Major Transitions

     After achieving enough of the goals we hoped would make us permanently happy, and being disappointed; deeply experiencing constant change, sickness, aging & death of loved ones; experiencing various forms of trauma from life's all-you-can-bear buffet of suffering; and after having our fill of every form of needless suffering, more & more of us are waking up from the collective dreamlike illusion of humanity. Inevitably we all awaken to our authentic Self, our True Nature.

    One of those who's awakened and is sharing her experience is Lisa Cairns. Here's her overview of awakening from dualism - the almost universal illusion of being a separate adversarial entity, and returning home to nonduality (Oneness, Self, True Nature, Divinity, Love, Silence, Stillness, Emptiness, Universal Consciousness, Brahman, Tao, YHWH, God, Source, etc):

    “Nonduality, you could say, is an energetic movement from being separated, from being a limitation, to being unlimited. Most people in this society believe that they are a separate entity that is walking through a separate world. And what that means is that they believe that they are the thoughts about themselves and the feelings they feel about themselves, rather than their actual experience. And the actual experience is nondual. 
    What we’re speaking about here isn’t theoretical. It’s actually something that can be experienced and is experienced when you’re not veiled by the illusion of thoughts.

    But most people walk around believing that they are their story. So their story might be that they’re 21 years old, they’re from Berlin, they have a nice car, they grew up in a family with 5 children, their name is Enid, they dislike bumblebees, love going to the beach, and they love music. So they believe all these things about themselves. And most people are trying to inflate that story. They’re trying to grow their sense of self and create a bigger sense of self. 
    In psychology they talk about getting a 'healthy ego.' It's actually a really good thing to have a healthy ego. But most people in our society are just trying to grow what they believe themselves to be, and make it better & better & better. That’s (a 'noisy ego) certainly not a healthy ego. And they believe they are their feelings and they’ve got no separation from it. So if they feel angry, they see that as reality. So if they feel angry with someone, they don’t notice that they’re feeling angry with someone, what they think is that the other person has done something to make them angry ('defensive projection'). They don’t have any separation from it. 
    So this is how most people walk around in our society that they are their body-mind mechanism and they’re the story that they tell themselves and then throughout the day, they’re mostly lost in what they’re thinking about. So they’re thinking about themselves or others, and most of what they’re thinking about is actually problems and how to solve problems, because that is actually the mechanism of the mind, but it just gets overworked like over-flexing a muscle, so it just becomes too big and it’s kind of finding problems everywhere. So most people believe they are their story. 

    But if you can sort of fall out of that story, some people name it in a way which I find very poetic and beautiful. It’s like ‘fall through the gaps, the silence in between your thoughts.’ There can be a whole new reality discovered, where you discover that you’re not that person that you think yourself to be, but you’re actually this vast, unnamable, unlimited consciousness – not personal consciousness, but a big consciousness, as well as this being, this alive presence, this consciousness and this presence. And this consciousness and presence isn’t limited to anything. It’s not limited by a name that you give anything, or a thought, or an idea, or a feeling you have about anything."
    Lisa Cairns “Most people don’t see this one thing and REMAIN STUCK for years!!!!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rrEtrU8OQk

    Here's a partial transcript (first 20 minutes) from one of her Lisa's valuable videos, addressing the question, “What happens when (after awakening) the 'old you' has died, but the 'new you' has not (yet) arrived?”:

    “That’s such a bizarre concept: 'What happens when the old you dies?' So who is this old you that died? This is something that people often feel, that the old you has died. But who is that? Who is this you that’s died? You may think, ‘well me, this person I thought I was, and this person has died and then this new person hasn’t taken place. The story might go, ‘I got into spirituality, and then through getting into spirituality, this character changed and it changed in ways which aren’t recognizable and I don’t really know who I am anymore.’

