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#1608 - Wednesday, November 5, 2003 - Editor: Joyce (Know_Mystery)
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THE RUNGS OF LOVE
At first one loves only when one is loved. ~ Sri Aurobindo ~ DID I LOVE WELL? "Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts. In undertaking a spiritual life, what matters is simple: we must make certain that our path is connected with our heart. Many other visions are offered to us in the modern spiritual marketplace. Great spiritual traditions offer stories of enlightenment, bliss, knowledge, divine ecstasy, and the highest possibilities of human spirit. Out of the broad range of teachings available to us in the West, often we are first attracted to these glamorous and extraordinary aspects. While the promise of attaining such states can come true, and while these states do represent the teachings, in one sense, they are also one of the advertising techniques of the spiritual trade. They are not the goal of spiritual life. In the end, spiritual life is not a process of seeking or gaining some extraordinary condition or special powers. In fact, such seeking can take us away from ourselves. If we are not careful, we can easily find the great failures of our modern society--its ambition, materialism, and individual isolation--repeated in our spiritual life. In beginning a genuine spiritual journey, we have to stay much closer to home, to focus directly on what is right here in front of us, to make sure that our path is connected with our deepest love. Don Juan, in his teachings to Carlos Castaneda, put it this way: Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use." ~ Jack Kornfield ~ "A PATH WITH HEART" http://www.oracleofseattle.com/text%20quotes/Did%20I%20Love.htm The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed. ~ J. Krishnamurti ~ Look around you. ~ Rumi ~ "Passionate
Poems of Rumi" "When the self is no more, there is simply an abiding in the beloved. The game goes on and there is a response to the game. But the response comes from nowhere and goes to nowhere. And the game and the respons is the divine expression. All and everything is seen and heard and felt as the beloved. And the beloved is the ground of all that is." ~ Tony Parsons ~ "As It Is" http://www.ods.nl/amigo/amigo3/index.html?poezie.html~mainFrame Q: So what you are saying is, we are all bound by the law of karma and it's better to give than to receive. Zen Master Seung Sahn: Don't check on giving and receiving, just DO IT! (laughs) "Just do it!" is very important. If you love somebody, then only love is enough. Don't check. If you are checking, that's like saying, when you like somebody, "I love you, why don't you love me?" - that's not love. Love is unconditional. Only giving, only giving, just as this earth, this universe, gives us everything. Every day we breathe in, breathe out. Nobody pays money for that. Living in this world, food is very important, clothes are very important, a house is very important. For all these things we must pay money. If for only ten minutes you do not breathe, you die. But no one says "Thank you very much" for their air. The universe always gives us this air. This air has no hindrance, it connects with everybody, not just human beings. The air connects with trees and animals and sky. We are all connected by this breathing in, breathing out. When you sleep, when you're awake, whether you have good thinking or bad thinking, you breathe in and breathe out. Always. If you stop, you die. So this much is given to you, this air. This is love mind. Think about it. Also, if we had no sun, we would die. If we exploded all the missiles that Russia and America have, a cloud would cover the earth. No sun could penetrate this cloud. The earth would grow cold - then what? Everything would die. So this sunlight is very important, but no one says, "Thank you very much, sun." Next is water, very important. For water we pay money. We don't pay the water, we only pay to have the water brought here from the mountain. Nobody pays the water any money. Also, if we had no earth, then what? We could not grow any food, any trees, any flowers. Air, fire, water, earth - the four elements. The universe takes these elements and makes your body. That's your life's root. Correct roots. Nowadays, human beings don't understand their roots. "I go to the factory, I make money, so I make a living. I don't have to believe in God, I don't owe the universe anything. What's the big deal? I have money, I take care of myself." This style of thinking. We have all forgotten our human roots. If you have no air, no ground, you cannot stay alive. Anytime you do not believe in love, you die. What is your life? The whole universe is only giving, giving to you, We call that unconditional love. It has no condition. So you must also give to this universe. Loving