Trying to understand someone is not the same as loving them, though we might think that’s a path to love. What that is is an attempt to access the heart by first going through the mind, as if the mind is a gatekeeper for the heart. (It’s not, but we can act this way.) When we live this way, when we feel a lack of love, we may seek to recreate it by seeking to create a sense of mutual understanding, but that’s actually placing a condition upon love and thinking that external things need to be a certain way for us to have a particular internal state of being.
Love can flow during both understanding and misunderstanding.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t value in seeking clarity with another person when there is misunderstanding present. Of course that can be a very helpful and beneficial thing to do. What I am saying is that we don’t have to require the prerequisite of understanding another person’s point of view mentally and making sure they see your point of view before we allow ourselves to open up to the flow of love. Mutual understanding can certainly help us open and take down our walls, yes, but it doesn’t have to be a requirement for us to love what is, for that makes love conditional. The following quote is taking on deeper meaning for me tonight:
“Spiritual practice is the capacity to offer your love even when you feel hurt, closed down, tense, angry, misunderstood, or hated.”
-David Deida
By love I don’t mean affection towards another, approving of them, having them be a part of your life, or even liking their behavior and choices. Not that.
It’s more about accepting others the way they are, accepting yourself the way you are, being a YES to life, and being open to allowing what is to be without closing down and attempting to separate yourself from the moment. Love is what we feel when we surrender our resistance to what is.
Surrender means to love without limits. It means to relax your guard so your lover can feel your core–authentic, unhidden, and undefended. Your muscles relax. Your breath becomes full. Your body and heart willingly open to your lover. If you are hurt, then you are hurt, but in any case you practice to remain open and full, like the ocean.
Why do bad thoughts like anger and hatred to someone pop up in our mind like chains? I don’t want to think these stupid things but it is popping up and it destroys the whole day. Is that the influence of an evil? I started this problem when I tried to transform myself to the enlightenment. I am not getting positive thoughts.
Thanks,
S.
My Response:
Those bad thoughts are present because there is unhealed energy present within your being.
Those unconscious and automatic thoughts arise due to your energy. At the same time, your thoughts alter your energy. They are an inseparable team. Each affects the other. It may seem like a chicken and egg thing, but you can heal any part of the cycle and transform the entire cycle.
Much of our energy and thought is unconscious (we’re unaware of it) and running on autopilot. In this sense, we lack awareness. We have hidden aspects of ourselves from ourselves.
But enlightenment isn’t a self-improvement course. It’s not a positive thinking class. It has nothing to do with your thoughts although the energy of your thoughts may certainly change as a by-product of your awakening and as you progressively let go of the egoic way of being.
Awakening is about bringing awareness to the fullness of what you are and seeing beyond your identity as a limited self. It’s about seeing Reality as it is, not as the mind labels it and perceives it to be.
Awareness itself is the most powerful transformative tool you have.
What you resist persists. Put another way, what you go unconscious to and are unwilling to face and bring awareness to, that’s what persists and seems to be out of your control. On the other hand, what you look at disappears. By shining the light of awareness on your darkness and facing your inner demons and fears, awareness itself automatically transmutes the energy back into light. This we call healing.
So the key is to SEE. Bring awareness to your darkness. See yourself as you actually are, without judging any aspect of what is seen. Accept it and love it. Be open, honest, and sincere about what is. You must want to see the Truth more than you want to be right, feel safe, or be comfortable. You gotta want to see Reality. When you want it bad enough and are willing to face the darkness within, you will see the Light that was always there, the being that you truly are.
Have you noticed how ideas and thoughts just kinda *pop* into our minds? Where do our thoughts come from? What’s going on here?
Well the typical way of thinking about our minds is as if it is its own independent thinking entity, doing its thinking thing. Basically it’s the idea of being a separate being who has the ability to operate while disconnected from everything else.
Now, instead of thinking of ourselves as separate independent thinkers, let’s change our perspective for a moment. Let’s imagine that there’s an infinite pool of thoughts that everyone in the universe can tap into. Every thought, idea, and concept is part of this single collective energetic thought bubble that we all have access to.
From this perspective, you and I are not exactly thinkers who come up our very own thoughts. More accurately we would be like vibrational tuners. We’re like radios that have the ability to vibrationally attune ourselves to different frequencies of thought. Whatever station you tune your energy radio towards determines what thoughts are received.
You have the ability to say “Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello” in your head, but what you’re really doing is tuning yourself to whatever radio station is playing those words and you’re sitting back as those thoughts pass through you. You are not your thoughts. Thoughts pass through you, this empty spaciousness of awareness that is eternally here.
