Love is a timeless teacher

Notice some people believe love is simply an emotion that keeps people bonded and committed. Awareness echoes love is more. Uplifting feelings, a deep sense of care, connection and commitment awaken something deeper. One might say everything points to a love beyond boundaries, beyond the known and unknown. Even that which evokes discomfort and resistance is guiding us to surrender to what is greater than self.

As Kahlil Gibran echoes, "when love beckons, we follow him." The brave are willing to travel high and low, to endure and grow from whatever presents. The winding journey is guiding one home.

Something within invites us to trust or have faith in what love represents, in all its disguises, shapes and forms. At different life moments, dreams may be shattered. This can be love in action And even as we fall in and out of love, do we realize love invites growth and pruning. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

The fearless one knows love is not limited to peace and pleasure. Love gives nothing but itself and takes nothing but itself from itself. Love possesses not and cannot be owned. Love is enough in and of itself. Only ego thinks it can direct the course of love. If love finds one worthy, love actually directs one's winding course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. This takes shape in the flowing river, the sun beaming down on the Earth, the wind that blows through the forests, plains and deserts. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own under-standing of love. And to bleed willingly and joyfully. Every moment is another opportunity to love and be loved, to be grateful for another day of loving. Meditate on love’s ecstasy.

To exist and move through life with a grateful heart is to sleep with a prayer of love for one's beloved and all beings in th heart. So love is everything and nothing, flowing in all directions and all dimensions right now. How and to what extent we are open to it, begins and ends within our unique being. This is the path of love, to love, back to love, from hence we came and never actually left.

 

Shift focus and vibration

Notice what it feels like to accept this moment exactly as it is. It enriches awareness to see the impact of one's own split mind. Polarities co-exist and both require addressing. We cannot take credit for only the positive perceptions without also being responsible for the negative. Many egos and superegos co-exist with conflicting drives to act out tension, intention and attitudes. Delusion and fantasy feed a common urge to get rid of ego when neither ego/ supergo exist. Like: if "I" could only do this without feeling bad, it would be okay. False beliefs and restlessness persist when a robotic system is in charge. This drives one split self into many inner conflicts and postpones inner peace.

To the ego, what it wants is unattainable, yet it continues striving. Its real self that doesn't want any of that, is also unattainable. A depersonalisation process is the only way to be real. Ego must die for real self to emerge from behind the screen of projections. They take up space and most of our attention. Real self is empty background. The ego believes it is a real self in a real world and that time is real. Layers of illusion may have one feeling trapped.

To get beyond the Matrix (trap), the unreality of the ego belief system has to be completely dissolved. Only then can the vast emptiness be realized. Its not simply emptiness, but intelligence without narrative or preconceived ideas, without a context, paradigm, that shapes one's way of being. One must detach, distance self from everything until one knows one is nothing but pure presence. Only then can one fully engage and connect on a whole new level. Only then can unborn intelligence emerge to consciously operate the body without desire, fear, belief in a body or existence of an "external". All of this functions from the intelligence that is producing the illusion. Everything happens perfectly without glitches. Everything that arises in one's scope comes in perfect timing and sequence, to guide the unravelling.

Apparent glitches in the Matrix simply point to residue of samskara that produce a positive self image. One has to bring it into the nothingness so preconceptions no longer superimpose in your life that actually act instead of the real self. Complete reprogramming cannot arise in the mind. As Einstein says “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it."

On an energetic level, emotions play out in the first 3 assemblage points to give ego an identity, and safety valve for its otherwise explosive energies (often xpressed as "I will die or kill"). At the third assemblage point, energy can be harnessed into a more creative direction. Yet, this is only partial sublimation of intense energies. Unused energy is continually produced anf released. The first 3 assemblage points depend on "the other" and are never contented with 'oneself' or 'other.' Those energies must be released in dreams, art or negative actions.

As it is, only soul-level discernment brings recognition of the thinking capacity from a truly different point of awareness. You can think, feel and process reality, but when grounded in the first three assemblage points, you are engaging the imagination and not yet in the symbolic. They produce only emotional charges, reactions, desires, fears to act out, not capacity to sublimate consciousness to the source of the intellect and the ability to think clearly. Shifts in consciousness shift vibrational state of being and sense of reality.

