Start with this idea: You will allow for the possibility of a new truth to be revealed to your waiting heart. Hold in your heart the idea that as you read these words—and when you finish reading these words— their truth will be revealed to you. Let your heart be open to a new kind of evidence of what constitutes the truth. (C:7.23)

One early morning while in Sedona for my recent Course of Love gathering, I got up early and drove out of town and into the mountains. On the road, “the reveal” is both quick and slow.

On the road, you’re going at a careful speed toward a curve. That moment of going “around” the curve passes in less than ten seconds, but the suspension of it! That feeling of being surprised. Of not knowing what you’ll find there.

You’re approaching the unknown.

The thrill it is to do that! The heightened senses that you’re aware of and unaware of at the same time because it’s a happening that you’re living. You’re not noticing what your body is going through and how it’s registering it all and applying just enough pressure to the gas pedal and just the right movement to the steering wheel. You don’t realize that you’ve ducked your head beneath the majesty.

And then during those expanses where you’re surrounded by rock and feel held in its embrace, and those where you see vistas and become aware of the LIFE! The LIVING majesty. The aliveness. The beingness of the land. I spoke to that aliveness and it spoke back. I honored it and it honored me. I felt it! Palpably. Whoever coined the phrase “palpable awareness?” Oh, I think the phrase is “palpable forgiveness,” and I can coin the phrase palpable awareness! The “palpable” part is such a good description of the feeling of it, the really “getting of it.”

The radical newness of seeing you can “experience” when your inner or outer terrain changes! As our brother Jesus says, “the territory of our consciousness awareness” expands.

And the same is true of people. The slow reveal. And the same quality of the expansion as the revelation happens.

Palpable comes from the Latin palpabilis, palpare—to touch. It means: to make, move, shake, feel. Palpitate is said especially of heart action that one is conscious of: to throb, quiver, tremble.

What a gift has been given me. In addition to the driving, I had several opportunities to share ACOL in Sedona.  There was the all-day Course of Love gathering at Unity of Sedona, there was a chance to join with a large group of ACOL readers at their regular weekly time, and I gave the “message” during the two Sunday services. The primary gift of Sedona, for me, was people falling in love with my voice, telling me that there was something “happening” when they listened as I read my beloved Jesus’ words . . . and my own. I wrote this piece on “Hidden Doors” for the “message.”  I may write many pieces on doors! Oh, if I could write beautiful things and read them and have them loved!

Oh …. The gift I’ve discovered is that I can! This was the surprise.

It is a challenge to prepare myself to engage for a whole day with people at “events.” I so want to share this Course … and give value in the way that I do so. And yet I feel in my bones like a writer, and I cannot prepare for that in-depth, day-long sharing through writing, no matter how much I would like to. I prepare, but I cannot have a script.

This is beautiful! A beautiful challenge and a beautiful experience.  It allows for the unexpected that comes in between my sharing of the experience and the message of A Course of Love, the readers sharing of theirs, and our responses to each other. This is what makes for the anticipation and discovery, the realness that is so welcome and so lovely. This has happened each time I have gathered with ACOL reader/receivers, and it happens in that unpredictable way that is the slow reveal.

Yet my own greatest reveal came of letting myself “write” the message and having it be received. My heart spoke, and my heart was held, and my heart palpitated. It was such a joy!

In The Dialogues, Chapter 8, Jesus says that when you accept that you have access to a “given” Self, to something neither earned nor worked hard to attain, you can then also imagine that this “given” Self existed prior to the time of learning. Our talents are one of the first things that alert us to the existence of our “givens.” As we concentrate on this idea of “givens,” we expand the territory of our conscious awareness and, at the same time, realize that this “given” (talent or ability) is quite wonderful.

When you have realized that you are “more” than your body, your natural talent or ability has been one of the primary factors leading to this realization. It has been one of the primary factors leading to this realization because a part of you has always known this ability was a “given.” That you are gifted—given to—and able to receive. And despite what science might have to say to you about the source of such talents or abilities, you have known that they are not of the body.  (D:8.4)

How remarkable and how true. As we concentrate on the givens “in” us, we expand. We expand both within and without, increasing the territory of our conscious awareness. When you and I share our gifts, we combine what is beyond the body with the actions of our bodies. We meet as our “given” Selves.

My gratitude is boundless for all who share their given Selves with me. And for the chance to share my given Self! This is expansion!