Very quickly we can all go to those things in our memory which have taught us the blessing of the gentle aspect we have experienced, and really appreciated in that very gentleness. Just remembering and visualizing gentle episodes relaxes and slows the push of thought and tension we may otherwise be experiencing, invoking the grace to yet return and become apparent in our sensing and through our being.
Love, as we know, lives in the moment it is living. It is difficult to exhume love through our memories, although we can continue to love a person without them actually being present with us, and this is a different matter. But the actual experience of love comes and goes.
Yet we can effectively call back into being the experience of gentleness that the love may have brought with it for a time. This may be gentleness we have known from ourselves or from others. It does tell us in that slower moment of time something about the love also that was apparent in it.
Should we desire to acquire more talent in gentleness concerning our manner, our person, our way, we can bring this blessed condition into our lives more and more simply by bringing before our consciousness those outstanding moments of care and gentle application.
Strange to say, adding to this, that for invoking the experience of further gentleness within us, it will even work in the imagining alone, to impart something of its quality in kind.
For example:
A picture - open your hand (in your mind if you wish) and hold the palm out. There is a tiny terrapin [a miniature turtle] now perched on your hand, and you dare not drop it, nor squeeze it too tight. There are droplets of water on your hand also. You can admire the perfect look of this little guy. He feels and appears very friendly. He has no teeth, but two black shiny eyes. He has a very small head that is now beginning to fully protrude from the hard shiny shell. You notice around his neck is a shiny gold collar, but also that this collar is too tight and will need removing from him, because it has begun to wear into his skin.
On the collar is a very tiny lock and beside you is yet a much smaller key. You need to take this key with some tweezers and place it inside the lock of the collar and turn it ever so gently so that the collar springs off. Can you feel it?
