What is Love?

Q: What is love? Often it seems to be unreachable.

A: Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others. Love for God or nature or even one’s pets opens the door to spiritual inspiration. The desire to make others happy overrides selfishness. The more we give love, the greater our capacity to do so. It is a good beginning practice to merely mentally wish others well in the course of the day. Love blossoms into lovingness, which becomes progressively more intense, nonselective, and joyful. There is a time when one ‘falls in love’ with everything and everyone they meet.

from The Eye of the I, ch. 17, pg. 328-329

Love becomes the field…

As egocentricity and selfishness diminish as motivators, the capacity for concern with the happiness and welfare of others gains dominance, and thus love… and its gain or loss become dominant. As this propensity matures, lovingness becomes the expression of what one has become… and is unconditional. Love then becomes the field and the context as well as the content of intentions and actions.

… Thus, the human world represents a purgatorial-like range of opportunities and choices, from the most grim to the exalted, from criminality to nobility, from fear to courage, from despair to hope, and from greed to charity. Thus, if the purpose of the human experience is to evolve, then this world is perfect just as it is.

– from I: Reality and Subjectivity p. 208-209

What does it mean to surrender?

In ordinary life, we surrender a little bit. Under greater pressure, we are willing to surrender more and realize that we do not have to put ourselves under catastrophic pressure in order to be willing to surrender at great depth. The transformation of personality, the whole shift in one’s spiritual position, traditionally comes from surrendering at great depth.

What does it mean to surrender at great depth? How can we surrender at great depth without having to put ourselves through a terrible emotional catastrophe in order to accomplish the same spiritual work? By seeing the essential nature of the process, we become educated. Our positions shift and we are different in the way we are. We are willing to be with life in all its expressions. The willingness is then experienced as an inner state of aliveness. Arising from that is the willingness to take the chance because we now know that we are accompanied by something greater than the personal self. It is not the personal self that has to handle what comes up in life. The Infinite Presence that is always with us is more powerful than the human will and ego. The self brings pain and suffering; the Self radiates healing and peace.

from Healing and Recovery, ch. 8, pg. 261

Seek to ‘know’, not to ‘know about’

“… Seek to ‘know’, not to ‘know about’. ‘Know’ implies subjective experience; ‘know about’ means to accumulate facts. In the end, all facts disappear, and there are none to be known.
 
… Each piece of information contributes to intuitive understanding and recognition. Truth is recognized. It presents itself to a field of awareness that has been prepared in order to allow the presentation to reveal itself. Truth and enlightenment are not acquired or achieved. It is a state or condition that presents itself when the conditions are appropriate.

… Humility is of greater value than all factual accumulation.”

The Power of the Love of the Self

Realization and Revelation

The relinquishment of the ego’s positionalities reduces its dominance and opens the door for comprehension and awareness that are nonlinear and nonconceptual. Thus emerges the ‘knowingness’ of the Self by which conflicts spontaneously dissolve. These inner transformations are accompanied by quiet joy, relief, and a greater sense of internal freedom, safety, and peace. The power of the Love of the Self progressively predominates and eventually eclipses all negative feelings, doubts, and obstacles.

Transformation is thus not experienced as the loss of the self but rather as the gain of the emergence and unfoldment of the Self, which is of a much greater dimension. What actually emerges is a change of state or condition that supersedes and replaces the old. Thus, the lesser is replaced by the greater, by which spiritual evolution reveals the Presence of God as Immanent. This discovery is the change in the state of consciousness historically referred to as ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘God-consciousness’.

from Reality, Spirituality and Modern Man, ch. 14, pg. 284-285