Gift Horse Love
by Arhata
You are a ‘gift horse’, but looked at negatively is to be ungrateful to someone or life giving you something, in this case, ‘life’, to make of it what you will! A gift horse is a fortune cookie manifested in real life. As horses develop they grow more teeth and their existing teeth begin to change shape and project further forward. Determining a horse’s age from its teeth is a specialist task, but it can be done.The advice given in the ‘don’t look…’ proverb is: when receiving a gift be grateful for what it is; don’t imply you wished for more by assessing its value. And, never assume that most all has within it a gift, especially if you look at it with love in your heart.
Sometimes a situation that has negative elements to it, maybe sadness and grief, at the time doesn’t seem to be anything approximating a ‘gift horse’ situation, even years later. One time for me comes to mind. At the age of 23, having graduated from the University of Oregon, I choose to take a vacation with a very cute, sparkly, and challenging girl after a few months of our involvement. We drove to NYC with the intent of returning after a few days. Six months, later and pretty broke we were still there. I luckily got a great position with a big corporation in sales in Manhattan, but we decided to live separately based on her decision. The parting was emotionally challenging, but I made the decision to send her love and cultivate the friendship.
Always, I have used situations and relationships as an opportunity to see the blessings, or light whatever the outcome.
At the time, I couldn’t see, until much later that using it as an experience to turn pain into deeper love, my life became more blessed than I could have ever imagined. Both in the pursuit of deeper love, business success, and socially. If someone tells you not to look a gift horse in the mouth, they mean that you should not criticize or feel doubt about something good that has been offered to you. Okay, it’s not the job or situation of your dreams, but it hidden in plain sight are great advantages. I’d be inclined not to look a gift horse in the mouth if I were you, and no matter how long it takes, find the benefits rather than let it ‘break you’.
You have inner glasses, even a microscope to see the positive, be it in a negative situation or not. Be patient, for it’s not always prudent to jump to see benefits as that is sometimes antipathetic to common sense. A life without purpose has little meaning – it is mere existence. To have a truly meaningful life, one must have a specific purpose; a worthy goal or ideal that one is constantly striving to serve or advance. I strongly suggest love be at the top of the list! The primary concern of the mass of individuals in our society is to be happy which entails going along with the brainless herd of sheeple. But that is not a purpose, but an excuse for selfishness. It has no enduring value for the future of life on this planet or our own personal spiritual evolution. Today’s artificial, materialistic, multicultural, politically correct society can, in fact, offer no higher purpose than ‘love’. It can only serve up decadence, degeneracy, disintegration, and alienation. See the ‘gift horses’ always!