    So let’s break down, first of all, what people think themselves to be. Most people think themselves to be a name, a body, past events and future events, what they’ve done, their choices, their decisions in this life, their behaviors, their wants & not wants, their relationships ie being a mother, father, daughter, sister, grandparent. And they believe that all of that is who they are. So that’s maybe something that we can describe, in time, about the supposed character, but it’s not who you are, not nearly who you are. 
    So most humans believe, that that person I’ve just described, is looking through the eyes now, and experiencing other people. But how can that person be looking through the eyes now, when everything you say about yourself is an imagination? So if you fell off your bike, bumped your head, had memory loss, and you forgot all these things, would you still be you? If you took drugs and forgot who you were when you were on drugs, would you still be you? And I feel that most people would unanimously say, 'Yes, I would still be me.' But yet they believe that who they are is a story looking through their eyes. That’s not true. 
    So right now, you’re dreaming a character. You’re dreaming a life, and you believe that character is the experiencer. This is where suffering arises, from the mis-identification that who you are is a story in time, rather than the radical presence which is experiencing now, and is prior to the story in time.

    And what you might notice about the story about you, the story of you, of this character in time, is that it’s a lot of who you think yourself to be is about what you want or don’t want. It’s about wants and seeking. So you’ve got two different forms of wants: natural wants and seeking wants. And the seeking wants are what make identity. And the seeking wants are wants where there is attachment to them. And attachment is the belief that these wants will free me in time. ('promissory materialism')
    So it could be, ‘If I get enough money, I will be able to be free. I will relax.’ So, we’re always waiting for that moment of relaxation. But the relaxation is your nature. It is what’s watching the dream. It’s that which is prior to the character. But the character is looking for that relaxation in its story of itself, which it can never complete. 
    And what actually makes the illusory you is this attachment (desire, clinging) to the wants. It’s a really funky phenomenon that happens, where the consciousness, the wants, and the ‘I am’ all get squished together, so it feels like somebody is inside the body. 
    And that happens through seeking – through the belief that your freedom, that what you’re looking for, that your home, that deep rest, that peace comes from a future event, or is taken away from you in a future or past event. And that forms this illusory ‘you.’ It sort of makes consciousness and the feeling of ‘I am,’ which are impersonal and prior to the illusory story of you, feel like they belong to the illusory story of you. And then this illusion manifests, and if feels like there is illusory you that owns consciousness and owns beingness and is walking around separate in this world.

    But when that story begins to be challenged, and waking up begins, all your desires and seeking patterns begin to change. So everything about you begins to change. What you held as important, becomes less important. What you spent your time doing to try and achieve something, you maybe have less interest in. You maybe have less interest in socializing and presenting to everyone a particular story about yourself. 
    And so everything in which you thought was you, and navigated your life by, begins to dissolve. And this can often be like and called ‘walking through the dessert.’ You no longer have these seeking desires, and yet there’s nothing which replaces that, and you’re still not feeling the bliss or freedom. So there’s this discontent and nothing in the life seems to make you feel contented. Whatever you look for doesn’t feel like it’s it. So it’s described like Jesus walking through the dessert for 40 days. It’s described as a dessert where everything’s dry, and you don’t have a direction, because in the past your direction was seeking and yet you don’t fully hear what could be called God’s will or natural intuition, your natural wants or desires. (You're experiencing a spiritual 'dry spell.')
    So isn’t this like a deeper movement happening? ... a good thing to do is to evoke bhakti – evoke the loving, compassionate side of nonduality, and know that this is part of the process, the apparent process, and happens to many, and that it will, like everything, pass. And there won’t be a new you that arises or arrives. ... that seeking you will dissolve more and more, and the character will become more authentically itself, and then you could call that being more authentically yourself, like God’s will appearing. God is speaking through you, rather than you as a separate person doing something. 
    So there’s this flow that takes over. And ironically, that flow feels naturally, organically yourself. It doesn’t feel like some alien has taken over your body and moving you as if you were a marionette. It feels like yourself acting because you are God (unitive mystical experience). So it feels like the most intimate sense of you moving everything, not some bizarre foreign entity, but it’s without the second. It’s without that separation. It’s spontaneous. It’s natural. There’s not that second which is controlling or owning or trying to get something for itself.”
    Lisa Cairns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMX5X3HFIzY

 

Lisa Cairns “What happens when the 'old you' has died, but the 'new you' has not arrived?”

