Love

“Love in its essence is spiritual fire.” — Seneca

“Loving kindness towards ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. It means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. The point is to make friends with who we are already.” - Pema Chödrön

“Love is the bridge that links us to the divine.” – Rumi

I took the week off to start writing a book that has been bubbling in me for several years now. As a result, I not only got a lot of work done, but have been able to spend more time with loved ones, either in person or on the phone and it has me thinking about love. Some say that love is a verb and in fact, I think I’ve even said that before. Others say that service is the path to love, and I appreciate that. Mother Theresa said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Without service in the world, many people would suffer.

For me, Kathy always told me that the greatest act of love that I could provide is to sit and meditate. It seems so paradoxical, at least it used to. To sit and meditate rather than taking some action seems counterintuitive, but she taught me through my years with Her that the most change is affected by the raising of a person’s consciousness. Whether or not that has happened, I don’t know. What I do know is that what I used to consider selfish, I no longer do. Meditation has become my favorite thing in the world to do, and I believe that I am making a difference every time I get into my mediation chair, regardless of the outcome.

Kathy said in Her Satsang on July 5, 2006, “We can’t sit here as humans and think the Path into reality. We have to meditate the Path into reality, and that’s when we discover that what is within all is within us. And that’s when we truly understand what love is.” And on November 23, 2014, She told us in another Satsang, “But our longing and yearning, our greatest longing and yearning…I’m telling you there is nothing more beautiful than merging in the ocean of love of God.”

Maharaj Ji in The Living Master chapter On Love and Devotion said:

“We can only really love others when we go inside. You see, the purpose of being on the Path is to ultimately merge back into the Lord, the Source. When do we love each other? When we have purity in our hearts, when we have devotion in our hearts. The more we are nearer to our destination, the Lord, the more we are nearer to each other. The more devotion and love for the Lord is within us, the more we find we are closer to each other. When Christ said, ‘Love one another,’ we forget the real essence behind his words. For we can only love one another when we can see that the Lord is indeed within each other. Then we don’t love persons. We love the Lord within each one of us. We are not lost with individualities and personalities then; we are lost in our love for the Lord. When we are in tune with Him, and find Him within every one of us, the question of our individual ego doesn’t arise.”

I know that the love within me has expanded hugely over the years. And not just for those parts of me that are kind and loving and secure, but also those parts of me that are mean, and selfish, and sometimes unknowingly unkind. I now accept all of those parts equally with what we term the “good” parts. Because it is really our minds that judge “good” or “bad.” It is for the Lord only to know the true purpose of all things that happen. It doesn’t mean that I can have free reign to act however I will, but it does mean that if I feel anger rise within me, I can watch it rise – and let it go – much more quickly than ever before.

Kathy said in Her March 15, 2009, Satsang:

“It seems so strange to be exploring the mind like it’s some kind of friend that we need to get to know. But it’s a wonderful way to understand the world, ourselves, civilization, time, everything. When you approach someone that you know will give you a difficult time as a friend, you have to have a certain amount of consciousness about it. It’s the same with the mind. Instead of approaching it like the mind’s a fierce enemy. It’s not fair to the mind to be blasting it all over the place. It’s fair of the mind to try to get to know it so we can befriend it and still override the darker parts it can lead us to.”

Ultimately, it has been my experience that love inside and outside expands through meditation, along with love for self and others. It has been so wonderful to spend additional time with friends and loved ones and I am making a point of prioritizing some time each week to continuing these outer connections. Sometimes, with work and school and all of my writing projects, I can look up and find that months have passed without seeing my people. Meditation just makes me appreciate them all that much more when I am together with them or talking with them. I feel so blessed, so loved, and so loving. It is truly amazing to feel the difference in myself and in all of the people around me as an added benefit of meditation.

In Her Love,

Kelly