Let’s examine a number of different examples that demonstrate the interconnectedness and non-separateness of thought.
Alright, so here’s something we see that’s pretty common in spiritual circles:
People are suffering and resisting what is (basically your typical ego stuff) and then learn about surrendering and allowing everything to be as it is. They hear phrases like “turn the other cheek” and give up struggling with what is. In a sense, this takes the wind out of the sails of the ego.
Great, cool. No longer do they fight, struggle, and demand that things should be different than they are. They basically give up trying to control their reality, but often they go to the other extreme and turn into passive wimps, basically neutered their sense of inner power sense. I’ve written about this previously in the article Does Surrendering Control Mean I Don’t Do Anything?
The Second Part of “Allowing Everything To Be As It Is”
This next part is often missed… You see, once we allow everything to be as it is, we notice that there is a totally natural and healthy desire to change things that, unlike all of the compulsive fear-based stuff we’ve let go of before, doesn’t arise from the anxious, fearful ego. This energy is Source/Creation itself expressing itself through you in physical manifestation. You become a vessel through which the creative power of the entire universe flows. How’s THAT for power!?
This power that arises seeks not power over others, but power WITH others. It uplifts the one and the all and creates win/win scenarios. It doesn’t seek to raise one up over the other in a win/lose scenario as the egoic energy so often did.
This is the third chakra taking action when in alignment with Source, rather than being dominated by the ego. Instead of being closed down, it becomes an open powerhouse for the Divine.
Look, did Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, or MLK Jr. sit around meditating and surrendering all day? Heck no! While that may certainly have been a big part of their process, they truly opened up to allowing the mind/body/soul to be used in service to the Divine and entered the world with this energy… and there was some serious mojo behind their actions!
They become flow-ers of Divine Energy, living from a place of inner inspiration, living from the stillness within.
This desire is the desire to create and be or do something out of the sheer joy of doing it, out of the pure expression of what you truly are. It’s Life seeking to experience itself through a physical body. It is Creation creating.
So… allowing everything to be as it is also includes allowing our inner being’s innate movement to create to be as it is as well, and allow our bodies and minds to follow through on this energy when it feels right!
“Everything is perfect about the universe, including your desire to change it.”
Something that seems to be developing over the last week or so is the progressive shutting down of the mind. Not that it’s somehow damaged and broken, but it seems trying to access thoughts and memories feels a lot like trying to crank an engine that just won’t start. There’s the attempted whirring of the engine, but this mind just doesn’t work the old way anymore.
I was at an event today and we were supposed to think of a memory that shaped our lives, and I just couldn’t get this mind to think of anything. (Assuming the “me” is the personality, I guess…)
Anyways, you know all those grudges and resentments that we carry around? Those are all falling away on their own. (Thank God.. heh)
But it’s not just the “bad” stuff that’s falling away. The “good” things are going too, though there’s no attachment to them as if I’ll somehow be less without my old good memories. They’re all just dropping away too.
Some people advocate believing in God, believing that unconditional love is better than suffering, believing that we’re all one, believing that you are the creator of your own reality, and so on. These belief systems can all have very powerful and helpful effects in your life. You’re probably familiar with the power of the mind and how much of an impact it has upon the reality you experience.
At the same time, other people recommend looking past beliefs entirely because they limit your knowingness. This too can be a very helpful process, and yet it seems to contradict the other way of life which uses beliefs as a tool to really impact your life.
You can believe in your beliefs so strongly that you effectively become them, yet you are not your beliefs if you are not your thoughts. What’s the dealio? If we’re doing the whole spiritual thing, should we have beliefs or not?
Marie Levit, author of Healing God, recently posted a video about this subject, discussing how beliefs fit into one’s spiritual evolution.
The mind is designed to think in either/or ways. Duality. The mind thinks that it’s this OR that, not this AND that.
Is someone right or wrong? How ’bout both? And neither?
We’re either separate or connected or one. Which one is True?
There is a here and a there, or there is only a here. Is there here?
Could fear be a form of love?
Could the Devil actually be God?
Something can be something, or nothing, or everything, but not all simultaneously.
Is there really Truth separate from something called falsehood?
It seems as though awakening makes the mind have to face some impossible realities that are obviously and undeniably happening right before your eyes.
You are the space of nothingness that is full of everything, and they are not separate. Nothing and Everything are unified as One.
Individuality and Oneness
Individuality does not imply separation. A wave is not in any way separate from the ocean, but is the ocean itself, expressing itself as a wave.
