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LOVE
by Swami Dhyan Giten
Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being, with our authentic self, with the meditative quality within, with the inner silence and emptiness. This inner emptiness is experienced by others and is expressed on the outside as love. This love is not addressed to a specific person; it is a presence and quality that surrounds a person like a fragrance.
The human heart is a healer, which heals both other people and ourselves. The open heart is like a fountain, which no longer make any distinction between: “I like you – I do not like you”. The open heart does not make any difference between friends and enemies. The open heart is open both for ourselves and for other people. The open heart is unconditional love.
Intuition is our true inner voice, the ever-present inner source of love, truth and wisdom, and the silent Existential voice within ourselves. Through the intuition, we are in contact with the Whole.
Our heart is the door to allow Existence to guide us – instead of being directed by our own ideas, attitudes and preconceived expectations of how life should be.
When our heart is closed, it can create a lonely and isolated feeling together with the attitude: “Nobody loves me” or “Nobody cares about me”, which can make it hard for other people to love us.
The basic problem with the world is that there is too much hate and too little love.
The fourth level of consciousness is placed in the middle of the heart. The fourth level of consciousness is the human heart. The heart relates to unconditional love and acceptance both for ourselves and for other people. The heart relates to qualities such as empathy, joy, acceptance, trust, intuition, understanding, compassion, playfulness, healing, friendship, sincerity and a sense of oneness in love.
The human heart has both an active and outgoing quality and a receptive and ingoing quality. The outgoing quality is active love and the ingoing quality means to allow both others and ourselves to love us.
Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being.
A silent revolution of the heart happens when we begin to care about another person and it is a joy to put the needs of the other person before our own needs. It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to develop the awareness and sensitivity, which makes us begin to care about another person.
When our heart is closed, it creates a lonely and isolated feeling. It prevents us from seeing the love that surrounds us all the time. It is when we begin to open our heart that we discover a feeling of oneness in love with other people, with nature, with the trees, with the stones, with the ocean and with the blue sky.
I remember when I had a painful relationship with a woman and did not know what I wanted to do with the relationship. Then I closed my eyes and asked my own intuition, my inner source of love and truth, Existence within myself, what I should do with the relationship. The answer that came in a silent whisper was: “Focus on love, not on a specific person.”
It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that we are not separated from life. We begin to understand that we are not small separate islands in a great ocean, but that life is one and that we all are small parts of the Whole. We begin to understand what is really important and meaningful in life. It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that life is about sharing, rather than hoarding. We begin to understand that life is about giving, rather than taking.
Above the consciousness level of the heart, we need a teacher and a guide. It is somebody who “knows”, who has walked further on the path than us and who can guide, encourage and inspire us. There is an Indian saying: “When the disciple is ready, the teacher occurs.”
Our heart is actually already open, but it is our judgments about others and ourselves that keep it closed. When we stop judging others and ourselves, our heart begins to open. The way to healing is to learn to love and accept ourselves unconditionally. It means to embrace both our positive and negative sides with love. It means to love everything that we find inside ourselves. Healing happens when we bring everything that we find inside ourselves out into the light.
Trust is a requirement for love. Without trust, love becomes without depth. It becomes like a plastic rose, instead of a fresh and alive rose. Even if some people will use and betray our trust, it is not a reason to allow them to undermine our basic trust in life. It is better to allow some people to betray our trust than to not allow our basic trust in life to develop. Many people are also so sleeping and unconscious that they do not even know what they are doing. Even if we feel hurt, disillusioned and disappointed with people, try to give them love. One criterion for spiritual maturity is that we begin to give love, instead of needing love.
The really poor are those that think that money are the meaning of life. When we lack love in our life, money becomes a substitute.
Love is to eat pizza with our beloved even though we hate pizza.
We have been taught to love others, but not to love ourselves. But how can we love others if we do not love ourselves first? The ABC of love is that we first need to love ourselves before we can love anybody else.
Exactly as the rhythm of the in breath and out breath of the physical body, love has also two poles: to give love and to allow ourselves to be loved. Some people can easier give love, while others can easier be loved. But for our love to be whole, we need to learn to both give love and allow ourselves to be loved.
Love and fear are two sides of the same coin. In the absence of love, fear arises. In the light of love, fear disappears. Fear is a contraction of our life energy together with a feeling of loneliness and isolation. Love creates an expansion of our life energy together with a feeling of love, joy and belongingness with life.
Love is the strongest force there is. There is no stronger healing power than love. Love is pure magic. Love transforms people without really does anything. The mere presence of love transforms people. There is nothing more holy than love since love makes people whole.
Love accepts a human being as she is. Love creates the freedom for a human being to be who she is. Love creates the relaxation, which helps a person to relax into her own inner being, into her own authentic self.
Love allows us to appreciate the beautiful being we already are.
Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality of our inner being. It is to discover the source of love deep within ourselves, which is our true nature.
In the depth of our heart, we already know that we are perfect as we are. In the depth of our inner being, we already know that life is perfect as it is.
Love is the most valuable gift we can give to another person. What we need to do is to open our heart and release our love to the world, to the people, to nature, to the animals, to the trees and to the sky – and this love will be returned a thousand times to us.
The basic fear with love is that love is larger than ourselves.
Love means to realize that we are one with life. Real love means to realize that we are one with the other person, one with nature, and one with the trees, the stones, the earth and the blue sky. It means to realize that all of life is God.
– Swami Dhyan Giten,
From the book The Silent Whisperings of the Heart
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