The following was part of the Awareness series which was published in the 1970’s in San Diego.
Now that I am certain that love is a state of being rather than an emotion, I am more relaxed and confident in my Self and my relationships. I no longer have to concentrate on finding love outside myself, and as surely as I know it is there for me, I am that positive it is there for everyone else, even though it might not look that way sometimes. More and more I notice my willingness to express love out in the world with people I meet for the first time, and I suspect that as I become more open I will be even more willing to allow it to touch all people all over the world.
Fear has been my worst confinement. It is the one mechanism that keeps me from being with people. There was a time when I was afraid to let people acknowledge me. I felt embarrassed because under the surface I believed that I didn’t deserve it. I had an idea that in order to be worthy of love I had to do something brilliant or spectacular, and in order to give love, someone else had to make me feel special. It was all very significant, and unfortunately it didn’t work. Instead of the spontaneous joy I now experience, my behavior was automatic and mechanical, more like a mental machine than a human being.
This past week I went to Las Vegas with five intimate friends, and we were all determined to share our natural love with everyone in this glittering, sparkling city ladened with every conceivable money hungry machine. Standing back for a moment, observing the vast casino, we were amazed to see how serious and significant people are about losing and winning money. It looked like most of them weren’t having any fun at all. I’ve heard of the evils of gambling but the only evil I saw was people forgetting how exquisitely splendid they are. What an opportunity this was for us to break through our own fearful barriers and be magnificent, allowing everyone else to be magnificent too.
So we used Las Vegas as a playground, a huge arena to share our joy with people we believed to be strangers. I was reminded of my childhood when I would bound out of my house with an unexplained energy, just looking for anyone to play with. It was wonderful to let people in so they could contribute to my aliveness, and they reciprocated in kind. I learned how to gamble and play the game, and somewhere along the way I noticed money taking second place to the love that everyone was sharing. People came to life, their faces sparkled and everyone knew something incredible was happening. We all discovered that even in Las Vegas, a mechanical city, with love, transformation is inevitable. And I love you.