and helping this universe is necessary. Don't make atom bombs, don't kill animals, don't pollute the air or anything. Many people have seen the movie "Never Cry Wolf." Human beings never understand their correct situation. Human beings are the number one bad animal. We have destroyed much of nature, air, water and trees. Then we say we want world peace. Not possible. That is number one stupid! So that is not so good. Human beings must just now WAKE UP - that is important. If we do not wake up, we cannot continue this human world, ok? It will soon disappear. Q: If all the animals in the world can exist in peace without human beings, then why are we here? (Laughter) ZMSS: Why are we here? I ask you, why do you eat every day? (Laughter) If everyone gives to each other, then there's no problem. The universe gives us everything. We are holding our I-my-me, our "I want this?" so this earth has a problem. You must understand correct love. There's the famous story about two women arguing about a baby, Each one said, "This is my baby." The the King said, "Bring the baby here, I will divide it in two. You take half, you take the other half." He picked up his sword to kill the baby and one woman said, "Oh, you take this baby!" to the other woman. That is unconditional love. Not for myself, but only love others. ~ Zen Master Seung Sahn ~ "The things of the mind are jealousy, envy, ambition, the desire to be somebody, to achieve success. These things of the mind fill your hearts, and then you say you love; but how can you love when you have all these confusing elements in you? When there is smoke, how can there be a pure flame? Love is not a thing of the mind; and love is the only solution to our problems." ~ J. Krishnamurti ~ Talks 1949-1950 http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk221.htm "Love is not an emotion, it is your very existence" ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ~ "See Love. ~ Ramana Maharshi ~ http://www.ods.nl/amigo/amigo3/index.html?poezie.html~mainFrame "Only if one knows the truth of love, which is the real nature of Self, will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. Only if one attains the height of love will liberation be attained. Such is the heart of all religions. The experience of Self is only love, which is seeing only love, hearing only love, feeling only love, tasting only love and smelling only love, which is bliss. But when you talk of love, there is duality, is there not - the person who loves and the entity called God who is loved? The individual is not separate from God. Hence love means one has love towards one's own Self." ~ Ramana ~ http://www.livingessence.com/ramana.htm "This sense of affection, this love, this quality cannot be cultivated, cannot be practised, cannot be brought about; but it must happen as naturally as breathing, as fully with great joy and delight as the sunset." ~ J. Krishnamurti ~ Talks 1949-1950 http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk221.htm "In relationship lies all the work that needs to be done on the spiritual path: the confrontation with our holding, grief, fear, distrust, and judgment. In the deepest spiritual practices, one discovers that pure awareness and pure love are indistinguishable." ~ Steven Levine ~ http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/solutions/GreatQuotes.html I
seem ~ Rabindranath Tagore ~ "With love, even the rocks will open." ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan ~ "It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, or a week, or ten thousand years -- we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we contact our capacity for love and happiness... the light has been turned on." ~ Sharon Salzberg ~ http://www.the-artery.co.uk/words/prose/0008.php "Hatred is
never overcome by hatred, "Love is will, the will to share your happiness with all. Being happy, making happy, this is the rhythm of love." "By all means be selfish; the right way. Wish yourself well, labour at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands between you and happiness. Be all; love all; be happy; make happy. No happiness is greater." ~ Nisargadatta ~ http://www.geocities.com/zainto/maharaj.htm FIREFLIES ~ Rabindranath Tagore ~ "Love is so vast within itself. It’s where you die. You don’t die into fear; you die into love. It’s so vast that it will burn you up. It’s so jealous and greedy for itself mirrored back that it will leave you nothing. And when you’re feeling that if you don’t give it away you’ll die in it, it’s so vast that there’s nothing you can do with it. All you can do is be it." ~ Byron Katie ~ http://www.ods.nl/amigo/amigo3/index.html?poezie.html~mainFrame The Third Canon of Thought - A Key to the Enigmas of the World by P.D. Ouspensky - Rewarmed by DenytEnAmun (April 13, 1992 CE) "So, to apprehend the noumenal world we must change our