Reminders for Being Loving

It is obvious that human beings have a dual nature, that is, they have the potential for both good acts and harmful acts. We can be loving, compassionate, and altruistic or the opposite. Most of us would like to be more loving because it feels good to be loving and because it is actually our true nature to be loving. But something exists within us that makes it difficult to be loving consistently, and that something is the ego.

The ego is the false self (as opposed to the true self, or Essence, as I like to call it). The ego is made up of conditioning—beliefs, opinions, judgments, “shoulds,” and any number of ideas that are part of our programming and psychological makeup. This conditioning affects how we see and react to the world, and we often respond unconsciously to this conditioning without realizing that we have a choice. Although some of our conditioning is necessary and useful, much of it is false, negative, and limiting. This is the conditioning that causes us suffering and results in our causing suffering to others. These false, negative, and limiting beliefs and perspectives are what interfere most with loving.

The ego is reflected in the voice in our head, the ongoing inner commentary we all are so familiar with. The ego admonishes and pushes us, chats with us, judges, fantasizes, and tells us what to do and how to do it. The ego is also behind most sentences that begin with “I.” This aspect of the mind is often referred to as the egoic mind because it is the aspect of the mind that is driven by the ego. The egoic mind is different from the more functional mind that we use to read, learn, calculate, design, analyze, and so forth.

The functional mind doesn't speak to us but is a tool we use when engaged in tasks that require us to think.
The ego tells us how to run our life, but it doesn’t have the wisdom to guide us. Instead, the ego is the cause of suffering because its voice is so often negative and leads to negative feelings. The ego’s perceptions and values are too limiting and narrow to encompass the truth about life. The egoic mind is an archaic aspect of ourselves that we are evolving beyond. The ego—who we think we are, with all the judgments, conditioning, and projections—is an imposter, and this imposter is the saboteur of all relationships and of happiness in general.

Essence is who we really are, the divine Self that is living this life through us. It is our essential goodness. We are actually spiritual beings playing at being human beings. Because we are programmed to pay attention to the voice in our head, we often fail to notice what is actually going on in the present moment—in the Now; we often aren’t present to reality. Most people live in a mental world, a virtual world of sorts. When we drop out of this mental world into the Now and are fully present to whatever experience we are having, we experience a depth, a richness, and a joy and peace that feel sacred.

When we are in the Now, we experience love! Love easily flows outward toward others and all life. This is the experience of our true self, or Essence. So, when we talk about being in the Now or being present to life, we are also talking about this experience of Essence—the experience of our divine Self.

The experience of being identified with the ego, on the other hand, is an experience generally of contraction, fear, judgment, unhappiness, and discontentment. Love doesn’t flow from the ego. The ego’s relationship to relationship is: “What can you do for me?” Love is only experienced when we are aligned with Essence. So we can become more loving by learning to become more aligned with Essence and less identified with the negative, judgmental voice in our head. This is accomplished by simply becoming more aware of our dual nature and consciously choosing to align with love rather than identify with the egoic mind’s judgment and other thoughts that cause negative feelings and contraction.

Love is.....

.... ALL YOU NEED

We have everything we need because all we need is love, and everyone has an unlimited supply of that. Not everyone may feel love, but it is always there and available to give to others. The way we experience the unlimited supply of love is by giving it away. That is counter-intuitive, which is why it may seem like there isn't enough love. When we believe we need to get love from outside ourselves, that sense of lack stops the love flowing from inside us to others. Believing that you need love becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy: You believe you need love because you aren't experiencing it, and in trying to get it, you fail to give it, so you don't experience it. You can't really do two things at once: If you are relating to someone, you are either giving your attention (love) to that person or trying to get something from that person. You are either in Essence (giving attention) or in ego (trying to get attention). These are very different states of consciousness, and they result in very different experiences.

The experience of being in ego is an experience of lack. The ego never has enough of anything, including love. So the ego looks outside itself to try to get what it feels it lacks. The ego tries to manipulate the world to fill its desires and so-called needs. The experience of being aligned with our true nature, or Essence, on the other hand, is an experience of fullness. If Essence has a need, it would be to give love, to attend fully to whatever is happening right now in the present moment. Being in Essence is an experience of loving whatever is arising and giving attention to that out of love for it. When we do that, we fall in love with life. And when we are in love with life and with the present moment, there is a natural movement outward to give to or support whatever is showing up in life.