Toward Intimacy

    "To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen  

    Enlightenment and Awakening are usually used to mean the same thing: experiencing reality directly, without the illusion of separation from everything, seen and unseen. 

     Intimacy implies direct, real-time connection and engagement, without any interference. Example: witnessing a beautiful scene in nature so that in the moment, we're 'lost for words' and can vividly remember it 60 years later. I witnessed such a clear starry night sky around midnight when I went outside after studying in first year university. Perhaps more important than the perceived, because I've seen & forgotten hundreds of clear starry night skies, was the letting go (from fatigue) of continuous thinking & self-talk, and then suddenly facing nature's splendor without words getting in the way.

    To be immersed, with all our senses innocently open, in an experience and rest in it, simply savouring without separating ourselves from the physical, full-body sensory 'isness' with our words, ideas, opinions, commentary, is a rare, brief phenomenon lasting seconds. Most of us are deeply conditioned by our materialistic, hyper-rational culture, and thus completely identified with the continuous running commentary 'story of me,' so letting that go can feel like voluntary ego death.
    A key component of meditation is practicing to rest in awareness with mental, emotional & physical stillness & silence continuously, for longer & longer periods of time. So we're not forming opinions or judgments, but remaining equanimous - emotionally neutral, stable, all our senses open, peacefully, intimately connected to everything right here, right now. 

    During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda

     “Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.” J.D. McClatchy

    “There are only two ways to live your life.
     One is as though nothing is a miracle.
     The other is as though
     everything is a miracle.”         Albert Einstein

    Most of us are usually continuously lost in self-talk, which rarely has anything to do with present experience. So at best, we're partially engaged with whomever or whatever we're doing ie nowhere near intimacy. Our mood depends on the degree to which the world of our self-talk clashes with our present moment reality. In this all-too typical scenario, we're too busy to stop to smell the roses, and would assume nothing in life is a miracle.

    Our self-talk is essentially our opinions about past or future events. Our opinions are strikingly less detailed & variably distorted compared to actual events. So imagine being free of self-talk, how much more vivid, detailed, accurate & 'engaging' our appreciation of everyone & everything would be. I suspect the difference would be akin to a falling-down drunk becoming completely sober. Life would appear miraculously rich.

    Spiritual practices to facilitate Awakening include Self-Inquiry eg asking ourselves 'Who is suffering?' and then progressively going deeper & deeper than our name, age, sex, address, occupation, etc, etc, until finally we might wordlessly feel into our 'original face before our parents were born.' Persistent open mind / hearted curiosity and sequentially letting go of 'easy rational answers' is key, as we go deeper & deeper to remember our own and everyone & everything else's Origin.

    Below, is an imho very worthwhile 14-minute 'direct pointing' to help us remember who we truly are. Watch this short video at least twice:

  Angelo Dilullo: "Awakening - What is It and How to Do It"

Radical Acceptance IS Freedom

     We all hold firm to the ideas we've - mostly unconsciously - formulated that are essentially survival strategies. A few of these are important & useful throughout life; while most are just life lessons in various disguises. 
    And yet, our old dogmatic rules for life can keep us imprisoned in a tight little box, fearing that even examining & questioning them consciously is to risk death & eternal damnation. Of course it's far easier to see such rigidity of speech & behavior in others. 
    We might clue in to our own imprisonment whenever our anger is suddenly triggered, when we refuse to look deeper into, consider alternative ways of thinking about, or further discuss certain ideas. Religion, politics & personal finance seem to be common no-go zones - triggers for rigid little box certainties. 

