from within. Our heart is at the center of our being human. There, our deepest thoughts, intuitions, and emotions find their source. It is also there that we are most alienated from ourselves and consequently, from others and from the world. We know little or nothing of our own hearts. We keep our distance as though we are afraid of what we might find there. If we ask ourselves why we think, feel, and act in a certain way, we often have no answer, thus proving to be strangers in our own house. We fail to know the beauty of who we truly are. That is the painful part of being human.
Jesus sends the Holy Spirit into our hearts to comfort and empower us, but finds there is little room for Him. Heavy walls and deep clutter has collected there from our endless attempts to fill and fortify them with anything we think might protect us from pain. If we choose not to wake up out of our self-imposed darkness, we will remain isolated and limited in our capacity to relate to others and the world in a compassionate way.
Awareness is the key to change, and attention is vital. Our path to hope and wholeness is first to become aware of our negative clutter and then to consciously begin to clear it out—little by little, one choice at a time. It is a long and arduous journey, and we fail over and over again, but growth is never a straight line and God will always forgive us, using everything for our good. Nothing is wasted. Slowly, we open a holy vacancy within us that Christ, our Redeemer, can begin to fill with Himself. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”1
This work will require a lifetime of perseverance, discipline, and intense desire, but the magnificent mystery is that Jesus wants to meet us in the seclusion of our hearts, stilling our fears, and making God’s love and our truest and deepest self known to us. As our inner life expands, our outer life will expand in blessing to others. If we will commit deeply to this great work of love, holiness will come, and with holiness the gift of mercy for all people.
Our humble opening to the Highest Good will, at last, become a treasure in the hearts of others, inspiring them by the sacrificial beauty of our own poured-out lives. We have become the still point in the midst of the chaos of our families, our work, and our relationships. We have become blessed peacemakers and reflectors of God’s Love—transforming our world from within.
A Further Word From Betty:
The transformation we all long for occurs in the intimate embrace of our Divine Lover, in the still, hidden places of our soul. It is here that we become real—the authentic self that God created. Becoming real is an unlearning, the process of emptying ourselves of all that we have clung to and been conditioned to by our culture. As we gradually do this painful work of emptying ourselves of our ego, illusions, perceptions, and aversions, we begin to see Reality, and in seeing Reality we become real. In the emptying, we are creating a holy vacancy in our souls allowing God to fill it with Himself. We are detaching from our mind’s control over our lives just long enough to open a tiny gap where Spirit can touch spirit, where we can begin to hear the voice of Love speaking to us. It is in this holy vacancy that we encounter Love, listen to the voice of Love, and celebrate the presence of Love. This Love is the center and source of our spiritual life and this Voice has a new and deeper message, one we must begin to trust. As we allow this holy vacancy—this little pool that is our hearts—to be filled up with the River of Living Water, our lives will naturally begin to overflow in blessing to others.
The Hidden Life Awakened p.200