(This is Part 3 of a series. Go back to Part 2.)
One of my ceaseless quests in life has been to try to sum up everything I've learned in this lifetime into a simple phrase. Something that could be easily remembered and that would serve as a kind of guiding light towards a fulfilling life.
With even greater grandiosity, I've sometimes pondered what simple phrase could somehow sum up or encapsulate the universe, God, Life, etc.
Don't bother to tell me how hopelessly idiotic such a quest is, how futile, arrogant, how profoundly deluded, absurd and imbecilic. I already know. But what the hell—I seem to have a taste for futile quests.
Anyway, in this hopeless venture I've been struck recently by the two meanings of the word appreciate.
One meaning is the one where we consider what is good, right or true about something or somebody. We ponder what we like about them or it, what is valuable about them or it or the situation.
But what intrigues me is that the very same word is also used in a financial sense—to indicate something that is rising, growing or increasing in value, as in, "my stock is appreciating".
And it struck me recently that maybe the two meanings are actually intimately connected, a kind of deep folk knowledge embodied in the wisdom of language.
And a phrase came to mind that linked the two, and that, when I considered it, seemed to be self-evidently true in some strange way. Here it is:
When we appreciate, things appreciate.
To take an example: Have you ever noticed that when you appreciate someone they seem to blossom around you? Indeed, that they seem to blossom in general?
Look in your own life: Think of someone who really appreciated you in your past. Didn't you just seem to blossom and flourish around them? To open up more, to appreciate yourself more? To begin to see, instead of obstacles, your own beauty, divinity and possibility?
To take another example: Have you ever noticed that when you pondered what you might be able to appreciate about a seemingly hopeless or negative situation that it seemed to transform from hard and unyielding to flexible and fluid? Ever noticed that?
When we appreciate people, they seem more able to appreciate themselves. When we appreciate situations, even they seem more able to appreciate themselves and to evolve. When we appreciate the universe, it seems more able to appreciate itself. When we appreciate God, it seems more able to appreciate itself.
I think that is exactly the truth. The universe gets to appreciate itself through your appreciation. Absurd as it may sound, God Itself gets to appreciate itself through your appreciation.
As we remember, it's all God. So when we appreciate some small part of It, we are appreciating God Itself, because there are no parts—there is only God, there is only the One, there is only the Totality.
When I hear people talk about how God is on "their side" I confess I'm unable to comprehend it. How could God be on somebody's side and not be on the other side as well, since He/She/It is everything? Impossible, in my opinion.
God is everything, loves everything. How could It love one part over another, one person over another, one nation over another? Impossible. It's everything, with nothing left out.
Everything is equally valuable. The merest bug crawling on a vine is equal to the majesty of the galaxies, because the One is equally represented in each, is equally in each,
is each. Just different scales of the One, that's all.
I probably sound like a babbling madman at this point. I probably am a babbling madman. But I've had to come to terms with the notion that even I—imperfect as I am, just stumbling from one mistake to the next—are "part" of that Eternal Love. And so are you, angel.
You are not only part of that Eternal Love, you are that Eternal Love. It is manifesting in you now, it is flowing through you now and It always has been.
Eternal Love is you, is us, now and forevermore...
(This is the end of Part 3. Go to Part 4.)
—jim sloman, 7.17.05
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