That flow of love and attention toward life is the experience of love that everyone is looking for. It is always possible to give attention and love to whatever is showing up in our life. It is a simple choice, but not so easy to do. The ego doesn't value doing that. It doesn't believe that doing that will get it what it wants. The irony is that giving love and attention to whatever is showing up in our life is exactly what gets us what we want, and doing what the ego thinks will make it happy results in the opposite. Life is a little like Alice's experience in Wonderland: Everything is backwards. However, once you realize that secret about life, your experience of the world changes. Life becomes bountiful and supportive rather than lacking and unkind. The kindness that flows from you creates a kind world, not only for you, but also for others. All you need is love—and you already have plenty of that to give!

Love is.... Gentle

I was listening to a song the other day, and some of the words were “Love is gentle, and love is kind.” The truth of that really touched me. We think of love as being a feeling—an emotion—but true love is more of a being and a doing, a giving, an outpouring. Love touches, love offers itself, love is gentle, and it is kind. That's how we know it. We know love by its fruits. Love gives: It listens, it caresses, it nourishes, it nurtures. It does whatever is needed of it. Love naturally responds to life as life presents itself.

Romantic love isn't like this at all. Romantic love is a giddy feeling, an excitement, an anticipation of getting something from someone. It makes us feel like a kid at Christmas—“Yippee! I'm going to get what a want!” Romance is exciting, fun, and feels wonderful, but it's not really love. It's too self-centered for that. When we are in love, we are often oblivious of the needs of others, as we have only the beloved on our mind. We become fascinated and obsessed with the beloved to the exclusion of everything else. We love the beloved, not for what he or she is, but for what we think that person might mean to us and to our life. We are excited because the beloved is believed to enhance us.

The feelings of romantic love are created by an illusion (i.e., psychological projection) and by the release of certain chemicals in the brain. Romantic feelings are a very different kind of love than true love; they are a falling in love with what we hope will be our salvation and happiness forever. That kind of love never lasts and often disappears upon getting to know someone better. If we are lucky, it turns into something truer, more real, more akin to our true nature. It is our nature to love, to be gentle, to be kind.

When all thoughts from the egoic mind (the voice in your head) drop away or aren't given attention, love is our natural response to life. The only thing that ever interferes with love is a thought, usually a judgment or fear. These are the enemies of true love. They undermine it and eat away at it, or prevent it altogether. Love cannot exist in the ego's world of judgment and fear. And yet we, as humans, need and want love so desperately. Because of this, we learn to love for love's sake, for the joy of loving, without conditions, just because it is our nature to love. We learn to move beyond the ego's judgments and fears because doing so is the only way to get what we really want—true love. We find a way to love in spite of our judgments and fears.

We discover this very simple truth: Love is an act of kindness, not a giddy feeling. Love is a natural expression of our true nature, not a feeling we get from others. The ego manipulates others to do what it wants so that it can feel love, but that's the opposite of love. Love allows others to be just as they are. It supports and nurtures, listens, and cares. Love flows toward others from within us. It exists within us and isn't something we get from others. This kind of love is the most fulfilling thing in the world. Experiencing it doesn't require that you be beautiful or rich or healthy or intelligent or that you have a special talent or standing in life; experiencing it only requires that you express it. It's free and it frees us, and it frees others from the ensnarement of the false self. It's the greatest gift and one that doesn't cost the giver anything. It takes nothing from the giver and returns everything. This is the great secret we are meant to discover.

LOVE TRANSCENDS APPEARANCES

Appearances seem so important. Most of us believe that our appearance is very important, and we work very hard at looking a certain way. This is especially true for women, of course, and this conditioning is very difficult to overcome because there's a lot of fear that not looking good will have drastic consequences. For many people, appearance is a top priority and often remains that way right up until death. My mother, for instance, insisted on “putting on her face” even on her deathbed after her body had been diminished to skin and bones by cancer. Even then, she was still trying to improve herself, still not seeing the beauty that she was as this old dying woman, still not allowing herself to just be as she was.