form of perception and representation, achieve an inner change. How is this to be done? Art and Love Ouspensky calls the proper way of approaching the world poetical understanding; art is the means of perception that we should learn if we want to enter into communion with the world of causes. Higher art will be the language of the future. Also love, as the strongest of emotions, is a force which can disclose the needed qualities. From an evolutionary point of view there is a vast overabundance (beyond what is needed for perpetuating the species) of love, and perhaps the vivid sense of the miraculous and consciousness of the unreality of (bluntly materialistic) life connected with intense experience will bring man beyond (material) facts and help him see new things." http://www.xeper.org/hyperborea/eng/archives/tertium-1.htm "In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions." ~ P. D. Ouspensky ~ http://www.geocities.com/azdriana4/love.html "Without self-love a man can do nothing. There are two qualities of self-love. One is a dirty thing. The other, an impulse, love of the real "I". Without this it is impossible to move. An ancient Hindu saying - "Happy is he who loves himself, for he can love me." ~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~ http://www.gurdjieff-internet.com/articles.php?WID=24 "That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but not wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the self, that is all. Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are." ~ Nisargardatta ~ http://www.sentient.org/nis.htm "We are kept from the experience of Spirit because our inner world is cluttered with past traumas... As we begin to clear away this clutter, the energy of divine light and love begins to flow through our being." ~ Thomas Keating ~ http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/solutions/GreatQuotes.html "Where there is sorrow, let me sow love...For it is in dying to self, that we are born to Eternal Life." ~ Saint Francis ~ "Bhakthi, Karma, Jnana and (Raja) Yoga, all these paths are one. You cannot love God without knowing Him nor know him without loving him. Love manifests itself in everything you do and that is Karma. The development of mental perception (Yoga), is the necessary preliminary before you can know or love God..." ~ Ramana Maharishi ~ quoted in 'Crumbs from his Table' by Ramanananda Love Osho http://www.ods.nl/amigo/amigo3/index.html?poezie.html~mainFrame
"A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it." ~ Dogen ~ "What
a man takes in by contemplation, ~ Meister Eckhart ~ "Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind.. . . In the process of discovering our true nature, the journey goes down, not up. . . . Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. . . . We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we will let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of compassion. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die." ~ Pema Chodron ~ "You must feel everything, otherwise the world loses its sense." ~ Carlos Castaneda ~ "The Teachings of Don Juan" http://spiral.plangentdesign.com/quotes.html Sri Atmananda: "I have no mine-ness, attachment or egoism. I am eternal, non-doer, all-purity, self-dependent and self-luminous. Attributeless, changeless and unconditioned, I am the abode of Love, stainless, the one without second and ever peaceful." ~ from Atma Darshan ~ http://www.bluedove.com/Advaita_Atmananda.htm "…I was going to ask: What about positive emotions such as love and joy? They are inseparable from your natural state of inner connectedness with Being. Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought. For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in moments when the mind is rendered "speechless," sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace. Usually, such moments are short-lived, as the mind quickly resumes its noise-making activity that we call thinking. Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They lie beyond the emotions, on a much deeper level. So you need to become fully conscious of your emotions and be able to feel them before you can feel that which lies beyond them." ~ Eckhart Tolle ~ "The Power of Now" "A