    At the bottom of the page is imho Helen Hamilton's most valuable guide to help us experience freedom from unnecessary suffering. 
    Fully 90-95% of our suffering is unnecessary because we unwittingly bring it upon ourselves by rejecting parts of reality we don't want, and by clinging to parts of reality that we do want. The mind only understands controlling our environment, even when it cannot be controlled - which makes no sense & of course causes prolonged, unnecessary suffering. 
    Especially those who've had a great deal of success controlling life using the mind, may find it very counterintuitive & almost impossible to shift from our common hyper-rational, head-centered operating system to a supra-rational (NOT irrational), spiritual heart-centered one. We may have to suffer needlessly, for a very long time before we allow ourselves to make this ESSENTIAL SHIFT.
    Helen skillfully guides us to radically accept ALL of REALITY - saying: "Yes to everything!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUOtVI_LnUU

    "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
    Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
    It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us." Marianne Williamson

    “There are only two ways to live your life.
    One is as though nothing is a miracle.
    The other is as though
    everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein 

    "The Great Way is not difficult
    for those who have no preferences..." Sengstan 

    "The light within you, when resolutely recognized in all circumstances, has the capacity to embrace everything. This uncompromising acceptance is, in fact, your true nature." Amoda Maa 

    "There never was a time when you or I did not exist.
     Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be." Bhagavad Gita

 
    As soon as we're ready to let go of fearful certainties, the spacious mystery of who / what we truly are & actual reality awaits!

    "Try to be mindful, & let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange & wonderful things come & go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha." Ajahn Chah

"We are stars wrapped in skin.
The light you are seeking
has always been within."
Rumi

 

 Helen Hamilton's MOST VALUABLE teaching - listen to ALL of it

Love - the Central Mystery

    Many of us have firm ideas about things we love / crave / must have and things we hate / fear / must avoid. Deep down, we fear that only by controlling these preferences, can we avoid chaos, misery & death.
    Of course these are just thoughts, and as such, CAN change.  

    The wise repeatedly advise: 
            “We are here to find that dimension within ourselves that is deeper than thought.”                  Eckhart Tolle

             "The Great Way is not difficult
             for those who have no preferences..." Sengstan

            “The whole point of spiritual practice is to discover that we’re already good enough. That we don’t have to prove a thing." Henry Shukman

    Nevertheless, some choose to rigidly stick to small, contracted, self-defeating ideas for an entire lifetime. In essence they're saying, 'IF life doesn't give me what I want, THEN I refuse to accept, never mind love myself, others, and life itself.' Their love is kept small, hostage, conditional, and so they unwittingly remain trapped in suffering.

    Some - including you I hope - choose to open their minds & hearts, remembering who they really are, the mystery, the love, that is one with everyone & everything, thus accepting & unconditionally loving everyone & everything - the good, the bad & the ugly manifestations of this one mystery.
    The resultant, progressively increasing peace & joy is part of a lifelong immersive process, beautifully guided by Helen Hamilton in a valuable (97min) talk “The Pathway of Love” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWkkmLx1G6Y and partially transcribed here:

 

     "This path that we’re following here is a very direct path to self-realization or awakening and everything that I’m sharing in (our meetings) is from my own experience of what really seemed to work for me, after lots of experience of what really didn’t work for me, in terms of not only recognizing who I am, what everything is – the one formless reality, the supreme Self – but also clearly recognizing and being able to step away from who l am not. And, so there is only the real Self, the One being. 
    And any ideas that we have about ourselves that are coming from the old sense of self, the old sense of a separate self that’s going to be falling away more & more as we progress on the path. 
    However, that doesn’t mean that that process is automatic. For many of us, we might need a little help. Certainly I did, and most people I meet need a little help to move beyond those old ideas about ourselves. And it’s because of this particular thing, moving beyond these old ideas about who we thought we were, and into a deeper understanding of what we actually are, and an experiential realization of that, I ended up writing a series of books. They just wanted to be expressed. And I felt really called today to read from one of those books (“How to Fall in Love with Yourself” 2021) And as always, it’s a theme that’s been coming up during the week again & again. And I always like to try to speak about something that’s relevant right now for me, and also people have been asking about. So I want to read today from this book, and I’m going to read from the introduction. But just a little background about this book first. 
    We might call what we really are, I’ve used ‘supreme Self,’ ‘formless reality’ in this satsang already. We could also call it ‘silence’ and ‘consciousness,’ ‘presence,’ ‘Divinity,’ ‘noumenon,’ ‘awakeness.’ We could call it ‘beingness.’ There are so many names for what we could call ourselves - the real Self. But ‘love’ is another name. 
    And as I began to realize who I was, I began to realize that to live authentically as that, that real Self, I had to be able to fall in love with myself again. And I don’t mean to fall in love with the formlessness, the silence. We’re already there with that, right? We have devotion to the truth, the formless reality. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here in this satsang or on the path. 
    But how do we fall in love with our body and our mind and our personality quirks and the things we would rather let go of? And of course, I’m not talking about romantic love here, although the love that we are will express itself that way too if it wants to. But how do we love something like fear? How do we love resistance we find inside ourselves? 
    This whole book was written to try to detail the steps of love that I went through in my own journey. And this book is actually a pathway in itself. If you were to read this book and really take it in and really try to embody what it is explaining and showing, that is, for me, 95% at least of awakening the journey to living as that real self or that real love. At least 95% complete, maybe more. There are only one or two more tiny things to know after that. So it’s a pathway in and of itself. And I thought it might be useful just to read from the beginning in this satsang. Something in my heart wanted to share it, so we will do that. 
    First of all, just to give a little overview of this, there are several types of love that we experience. And we all begin with conditional love. And conditional love says, ‘I’ll love you if,’ or ‘I’ll love you when,’ or ‘I’ll love me if or when.’ So when I change or let go of this thing that’s not right about me, then I’ll love myself. When I wake up to truth completely & embody it fully, then I will love myself. Or, I’ll love you if you make me feel secure, or worthwhile, or needed, or whatever we’re asking for, unconsciously of course. 

