We all have a conscious opportunity to extend love, to expand it by being aware that loving is present, even—maybe especially—for the things we don’t necessarily consciously consider. Love is there, and that’s a good reminder, a kind of discipline, that you just remember to bring the love to the little things. Maybe you can become the MSIA patron saint of the little things, that you remember them first about yourself, and as you take care of yourself in that way, you would extend it to other people’s shoes and whatever else you notice about people—especially if you happen to notice that somebody doesn’t seem to be giving off the vibe or the impression that they’re really loving themselves. You extend love.

That can be a very quiet process, that you just extend silently in your own way. Also keep in mind that our ministry needs to “go forward into the world,” so that means don’t keep your Light under a bushel. It can sometimes be uncomfortable to let your Light be known.

Somebody told me about standing at the back of a grocery line, waiting to get up to the cashier. There was a mother with her young son, who was acting up and being his free self in a way that she obviously didn’t find appropriate or agreeable. She was letting him know that, and that became louder, more demonstrative, more physical. The person told me that it was disturbing and uncomfortable first for himself, and then he experienced that others in his line and in the lines next to him also seemed to be feeling disturbed. He didn’t know what to do about it, but he felt like he was building up to having to do something. So he moved away from his spot in the line, like a couple aisles over, somewhere where he felt like he was more by himself, and he yelled out, “Kindness!”

He was kind of startled because the attention of everybody went towards him, including the mother’s, and she shifted gears. People were actually looking at him and smiling, and he got the idea that it was, “Thank you. We needed that.”

There are often ways that we can extend loving first to ourselves, to make sure it’s intact. When I start the day, I find it’s essential to do what I would consider a check list: am I engaged in the Light and the love? Life doesn’t always allow this to be an extended period of time, and I don’t always wake up in a state where I’ll have the next two hours to do as I please. Sometimes I’ll have just the next few moments, and that’s about it. Sometimes it’s “get up and do your spiritual exercise of surrounding yourself, filling yourself, extending the Light into your day as you move forward.”

However it is, it’s so essential to me to take the opportunity to engage myself inwardly spiritually first, rather than to go forward and then later realize that the day has not gone so well. It’s as if some critic or judge inside says, “Hey! You missed your opportunity to plug in and be engaged. Remember that the Light goes before you and prepares the way. And all the things that come today—expected or unexpected, wanted or unwanted—are part of that Light action.”

That’s a way I find myself tested as a personality, as a mind, an ego—whatever you want to call it—because at that level I don’t necessarily register, “I like this, I love this, I want this.” And it’s important to engage my own trust and faith that this, too, is God. This, too, is loved.

So I ask myself, “Am I engaged in way that God engages as loving?” Can I take a moment to pause and say, “I realize I need to get myself engaged inwardly because, outwardly, I’m already in a reactive state and I’d like to reorder that in some way.” And if that reactive state manages to have a moment where it’s expressed, then I find I’m called upon to make an adjustment, first inwardly, to instill that love as my foundation, love is who I am, it’s what I’m based upon, regardless of what I did or said or what happened, and I extend that to others as well.

Extending love to others can be making amends with others, to reorder it inside towards them if I’ve offended them in some way, like, “When I said that or when I did that, I apologize. I meant no offense. Or even if I did at the time, that’s not really who I am. I allowed the lower consciousness, the lesser self, to have a moment, and from that I still gained benefit because I became more aware of the reactive state I was walking around with. So thank you for bringing that to my attention. I wasn’t very conscious that I was upset or disturbed or depressed. So I needed that brought to my attention. I needed to balance and clear inside.”

Making amends has a way of putting what happened in a whole different way for people. I’ve said this before, too, that I’ll just tell somebody, “I’m sorry,” and they’ll look at me like, “For what?” I say, “For whatever that applies to.” And maybe I just needed to hear it myself for whatever it applies to inside of me that doesn’t feel good about what’s present or what happened. It’s amazing. It works, just to have that willingness to be humble and ordinary as a human being in the ways that applies, and to bring harmony to myself, others, and the world.

Baruch bashan.