Offering and Receiving Love Offering and being love
It is impossible to feel unhappy when we are offering love for real joy is the result of the flow of love.
There is no more 'in-nature' a state, no closer to heaven, in fact, heaven's singular characteristic is the constant offering of love. To be sure, heaven wishes nothing more than to flow through each of us, empowering and inspiring us with the infinite, spiritual force of the universe. We, with gratitude and determination, do our only work, which is to open our heart and allow this universal flow. This is the true nature of joy or bliss and it is defined by the rate of the flow of love through us. The more we can open our hearts and offer love, the greater our joy. It is the simplest of truths.
In this constant flow there is infinite joy, infinite love and a simplicity of wisdom, that in this world can sometimes seem a philosophical stretch, but while in heaven, common sense.
The offering of love requires no beliefs, no magical technique, it is the simplest most innate function of human life. It is the first and last thing we do as human beings entering and exiting the earth, and exiting and entering heaven. And it is the last thing we forget, as we leave the spontaneous, unconditional love as an infant, twisting it into the emotional and physical degraded marketplace of romantic love in our teens and later. A major function of our conditioning seems to be to distance and romanticise love to one or at best a few unsatisfying glimpses of human love, so heaven becomes an age away.
There is no other so desperate a condition in our world than humans seeking love. Every problem on this earth arises from this malady. Even the most loving of families would need at least a thousandfold increase in their love (just within the family alone) to begin to grasp the dimensions of this loving flow, but that is not to say that it is difficult. It is not, it is very easy, for the universe once opened to it, powers effortlessly this flow. All we do is open ourselves to the natural, infinite flow of love that arises from the inmost recesses of our hearts. As simple and as impossible as a change of mind, offering love is the purest, most realistic expression of life that is possible.
And it evolves with the practitioner. If we have forgotten our innate ability as a 2 year old - we can try even with condition and expectation. Even this base form of love will gradually, naturally evolve us, evolve us inevitably until we slowly expand the targets of our love to music or art or even sport. All expressions of love continue to evolve us until we gradually reduce the conditions and expectations of a particular result. Finally at the highest, most spiritual form of love we actually bridge the earthly and heavenly worlds. If it is that heaven is a state of consciousness, then this is the consciousness, where we offer pure, unconditional love and good will to every human, every animal, plant, forest, ocean, sky or atom of every sort. When this offering is constant, so is our joy, so is our comprehension of heaven. Indeed heaven is here and it is here now!
Receiving love
As a student at high school, I remember a time when I made it very difficult for myself in terms of the parameters of my sense of self. My overwhelming knowledge was that in this world that I understood (which by the way, was the ‘perfect’ understanding that only a teenager can have) there were very narrow schemas for my perfect life.
It seemed that the career I chose was absolutely crucial, if I got it wrong, my whole life would be a disaster. Similarly, my partner was a component of this single opportunity for me to find happiness, even the clothes or the car I drove, were all critical components to the ‘success’ of my life. Finally, my peers could make or break any of this with the acceptance or rejection of any of my choices.
This rigidness of vision is exactly the opposite to what I believed I was doing. I perceived myself as the most open of minds, accepting of the widest of opinions, but the reality was I was constantly narrowing the places that I could receive fulfilment. I began to ‘push’ and ‘pull’ things and people into events and places to try and fulfil a vision that I had constructed egoically. The fragility of these constructs led to their ultimate demise as I was unable to convince myself of any of my choices with any real confidence.
I am sure that all of you can look around to your friends or peers and see this ‘narrowing’. or notice it at some stage in your own life It is bound up in expectation and conditions and ‘ifs’ and ‘whens’ – we lay blame on others or other things for our unhappiness.
The simplest of truths though – usually have the most profound wisdom. For me, there is nothing more simple than each of us must be loved. And it is not even that, we must be loved without condition and again we must love without condition for us to be truly satisfied.
