Spiritual realization, which really means the same as God experience, is not so much of a mental experience as it is a heart experience. This divine experience is within the medium of consciousness, but this consciousness is really in the heart. The heart opens its knowing consciousness. And at each stage of opening there is a greater and greater expansiveness of inner experience. Boundaries dissolve, veils drop, and a great unlimited inner space opens up. The experience is like being the unlimited conscious universe itself. There are no boundaries and the space is endless. As well, in this space there is deep peace, the deep peace of Just Being. And in this space there is only heart, only One Heart, which is the very Being of God. Everything is included in this Universal Heart Space. Even the little ego-self, and even the personal thoughts and feelings, all of which will eventually re-emerge yet to some degree transformed; this too is included in this great Heart Space of Being.
In spiritual realization, all of life, including oneself, is seen as immersed in the One Ocean of Being, the One Heart, the One Love. Nothing is really outside of this Ocean; for the medium of all reality is this Ocean. We are all in God. We are all in Love. Yet until this is realized, or better yet experienced, the thinking mind will live in an illusion of separation and un-connectiveness. Then, since action follows thought and belief, our relations with each other and the world become mixed up and often messed up. But let us not dwell on such negative matters. Instead, let us go deep into the Ocean and dissolve all ego-ness into this infinite expanse of Being. Abandon all worry, all attachment, and all self-identification; and let go completely into this Great Ocean of Being, the Ocean of Love.
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The heart contains God, unlimited Being. 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.
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.
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Love is different kind of power and strength from our usual understanding of power and strength. We usually think of power and strength like that used when chopping wood or pushing at something or manipulating something. This power comes from just below the belly, which is often called our centre of power. Even our thinking can actually come from this place. It is when we are trying to move things or force something to happen. But the power of love works in a different way. It is not passive, yet its activeness is of different kind. It brings together and builds a unified relation, while the other kind of power manipulates from a centre of separateness and relates in a separative way. It is important to notice this difference, as we relate with others. For in our relations with others, our centre needs to move up into the heart, so that we relate with others in love. Then the power of love can unfold. We need to allow this power of love to unfold, rather than try to force it on others. It is not like chopping wood or manipulating blocks of cement. It is a different way of being and doing. It is being with, and coming into an empathy with others. It is not the same kind of power used when chopping wood. It is more like a melting with the other, or discovering unity with the other. It is like coming into unity with the trees, rather than trying to make use of them. To simplify this, love is a merging together in unity, rather than try to make others conform to our wishes. But too often we treat others like wood in a forest, trying to chop and sculpture the wood how we want it to be. But again, love is not just passive. For love actively seeks out the good in everyone and helps to bring forth their inner divine potentials. Love is empathetic and brings out the good in others. So in conclusion, there is usefulness in the kind of power needed to chop wood and get things done in the material world, but in the world of human relations and also aesthetic relation with the natural world, the manipulative kind of power needs to be abandoned. Love needs to be in power. Love needs to be in charge. So we need to surrender the manipulative power and embrace love. This is the true Way of the Masters. To be a great Master in life is to foremost be in love and live by the power of love. Then great actions will proceed from this love. Jesus could do all sorts of miraculous things, but this power came from love, not merely from an ego trying to be great.
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The Divine Will (GW) is the power of Love. This is not a power that manipulates or fully controls all events in this world. Rather, this power of Love provides Love to this world, it generates Love, and it brings Love into this world according to people's receptivity to Love. Love is not imposing; rather, it offers itself and provides itself, and it comes into our experience and reality when there is an opening for it. Love also brings goodness into the world. It brings goodness, beauty, harmony and justice. It also brings joy and fulfillment. Love also dissipates fear, anxiety, worry, anger, and suffering. Along the way, Love is also intelligent, the intelligence of Love.
Love makes us feel good and do good. On one hand, Love is the feeling of Love, or the feeling of being loved. On the other hand, Love is the impulse for loving, the power of love in action. So it has these two basic aspects, pertaining to feeling and action, to feeling loved (or in Love) and doing love (or loving). Thus, the Divine Will generates the feeling of being in Love, and it also generates the impulse or decision to love. Divine Will wants us to feel loved and also to love. So how do we help others and the world, how do we serve life and love? We help and serve by loving others and also by doing good for others. We do good for others by giving them what they need. The first things people need are the basics of life and healthy living. Yet people also need love, the feeling of being loved and opportunities for loving. People also need joys and pleasures. We need not be too greedy about our joys and pleasures, but to have joys and pleasures are certainly important. Different people may have different kinds of pleasures to which they seek, so we are often different in our particular pleasures, yet we all share the same basic need for pleasures in general. What we each enjoy can be seen as the good we seek.
The Divine Will, as the power of Love, seeks to fulfill our pleasures and bring us joy. The Divine supports our needs and pleasures, though the flow of this Divine support depends on receptive and cooperating factors in the world at hand. The Divine supports and encourages our pleasure, though it does not support personal or social greed. There is a distinction between greed and justified pleasures, but this issue will not now be discussed. The important point, for now, is that joys and pleasures are part of the Divine Will, or part of Divine Goodness as is Intended by God. Thus, we can bring goodness in the world by supporting and helping others in the fulfillment of their personal pleasures, whatever they may be (as long as such pleasures are not harmful to others). In other words, love and service in the world involves the bringing about of pleasures to others, or giving to others what is pleasurable to them. This may not be just physical pleasures, of course, for it could be emotional or intellectual pleasures. It may even be the spiritual pleasure/joy of becoming closer to Divine Being.
So love [in action] involves bringing greater pleasure and joy in the world around us. In other words, a way we can bring Love into the world is to bring pleasure and joy to others. Also, helping them to fulfill what they seek to fulfill, whatever that may be, is to bring pleasure to them. One way to think of the Divine Will is that Divine Purpose or Intention to fulfill and bring about the pleasures and joys of everyone, in a great harmony and fairness. But of course, this is not just about others. It is also about ourself. For we also serve the Divine Will and Purpose by fulfilling our own pleasures and joys. So our own pleasures are of course important too.
Remember that each of us are instruments (so to speak) for Divine Experience. That is, the Divine experiences itself through us. So we serve the Divine by our experiences of joy. We bring joy and pleasure to Divine Being as we ourself experience joy and pleasure. Thus, here is one of the great secrets regarding Divine Purpose. The Divine seeks enjoyment. This world is created for the purpose of enjoyment. And the Divine enjoys through us. Theologies of recent past have mostly emphasized that the purpose of life is for learning, or for some sort of religious conversion. Learning and religious yearning are admirable; but also are joy and pleasure. Most deeply, the greatest fulfillment of Divine Purpose is the feeling of love and the experience of loving. This is the deepest joy.
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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, or 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 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.
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4. Discover the love inside, the love which wants to come out to love others and celebrate love.
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.
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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 '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. This is really a self-transformation practice, involving the inner act of surrender. One is surrendering everything in oneself but God. One is surrendering into the realization of just One God, the True Reality of Being, surrendering into Love. 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 practice thus moves into a deep contemplation of 'Only God', knowing there is only Love. Then the sufis simply chant Allah, being immersed in God, in Love. Finally they chant Hu, the very essence of God, and dissolve into pure consciousness.
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