Honour Being in-Limbo

Notice amidst ongoing shifts in consciousness, emotional and global upheavals, its crucial to honour the "liminal space", in-between gap or transitional phases of transformation. There are periods of being "in-limbo", when what used to make sense to you no longer does and yet, you still resist completely letting go with peace and certainty to move ahead, above, beyond. It touches relationships, situations, identity- previous foundations or perceived truths of your reality are crumbling. Its those points where the mind does not yet see clearly where to go from here, does not yet completely accept or reject new ways of seeing, know how you will survive or operate beyond the familliar. This is where surrender happens.

It is my experience that we discover a great deal of freedom during this process of shifting to think less and feel more along our winding road. A similar feeling arises during lucid dreaming as we come to sense different levels of awarness and energetic activity.  This freedom does not necessarily imply the total elimination of suffering or all our expectations. And yet, it does free us to live more fully, can lead to profound changes in character, priorites and being open and receptive to the unusual and unforeseen.

From the moment we begin to accept we do not have to know everything, that our assumptions are unfounded, that ideas of past and future are distractions to the ultimate truth, our life shifts in profound ways. New opportunities arise as if from nowhere, what we had aspired to or struggled toward unfolds without effort, teachers and invisible guides make themselves known. Suddenly, it feels natural to experience pure presence. This is about bringing the ind to the present moment, seeing blessings & wisdom in whatever presents.

Equanimity is what you are

Notice the resistance that arises at the prospect of facing adversity. Sitting meditation in silence offers ideal conditions for preliminary practice, to develop tools to face what evokes discomfort, and yet, sitting as such is not the real thing. True meditation happens when you are amidst the action, the chaos, when you face impossible people, intense emotions, unavoidable situations. During such conditions, can you keep the mind in silence, solitude and peace? To do so, we must first raise awareness and stop attacking ourselves. Many of us have a mind split into a victim, rescuer and/or attacker for ourselves or "others". We may even change roles. Still, when we are fiercely equanimous, we do not perpetrate or yield to threats, do not cave at emotional manipulation or implications, remain unaffected from attacks and guilt-trips that come from our superego, our own unconscious. We dissolve it by refusing to ratify it. By calmly abiding, we see through the unreal. The ego mind attacks, would like us feel bad about ourselves, stuck in a spiral. The only way out of it is to stop being an ego self, be unaffected by desire or fear, pain or enjoyment. Our true practice is to come to view suffering as a mental exercise. Most of us are taught to fear death, pain and other challenges. Yet, to a Zen master, all are great blessings. The view is our enemies are our greatest gifts to evoke love, passion, forgiveness, self-empowerment in the realisation of the unity of all that is. They guide us to let go of the ego mind, that which would like to be in pain, to be in a state of inadequacy, guilt, shame, attacking or peaceless self -justification or self-reproach. These are all false relationships with the real. The Supreme Being is within us. Only through awareness and alignment with Soul can we claim this power. A guru cannot give it. Mantras or other spiritual practices do not give it. One must claim it and with the power of will, integrate it into our life. It happens when we are in a state of deep honesty and truthfulness with ourselves. If we allow it, our inner voice can sting us worse than a sword. Let us focus on remaining in unwavering stillness. Let us not react, but move instead into that state that dissolves into the pureness of our Being which is love. Let us follow our breath. Get into the mind of silent presence. This vital life force, or equanimity is what you are and it cannot be lost.

Clarity reveals itself

Notice the nature of what you see and experience directly reflects your version of the Truth. Everything you do and do not do is a language expressed as energy in motion. If you see your life as upside down and topsy-turvey, then confusion and vertigo seem very real. As you find balance in the middle of nowhere, then calm abiding grows more accessible. As you begin to expand and appreciate different points of view, then everything is a mirror. As you continue to work out what matters, and stay open to stretch yourself, explore new shores and realize nothing is out of reach.