Our appearance does affect how others initially react to us. However, it's not as important as we make it. We suffer over it and try so hard to look other than the way we do. All of this trying is exhausting and takes time and energy away fromthings that are more fulfilling and important in life. That's the problem—when we are consumed with our appearance, we aren't giving our attention and energy to other things that might be more meaningful, fulfilling, and rewarding. We might not discover that cultivating kindness is more rewarding than cultivating beauty. We might fail to notice the beauty that is here, within ourselves and others, just as we are.

Inner beauty and outer beauty can be at odds, since there is only so much attention and energy we have. Where your energy and attention go reflects what you value. Do you value outer beauty more than inner beauty? You might say you don't, but where are you putting your energy and attention? What are your thoughts on? The funny thing is that others love us for our inner beauty, for the unique expression of Essence that we are, although they may be attracted to us by our outer beauty. However, that allure doesn't mean much if they don't also fall in love with us. What people fall in love with isn't our outer beauty (that's attraction or infatuation, not love), but something much more subtle—our being. They love us because they see lovable qualities that belong to Essence: goodness, creativity, kindness, joy for life, patience, compassion, courage, wisdom, strength, clarity, and so on.

The beauty of getting old with someone is the opportunity it presents to really get that appearances don't matter. You watch as your beloved changes before your eyes into an old man or old woman, but you may love him or her more than ever, not because of how he or she looks, but because you love your beloved's being—you love how he or she is in the world and with you. That's when you really get that all this emphasis on appearances is false. Appearances never were that important. You only thought they were.

Just because most people believe that appearances are important doesn't make it so. People are under the illusion that appearances are far more important than they are, which does create that reality to some extent—it makes this seem true. This illusion results in a culture that's sadly misled into putting too much energy and attention on such things. This cultural illusion makes it more difficult to discover the truth—that appearances aren't that important. But life is wise and ages us so that we can discover the truth. It is perhaps one of the greatest lessons of our lives, although it may take a lifetime to learn it.

If we realize that appearances aren't that important, then aging can be experienced as fortunate, as it gives us the gift of finally getting to relax and stop striving to improve ourselves. We finally get to put our attention on what's important— on loving others (and ourselves) just the way we are. This is the greatest gift we can give others and ourselves, and the most important thing we can do in life.

LOVE IS ACCEPTANCE

Some people are easier to love than others, and they are the ones, therefore, who experience a lot of love. They experience it both within themselves and coming to them from others. What is their secret? Amazing good looks? No. Stunning personalities? No. Money and power? No. Their secret is none of the things we assume will make us more lovable. Their secret is that they love, and by that I mean, they accept others the way they are. Isn’t that when you feel loved—when you feel accepted rather than judged?

Acceptance is the opposite of judgment and the antidote to judgment, and acceptance brings us the experience of love. What is the experience of love? It is the experience of accepting and being accepted, the experience of relaxation, of being able to just be, without struggling and striving to be any different than we are or requiring that others be different than however they are. That is what we all want—to just be able to relax and be okay just the way we are and to be okay with others just the way they are. When someone gives us this gift of acceptance, we love them. What a gift! It is a gift you would never reject and hopefully one you will return, because returning it—giving others this gift—brings you the experience of love. Loving and accepting others feels good. It is its own reward. It isn’t even necessary for others to love and accept you in return because it’s enough to just feel love and acceptance for others.

The ego loves, or tries to love, in order to get love or something else it wants. But this kind of love isn’t really love. It’s more like being nice, and it may not entail acceptance at all but something more like tolerance for the purpose of getting something. This is a very different experience than love. Tolerating people is better than not tolerating them, but it’s not the same as enjoying them, which can only come from true acceptance. You accept others because you appreciate the unique expression of life that they are. What amazing things these human forms are! And all the different personalities! When we can just let people be the way they are, it is such a relief—for us and for them. Allowing people to just be is loving them, and this appreciation and allowing flows from our true nature, or Essence, which is love. Accepting and loving is how Essence feels toward life and every one of its creations.