    Conditional love is not bad. It is simply conditional love. It’s a more limited expression of the real love that we are. When the real love thinks itself to be a separate person, only one body and mind, all it knows is conditional love, love with conditions put upon it. 
    Then, as we deepen in our journey into awakening, we’ll begin to touch on unconditional love, which is simply I love me as I am and I love you as you are. But there’s still a separate person there even in unconditional love, an apparent separate being loving unconditionally. And again, unconditional love is not better than conditional love. It just is more expansive, less limited. 
    So, the book takes us through that journey. But most of what I want to say today we can get through in the first two chapters, which lay the foundation. The final stage of love is nondual love, or love before division, or love before separation. Love where there is no person or thing to love. There is just love recognizing itself. So, when love looks at something, that love sees itself in a different disguise. It doesn’t see a person or a thing, only recognizes itself. 
    What I thought I would do is I would read through these chapters and then, as always, I’ll open it up for any questions ... 
    So I’ll start with the dedication for the book.

    ‘This book is dedicated to all humanity in the hope that it helps us to come to love and accept ourselves as we are right now. Only once we may love without limits, expectations and demands upon ourselves will we begin to live and love in our highest potential. May you fall deeply back in love with yourself and may all internal conflict cease. Let there be peace in your heart.’

    Because if you fall back in love with yourself, then you’re going to find it impossible to judge yourself or anyone else or anything else. You’re going to find it impossible to resist, reject or dislike yourself. And the deepest part of awakening is a full & rich expression of the love that we are, living like a human being in the world – a living, loving expression, looking like a human being, but not confused anymore.

    ‘Introduction: This book arose out of a clear calling from students who expressed a deep wish to be able to love without limits and without any boundaries. Over and over again, it was seen that there was a deep desire in each of us to return to the natural state of love that we really are. And yet, time and time again, I saw most of us don’t know how to stop judging ourselves and begin to allow the emergence of love.’

    And that was how it was in my own journey too. I knew that the ultimate goal was to love myself. Whatever that meant, I didn’t know. But there was a deep desire for that, and I was endlessly frustrated by not knowing how to actually begin with that. As I said before, the only experience of love I’d had was conditional love and conditional love for myself, which was really my own unique way, as you have your own unique way, I’m sure, to reject or judge yourself.

    ‘This book is offered then in the wish that it serves as a gateway to allow the love that is already inside each one of us, but perhaps we don’t know how to allow. As you read the chapters that follow and apply them, a deepening sense of acceptance, love, & compassion for your own self and others will begin to emerge. Soon you’ll forget how to judge yourself harshly or negate any part of your existence. Your very presence will inspire the same in others around you.’

