Love is a relationship

Love is a relationship. It is pleasant to be with someone who is physically attractive, but how long can you enjoy an aquiline nose? How long can you thrill to the timbre of a voice, when it doesn’t say what you like? It’s very much like eating: no matter how much you are attracted to chocolate pie, there is a limit to how much you can enjoy. Beyond that limit, if somebody merely mentions chocolate, your stomach stages a revolt. That is the tragic truth about the satisfaction of the senses: they cannot last. The wave of passions has risen, now it has to fall: that is all. Pleasure cannot last, any more than the tide can rise without falling again. If you want to build a relationship, don’t build it on what changes. Then there is joy in everything, because there is joy in the relationship itself- in ups and downs, through the pleasant and the unpleasant, in sickness and in health.

In Sanskrit, physical attraction is called Kama: selfish desire, in which I ask only what pleasure I will receive. But Kama can be transformed – by gradually changing the focus from me, me, me to you, you, you. Then, in Sanskrit, we say that Kama becomes prema:  pure love, where my attention is not on my own pleasure but on the happiness and welfare of those around me of you want your relationship to blossom, you won’t dwell on each other’s weaknesses. You’ll set to work to correct them together and really learn how to love.

Look at our honeymoon travel ads. They show us a couple of swaying palms, some azure waters lapping at white sands, and then they ask innocently, “Wouldn’t you like to sit beneath these coconut palms and fall in love?” I come from Kerala, the “land of the coconut palm”. You can take it from me: never try to pursue your dreams beneath a coconut tree. Coconuts have a way of falling on romantic heads, and even the smallest nut, if it drops from a height of 50 feet, can put an end to your romance before it starts. What do swaying palms and azure waters have to do with love? Love doesn’t need an exotic setting; it can flourish in the kitchen, in the garden, wherever two people are putting each other first.

Two people like this are no longer really two; they are one. When things are sunny, you may not notice how their relationship shines. But wait until the storms begin to blow outside, when everything is going wrong: you will see unfailing support between them, unfaltering loyalty, tenderness that never ends.

God is love. Love is loving without expecting anything in return; no judgments, no restrictions; no limitations; no expectations!

BE LOVE………….

We are not the body

We are not the body………… How many of us agree to this?

     Unfortunately, there are very few in the world today that fall into this category.  Virtually all of us believe that we are the body.  We may protest, “This is the age of science knowing has to be the right path for us.” But the mystics can only smile. “Do your senses obey you? If they do, you might be on the right track. But if they insist on getting what they want, you’ll better consider the way of love instead.”

     Anyone can overcome their conditioning: not by reasoning with it, not by suppressing it, not by taking security hormones, but by learning to master his own mind.  When that is done, all conditioning goes.  Just as milky way has lots of galaxies, each person has worlds in the galaxy of the brain. Brain is not consciousness, it is an instrument of consciousness. When consciousness is changed, there will naturally be correlated changes in brain biochemistry and behavior.

     “Wake up, sleep and rise from the dead, and the Christ will give you light.” This is the promise of all the great religions: when we unify with our consciousness completely.

     “Wake up! It is time to wake up. You are strong and young in heart; why do you waver?” Says compassionate Buddha.

     “We live in “the light that knows no night,” in a day that never ends.” Says St. Teresa.

Excitement Vs. Depression

     There are a number of ways to illustrate how excitement and depression work. One way is to consider the role of the senses. We can think of the senses as windows. In my home state of Kerala, houses are mostly single story buildings with large wooden windows, which open out into verandas(passage ways) when weather is pleasant, but they are closed securely during heavy rains or on hot afternoons. After a round of exposure to monsoon storms and tropical heat, it becomes difficult to open the windows, and there is always the danger of forcing them open too wide that they get stuck and can’t be closed again.

     The senses behave in a very similar way. They are windows into the mind, meant to open smoothly when we are interacting with the outside world and to close securely when they are not in use. But in a person who gets easily excited, the windows of the senses are not just opened gently, they are thrown open as far as they can go. We are not usually aware of this when it happens, because all our attention is turned outwards; there is no attention left for reflection and self knowledge. But what can happen is that, the senses are thrown open with such force that they get stuck that way, leaving us completely at the mercy of the weather. We take in everything without discrimination.

     Then, eventually, there comes a storm. Something unpleasant comes along and slams the senses closed with a bang, locking us inside. That is depression.

     What follows then is tragic: we cannot help brooding over ourselves. If you look at a depressed person’s eyes, you will see a little sign: “Closed - Nobody Home.”  The tragedy is that their program is never positive. Everything is in negative mode: “Nobody likes me; I don’t like anybody, I can’t stand myself.”  In personal relationships, the tragedy is at its worst. We can be in the midst of a jolly crowd and still feel utterly alone. Everything is distorted, the way it is in a house of mirrors.

     What can we do? As a healer; I show them how to get the windows open.  Once that has been accomplished, I teach them how to open & close their senses gently and with discrimination, so that they can guard themselves against depression coming again.

Accepting Life as it comes

“Wherever you go, you are going to encounter ups and downs – pleasure and pain, fortune and misfortune, people who like you and people who didn’t care for you at all.” The nature of life is, up today, and down tomorrow, and God says, “Let life go up and down, you don’t have to go up and down with it”.

I have a friend who is interested in biorhythms, the built-in cycles of emotional ups and downs that each of us is supposed to have. The idea, of course, is that he can plot these cycles and pursue his goals when he’s at his best and relax when the cycles are down.