What makes someone lovable? Certainly their acceptance of us makes them lovable. But what also makes them lovable is their acceptance of themselves. People who accept themselves, who are gentle and kind to themselves, are also gentle and kind to others. We see these qualities in them, and we relax. And when we relax, we become aligned with our true nature. People who love and accept themselves are lovable because they reflect Essence, and that’s what we all really want—not someone to do our every bidding and match our every fantasy. What we really want is to be with someone who knows how to love because our deepest desire is to love. Therefore, we are drawn to those who know how to love. They are our teachers—the way-showers in this world. And this is our destiny as well—to be a place of refuge, where egos dissolve and all that is left is the love that we are.

LOVE IS A CHOICE

We tend to think of love as an uncontrollable feeling that comes over us. Although this overwhelming feeling does happen, real love and love that is sustained is always a choice: You choose to be open to someone, you choose to accept them, and that openness and acceptance allows love to flow. This process is often unconscious, so we often don’t realize we are choosing to accept someone when it’s happening. But that choice to accept someone is what precedes love. It happens unconsciously all the time, and it can happen more consciously too.

When acceptance and love happen unconsciously, it’s often because someone fits our ideas, desires, and conditioning. We find that person pleasing because we identify with him or her in some way, probably because we see qualities similar to ours, or perhaps because we see a quality we admire and would like to develop. When our acceptance doesn’t happen automatically and unconsciously, we can simply choose to accept someone because he or she is different or unusual in some way. You can learn to welcome and embrace differences rather than reject them, as the ego does. When you do that, you open up a new world of possibilities in relationship with people you never thought you could love. You still might not choose to have relationships with them, but you don’t have to miss out on the experience of love by rejecting them just because they’re different from you or because they don’t match your conditioning in some other way.

It’s useful to notice how much we withhold love from others because they are different. Once you become more conscious of this tendency, you are free to make another choice—to choose to celebrate differences rather than reject them—and that choice opens your heart and your life up to new possibilities.

LOVE IS BEING IN ESSENCE

Our true nature, Essence, is love. To be in Essence is to be in love. If love is what you want (do you?), then being in Essence and staying there is how to have it. The problem is that we have other agendas—other desires—when we are in relationship. Sometimes we want to be right more than we want to experience love. Sometimes we want to be separate and avoid being vulnerable more than we want to experience love. And sometimes we want what we want more than we want love.

It’s important to realize that there are reasons why we don’t choose love as often as we could. There’s a payoff for the ego in not choosing love, and it’s good to be aware of what you are trading love for. When we are identified with the ego, other things seem more important than love, because they are more important to the ego than love. That’s the catch. The ego doesn’t choose love. So what are you to do if you are identified with the ego, but you know Essence enough to want that?

That’s the situation so many of us find ourselves in. Very few of us live from Essence most of the time. There’s an answer, though. When you do choose love, that’s Essence choosing love. Essence is able to reach into the egoic state of consciousness and draw us to itself, but we have to be willing to pay attention to Essence instead of the egoic mind (the voice in our head). Essence won’t shout at you like the egoic mind does. It won’t try to convince you, scare you, or bully you to come to it, like the egoic mind does.

Essence whispers softly in each moment. It entices you with feelings of love, joy, peace, contentment, and happiness that seep into the egoic state of consciousness. When you pay attention to these feelings, you are paying attention to Essence, and doing that drops you into Essence. The way out of the egoic state of consciousness and into Essence is not a hard road after all. All it takes is paying attention to the love, joy, peace, contentment, compassion, wisdom, and happiness that are already here in this moment. Can you feel them—any of them—even just a little? That is your doorway into Essence. Even a sliver of love or peace or joy can take you there. Pay attention to that sliver—notice it—and then that will become your experience of the moment instead of your thoughts. Instead of noticing your thoughts, notice these subtle feelings and qualities that belong to Essence, and you are there! Making this choice isn’t difficult or unpleasant, but it is a choice.

This is also the answer to finding love in relationship: Notice the love that’s there and not the other person’s persona, words, or actions. This person in front of you is playing a part. Let that part be played, recognize it as a part, and enjoy it. It’s all play—lila, as the Hindu mystics say: God playing with God in many forms. What fun! Essence enjoys the characters that we are. It accepts them and revels in their quirkiness and uniqueness. It has compassion for their pain and the suffering they bring to themselves and to others. It accepts this pain as part of life too.