Don’t each of you know someone that is enveloped by love, some might even say spoilt, but still that person pushes away from that place of love to a narrower schema of how he or she must receive love. They might crave acceptance by a particular peer group or even love from a particular person or type of person. Have you seen in your own life, people that have perceived themselves as ‘givers’ all of their lives but are unable to receive? Perhaps a person that reaches to alcohol or other drugs when all around him there are people that love him.
This is critical.
Lovability
Remember the simple truth that we must be loved and we must also love without condition. Contemplate the opportunities you offer the universe to be loved. Have you ‘narrowed’ your lovability to just a single person, or perhaps to a series of things you do or possess? If it is important for us to be loved, then it is essential that we open our opportunities to be loved, and to be loved without condition. With this philosophy we might think that the rock star or actor is so loved that they must therefore be very happy, but the reality is more often than not, that the love that they receive is conditional - to be possessed or controlled - and so the love that they offer is similar and since they can do neither they are often more unloved then the less famous.
Our goal is to expand our lovability to the entire universe. The truth is we are all very spoilt children, in the loving embrace of the entire universe and every atom is offering us love. While we narrow our lovability to a single person, thing or event we look past the love that is flooding us at every moment. If you are lonely or lost, it is this awareness that we have lost, it is this intimacy that we crave.
A simple task!
All we have to do is increase our lovability. So let us use our common sense. On so many occasions the outer world is a classroom mirroring the wisdom of the inner worlds. When we look around in our world who are the most lovable? Perhaps a little baby or child, and when we contemplate the baby’s lovability we would notice that it isn’t so much the outer beauty that we might regard as the biggest consideration for lovability, but other qualities such as purity or innocence or simplicity or perhaps even helplessness. We might even judge a dog or cat as lovable, do you see the same qualities? How might this relate to us? Do you notice also that when we interact with lovable people or animals we let go of our egoic constructs, our barriers and relate at their level?
We might also notice that the most lovable are those that do not demand a particular love. They have not egoically erected a rigid, particular way that they are to be loved, they are open to be loved in any way we choose, and they certainly do not demand or expect to be loved. The helplessness of the child evokes a feeling of perfect faith that the child has for its parents, which is the fundamental building blocks of perfect love. This lack of rigidity is very important, we do not construct love, we do not own it, we simply allow its flow. Lovability is our ability to receive the divine in which ever it chooses to flow through us.
To be very simple, the ultimate lovability is born from us realising our divine one ego, by receiving and offering love, beginning with ourselves. They will actively cherish the opportunities they have to offer wisdom to the intellect and divinity to their emotions. One who loves oneself will see his/her soul as the window to the universe divine and their meditation as the viewing.
Finally, let us enjoy love in all its dimensions. When our parents offer love even though it is perhaps not in the way we want, let us receive it with gratitude and radiate our unconditional love back. When the sun rises or the birds sing or the wind blows or perhaps a raindrop hangs silently on a leaf, let us see all these as expressions of love and let us receive them with gratitude from our Heaven and radiate their love right back at them.
As you gaze into the flame look back in time before anything existed.
Our universe began as a huge explosion, the birth of our universe was in fire, it allowed everything to start afresh.
It is therefore, the most base component of life and this very same awesome power is given to us – we can live in harmony with it, allowing it’s energy to keep us warm, to cook food, to mould plastics or fashion metals or again it can destroy buildings, blow up cities or even the earth itself.
Its great asset is its speed. Its ability to clean the slate and start anew. To transform and rejuvenate.
If we are not in harmony with it, it will burn us and trap us. The fires of hell inside us are own anger and aggression but this same fire can fuel our determination to change, to evolve and grow. So see that fire inside your heart, feel it burning up your negativity, your worries and anxieties, purging you of all the negativity, the rubbish (mental garbage) that you allow to accumulate in your world.
Burn it up, release it, let it go and allow it to fuel your determination to change. See the heaven inside you as being cluttered up and polluted by the rubbish and noise you have accumulated. Let this fire silently wipe all that and start afresh, and be determined now not to allow your old state of mind to return. The fires of heaven are your determination to purify your heart with peace and love and truth.
Gaze into the flame and rejoice and realize that heaven is here, now
Receiving love
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1. Grounding In