There is no separation, and yet there is simultaneously oneness AND the infinite. Non-duality is NOT limited to just Oneness. That’s why they don’t call non-duality oneness. Non-duality means not-two, or not-separate.
It seems like the mind can get “stuck” in oneness, yet the One expresses itself in an infinite number of ways. In this, there is no loss of individuality. Everything is the One.
Any realization or understanding you must be willing to let go of, including Oneness. You must be willing to not understand or know a single thing. To have no idea what the Truth is. To be that simple and unattached to knowing.
You are the indescribable, and you are all descriptions. There is nothing that you are not, and you are that which you are not, except that you aren’t.
Beingness
How would you describe or visualize beingness? It has no qualities to describe. It just is. Is/am/are/were.. all forms of the word be. To be, you just are. Nothing else. No thing to describe. Just beingness being without any mental image to wrap around beingness.
Free of identity beyond simple existence.
Creation
You look at a plant and you see how Creation creates itself and recreates itself infinitely fast over and over, yet taking no time to do it. How is this possible?
Every thing is the unmanifest no thingness expressing itself repeatedly in a series of blips of time that doesn’t even exist.
You Are What You Are Not
God is All That Is. You are God. You are All That Is. Illusion and the dream state is God. Non-God is God.
Your thoughts are not what you really are. Yet thoughts are another manifestation of All That Is. Thoughts are All That Is. Everything is All That Is. Everything you look at IS the infinite. Thoughts are your true Self, the totality of what you are, as is everything else in All That Is. There are no “parts” of God. There is simply the unified totality even though there is the individual which is not the totality.
A is not B. Yet there is ultimately only one presence, both of which A and B are. Thus A is B, just different manifest expressions of the same One presence.
Your body is your mind which is your false self which is your true self which is the sun which is the stars which is your deepest passion… it’s all the same, even though it’s different. They are not two.
Creating the Impossible
You can experience the unreal by making it real in your own imagination and thus experiencing it. Have you ever seen someone completely misinterpret a situation and experience something that never actually happened except in their own imagination? This is the experience of the dream state people call real life. It’s all just a play of mind which is consciousness pretending to be mind, which is lila, the play of the Divine.
Because of this creative and imaginative ability, we can somehow experience separation up to a certain point, even though it doesn’t actually exist! Through the mind, we can create the impossible and make it manifest. “Anything is possible.” This is what the mind does. It makes up stories and descriptions to describe that which just is and has no description. The mind is a creative and imaginative story-teller.
The you you think you are is just another story.
Humanity
Paradoxically we can go through separation to realize oneness. All separation eventually does reintegrate back into Unity.
We can experience who we are not in order to realize who we really are. This is the summation of the human experience.
There is NOTHING wrong OR right with any experience, real or illusory. It just is what it is, all part of a larger scheme to bring us back to who we are, unless it does not.
When the wave falls back into the ocean and realizes its immense depth, nothing is lost. Awareness expands consciously to become more conscious of what it is, and always “was” and always “will be.” It just is.
The wave does not cease to exist when the ocean is realized. It simply realizes its own depth. The wave continues to happen, but it feels so superficial compared to the immensity of the infinite Self, yet the wave IS the infinite Self.
You are the impossible, happening, and you are not.
Surrendering the Need to Understand
The mind… can it even grasp Truth?
What if we just gave up trying to understand all this?
What happens when we finally get it that we can’t get it…
What if we let go of trying to understand, know, or realize anything…
You Are Truly Loved features content designed to guide people towards enlightenment, unconditional love, and living a life of joy through Self-realization and proper application of the Law of Attraction.
Trying to understand someone is not the same as loving them, though we might think that’s a path to love. What that is is an attempt to access the heart by first going through the mind, as if the mind is a gatekeeper for the heart. (It’s not, but we can act this way.) When we live this way, when we feel a lack of love, we may seek to recreate it by seeking to create a sense of mutual understanding, but that’s actually placing a condition upon love and thinking that external things need to be a certain way for us to have a particular internal state of being.
Have you noticed how ideas and thoughts just kinda *pop* into our minds? Where do our thoughts come from? What’s going on here?
This next part is often missed… You see, once we allow everything to be as it is, we notice that there is a totally natural and healthy desire to change things that, unlike all of the compulsive fear-based stuff we’ve let go of before, doesn’t arise from the anxious, fearful ego. This energy is Source/Creation itself expressing itself through you in physical manifestation. You become a vessel through which the creative power of the entire universe flows. How’s THAT for power!?
