Wrapped in Love: Opening to Oneness 6

Inner Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

Inner Work

For the weeks of March 20 & 27, 2017

Wrapped in Love

We usually think of love as an emotion, a warm, melting in our chest, in response to seeing a loved one, or as an ongoing state of caring about someone, serving them, wishing the best for them, appreciating who and how and what they are. This love, real as it is, can be challenged if not reciprocated, if rejected, or if our loved one treats us badly.

There is a different, more fundamental kind of love, which may or may not manifest as emotional warmth. This deeper love depends not on emotion, not on being someone who is in love, but on the perception of oneness. Seeing and living in the underlying unity of all reveals our condition as embraced by the spacious wholeness of experience. Everything within the field of awareness shares in the unity; everything belongs. In this total embrace, we open to being surrounded by love, to living and being within this all-pervasive field of love. Where there is unity, there is love. Where there is oneness, there is love.

The material question for us is whether this kind of love lies beyond our capability to experience it, whether we can connect with the oneness that is love, whether we can let go of our place in separateness to take our place in the unity. At least for brief moments, this might be easier than we imagine it to be.

We open to the seamless whole of our awareness itself. Everything we perceive with our senses and our mind exists within this awareness. We look beyond the content of what we see, hear, think, feel, and the rest, to connect with and be in our underlying awareness, the pure awareness, the cognizant field in which everything appears. That field is continuous, not broken or divided into the objects, thoughts, people, earth, and sky that it contains. Our awareness is one whole. All share in the same, singular field of awareness.

Yet awareness is not just a container; it also permeates the entire field. Nothing is separate from awareness. Thus, nothing is separate from anything or anyone else. This fact is a direct perception, available to us all, right now.

The ultimate condition of love is non-separateness, unity. You and I and everyone else are in the same oneness. When we look at someone, the quality that makes them seem separate from us is our own ego, our world-view that we are here and everything else is out there. When we open up beyond our mental chatter and our attitude of separateness, we simply see what we see, without being someone who is looking. If no one is looking, then no one is separate from what we see. We see the wholeness that encompasses everything, including our body. That indivisible wholeness is wrapped in love; its very nature is love. We are that wholeness and we are that love. We live and breathe in love.

Thus, the phrase "I love" is an oxymoron, for several reasons. First, love is not something we do; love is a reality, open to our participation. Second, if by "I" we refer to ourselves, to this separate self that has my character, my personality, my memories and my body, then that "I" is only an illusion; it cannot do anything, much less love. Third, only by letting go of this notion of I as a separate person, as my reality, can we open to the selfless reality of love. That reality is oneness, with no room for two. The attitude of two-ness keeps us out of oneness. The latter offers the true beauty of love.

For this week, open to the fact of being wrapped in love.

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