Inner Work

For the week of December 21, 2020

This is Love

(The Ladder of Being: 8)

When we are present, just being, in whatever it is we are doing at that moment, there is a question we might ask about that state. Who is present? If we can say in truth and reality that "I am present," then that is a wonderful thing. Our life becomes much more vivid and real, when we ourselves are the one who is, the one who receives what our perceptions bring us, the one who does what we do. In such a state, we are much more alive. Indeed, true presence begins with "I am present."

But even more is possible. The spiritual path is unlimited in its farther reaches. One of those possibilities is to live in and as love, in the reality of love. When we are just being, in presence, can we let our boundaries dissolve and open our self to include others, perhaps even all that lives and breathes? Can we stop insisting on a self-defining fence, on this is me inside here? Can we simply be without that fence? If so, we may discover that we live in a seamless sea of consciousness, that we share one awareness, one consciousness with everyone else.

There are no boundaries between us, except the artificial ones that we imagine and then believe in. Obviously, we do have separate bodies, but even at that level we are connected by the air we all breathe and the many necessities that keep us alive.

Yet one step inward, into our awareness, and we are in a common, mutually shared domain. What it is like to be you is essentially no different than what it is like to be me. While the superficials can be quite different, our basic awareness is the same. Not just similar, but one and the same awareness. Like the air we all breathe, we all live in the same, continuous, and singular field of consciousness. Relaxing into simple being, relaxing our body, mind, and heart, allows the direct perception of non-separateness to emerge from background into foreground. We rest in awareness that includes all humanity, all our brothers and sisters with whom we are sharing this life, this consciousness. This is love.

One more step inward and we come to the crux of it: our ego. This is who we believe we are: this construct that carries our name. Revealing that belief to be unfounded is a major aspect of the spiritual path. But if I am not my ego, who am I? We can answer rightly and simply that I am I. Yet even that can hide a deeper truth.

Our ego appropriates to itself the claim of ownership, the claim of control, of being the chooser and decider. But on careful examination we find the ego, our ego, to be ephemeral and illusory, nothing really there. It convinces us to relinquish our will to a self-centered amalgam of thoughts, attitudes, and emotions, which claims to be us, to be who we are. And so we live our life that way - until we see through that illusion. After that our will is free and reverts to who we truly are: our I.

The surprising thing about our I is that it is not self-centered, indeed it does not have a center, unless we say that center is everywhere. Our I is an open channel of will, a channel that was formerly blocked by our ego. What do we find if follow that channel back toward its source?

It is said that Christ brought love to this planet, to humanity, that He opened the gates of love. If we follow the channel of will back toward its roots, we come toward the Sacred, toward the greater will from which all personal, and apparently separate, wills devolve. For each of us, the root of our will is one and the same as everyone else's. You and I may have very different goals, very different attitudes and beliefs, very different ways of living and interacting. Yet in our core, we are one and the same. This is not simply shared consciousness. It goes deeper than that. This is shared identity. When we look at someone, beneath the surface appearance, we are looking at ourselves, we are looking at the Sacred. This is total. This is love.

For this week, please seek to live in and as love.

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