What does it take to bring something soft and precious into a hard world? Don’t you think that is a challenge? And particularly for those of us who have touched the source of life within ourselves? We seek to share that softness and preciousness with others, and sometimes it goes well. Sometimes it is met with love, and people embrace what we have shared. But not always. Other times we are subject to scorn, criticism, and shame. The question becomes: What do we do then? How do we bring something soft and precious and beautiful into the world as it is?

People of the Islamic faith speak of the soft spot within a person as fitrah. An Islamic scholar, Yasien Mohamed, said it this way:

What makes our religious understanding positive is that it not only acknowledges fitrah as a natural predisposition, but also one which is inclined towards right action and submission to Allah, the One God.

I am not Muslim. And yet it is beautiful to hear something very familiar through unfamiliar words.

I might call the soft spot the first love. There is the first love for us all. I do not just mean our first girlfriend or boyfriend. Our first love is the source of life. We are in the flow of the first love as a baby and as a child. At that age, we cannot help ourselves from being in the soft spot and in the flow of the first love.

Many of us can remember back to our first time of profound spiritual opening. We might call that our first love. It never goes away. And yet, some seem to become entranced or obsessed with other things.

How do we bring the first love into the world as it is? And what do we do when, confronting the things that we do in the world, we find that there is a rejection of what we are bringing? Or when there is neglect of us and coldness of heart toward us? Or perhaps we are ghosted.

Here is a foundational key: non-reaction. Do not react. If you bring the preciousness of life, and it is not received, do not react.

If you are not reacting, what are you doing? Be in a place of forgiveness and gratitude. Forgiveness and gratitude are practices of non-reaction. But they are proactive.

To forgive is to stay in the soft spot and allow the flow of the wonder of life to continue, even in the face of what you encounter. You may have been cold to me, but I am still flowing!

In all things, give thanks. This is the attitude of gratitude. No matter how what is soft and precious is rejected by another person or by the world, I am in a place of appreciation for the fact that I am here, and something is coming out of the world that is beautiful and worthwhile that I have to receive, however it comes. And while I can set aside unsavory things that are attacking and antithetical to what is true, I can embrace what is true, and I am grateful for that.

In Uranda’s 1936 booklet Lighting the Way in You, he said this:

Every “kick” becomes a true “boost,” and the world has no power to hurt in any way.

Every adverse reaction in the world in which we live can be used to connect more deeply with the Wonderful One within—to what is soft and precious to us. I will not just agonize over the fact that I got a kick. And we all get our kicks in one way or another in the world as it is. I will use that experience as an opportunity to cleave ever more profoundly to what I love, to declare my obedience and surrender to what I serve—as this Muslim scholar put it, my submission to Allah, the One God.

I love that name, Allah, not because it names a God of a religion but because the very sound of the word resonates with the vibration of the One God, however named. And for the very meaning of the name: the One God.

Every “kick” becomes a true “boost.” That is one of the keys to bringing something soft and precious to the world. Use any challenge as an opportunity to attune more fully to the One God.

There is a right protection for what is soft and precious. Think of the human heart. It is relatively soft, though muscular and full of a flowing fluid, blood. The HeartMath people tell us they can measure its vibrational impact at least six feet away. And we suspect that it goes well beyond that.

Our hearts aren’t located in our bellies. It would be vulnerable to impacts from the world in such a soft place. It is behind our breastbone, which acts as human armor, a breastplate that protects the heart. Behind that breastplate, the heart does its work, pumping blood throughout the body and resonating the vibration of love to the world.

There is part of us that is naturally and rightly soft. It is our fitrah. We are made to be soft as we hold what is precious and offer our hearts to the One we love. And at the same time, as we bring what we love into the world, strength is needed, a hardness.

In my own experience, there has been a growing realization over the years that my strength serves other people. Isn’t it true that other people need us to be strong for them? Yes, soft, soft-hearted, and gently holding them. But we can also hold them in our strength. It is a good way to hold another person, to say, in essence, I’ve got you. I’ve got your back. My strength is there for you through whatever challenge, through whatever is happening. My strength is with you.

What is our strength? There are all kinds of bad ways to be strong and hard—angry, punitive, and vindictive ways. How can we be strong in the world in a good way? True strength is born out of our softness. Out of our softness comes our love. Love can be gentle and affectionate, enfolding and encompassing. Love is a mother’s embrace. Love is the affection that one lover has for another.

Love is all that. But love is also an everlasting power. True love is an everlasting love. As the song goes, I love you with an everlasting love. I love you with a love that does not stop, a love that is strong. The power of love is an irrepressible flow. It is, by its nature, unstoppable unless I stop its movement through me. But I do not stop it, and so it keeps flowing. It is an everlasting love, an enduring love, an ever-flowing love.

That is the strength of love. It is the strength of a river, ever flowing down the mountainside. Do not wade into its current and try to hold it back! That is the nature of the love we bring to the world.

I am that love, and I do not stop.

There is a physical dimension to the flow of everlasting love. It is the right action of fitrah. It is committing our lives to something, working a full day to manifest it, seeing projects through to their completion, not shirking from responsibility, and being there dependably for others and the projects we commit ourselves to. Those are all human things that we do that are important. And yet those human things can allow the divine thing to happen. Those human things allow the divine vibration to be at work. And I am talking about vibratory things here.

Human activity can set up a vibratory pattern in which everlasting love can come into the world. That everlasting love is like the mountain stream that overcomes the resistance of rocks and earth in its path. Everlasting love can move past the resistance present in human hearts and in the vibration of the world. It changes that vibration so that it resonates with everlasting love.

For us, these are real things. They are for me. They are nice things to write about in an article such as this, but these are the real things of life. We might be challenged by the everyday things of the world that, in essence, say, No, you cannot do this. No, you are not allowed here. Or people might attempt to impugn the character of who we are and our mission. My answer is, I do not stop. Everlasting love does not stop. It is an enduring love.

One of the most pivotal things for a person to figure out in their life is what they ought to be soft to and what they ought to be hard to. I had this come dramatically to focus for me in a courtroom two weeks ago, when I was accused on the stand of being willfully neglectful. It was a time to remember what I was soft to and what I was hard to. I was soft to the truth of what Sunrise Ranch is and the truth of who I know I am. And every kick became a boost. I embraced the truth of Sunrise Ranch, the truth of Emissaries of Divine Light, and the truth of me. And I brought everlasting love into the courtroom, an enduring love that does not stop. I brought the power of love, something soft to me yet unyielding and massive in the human world. I brought the flow and the radiance of that love.

I am here to be soft with my God, with my first love. And I am here to be soft with all of you, who are my friends in that. We have the honor of sharing that yieldedness, that surrender with each other that we know for ourselves if we have the courage to share it. If we all do, there is a fused core of the highest love present in a body of people. 

The soft spot in each of us challenges us not only to achieve greater and greater things in the world. Yes, we do have something to accomplish in the world. But beyond that, our first love challenges us to reach higher and higher levels of simply being together—higher and higher levels of spiritual intimacy and communion, where we are sharing what is soft in us with each other, where we are doing nothing except learning to be together.

Do you think that might be a good starting point for us as human beings? To learn to be together. And if we could learn to be together, we could learn to create together, to work together, and then to bring this powerful vibration of love, everlasting love, into the world. I am here for that, and I know you are too.