Essence accepts whatever your partner is doing or saying because Essence knows that it’s not the whole truth of him or her. Essence sees the truth about the other, and it loves the other because the other is itself. To Essence, it’s clear that the other is no different from itself. It feels and sees the sameness. It knows only Oneness. It can’t be fooled by words, behavior, and looks. Appearances can’t totally hide the truth. Look into your beloved’s eyes and see. This is the experience you have to look forward to when you choose Essence over the ego, love over being right or superior, acceptance over judgment, kindness over criticism, and unity over being separate and safe. These are your choices, which can only be made by you. Happiness and love depend on them, but happiness and love can wait. Essence is patient, and it will wait as long as it has to for you to choose it over the ego.

It’s time to choose Essence, to choose love. You choose Essence not just for your own happiness or for a happy relationship, but also for peace, love, and happiness for all—for the rest of you in your many guises. You are here to find love, not just for yourself, but also for the divine Self, which has been hiding love from you in this world of form just so that you could have the pleasure and amazement of discovering it in the simple quiet of this moment— and in your beloved’s eyes.

LOVE IS RECOGNIZING THE DIVINE SELF

Love flows when we recognize our own divine Self in another. It flows when we are able to see beyond (or behind) the egoic mask to the real Self, which is exquisitely lovable and which evokes love. All the qualities we love in another are qualities of the divine Self, of Essence: compassion, understanding, wisdom, kindness, love, patience, and inner strength.

These are not qualities of the ego, which is innately self-centered and focused on its needs. Where are the wisdom, compassion, and love in that? Is it any wonder that when we are identified with the ego, we don’t feel very lovable? The ego is not very lovable, but our true nature, or Essence, is; and when we are aligned with Essence, even our ego and the egos of others are experienced as lovable.

The ego doesn’t know how to love, but the Divine in us—Essence—does. Essence loves. It’s also wise, understanding, kind, compassionate, sensitive, patient, and caring. Anything you would want a lover or another human being to be comes from Essence, not from the ego.The love that the ego has to offer is tainted by self-interest. “What’s in it for me?” lingers in the background of every interaction between those who are aligned with their egos. This is not love, but manipulation disguised as love or kindness. It may be better than undisguised manipulation, but it’s still not love in its purest sense. The ego and love can’t inhabit the same space. One must go.

Pure love can only come from Essence, which is unadulterated goodness. Essence loves because it feels good to love and for no other reason. Essence loves because it is its nature to love; we love because it is our nature to love.

LOVE IS BEHIND ALL LIFE

If evil were behind life, this would be a sad world, indeed. As bad as it can get here, there are probably few people that feel that evil is what is behind this world. Certainly few want evil to be behind this world, and that’s a good sign. Something in us wants and gravitates toward goodness, not evil. Negativity tugs at us and even grabs hold of us at times, but something else continually pulls us toward the opposite, toward love.

Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of love. Evil isn’t a reality itself but the result of the absence of contact with Reality, with what is true—love. Evil is the result of being divorced from our true nature, being very, very divorced, so divorced that someone might not even believe in love because he or she has so much fear and so much difficulty feeling love. Such deep separation is a frightening and lost place.

The spectrum of life is a spectrum of love: On one end is pure love and the experience of oneness with all life, and on the other end is the absence of love and the experience of complete separation and fear. What exists in the absence of love is fear, and fear can produce hateful acts. Those who are lost in the deepest separation need our love and compassion; and yet, they are the ones who are most difficult to love. Nevertheless, no one is ever irretrievable. All eventually return to love.

This journey on earth, which takes many, many lifetimes, is a return to love and a rediscovery of our oneness with all, in fact, of our true nature as Oneness. The journey is a beautiful one because it ends in love. It takes us away from separation and returns us to unity. This is surely evidence that love is behind all Life. We evolve from feeling very separate to realizing our oneness with all life. What a wonderful discovery and ending to this adventure called life. Life is good. How do I know this? You don’t have to take my word for it. Many, many have gone before us, and this is what they report and have reported. These individuals are the ones we revere as saints, spiritual masters, avatars, and founders of our religions. We revere them because we want the peace, love, and wisdom that they embody.

