Our ability to give and receive the gaze in childhood

Inner awareness transforms the hard, critical, evaluating look of outer awareness into a soft, unconditionally loving gaze. The gaze involves no assessment of any kind, for gazing is an act of unconditional love. The gaze happens in the moments when there is no barrier between us caused by judgments, expectations, and weighty stories. The power of the Gaze is obvious when a loving mother gazes at her child, and the child reflects this loving embrace with his own smile-filled gaze. That Gaze is timeless—mother and child feel no compulsion to avert their eyes from one another—they could seemingly remain that way, held in each other’s gaze, forever.

Most of us lose our ability to give and receive the gaze in childhood, but we need it all our lives if we are to love and be loved. A core idea behind the practices of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness is that until we learn once more to gaze at ourselves with unconditional love, we will not be able to love others unconditionally. Once we become practiced in the art of gazing and bask in the unconditional love it offers, then we can turn that gaze out onto the world around us.