The way we imagine ourselves, our self-concept, depends on what we're looking at and how engaged we feel. If it's a beloved person, pet, activity or even object, we may well feel at-one-with them. Neither we nor our beloved seems to have boundaries. This has been called a Unitive experience or Oneness. It's primarily a felt experience - as one hugs or kisses a beloved, stares into a baby's or very young child's eyes, holds a puppy's head and stares into its eyes, there is simply unconditional love flowing unimpeded both ways. However, the more different, cautious, afraid, angry or especially hostile we feel, the thicker & moreimpermeable the protective wallswe erect. Often we feel superior in some way than the other. We are right, others are wrong. This "othering" is supercharged when there is a perceived or actualpower imbalance - "might makes right." The swaggering bully, be it in the playground, school, workplace, bar or political arena, displays psychosocialspiritual immaturity. When such delusion of superiority is capped by "God is on OUR side" - religious exclusivism / narcissism - then ANY behaviour becomes not only justified but "sanctified!" When any leader consistently behaves destructively AND is allowed to get away with it, we're dealing with a dangerous cult. Sadly cult members often remain ardent followers to the bitter end.
"Tom was in his mid-thirties when a truck he was working under fell and crushed his chest. He had a very elaborate near-death experience (NDE). There were many parts of it, but one part was his life review. He went back over every event in his life in minute detail. He said, ‘I could count the number of mosquitoes that were buzzing around me at this time, which he couldn’t have done during the event, but in the NDE he did. And he said, ‘Not only that, but I experienced everything through my eyes and through the eyes of other people involved in the scene.’ He described one incident in particular, when he was a teenager, driving his truck down the street, when a drunk man wandered out in front of him. He jammed on the brakes, and was furious at the man for almost denting his truck. So he rolled down the window and started yelling at the man. And the man, being quite intoxicated, reached his hand in the window and slapped Tom across the face. You don’t do that to an angry teenager. So Tom got out of the truck, and started beating the man up. And he left him a bloody mess on the median strip. Now Tom tells me, when he relived this in his life review, he felt it through his own eyes – the adrenaline rush, the rage. And he also felt at the same time, through the eyes of the drunk man – the humiliation of being beaten up by this kid, the 32 blows of Tom’s fist in his face. Now Tom couldn’t have told you it was 32, but reliving it anew in an NDE, he felt 32 of them. He felt the man’s nose getting bloodied, he felt the man’s lower teeth going through his lower lip. And he came back realizing we’re allthe same thing. There’s no difference between me & that man. It’s like if you’re looking at your fingers, they look like they’re separate things, but they’re really connected, and you can’t cut one off without hurting them all. So the Golden Rule for near-death experiencers is not a guideline, it’s the way things are.” Dr. Bruce Greyson - "After" 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViCWJWHR0a8
Before his NDE, Jonathan Ashford had nothing to do with religion / spirituality. During his NDE, he like most ND experiencers, was welcomed with unconditional love. He now understands that the Divine has no interest whatsoever in which quirky little religion, if any, you belonged to. The Divine likely inspired Emo Philips' comedy sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78
“Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Confucius 500 BCE
Increasingly, people understand the Golden Rule from a non-dual perspective ie that myneighbour, myself & the Divine are one & the same - ONEentitymanifesting as infinite variety of appearances, includingeveryone & everything: spiritually independents, scientific materialists, agnostics, atheists, theists, "president-for-life" dictators, drug dealers, petty crooks, mosquitoes, dogs, birds, fish, trees, rocks, mountains, oceans, earth, sun, moon, clouds, sky & cosmos. Divine non-dual infinite potentialself-reflecting by manifesting as & exploringduality - the material world of opposites.
“A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web ‘God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,’ but it can be known only as love.”Joan Z. Borysenko PhD
On manifesting as humans, we tend to forget our true nature, AND alsoforget most of our wisdom. Awakening is remembering who we truly are - and -how to live appropriately as 'dual citizens' of non-duality & duality.
So, no matter who we think we are, let'sbe kind, humble & pull together like wise, nurturing grandparents.
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” Jonathan Haidt & Dacher Keltner “The only service you can do for anyone (including yourself) is to remind them of their true nature.” Stephen Levine
This information Jonathan Ashford brought back willresonate, uplift and help guidewhen you're ready to hear it:
“It was made very clear to me on the other side, that the information that I have is for those who are ready to receive it. One of the messages which was very clear is that it’s for the one, not the 99. And coming back, it’s kind of like, well, who’s that one? Who’s that one person this is for? But you get to this understanding that the information is catered to each individual. It’s for the one, the one, the one, the one. And everybody hears it in a way that helps them. But the message is, if I could say there is one message, is everything that I was shown was based on love. It’s the glue that holds together who we are, what we are, reality, the formless. It’s understanding that everything can be boiled down to love. Even the worst day of your lifeis a loving day. Butyou can only get there when you wake up. You can only get there if you make the free will choice to try and remember what you are and live consciously. Otherwise, it will never make sense.
