To admit how much we have can be daunting. We may struggle and feel inauthentic. The tumescent mind will fight every acknowledgment as it loses ground in the process. We stretch and soften the mind to make it more supple. We note the way love makes up every moment, that what goes into us has electricity, and is the structure we live inside of. We are training the mind to tune into and perceive bounty. We could call this the seventh sense: the capacity to tune into the invisible and perpetual sustenance our lives offer.
The tumescent mind may want to rush to rapid acts of payback in order to not feel a cascading sense of debt. We rest in Eros as we receive the awareness of the abundance. Eros asks only that we receive and acknowledge. To sit and allow ourselves to be touched and moved, even melted by our own lives. This process will make us liquid enough to do the only payback there is—living our lives in gratitude by offering ourselves into a consonant response to the deeper inner urgings of Eros.
If we are not melted down by appreciation, we are unable to act as part of the whole, unable to act with Eros as part of it. And with Eros, anything done out of alignment with nature, no matter how lofty, will cause wreckage in the end. It will also feel as though there is strain or effort in the giving.
We sit in the discomfort of appreciation—the often overwhelm of appreciation—until we are called. It will take however long it takes to melt down the extra that is inside of us so it can be used in the outflow of generosity. This is an actual procedure and it is not to be rushed through.
The tumescent mind will want to get to work and start expressing the appreciation in various ways. When we are ready, however, it will be recognizable in the same way that a turkey thermometer pops. It will be incontrovertible. It will be slow. It will recognize the gravity of life with deep beauty.
The sense of dutiful payback will be transmuted into a living gesture of thank-you and there will be an inexhaustible resource powering our desire. It will be a natural, easeful outpouring on the order of laughter; nothing will be forced or sacrificial.
We will feel a true sense of gratitude for being used because the process of being used will be a gift given to empty us of all that stands between us and intimacy with life. We inhabit a beautifully spacious interior world where life can flow through us with ease. This is the bait and switch of service.
There is one caveat, though, and it is a highly intricate move. We must accept acknowledgment as a way to allow others to empty their appreciation. The greatest joy that we cannot see from the perspective of the scarce tumescent mind will be to find evermore creative ways to express this appreciation.
There will be an underlying but joyous feeling that there is not enough time or capacity to truly say thank you adequately. We feel the joy that the endless seeking we all do will be plugged into building oneself to be able to offer more.
