Loving humbly

” At some things you stand perplexed, especially at the sight of men’s sins, uncertain whether to combat them by force or by humble love. Always decide, ‘I will combat it by humble love.’ If you make up your mind about that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humbly is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it.”

The Spiritual guide Zossima in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Attachment and Love

You haven’t heard form me in a long time. Well, I’m glad to be back. The following is a paragraph I wrote down after awakening one night a few weeks ago. Something must have been on my mind… It’s a set of  instructions I wrote for myself.

What appears as love with a touch of pain (deep feeling with drama) is the carrier of attachment. These are misunderstandings from childhood. The clear indicator of trouble is the stress in those feelings. However, we connect this stress with a drama of loving and confusion is born. Love is clear. Better a small clear love than a deep confused one that’s attached. Begin with a small clear one and let the clarity in you grow – then relate to the one you love from that.

Ramana Maharshi on ‘Absorbing the Mind in the Heart’

When the mind gets absorbed in the heart,the ego “I” which is the center of the multitude of thoughts vanishes and pure consciousness, or the Self, which subsists during all the states of mind, alone remains resplendent.

It is this state, where there is not the slightest trace of the I-thought, that is the true being of oneself.

It is the undifferentiated light of pure consciousness into which the reflected light of the mind is completely absorbed.

One from Hafiz:

I would not want all my words

to parade around this world in pretty costumes,

so I will tell you something about the bar room view of life.

Love is grabbing hold of the great lion’s mane

and wrestling and rolling deep into existence

while the Beloved gets rough and begins to maul you alive.

True love, my dear, is putting an iron-clad grip

upon the sore swollen balls of a divine rogue elephant

and not having the good fortune to die.

This Morning

I awoke breathing this love you inspire in me,

Noticing that my purpose is nothing less than

To dissolve in this love.

Life’s movement is to become love,

Is to become what we already are,

Is to awaken to our core.

All the movement of bodies and minds

Has this single goal:

To cease in this love.

To cease in this naked embrace

Of the Nothing beyond space and time

And be born again and again

Into this World of Abundance.

This is the joy of Being:

To inhale this love from the heart

And to exhale it into each other.

What is death in the face of this love?

An opening into a greater depth

In the infinite well.

What is mastery?

To see through the movements of mind

As the sun rises through the morning mist.

And your face, each face,

Is the face of this love,

Is the face of the Goddess.

Ram Giri

The Ocean Floor under Your Love

The beloved is not a being of flesh, blood and bone.

The beloved is a hollow reed through whom the wind of God stirs my soul.

The beloved is God, is the Goddess. Through her I can get to know myself.

The beloved is a mirror with my name on it.

How could I not love?

The beloved dwells in me, in the innermost cave of my heart, in the song of my breath, in the movement of the clouds of the mind.

The eye of the beloved is like the sun; always steady in her gaze upon my true heart. The beloved shows me the way to myself.

Everywhere is the land of the beloved. All rivers flow into her. All mountains rise only to touch the hem of her dress. All stars sing her glory as they revolve.

She is the tiniest seed still waiting to sprout into time. She is the inhalation and exhalation of galaxies. She is my body in its universal dimension. She is the way the heart of the world knows itself.

And she comes to me in the form of a woman of flesh, blood and bone – your form.

Your scent and your face tell me simply that it is safe to love, that there is no reason to fear.

Your smile says that I can let go of the mind. That I can find myself in the simple gesture of morning, in the beauty of all the light ever raised from the dead.

My heart responds to your beckoning. I enter your face as a door to the unknown. I become humble and still.

Mirror-face of the creation of God in my soul, what do you hold for me in your secret depth? I bow to your invitation to enter your mystery.

You, my beloved, are the gateway into my infinite beauty.

You look at me from every eye, seeing or blind.

You touch me from inside each cell in my body.

Your heart beats in mine. Your breath holds the still cloudless sky.

Your nakedness covers the world.

Where are you not?

When am I not in your hands?

How can you ever be absent?

What can I do to give you my heart which you already possess?

I am the ocean floor under your love.

Ram Giri

Food for the Heart

Drowning in the ocean of the nectar of love,

the ego only wants to be released from its misunderstanding.

The ego’s misunderstanding is fear.

Ram Giri

Love is

Love is infinite and that is what we are

That Love Issue again…

Here is an excerpt from Byron Katie’s book “A Thousand Names for Joy.” Enjoy:

There’s nothing you can do with love. All you can do is experience it. That’s as intimate as you can ever be with another human being. You can hug him, you can kiss him, you can pack him up, take him home, cuddle him, feed him, give him your money, give him your life —- and that’s not it. Love is nothing you can demonstrate or prove. It’s what you are. It’s not a doing, it can’t be “done”, it’s too vast to do anything with. As you open to the experience of love, it will kill who you think you are. It will have no other. It will kill anything in its way.

Once you give yourself to love, you lose your whole world as you perceived it. Love leaves nothing but itself. It’s totally greedy; it has to include it all; it will not leave out even a shadow of itself. And everything else falls away, and you’re like a tree losing its leaves in autumn, so beautifully. Our pain is in denying love. A boundary is an act of selfishness. There’s nothing you wouldn’t give to anyone if you weren’t afraid. Of course, you can’t be generous before your time. But when you meet your thoughts with understanding, you discover that there’s nothing to lose. So eventually there’s no attempt at protection. Giving everything you have becomes a privilege.

The only true love affair is the one with yourself. I am married to me, and that’s what I project onto everyone. I love you with all my heart; you don’t even have to participate, so there’s no motive in, “I love you.” Isn’t that fine? I can love you completely, and you have nothing to do with it. There’s nothing you can do to keep me from the intimacy that I experience with you.

When I say “I love you”, it’s self-love. There’s no personality talking: I’m only talking to myself. Love is so self-absorbed that it leaves no room for any other. It’s self-consuming, always. There’s not a molecule separate from itself. In the apparent world of duality, people are going to see it as a you and a me, but in reality there is only one. And even that isn’t true.

The voice within is what I’m married to. All marriage is a metaphor for that marriage. When I make a commitment, it’s to my own truth, and there’s no higher or lower. “Will you have this man to be your husband?” “I will.” And I may change my mind.” That’s as good as it gets. I’m married only to God — reality. That’s where my commitment is. It can’t be to a particular person. And my husband wouldn’t want it to be any other way.

Unless you marry the truth, there’s no real marriage. Marry yourself and you have married us. We are you. That’s the cosmic joke.