Love is within us. It cannot be destroyed, but can only be hidden. The world we knew a children is still buried within our minds. I once read a delightful book called The Mists of Avalon. The mists of Avalon are a mythical allusion to the tales of King Arthur. Avalon is a magical island that is hidden behind huge impenetrable mists. Unless the mists part, there is no way to navigate your way to the island. But unless you believe the island is there, the mists won’t part.
Avalon symbolizes a world beyond the world we see with our physical eyes. It represents a miraculous sense of things, the enchanted realm that we knew as children. Our childlike self is the deepest level of our being. It is who we really are and what is real doesn’t go away. The truth doesn’t’ stop being the truth just because we’re not looking at it. Love merely becomes clouded over, or surrounded by mental mists.
Avalon is the world we knew when we were still connected to our softness, our innocence, our spirit. It’s actually the same world we see now, but informed by love, interpreted gently with hope and faith and a sense of wonder. It’s easily retrieved, because perception is a choice. The mists part when we believe that Avalon is behind them.
And that’s what a miracle is: a parting of the mists, a shift in perception, a return to love.
Extract from A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson (end of the introduction)
