The Love That Never Ends
It is the remarkable experience of many that the basis of resolving psychological suffering and taking actions that create value in life is to be discovered standing right inside them all the time. For these people, it is as though, metaphorically, their best friend of all eternity, most beloved partner, and protective parent has been discovered. This metaphorical being has sat patiently for eternity watching them whilst they busied themselves with daily life, ignoring it completely and yet feeling something was missing all the same. It never judged them, criticised them or rejected them for doing this. No matter how long they decided to ignore it, it was there when they were ready, and the moment they took the time to turn to it enthusiastically, it greeted them with such overwhelming love they could not help feeling a sense of peace and wholeness it was beyond words to describe. It is, they discovered, nothing more than the aware self that they called “I”.
This experience of the aware self is the reality that knows of all the other phenomenal experiences that come and go in our life from moment to moment, including thoughts, sensations, and perceptions. Acknowledging that we do not know if this experience of the aware self is generated by or limited to our individual mind, and we have no evidence to back up this belief, the mind stops trying to define the self with endless thoughts that indicate it is limited. Thoughts such as “you cannot do this”, “you will be rejected and found out to be a fraud”, and “they are happy, and you cannot be”, for example. We realise that the source of all psychological fear was the embedded belief to be a separate entity that, by definition, was not complete, was temporary and therefore threatened the possibility of non-existence.
Quietening the mind of such thinking leaves us open. This very openness of mind allows us to test out living as if our aware self is universal and the container of all things and therefore complete as it is. As we open to this possibility, we experience the psychological wholeness that follows. Instantly, what was previously perceived as a separate threatening environment (of all living and non-living things) is no longer separate, it is intimately part of us, and we perceive it as a creative expression of the universal us.
Though we continue to experience unavoidable challenges in living, once we realise we have no evidence the self is in any way limited and see the environment as part of ourselves, we can release any fearful mistrust of it. Free of fear, we can shine our innate love and other life-affirming qualities onto it, and it reflects them back. We see the evidence of living like this as an endless serendipitous, reflected love and beauty. Released of the contractions of psychological suffering, we can more readily use the innate resources of our mind and body constructively. We discover that all along, legitimate physical danger notwithstanding, it was not events but the unfounded programmed belief to be a separate self that was at the root of so much of our fear and the cause of the vicious spiral of anxiety that takes us out of the joyful alive, rich present into a lacking fearful past and future.
Establishing this experience is the core of spiritual and psychological liberation. Although it is not done with the agenda of changing the world, it is possibly the only thing that can. Living as if the self were universal and whole as it is and making this the home of actions and motivations instantly makes living in the Universe a sacred intimate affair. As we fall in love with (are at one with) the aware self, this very love naturally informs to ever greater extents all our transactions, communications, and organisations in life and is the best context for learning and acquiring skills. The most remarkable thing is, but for the simple realisation of it, we do not need anything else to get us there.