We want peace, love, and wisdom because these are what bring meaning and joy to life. Why? Because peace, love, and wisdom are what is behind life. We don’t revere murderers and rapists or those who torture, maim, and steal from others. Why? Because we know what’s true and good when we see it. We just know it. All societies value love. Love not only helps us survive by making it possible to cooperate with others, but love feels good; it just feels right. We know the rightness of love, and that is why we can trust life. Life is all about love.

LOVE IS WHAT DRIVES LIFE

Fear drives the ego, but love drives life. Love drives all that matters in life. Love is the motivating force in life that creates, sustains, enhances, and gives meaning to life. There is nothing else here but love because Life is love. We are love. This Love is hidden only by a sense of being someone who is afraid of life. The ego is this sense of ourselves as small, afraid, and inadequate. Our identity as a separate individual, as the ego, is of someone who feels lacking, insignificant, lost, confused, afraid, struggling, and in conflict with life.
So it’s no wonder the ego wants and feels it needs so much to be okay and happy. But this is a false identity and false needs—we need nothing but what we already have to be happy. We are not the individual we think we are. We are life. It is living through us. And when the ego is put aside, Life lives through us more cleanly and purely, and with ease, gratitude, fortitude, joy, and love. When the ego is no longer dominant, it becomes obvious that all that’s here is Essence being and relishing in being.

Life is trustworthy because love is behind life. Love is what is unfolding life and making life happen. Love is the motivating force in all we do: Love for our life, our body, and food motivates us to grow, shop for, prepare, and eat what we need to sustain us. Love for self-expression, expansion, discovery, and self-development motivates us to speak, learn, create, expand our capabilities, and develop our talents. Love for others motivates us to procreate, relate, give, care for, nurture, and support others and society. Love for pleasure and fun motivates us to play, rest, sing, dance, and enjoy life.

Love for security and safety motivates us to be careful and take care of ourselves. Love for being productive motivates us to work and develop our skills. Love for knowledge motivates us to learn, read, and share what we’ve learned. Love allows us to identify with the ego, and love is even what motivates the ego: Love for security, safety, self-preservation, superiority, power, comfort, and prestige motivate the ego to pursue what it pursues, such as money, beauty, and a good job. The ego and Essence are motivated to do many of the same things: Both motivate us to take care of ourselves, work, play, pursue relationships, and in other ways create a life.

However, the ego and Essence do these things for different reasons. While Essence does them for the love of life, the love of being alive, and the drive to perpetuate life, the ego does them out of feelings of lack and fear in order to gain superiority and control. Because the ego acts from fear, it often causes harm, but even love is behind that, albeit a distorted version of it: love for what the ego is trying to get by harming someone or love for its own self-preservation. Because the ego sees itself as separate from everything, it is driven by fear and sees others and the world as something to conquer or subdue. This is obvious in how people have related to the environment. While native peoples have generally viewed themselves as part of a Whole and as belonging to and caretakers of nature, our ego-driven societies have related to the environment and other peoples as something to control and use for our own needs, without considering the impact of our actions on the Whole. These are two very different ways of being, which come from very different states of consciousness and result in very different worlds. If we don’t begin to relate to the world more from Essence instead of the ego, there may not be much of a world left.

Raising our consciousness is not just for ourselves, but for everyone and for the earth—for the Whole. Many think that if they don’t live as the ego would have them live, they’ll end up doing nothing. They think that spiritual teachings that emphasize meditation, acceptance, and being in the moment lead to being passive and avoiding the world and practical matters. Many assume they won’t get anything done or be able to pay their bills if they live as these teachings suggest. But that’s a misunderstanding. These teachings emphasize what they do because doing these things drops us into Essence, where we can then discover how Essence is moving us to act now in the world and what wisdom and insights it might have for us that can inform our life and actions.

How do we know what to do and how to live our life? Instead of getting the answers from the egoic mind, we can find out by paying attention to what’s coming out of the Now. Life happens, and it happens through us. We can be moved by the ego and its fear, or we can let life happen through us as it’s meant to by letting Essence move us. Essence is motivated by love, not by fear, and the results of Essence moving through us are peace, harmony, unity, and love. The only thing that can interfere with wiser and more loving action in this world is following the ego’s fear and letting the ego dominate our lives. When we’re no longer listening to the egoic mind, Life has a chance to flow through us as it’s meant to and as it naturally does, even to some extent when we are ego identified.