    Pause there for a moment. What would it be like to forget how to judge yourself harshly or negate any part of your existence? What does that even mean? It means that no matter what arises or what we would like to change about ourselves, we’re not going to use that as a reason for not loving ourselves. We’re not going to put conditions on that love. We love ourselves because we are, because we exist, and we’re not going to treat the continued unfolding evolution of our body & mind as a kind of project or a work in progress that is going from imperfect to perfect. 
    So not being able to judge yourself, there is only peace. It doesn’t mean that you stop unfolding & evolving. Your mind & body in fact will still evolve and love will emerge even faster. And as it says, ‘you’ll inspire that in others too as they see your living example. 

    It’s not our fault that perhaps we don’t know how to love ourself as yet, and we must stop blaming ourselves. Simply through coming to understand what love is and how it moves in our lives, we’ll begin to become that love and move away from judging ourselves and others.

    'First, we’ll take a look at what love is, and perhaps more importantly, what it is not. Second, we’ll take a look at the stages of love we will move through in our journey. We all start with conditional love before allowing unconditional love to blossom. We can then move even further into an awakening to the truest non-dual love of the real self or reality. Each of these stages will be described and explained so that we may let go of more limited forms of love and move to freer expressions of self-love. Limited is not wrong or bad. It is simply limited.’

    It’s important that we can start right now. If we notice that we’re loving ourselves conditionally, that we’re withholding love or approval from ourselves until we measure up to the picture that we have of how we’re supposed to be, then we can really notice that even without judgment. If all that we have been taught is conditional love, how could we possibly know any different? And if those that raised us have only been taught conditional love
 and had examples of that, how could they know? 
    So we can begin to move even into unconditional love now, if we can see our own tendency to withhold love from ourselves without judgment of it just to see it: when this thing happens; or when I feel that emotion; or when I have the same old trigger come up inside again; or when I find that I have spent too much money; or put too much weight on; or said the wrong thing to the person I want to be with. When we find those things happening, even if we notice an immediate rejection of ourselves because of that inside, can we simply just notice that? And of course, we would want to move to a deeper form of love. 
    But can we blame ourselves, if we don’t know that yet? And what happens if we don’t judge ourselves for not knowing even what love is or what unconditional love would look like? Have we really had many examples of unconditionally loving beings to model ourselves upon? Did we learn it in school? Did we get sat down and told this is how to love yourself unconditionally? Well, I certainly didn’t. So we can start to let go of judging and blaming ourselves for where we’re at. If all we have for ourselves is self-hatred and self-rejection or judgment, so be it. But we don’t need to blame ourselves for that. We’ve all been taught that the way to change into who we think we should be, is by rejecting and blaming ourselves as we are right now. And that has never worked, not ever, not once. So let’s continue reading.

    ‘Lastly, we will look at how we can love our separate sense of self or ego into dissolution. As our capacity for love deepens, we can stop rejecting any part of ourselves and begin to live as that highest expression of love in which there is no object of love but only love itself – formless, omnipresent love. 
    One human being, living as this highest expression of love, can change the world and inspire many others to do the same. Isn’t it time you lived your highest and best life?’

    We’ve all known examples of great beings who have walked this path right to the end of the path of love, which is what this book is about. It’s a path in itself. Examples of those who are not only unconditionally loving – the great sages, the great teachers – but have the capacity to love all of creation because they know what it really is – that it’s not at all what it looks like.

    We’ll move onto chapter 1, called ‘What is Love Anyway?’ because as I was writing this, it reminded me of my own experience. The first thing I had to admit to myself is that I didn’t know what love was. And it was a huge relief when I finally admitted it. This thing that I had been wanting and chasing, trying to get from other beings – please, please, please love me so I’ll feel better about myself; and trying to give to others; trying to love others. And if I was to become this love, or to live as this love that I already am, doesn’t it make sense then that we start by honestly admitting that we might not know what that is? What is love? It’s an endless question, but it’s enough for us to start by just letting go of any blame, again for ourselves, that we might not know what it is. Again, nobody has ever actually sat us down and said, ‘This is what love is in its various expressions.’ So,

    ‘Chapter 1, What is Love Anyway? 
    We are here to learn how to love ourselves. And the first step is to realize that it’s not our fault if we don’t already know how to do that. We may have been taught that love is to want to improve ourselves or be better than we are. Whilst this is a noble intention, it will also set us up on a never-ending path of trying to improve what is already here and perfect in this moment. 
    None of us start out feeling our own perfection. And in fact, we may be highly skilled at noticing our imperfections.’ 

