True Recognition of What Is
I had been resisting reality all my life—resisting facing it, resisting accepting it, resisting feeling it. … When I dropped my stance of resistance I felt totally connected to myself. … It was … my life’s first conscious moment of peace.
—Gay Hendricks
The first aspect of love is true recognition of what is. Though this might seem simple and straightforward, we encounter situations and circumstances in our daily life that we find disturbing: things that are scary, angering, guilt-inducing or saddening. Of course, we also observe actions that warm our hearts: generosity, consideration, gentleness and loving kindness.
My Qi Gong teacher, Dr. Effie Chow, back in 1987, through the use of muscle testing, was able to demonstrate that merely observing acts of kindness will energetically strengthen our body/mind and that observing acts of unkindness will weaken it.
Therefore, it is not too difficult to understand why, as we go through our day, we choose not to see the things around us that literally weaken our bodies. In truth, even though we might consciously or unconsciously choose to ignore these events, we do see them, and what we see does affect our energy; we are simply choosing not to consciously recognize their effect.
In some ways, this choice is a self-defense mechanism. Maybe if we stopped to console ourselves for every hurt we feel, or we demanded fairness for every injustice we experienced, or if we cried for every pain we experienced, we’d never get anything else accomplished. Still, if we could give more of our attention to accepting and resolving these experiences, we would be able to make an enormous difference in the type of energy we carry within us.