love and manipulation

lovely satsang again this morning at Ananda Ashram - with MaBha in the lead and the Ashram folks all participating in the Bhagavad Gita.

In the Gita, we read how to see all beings as God. 

God = Pure consciousness.  And MaBha explained that consciousness and love are equal and the same.

This idea of love is very different from the one projected out there by the commonest sense.  Which is: "if you love me, you will do this and this and this thing and act this and such and such way."

A very difficult and sad equation of love that has been projected for all of us to uphold.  The highest beings loved so powerfully that we still feel their love after they have died and left their bodies.  Their love is not the love that is conditioned by even having a body close by.

A body is simply a vessel, a lovely one we all get to have for a lifetime. 

As I understand it - the love that has been taught and projected by everyone en masse - is:

"I love you if..."

and the "if"

includes all sorts of manipulations and versions of control:

"I love you if you look good."

"I love you if you never get angry."

"I love you if you are always around when I need you."

"I love you if you never grow old."

"I love you if you never act stupid."

"I love you if you love me."

"I love you if you tell me you love me."

And we can really project all of these ideas of love back onto ourselves and our relationship to our very self.  "I and you" are the same.  "I and thou" are the same. 

How we neglect aspects of ourselves that we feel are unworthy and unlovable.  And then we do this with everyone around us.  And then we wonder why we feel so distant from everyone and everything.

I realized that I love even when nothing is given back to me in return a long time ago.  The only time this has become a problem is when I sat around "expecting" anything, something in return.  And I was disappointed.  It's not the love that I have for all of humanity that is a problem, it's my own expectation of something back - and the picture of what that something is.  The picture is really an illusion we all cling to for fear of really knowing that all of this wonderful world is a spectacular illusion. 

And our media, magazines, books, newspapers, television love keeping the illusion up for us because they are such fantasies and fancies that can only be contained in the media - and not really by the second by second reality that LIFE really is.   Pictures of scantily clad women and buff men being sexy every second of the day line our magazine racks.  People who have been plucked, tweezed, makeupped, plastic surgeried fill up our television and movie screens.  Live theater, music and dance are so much more alluring than the Internet, movies or television because you can see the spit fly when the actor/artist/singer gets into a scene. 

And I've found that it's so easy to love from afar.  But to love every single day, people as close to you as your own skin, to love one's own skin every single moment - and to see EVERYONE at every single moment- the most disturbed creature in the world, the most schizophrenic, the most harmful, the most angry person - as the light of pure consciousness.  Well, this is my practice.  To touch and not recoil when feeling pain.  To give light where there is darkness. 

endlessly.

I honor the great light within - that shines even when I stop shining.

I honor the great light within you - that shines even when you stop shining.

I honor the great light within me, even when I am bloody, whiney, sick and spitty :-)

And then I must honor the great light within all - and be able to tend to the lepers as Mother Theresa did - without a single trace of "eww, yuck" in her heart.

Namaste.  Namaskaromi.  Namaha.