7th Invitation -- Widen your World

Reading and study – Setting Your Heart on Fire, p. 215-253 

In the Seventh Invitation, love calls you to see the earth and its inhabitants as one interdependent whole.

We look at the whole world as partner, as self, as we begin looking at the Seventh Invitation.  We explore six forms of resistance to global suffering and we also look at four qualities of love, from a global and a personal perspective.  We find that one of the best ways to work on ourselves is to work on the world.

Love as exercise:  To widen our world, we must love when it’s hardest to do so.  We consider compassion on pages 229-232 and find a way to assess our limits.  Take the opportunity to look within and uncover your own compassion resistances.  Are you ready to widen your world?

Life as choices:  Loving the world begins with daily decisions to do no harm.  We are given examples of daily choices on pages 236-238, with two keys to determining the choice that is right for us.  Take a look at the integrity of your life.  Do you find aspects that need work?

Accepting the Great Cycle:  On pages 239-240 we look daringly at the cycle of life and death, coming face to face with the reality that living life means taking life. Are you willing to accept this inevitability? Can you love, appreciate, and bless what you kill?

Compassionate activity:  Pages 245-247 have to do with compassionate action and fighting for change. Which issues call out to you? Which would you like to know more about? Do you see that love itself cannot accomplish anything without us?

Surrendering our will:  In pages 248-251 we see that through accepting the Seven Invitations love becomes effortless as we surrender our will to our heart.  With a newspaper at hand, do the exercise on page 249, exploring any resistances, noting any feelings, and discovering the responses of your heart.  Along with Cushnir, are you making the discovery that love is infinite and always present, offering itself through your own fiery heart?

Accepting the Seventh Invitation:

To the best of my current and evolving ability, I resolve to:

• Acknowledge global interdependence
• Break through my blocks to compassion
• Inflict the least possible harm
• Honor the lives I take
• Abide by the guidelines of giving
• Become a force for necessary change
• Surrender my will to my heart

You have traveled a long way with the intention of reforming your consciousness and, through it, your experience.  Your journey has brought you progress.  Bless yourself with this benediction:

“May my presence always deepen;

May my exploration never cease;

May not a speck of God’s creation elude my heart’s embrace;

May I live as I die – awake, ablaze;

May I live as I dream – clothed in miracles;

May I explode in loving light, in the mirror of my beloveds;

And may the sparks rain down forever toward an undivided world.”