    I certainly was. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was. I was an expert on my own failure and my own imperfections.

    ‘To begin to love ourselves, we must come to admit that maybe we don’t really know how to do that, and that it is not our fault if we don’t.’ 
    I’m going to repeat that because it’s so important. 
    ‘None of us start out feeling our own perfection. And in fact, we may be highly skilled at noticing our imperfections. To begin to love ourselves, we must come to admit that maybe we don’t really know how to do that, and that it is not our fault if we don’t.’

    So can we just take a pause here, and if we’re willing to admit to ourselves inside that maybe we don’t know how to love ourselves, and that that could be a good thing. And it’s only this idea, that we should already know this, that torments us. If we don’t know how to love ourselves and we weren’t supposed to know yet, then how much are we at blame or fault?

    ‘What if we look at our life as an opportunity to learn how to love rather than a place to prove to ourselves that we are no good at it?’ 
    So let me say that again, because it’s so important. 
    ‘What if we look at our life as an opportunity to learn how to love rather than a place to prove to ourselves that we are no good at it? If you want to learn to drive a car, but you have not yet met anyone that can show you how, would you be berating yourself that you cannot drive before having even a single lesson? No, of course you wouldn’t. Yet each one of us is punishing ourselves deep down inside because we feel we should know how to love our own self and others.’

    So we’re beating ourselves up, berating ourselves because we think we should know how to do something we’ve never been shown how to do – to love ourselves. It’s quite strange, isn’t it, the way human beings are when we look at it like this – this idea that I should already know how to fall in love with myself, how to fall in love with all of myself - the formlessness, the silence, the stillness that I deeply love already. 
    But I might even be loving that to try to get away from the form, which I was doing. You know, if I fall deeply in love with silence enough, somehow it will magically transform this (small self / personality / ego) into what I want it to be. It’s not the fullest form of love, is it? It’s conditional love. I love my mind, my body, my life, my emotions, as long as they change and look completely different, is what I was in effect saying. 
    So let me just recap that. If you want to learn to drive a car, but you’ve not yet met anyone that can show you how, would you be berating yourself that you can’t drive before having even a single lesson? No. Of course not. You wouldn’t.

    ‘Yet each one of us is punishing ourselves deep down inside because we feel we should know how to love our own self and others. 
    Let’s just be honest and say perhaps we don’t know how and that we aren’t supposed to know how. Can we move around in our life in this orientation? Can we begin to be students of love and lovingness and want to find out what that is? Can we let go of judging, hating, and blaming ourselves that we don’t seem to know how to love ourselves?’

    There’s an opportunity here. Let’s pause to just launch an intention, not to try hard or anything, but just to launch an intention inside ourselves. I’d like to let go of judging, hating, and blaming myself because I don’t seem to know how to love myself yet. If that feels relevant inside, then let’s just take a moment to let that arise. I’d just like to let go of that, knowing that the arising of that intention is enough. So,

    ‘Can we let go of judging, hating, and blaming ourselves that we don’t seem to know how to love ourselves? Yes, we can. I would urge you to let go of your ideas about love and instead insist on finding out what that really is. We may have seen many examples of loving beings that seem to radiate that love to all. And we may somehow be trying to measure up to that standard. What we fail to realize is that that great love for all of humanity emerging from these beings has been allowed, recognized, and learned rather than intuitively known.’

    That’s important! If we’re trying to emulate some being who’s really, really loving of all creation, including themselves, can we recognize that they’ve been through their own process already that we’re going through right now, to allow love to emerge? And what would it be like if we simply were students of love, and viewed our life, as we were saying before, as a place for love to emerge?

