Enrich Life With Love
You can listen to Pheo Rose’s “Love’s Reach” as you read
(This piece of music is from the “Inner Universe” Music Album)
1 Overview
The synthesis of all the other seven parts of the Land of Being goes into Living Love. Take any moment of your day, living love requires first discernment: “What does this situation need, and should I be the one to step in?” Then, from self knowledge that has come from personal growth, comes the needed question: “Is this a good place for me to be?” If yes, the situation may call on your serving, creating, and wisdom. Your degree of personal growth can greatly enhance your knowledge of how to best handle the situation. Your level of personal depth will determine the level of maturity in your response.
Living Love is more than the sum of its parts. Living Love is living in the very essence of “the greatest aliveness” energy. The energy of love, especially synergistic (research term 🙂 energy, is the most powerful energy (please notice that I did not use the word force). Living Love influences the smallest and most inconsequential of actions; ones not even perceived. Living Love affects your tone of voice and the way you carry yourself; as well as what your perception chooses from the vast stimuli presented. Living love is perhaps more preconscious than conscious. Yet the path is the one requiring the greatest effort of self-awareness, discipline of doing away with the false ego self; and compassionate passion; because at times the whole idea just becomes overwhelming. Please remember these words.
Living Love requires much reflection just on “what is love?” A wonderful movie that is both enjoyable and wise regarding Living Love is Groundhog Day. What might have saved the main character’s many life-times would have been knowledge of what Living Love required. There are three basic elements of Living Love found in Eastern and Western holistic self-integration systems.
The first element is awareness.
The second element is acting on that awareness.
The third element is integrating within.
A person becomes aware of patterns of behavior that harm, neglect, or demean other life. All life has dignity. Harming just because you can, neglecting in egoistic consciousness; and demeaning any life, from the smallest of plants and creatures to humans; is unacceptable for Living Love.
Christian Mysticism uses the term metanoia for realizing (awareness) that without a change of heart, (acting) the ways a person fails in living love (integrating). (Volumes could be written just on this; scientists, for example, are finding that the heart influences the brain, not vice versa. The change is truly a change of one’s own energy because love is the source of all synergistic energy. There comes a knowing that has always been known but not realized; remember, wisdom is the embrace of love and knowledge.)
In Buddhism, life not grounded in living love produces suffering, thus the first of the “Four Noble Truths” give awareness:
[The first truth is that life, from birth, aging, illness, separation from love, and not getting what one wants, is often filled with suffering. The second is that the cause of suffering is our own craving. The third realization is that the cessation of suffering is the cessation of craving. The fourth realization is that to get to that cessation a person must take on (Act) the Noble Eightfold Path.]
When cravings, egoism, ambition’s shadow, and gratifications are quelled, reality begins to emerge, as well as the personal integration of oneness; the lack of separation from ultimate reality, which is love.
In Yogic Hinduism, realizing Avidya is to become aware of our ignorance of the greater reality, our flawed perception, and that we often prefer not to see right from wrong – or at least we think if no one else see or catch us, then we are okay.
[Avidya includes the ignorance of mistaking one tiny part for the whole, like thinking our ego is the entirety of self, the wave thinking it is the ocean. Another ignorance is mistaking the temporary for the eternal … “Hey, this life is all there is, there isn’t anything else.” A third ignorance is non discrimination between the impure and pure. “It doesn’t matter if I…. ” “There is no harm in using sex for helping me feel good.” Yet another ignorance is placing what is not really our self for our real self, “This is who I am, that’s it.” ]
Wonderfully, and not surprisingly, the remedy to such ignorance, wrong views and wrong perceiving, parallels the thoughts in Western and Eastern wisdom/mysticism; and basically this remedy is the same: “so change!” Yogic Hinduism has eight stages in which to act and make the change. From this can occur integration with self-existent principle, in which is ultimate self-knowledge.
In drawing from these traditions, living love involves, increasing awareness, increasing personal growth and transformation, and increasing integration with the depths of being where oneness with reality occurs. No small task! So, if you are ready now for more information go to the “The Way of Words” page. If you need a breather, very understandably, simply try to remember three words: awareness, action, integration. They will help you form your Living Love Place in your Land of Being.
2 Living Love: Practicing Not So Random Acts of Kindness
One of the easiest and simplest ways to Live Love is starting each morning with the commitment to be as kind in as many situations as you can throughout the day. Depending on the events and interactions, and who was driving you crazy while driving, this is easier or more difficult.
A kind word to strangers (not a whole conversation), or a kind word to those around you each day helps keep you grounded in love. You can become very angry by what someone does, but you also can come back around and give them their “mortality due” and move on. Kindness is definitely practiced by not criticizing someone or spreading hurtful information about them. There really are much better ways to handle situations than these.
Acting selfishly is not kind, especially when you intend to hurt someone by depriving them of what is either rightfully theirs or yours to share. Learning to share is taught to the young, but has a place throughout our entire life. Along with this category, purposely excluding others is not kind; clichés, segregation, and inner circles can be most unkind. “Feeling exclusive” builds the ego, so truly a double mistake is going on. Taking what belongs to someone else, whatever that may be is not kind. There are levels of this that are just short of stealing.
You may know many more categories than these. In “The Way of Words” there are full sections on these from eastern and western holistic self-integration traditions. In yogic teachings, to refrain from harmful acts in not enough, one must also cultivate goodness in being and behavior. This means not to just refrain from unkindness, but also to initiate kindness. There is a direct path between this and accessing your greatest depths of being. As we become more perceptive and active in initiating kindness we are shedding dualistic consciousness and developing united consciousness. Likewise, if we want to develop spiritual consciousness/intelligence, we live according to that to become more kind.
There are a few advisory warnings to even kindness. We cannot push kindness on others, only offer and let go. Be sensitive in what you initiate. Refraining from actions is easier than initiating truly kind ones. Also, avoid the trap of codependence, in which what you are really doing is creating a situation of another person becoming dependent upon you. Kindness empowers others, rather than making them dependent. Finally, if you go about being kind so you can feel good about yourself you will miss the mark. Be kind without thought of you or the kindness you extend. (By the way, when in stores, if you have a full basket, and the person behind you has three items, let them go ahead. Likewise, if you see the person ahead of you fumbling for that last quarter to pay, softly offer your quarter, giving them their dignity.)
This first step in Living Love may seem simplistic, but celebrate the simple steps and fully enter into them; for they are the foundation upon which the next steps are built. The next segment will look at Right Livelihood; is your life style conducive or counterproductive to Living Love?