The Little Garden

Chapter 18 – 8. The Little Garden

It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the
body is a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was
made to limit the unlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it
was made to limit you. Can you who see yourself within a body know
yourself as an idea? Everything you recognize you identify with externals,
something outside itself. You cannot even think of God without a body, or
in some form you think you recognize.
 
The body cannot know. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny
senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you. God cannot come
into a body, nor can you join him there. Limits on love will always seem to
shut him out, and keep you apart from him. The body is a tiny fence around
a little part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely
small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole,
proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not.
 
Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And to defend this little
speck of dust it bids you fight against the universe. This fragment of your
mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you
would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or like the
faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this
tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails
itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this
infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. The sun
becomes the sunbeam’s “enemy” that would devour it, and the ocean
terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it.
 
Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless
activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a
tiny segment of themselves. Even that segment is not lost to them, for it
could not survive apart from them. And what it thinks it is in no way
changes its total dependence on them for its being. Its whole existence still
remains in them. Without the sun the sunbeam would be gone; the ripple
without the ocean is inconceivable.
 
Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies
seem to be. Each body seems to house a separate mind, a disconnected
thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was
created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing another for
some things, but by no means totally dependent on its one Creator for
everything; needing the whole to give it any meaning, for by itself it does
mean nothing. Nor has it any life apart and by itself.
 
Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part
regards itself as you. It is not missing; it could not exist if it were separate,
nor would the Whole be whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom,
ruled by an idea of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it,
preventing it from joining with the rest, and keeping it apart from its
Creator. This little aspect is no different from the whole, being continuous
with it and at one with it. It leads no separate life, because its life is the
oneness in which its being was created.
 
Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as yourself. The sun and ocean
are as nothing beside what you are. The sunbeam sparkles only in the
sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun
nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain within your tiny
kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all that he surveys, who looks on
nothing yet who would still die to defend it? This little self is not your
kingdom. Arched high above it and surrounding it with love is the glorious
whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to every part. The
little aspect that you think you set apart is no exception.
 
Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total
lack of limit is its meaning. It is completely impartial in its giving,
encompassing only to preserve and keep complete what it would give. In
your tiny kingdom you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that you
would call on love to enter? Look at the desert–dry and unproductive,
scorched and joyless–that makes up your little kingdom. And realize the
life and joy that love would bring to it from where it comes, and where it
would return with you.
 
The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier
you built to come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life
springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and
quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust. Give
them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them where once a desert was.
 
And everyone you welcome will bring love with him from Heaven for you.
 
They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they
had come, alone. The love they brought with them will stay with them, as it
will stay with you. And under its beneficence your little garden will expand,
and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water, but has grown too
weary to go on alone.
 
Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them. And lead them
gently to your quiet garden, and receive their blessing there. So will it grow
and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away
from love, and leaving you inside. And you will recognize yourself, and see
your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all
the love of its Creator shining upon it.
 
The holy instant is your invitation to love to enter into your bleak and
joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome.
 
Love’s answer is inevitable. It will come because you came without the
body, and interposed no barriers to interfere with its glad coming. In the
holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor
more. Asking for everything, you will receive it. And your shining Self will
lift the tiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven straight to Heaven. No
part of love calls on the whole in vain. No Son of God remains outside his
Fatherhood.
 
Be sure of this; love has entered your special relationship, and entered fully
at your weak request. You do not recognize that love has come, because you
have not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against your brother. And you
will not be able to give love welcome separately. You could no more know
God alone than he knows you without your brother. But together you could
no more be unaware of love than love could know you not, or fail to
recognize itself in you.
 
You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is
over. You are still worn and tired, and the desert’s dust still seems to cloud
your eyes and keep you sightless. Yet he whom you welcomed has come to
you, and would welcome you. he has waited long to give you this. Receive
it now of him, for he would have you know him. Only a little wall of dust
still stands between you. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it
will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for both of you.