    ‘Perhaps it’s wiser to say that a lot of both has occurred.’ 
    So, ‘a lot of both’ being that we’ve learned, allowed, and recognized and also intuitively known about love. 
    ‘Sages, avatars, and teachers of truth and love have had to do this exact same opening up and admittance of “I don’t know what love is, nor how to get it or be it” too. We all start from the same honest place of truth. Love is to begin to admit the truth that maybe I don’t know how to love myself, and maybe I’m not supposed to know already.’ 
    I’ll read that last sentence again, 
    ‘Love is to begin to admit the truth that maybe I don’t know how to love myself, and maybe I’m not supposed to know already.’

    What if that is the very first act of love that you can really give yourself – unconditional expression of love? Maybe I don’t know how to love and I’m not supposed to. I’m finding out as I go.

    ‘Can the capacity for love be viewed as an art, science or an emerging skill? Yes, indeed it can. All of us have been taught to love conditionally and that’s where we all start. Even the great sages started from their ideas about what love is, and how to do it or be it. We can finally begin to love ourselves more in this moment by accepting that we can love what love actually is, rather than loving our ideas and preconceptions about it.’ 
    I’ll say that again, 
    ‘We can finally begin to love ourselves more in this moment by accepting that we can love what love actually is, rather than loving our ideas and preconceptions about it. Perhaps even this simple thing is to be love itself already. Perhaps in admitting we don’t know what love is, and have been following what we think it is, is how to love ourselves more.’

    So if we can recognize that we maybe have been in love with our ideas about what we think love is and should be, and now we’re drawing a line underneath that and saying, ‘I don’t know what love is,’ then we’re wide open for some revelation to appear, to actually love love itself, rather than to love what we think it is. To love ourselves, rather than to love who we think we are, which is usually some very distorted self-image that has nothing to do with who we actually are. And perhaps just doing this one thing is actually beginning to be the love that we want to be. 
    I don’t know what love is. I’ve perhaps only experienced my ideas about it. And I’m beginning to explore what love actually is. How I actually love myself might be very different than how I think I should go about loving myself. That’s a huge difference. 
    We can make that shift now. We can make that shift now in this moment. I want to know what love is. I have all kinds of songs going around in my head at the moment from various artists (laughs) – ‘All You Need is Love’ and ‘I Want to Know What Love Is.’

    ‘What happens when we throw out all ideas that we should already know how to be love, to give or to receive love, or how to love others more? We will immediately be starting from the truest place of all by knowing that we don’t know how and that is totally okay right now. 
    Love yourself enough to admit right now, with me, that you don’t know. I don’t know how to love either because I don’t know what love is. I am in a constant and never-ending unfolding and discovery of what love is. Each and every moment love is revealing another face of itself to me. And I love that I don’t know what it is. It was a huge relief to admit I didn’t actually know, nor was I supposed to know. Try that on for size and see if it feels good.’

    I’ll conclude by saying, I still don’t know what love is. This satsang for me, and hopefully for you, is an unfolding discovery and exploration of love – also known as 'silence' or 'consciousness' or 'presence' or 'divinity.' 
    And I hope there’s been something said here, as I’ve read through these chapters, some movement inside of you, that if all you get from this one thing that maybe we’re not supposed to know how to love ourselves yet, and how could we know, if nobody has shown us. Just that one thing is life-changing in itself. And then we can begin to be students of love and students of lovingness, as it says in the previous chapter. So hopefully then there is a deepening within us all from sharing this time together, this love together and I really sincerely really hope that something has moved inside your heart and a deeper love for yourself is emerging just by being here, just by listening, just by absorbing what this is and what this means. 
    Just to recap, there were the first two chapters of the book, ‘How to Fall In Love with Yourself.’ And you might see that it came from my own journey of having absolutely no idea how to love myself at all, and yet somehow really, really wanting to. And now there is this falling away of any end point to that. What if it was a never-ending deepening of love for myself, and somehow, 'myself' has grown to encompass all of manifestation, and the unmanifest? 

    I hope that that was helpful.”

    Helen Hamilton, first 36 minutes of her valuable (97min) talk: “The Pathway of Love” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWkkmLx1G6Y

from "Awake Awhile" by Hafiz