Unfortunately, the demands of life pay very little attention to anybody’s cycle. If they did, I doubt that we would ever learn to grow up, which in the Gita means being at our best always – loving when life is for us, equally loving when life is against us. It means going beyond the conditioned cycles of excitement and depression and to live in an abiding sense of joy.

Most of us do not think of excitement as a problem. After all, doesn’t everybody like to be on cloud number nine? But as all of us know, the cloud eventually disappears. Then we not only come abruptly back to earth; we usually burrow right into its depths and hide – that is, we go into a depression. In other words, the problem of excitement is depression. “What goes up must come down” is as true of moods as it is of Newton’s apple. Excitement and depression are inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon, the erratic swinging of mind: up with what it likes, down with what it doesn’t like. Because of our conditioning, we like to make a distinction, and say that when the mind swings up, the swinging is pleasant; when the mind swings down, it’s unpleasant. But God says, “No. Swinging is swinging.” In both excitement and depression the mind is in agitated mode, the focus of attention has simply changed.

This is an important point, because depression is almost epidemic today – a serious and wide-spread problem that often goes unrecognized when help is needed. Ninety percent of clients who come to me for healing suffer from depression. Most kinds of depression are not really physical problems. The drugs do not get at the mechanisms of depression; they only affect its symptoms. If you change your approach to life, this state of mind disappears.

Let us stand up and Be in the flow of life with Joy and Happiness. Let us welcome the New Year with this firmness in heart and mind.

Surrender in love….

Surrender in love…. It takes time…….. But, take the steps………

     Where there is love, there is a direct apprehension of unity.  I asked God “Do you want me to repeat the mantra mechanically?”  God answered “Of course. How else can you repeat it at the start?  In order to repeat the mantra with devotion, you should have very little self-will.  But devotion can grow.  You begin repeating the mantra with as much enthusiasm as you can, whenever you can, and after a lot of practice, it slowly begins to penetrate to a deeper level of consciousness.”

     As we practice these disciplines, insight grows.  But just understanding is not enough. These insights need to be practiced.  For that, we need meditation.  After many years, if our practice of these disciplines has been sincere, we may reach a stage when we can truly say, “In love all barriers are gone; every trace of self seeking has been removed. We find our joy in the joy of all.  Heart is flooded with total peace. The ego has been stilled, so there can be no more turmoil in the mind and no more anxiety or fear.

Love and detachment

It is helpful to look at the relationship between love and self-will.  Self-will is the overriding demand to put ourselves first, do as we like, think what we want, and get whatever we desire, no matter what the cost might be to those around us.  The more self-will we have, the harder it is to love. So in order to love, we have to reduce self-will. If not, we are not learning to love.  The less self-willed we are, the more detached we become – not from others, but from ourselves.  Without detachment from ourselves, we get easily caught up in our own reactions.  The more detached we are from ourselves, the easier it is to remember the needs of others, without which love is impossible.

    Mind is like a seesaw, constantly in motion, swinging up when things go the way we like and swinging down when things do not go the way we like.  As self-will subsides and detachment rises, this seesaw motion becomes less and less. When the mind is still, there is no self-will, no separateness, and no sense of compulsion.  We live in unity, and the natural expression of unity is love.

     When your mind is still always- twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, not only in waking life, but even in your dreams-then, says God “You will live in Me continuously, absorbed in Me, beyond any shadow of a doubt.”  This is a state that is almost impossible to describe in words, but there are certain signs.  For one, your awareness of the God will be unbroken.  In a sense you will be meditating wherever you go.

     In personal relationships, there will be no conflict, no doubts, no reservations no irritations.  You will not need to prompt or force your love, and you will need no reason for loving, or trusting or forgiving.  Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment.  I love because I Love; I love in order that I may Love

How to still mind?

How to still mind? Don’t you know some shortcut?

     God says, “Of course I’ll give you a way that has worked for spiritual beings all over the world.”  God whispered “Try, and keep on trying until you succeed.”

     This sounds hard – it is hard – but there is no other way.  Nothing about meditation is easy; nothing takes place overnight. Even Buddha took 7 years to attain enlightment.  We have to be patient with ourselves. In our daily life, we have seen advertisements of “enlightenment Workshop” that promises illumination in a weekend. Is it possible? It’s the same way as you putting a pair of toe shoes and making an appearance in a ballet without any practice or preparation. Dancers are gifted, but the gift is not gracefulness; it is dedication.

     Meditation is training the mind, which in many ways is like training the body. Put Meditation first.  Make it your first priority; everything else can be second. We all have time for meditation and the key word here is practice.

     We need a still mind, while meditating. When the mind wanders, consciousness is divided; attention is weaving all over the road. Each of us knows what it is like to share the highway with a bad driver.

     If we could only see it, everything in life suffers like this when attention wanders. Power of thoughts of resentments, irritation, apprehension, and craving is that, they are so self-centered.

     Here again, our greatest ally is the mantra. Whenever a selfish thought comes up, repeat the mantra. When the mantra takes hold, the connection between the thought and your attention is broken.

     A compulsive thought, whether it is anger or depression or a powerful sense craving, does not really have any power of its own. All the power lies in the attention we give.

     Let us illustrate all this by comparing the mind to a theatre. Thoughts are the actors, and getting into the unconscious is like going backstage into the greenroom, where everybody is getting made up.  And attention is the audience. These actors are like actors everywhere: they thrive on a responsive audience. But what happens if nobody comes to see the performance? No actor likes to play to an empty house. Finally the whole set of actors give it up as a bad job and go out for a midnight cup of hot chocolate.

     So when you can direct attention, problems will never be compulsive again. The freedom this brings is bliss.