God is essentially Love. God is Love. Love is God. The Being of God is Love. Love is the Being of God. The Presence of God is Love, and the Power of God is Love. We are transformed by Love. The world is transformed by Love. The spiritual path is essentially about Love, the realization of Love and the expression of Love. How we each express Love is our own expressive responsibility, and we each are on our own unique path learning how to love. Realizing Love, or experiencing Love, can be fostered by various spiritual practices, but it is not something we invent or make up. For this Love is given from the Divine Essence of Being within us. Love flows from the Inner Essence outward, into our experience and into the world.
In order to experience Love and have Love transform our being, we need to first empty ourselves of mental preoccupations and emotional dramas, clearing the way for Love to flow through us and be directly experienced. If the mind or emotions are entangled and preoccupied, then Love cannot be experienced, since there is no clarity or room for Love to be known. But once the mind and heart are clear of entanglements and clutter, there can be an open receptivity to Love and an allowing of Love to emerge into experience and into being.
This open receptivity and allowing is the second step. It also involves relaxed readiness, inner stillness and trusting patience. Conscious breath is also helpful. The third step is discovery: gradually awakening to the Presence of Love emerging from within the heart of self, or from the Universal Space around us. The Presence of Love can be experienced as emerging from within us or from around us. At first Love is experienced in one or the other of these ways, but as we deepen into the experience these two orientations merge into one final absorption of being into the Presence of Love.
Which brings us to the fourth step of deepening into the experience of Love by allowing oneself to be absorbed into Love. Some mystics describe this as surrender or submission to God. It is a surrender of our being into Love. Consciousness loses itself in the Light of Love, and the heart loses itself in the feeling of Love. This is the mystical union, and it is transformative to our being. Consequentially, from this transformation and dynamic state of union, Love begins to express outwardly from our own being, from our own heart centre, which has become a mirror and focal point for Divine Expression. Then, Love's Expression becomes more refined through us.
The Way, and also the Practice, is really about Love. There is only One Being. This is God, and God is Love. The Essential Reality, the Essence of Divine Being, is Love. So surrender to God is really surrender to Love. Surrender your heart to Love, surrender your being to Love. This is surrender to God. Surrender into Love, and you surrender into God. Lose yourself in Love. Let go of yourself completely in Love. Nothing is more important than this. It is the Way, the direct path to God and into God.
Submerge yourself in God, by submerging yourself in Love. Jump in with courage and abandonment. Jump in with faith. This is the Way of transformation, for the lesser energies of self are transformed by this surrender, this abandonment and submergence. Let go and surrender your little self-preoccupations, vanities and resentments. Dive into Love. This is how we come into Union with God. This is not a submergence into unconsciousness, but rather a submergence into deeper consciousness, the consciousness of Love, the consciousness of the Heart. Then all that remains of oneself is Love. All that remains is Heart Consciousness, Love Consciousness.
The sufis practice a meditation and chant of La ilaha illa 'llah, meaning 'there is nothing but God' (or, 'there is no other than One God'). This has in it both a denial and affirmation. It denies there is anything other than God, and it affirms there is only God. Some practitioners think this about thinking there is only God. No. This is really a self-transformation practice, involving the inner act of surrender. It's not a thinking practice; it's a heart-surrendering practice.
One is surrendering everything in oneself but God. One is surrendering into the heart-consciousness realization of just One God, the True Reality of Being. One is surrendering into Love Itself. Then, in our own experience, there is only Love, there is none other than Love, none other than Love being conscious of Itself, just the Self-Consciousness of God. The sufis chant Allah, being immersed in God, in Love. Finally they chant Hu, the very essence of God, and they dissolve into pure love consciousness.
The mystics enter into a very special state of unity consciousness. But this is not inaccessible, nor is it particularly difficult to enter. One just has to realize what it is and how to enter. The secret is love and abandonment into love, which is to enter into love consciousness. If one enters into love consciousness with complete abandonment, then one’s experience totally changes; because then, all there is is love.
Here, one is totally in the love/heart consciousness, without mind and thinking getting in the way or taking over. For in the usual ordinary state of experience the thinking mind rules, or else the energies of desire rule. But total heart consciousness is different from both thinking and desire. Love is an emotion, but it is higher kind of emotion. It is really a spiritual emotion, rather than a physical based emotion or a desire kind of emotion. Also, love is an experience of unity or oneness with others. Complete love consciousness is the same as unity consciousness, yet fully in the heart.
The physical space of the heart is indeed limited, but the spiritual space of the heart is unlimited. For within our limited being is the Inner Space and Essence of Infinite Divine Being. This Divine Being is the Secret and Treasure of our own being. It is meant to be discovered and explored, realized and understood. But It remains unconscious to us, until we meditate in It and allow It to emerge consciously in experience.
In spiritual reality, there is only One Heart. There is only one love. There is only one consciousness. There is only one Self. This is the mystical understanding of God. For God is simply a word referring to the One Self, one mind, one consciousness, one heart, one love. God is not separate from us or out there somewhere in some kind of super dimension. Rather, God is who we are in essence. For the mystic, one’s own self is one of the many possible extensions of the One Self, God. And if the person’s heart and mind are pure enough, as with Jesus for example, then they could be described as living reflections of God.
