Love

Detail of natural stone mural for the BAPS temple in New Jersey

For me both universal and individual love are never, even for a moment, found alone.  There is always something all-personal and all-universal about love. By love, I do not mean something temporary. To be able to describe love, it must speak for itself. To recognize and own this quality is the very nature of the heart and mind of the Self-realization. In its universal expression, love spans all space and time. In its individual expression, it is universal love in its most concentrated form.  My experience of universal love is no different than Self-awareness and is what I feel in my heart—they are perfect expressions of each other. Love is like a great river that joins two banks. One side of the river is vibrantly silent; the other absolutely divine and physically active. Feeling love for the whole world—for the wonder of creation or the Creator—is one kind of love, but since even this experience is being had by an individual, it is appreciated and enjoyed by a personal loving experiencer. It’s seed form is sitting waiting to be noticed and is already present in everyone’s heart. 

Human consciousness in its full capacity is an ocean of pure love. The consequence—the real benefit of Self-awareness—is in the recognition that universal love is the ground state of individual love. As is the whole ocean, so are the divine waves.

There is a state of experience so simple, so grand, so all-inclusive, so all-knowing that even individual love is nested throughout its structure. The great, unavoidable attraction that emanates from universal love spontaneously quietly pulls me and everyone towards it. Love, in its fully expanded state is sublime; it permeates all thoughts, all emotions, the whole body and everything I do. There is no getting away from it; it is a blissful understanding, a wonder-filled emotion, a delight to own. As quiet as it is, it flows as a unified fullness that is so comprehensive that every single aspect of individuality thrives in its luster

No words measure up when describing love. Looking closer, this warm softness of silent bliss extends all around me with no discernable limit to its expansion. This expansion is full of a kind of silent, ringing majesty of a Devata heaven of abstract luminous splendor. The sight, as the localized value of universal bliss in daily life, spans the space between us while incorporating the entire value of cosmic universality. 

Under my feet and over my head and all around, love is the embodiment of all that I am meant to be; it is the fullness of my whole heart and activity. There is a tangible, knowable, see-able, luminous universality that permeates all space and time, and is experienced as Self-realization. Love is, after all, the primary experience of the awakened heart, as the great unifier it  spontaneously joins and familiarizes inside experience with daily life.

I experience love as completely timeless and universal. It is not born; it is the ground state of eternal awareness. Within my experience of love, the dignity and grandeur of the unbounded knower is always found. The knower and love are inseparable. It is the complete participation of the heart and body that creates the connectedness that is the love story of Self-actualization—where even God and Mother Nature finally find a suitable, infinitely spacious and beautifully decorated, heavenly dwelling place.

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