coward is incapable of exhibiting love; ~ Mahatma Gandhi ~ "Anahata - The Heart Chakra by: Anodea Judith Element: Air Color: Green Verb: I love Attributes: Love, balance, relationship, compassion We are now halfway through our seven-leveled chakra system. Below us are the first three chakras which relate to things and activities in the external physical world. Above us are the top three chakras which relate to internal representations of the physical world that are experienced mentally. The fourth chakra, located over the heart, is the balance point between these two extremes: the integrator of mind and body, believed to be the central home of the spirit. The 12-petaled lotus symbol of the heart chakra contains within it two intersecting triangles forming a six-pointed star. These triangles represent the force of matter moving upward toward liberation and the force of spirit moving into manifestation. It is at this chakra that they are evenly combined, creating a center of peace and balance. The heart chakra is related to the element air and the quality of love. Air is formless, largely invisible, absolutely necessary, and the least dense of our first four elements. Air is expansive as it will expand to fit any space it is put into, yet it is soft and gentle. So, too, is love. Love is the expansion of the heart, the transcendence of boundaries, the interconnectedness of spirit. Love is balance, ease, softness, forgiveness. And love at the heart chakra is felt as a state of being, existing independently of any object or person, unlike the passion-oriented love of the second chakra. The Sanskrit name for this chakra is Anahata, which means "sound that is made without any two things striking." This describes a state where we are no longer fighting or confronting what we love but moving with it in graceful harmony. The fight of the third chakra gives way to graceful acceptance in the fourth. Because Anahata is related to the element air, it is accessible through the breath. The Hindus call the breath prana, which means "first unit," and they believe it contains the essence of all vitality and nourishment, being the point of commonality between the mental and physical worlds. Opening up the breath, unloosening whatever tensions are constricting it, is a way of accessing the heart chakra. If the heart chakra is closed down, the very core of us suffers. Our breathing is shallow, slowing down our metabolism and our physical energy. Blocked at the center, we feel divided between mind and body. We pull in to ourselves, withdraw, and become a closed system. When the heart chakra is too open, there is a tendency to give all our time and energy away, to be so focused on "other" that we lose our own center. Ideally, the heart chakra should radiate love from a strong, solid center of self-acceptance and reach out with supportive care and compassion toward others. With its essential message of balance, our self-love and love for others need to be balanced and interconnected. Directly below the heart chakra is another small lotus that is seldom talked about but significant to the heart chakra. Called the Anandakanda lotus, it has eight petals and contains the Kalpataru, or the Celestial Wishing Tree. In front of the tree is an altar for worship, and it is believed that the tree contains the deeper wishes of the heart chakra—those things we hardly dare name but are most integral to our deepest hopes. It is believed that when one worships at this altar by wishing from the heart, the tree bestows even more than is desired. The operating force in this chakra is the force of equilibrium. That which stays in balance has longevity and lives in harmony. Enter the peaceful balance of the heart within yourself and others, and you will experience the mysteries of Anahata. The Arch Exercise Form the grounding position of chakra 1 and begin breathing into your legs, building up some charge." Then bring the charge into your pelvis by moving your hips back and forth until your second chakra feels some of this same energy. When your hips and belly feel connected, begin to form an arch with your body, keeping your knees bent, thrusting your pelvis forward, then your stomach and chest, and finally reaching upward with your arms, head back. (Be gentle with your spine, and do not hold this position if you feel any discomfort.) If you are holding the position correctly, you should feel a vibration in your chest. Breathe into this and relax as much as you can in this difficult position, imagining a green light filling and opening your heart. Return slowly to your upright position, keeping the knees slightly bent, and slowly return your arms to your sides, eyes closed. Stand at rest a few moments to feel the effects of this exercise. Repeat when ready." http://www.llewellynencyclopedia.com/article/255 "Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." ~James Baldwin~ "For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation." ~ Rainier Maria Rilke ~ "I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. " ~ Nisargadatta ~ http://nisargadatta.net/quotes1.html "The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings." ~ Buddha ~ Panhala ~ Joe Riley MIRACLE FAIR -- Wislawa Szymborska "You need not get at it (Enlightenment), for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly slip into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love - worthy and lovable." ~ Nisargadatta ~ http://www.thecourse.org.uk/thoughts.html When
your love reaches the core, |