There is a tendency which grows and manifests in a person who is advancing spiritually, and that tendency is Overlooking. At times the same tendency might appear as negligence; but in reality, negligence is not overlooking. Negligence is not looking. Overlooking, in other words, may be called rising above things. A person has to rise in order to overlook. The person who stands beneath life cannot overlook, even if they wanted to. Overlooking is a manner of graciousness, it is looking and at the same time not looking. It is to see and not take notice of seeing. It is to be hurt or harmed or disturbed by something, and yet not mind it. It is an attribute of nobleness of nature. It is a sign of souls who are tuned to a higher key.
You may ask, is it practical? I may not always be able to say it is practical, but I mean it all the same. For the person who overlooks will also realize the practicality of it. Maybe they will realize it in the long run after they have met with a great many disadvantages of it. Nevertheless, all is well that ends well. Very often it costs less to overlook than to take notice of something that could well be overlooked. In life there are things that matter and there are things that do not matter, and as a person advances through life they find there are many things that do not matter. You could just as well overlook them. The person who will take notice of everything that comes their way will waste their time on a journey that will take all their life to accomplish. While climbing the mountain of life, the purpose is to reach its top. If a person will trouble about everything that comes along, they will perhaps never be able to reach the top. They will always be troubling about everything at the bottom of it.
No soul, after realizing that life is only four days on this earth, will trouble about little things. They will trouble about the things that will really matter. In the strife of little things, a person loses the opportunity of accomplishing great things in life. The person who troubles about small things is small. The soul who thinks of great things is great.
Overlooking is the first lesson of forgiveness. This tendency comes out of love and sympathy. For when a person hates another, they take notice of every little fault, but when a person loves another, they naturally overlook the faults. Very often they try to turn the faults of the person they love into merits. Life has endless things that suggest beauty and numberless things that suggest ugliness. There is no end of merits and no end of faults, and a person’s outlook on life is according to their evolution in life. The higher they have risen, the wider the horizon before their sight.
It is the tendency to sympathize that brings a person to desire to overlook. It is the analytical tendency that weighs and measures and takes good notice of everything. “Judge ye not,” said Christ, “lest ye be judged.” The more you think of this lesson, the deeper it goes in your heart. All that you learn from it is to try to overlook all that does not fit in with your own ideas about how things ought to be in life. Then you come to the stage of realization where the whole life seems to you one sublime vision of the immanence of God.
July 15, 1923
CW 1923, Vol. II, pp. 112-113.
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