In this realization, I am not merely this single body, I am not merely these emotions and thoughts. I am not just a heart and mind separate from everyone else. No, I am everyone and everything. I do have a separate body, and I do have unique emotions and thoughts. And I do have my own heart and mind. I recognize all of this as me. But I am not merely this. For my identity is much greater as well. I am the whole. This is who I am when I abandon the separation.
I am everyone and everything. So whoever I meet and whatever part of nature I am near, I am in unity with them, because I realize that we all have the same essential heart and the same essential consciousness. We are all in the same and of the same. We are in the One and of the One. In fact, we all come from the same love.
So for the spiritual way, we can simply speak about love, for love is the greatest motivator, the greatest power. Find God in love. Find love and you have found God. It has always been this simple. Yet few have really entered upon this simple path of love. Just love. No dogma, no rules, no complex discourses. I give out the complex discourses because detail and elaboration is interesting. But more important than this is love, simply love. Right action, good deeds, dedicated service and spiritual creativity proceed naturally from just love. So the greatest key to spiritual life is to find love, that is, find the experience of love. Then proceed from there, express from there. This is the best advice one can give. Even in healing, there are all so many different techniques and systems, but healing is actually quite simple. Just help the person experience love. Anyone who can get in the energy of love is in the energy of healing. If we could do everything from love, then all would be well. This is of course true on the individual and humanitarian level.
Love consciousness, the love realization, the love experience, (all meaning the same), is a unity synthesis of loving and being loved. There are two aspects of love, two sides. One is loving others, or loving any part of life. It is the active feeling of loving. The other aspect is being loved. It is the receptive feeling of being loved. The balanced human being will feel both, will know both. So these are the two aspects of love. Yet there is a third, which is the synthesis. This can be called love consciousness, love realization, or love-being. It is the experience of love itself. It is the beingness of love.
Sometimes I give love; it goes out to someone or maybe to all the world. Sometimes I receive love, or I realize I am loved, maybe by someone, maybe by God. This is mostly how love is experienced. Yet there is a profound synthesis; however it is really the source or essence of all love. For where does love come from, in the first place? Love already exists, before the love-giving and before the love-receiving. This is the Being of Love, the Essence of Love. So come home into the Essence of Love, into just Being Love. Experience just love, the essence, the beingness of it. This is significant to being in heart.
We all want to be loved. In fact, we all need to be loved. Yet this is something that one cannot simply make happen. One cannot simply go out and make this occur or acquire it. Its not something one can acquire or buy, or obtain by an act of will. Think about it. You cannot get love by your own will. You cannot be loved just because you ‘will it to be’. Of course one can make oneself into a lovable person by being nice and loving. But ultimately it is not up to oneself; its up to the other. So we are in this difficult relationship with love, in that we need to be loved and yet we cannot make it happen by our own will. All that one can do is to be willing to be loved, or allowing oneself to be loved, and also be open to love.
Next, consider that we can be loved by two kinds of sources. One source is from the world; in other words, from other people and our children, and also we might include pets. To feel loved from another is a great experience. The other source is from God. For those who are not especially religious and for atheists, this notion may seem fanciful; but for the religious and spiritually minded people, this love from a higher or greater source is significant.
Now it has been said that this love comes from God, but we can understand this even deeper if we understand that God IS Love. So we might think in terms of a Divine Love that is omnipresent throughout the universe and even transcendental to it. It is the Love that feeds all other loves, the Source of all love. So in this sense, we are loved by Love Itself. We are loved by this Source of Love Itself, the Divine Love, God. Yet to actually experience and truly know this Love, we must be open, allowing, and receptive to it. And this can only occur if we are quiet inside and ready to be loved. So in a meditative and quiet mind/heart, allow yourself to be loved, allow yourself to feel loved. Allow yourself to experience and feel this Love.
Now what is significant about experiencing and feeling loved by the Divine is that this Love is always available and it is unconditional; in contrast to the sometimes wavering love that may or may not come from others. The Divine Love is absolute, unconditional, and always present, and so it becomes a constant in our lives and something we can always rely upon. This changes our attitude in life, for now we are not so desperate for love from others, though of course being loved by others is very special.
Furthermore, we can increase our experience of being loved, and increase our receptivity of Love, by intentionally calling upon the Divine Love or God. This increase of receiving love will add to our spiritual transformation and healing, for remember that Love transforms and heals. The practice is to call upon God, call upon Love, to wash us clean with love. Or the practice could be to simply open up to the experience and feeling of being loved. And our role in this, besides being receptive and open, is to surrender into this Love and give all of ourself to this Love.
Discover
the love inside, the love which wants to come out to love others.
Love is a natural and divine essence already inside us. It is an
essence of who we really are. So deep down, we are want to love, we
all want to be lovers. Love is a seed within us, in the very heart of
our being, and this seed wants to come out and grow. Love wants to
come out. Love wants to come out and blossom. It wants to come out to
flower and bear fruits. Love wants to manifest and express itself. It
wants to come out of hiding. It wants to come out and dance, and
sing. It wants to come out and play. Love wants to come out and love.
This is who we are. Our deepest essence is this love. So let us
discover this love within us, and may we let this love come out into
the open. Let it come out of the closet. Let it come out of hiding.
So discover the love within and realize this as your true essence.
Then let it out and bring it forth. God-Love is emerging from within.
This love is God. It is also our essence emerging. Trust that God is
emerging.