There are a few reasons (why we come here over and over again). I like to remind everybody that if you chose to come back here, you came to serve. You serve the whole with your next breath. There’s not anything you need to do or change. But you do serve the whole. We’re all tools in the garden that get picked up to be used appropriately when they’re needed to be used. So, we all experience what we need to experience through others, through our circumstances, through what we experience in life. If you lived in that cave your entire life, you wouldn’t experience much. The reason we come down is to remember. You could say it’s to rememberlove. And you could say we turn away from the sun so that we can remember that there’s a sun behind us, and turn back and experience it. So, it’s always going out to return. And most people try to intellectualize their way there, but it’s more about the free will choice of remembering love, not intellectual love, not conditional love, but unconditional love.
And unconditional love is saying there’s nothing to worry about. I go on forever. Death isn’t death. Unconditional love is knowing that there’s a benevolent force in the room with you at all times. It doesn’t sit in a throne somewhere. Unconditional love is recognizing everybody here has the same amnesia and they’re just doing what they’re doing because of the amnesia. And when you wake up, you can grow in compassion in ways that are beyond measure, just recognizing that that neighbour you don’t like just doesn’t remember.
(Our future depends on) 2 possibilities (according to) the visions I’ve had recently. Those 2 possibilities are right back to that free will choice: whether I choose to live as an awakened beingORI’m asleep. And that directly affects what we will experience.
Everybody asks me how to change the world. How can we help? And I give everybody the same answer. ‘Wake up.’ You awake changes the world. I was shown this on the other side. Imagine that the billions of people in the world all wake up tomorrow and everybody’s awake and are loving beings. What happens? Well, the earth stops. This whole reality stops. The whole reality here is based on contrast, because the contrast is the sandpaperthat wakes you up to what you are. And if you no longer need it, what’s the point of contrast? But it’s the understanding that it’s not about volume, it’s about authenticity. So, it isn’t well, if we only get 3 million people to wake up, we’re safe. It’s more about there’s a hand that moves pieces on a board, and we’re the pieces. Are we giving it the opportunity to move us in a way that benefits the whole? Or are we fighting the hand? When you wake up, you don’t fight the hand. You know that the hand is there for you. You know that the hand is there for all others. But if we’re in our intellects and our egos, we fight the hand because we’re viewing reality through our own intellect and our intellect has its own lens of what it thinks is right, wrong, good, bad, where we want to end up. So, it’s a time of surrender. Surrendering to the fact that you’re something more. Does everybody need to wake up? No. But those who are close to waking up, should. Interviewer Q: Do you fear death? Jonathan Ashford (JA): No. Not at all.
Q: If you met somebody that was grieving over the loss of a loved one, what type of advice would you give? JA: I’ve done it many times. I speak to a lot of widows and people who are about to pass. And I tell them, imagine yourself as the ocean. And then a warm or cold air hits the ocean and you turn into fog. And then a warm or cold air comes again and you turn into a cloud. And a warm or cold air shows up again, then you turn into the rain that falls back in the ocean. Were you ever not the ocean? The ocean was always there. Death is nothing more than a change of state. You’re not going anywhere. You’re not lost. You’re not in some other realm. You’re just the fog now or the cloud or the rain. You’re still in the same room. You’re still here. You still have access to everything, to everybody. And I often tell people to just speak to them because they can hear you. Everything here is alive. Everything here is connected. And it’s just understanding that we’re no longer in form. We’re just formless. But we’re not gone.
Q: How would you explain what God is in all of this? JA: I think God, as I understand it in my experience of it, it’s so many things. It’s love. It’s a binding force. It’s a personality. It does have a personality, and it does have a sense of humour. Can it be a guy with a long beard and a tunic? Sure. Can it be invisible forever? Sure. It can be whatever it wants to be. But, it’s knowing that all things have it within. Your doorknob is God. Your door is God. The paint on your wall is God. You are God. The air is God. Your clothing is God. Everything has it within. It’s the circle from which all things come. And all things are constantly connected to it. Is it one thing? No. Often, I refer to it as they because it is many. It’s many things. It’s all things. If you’re breathing air, you’re breathing God. We try to personify it. We try to make it into a human with a certain level of power that makes certain decisions. And it can be that. But, honestly, it’s much bigger, and it’s much more. And it’s something that moves pieces on this board of existence for something greater. And it’s just the reminder to say your existence was never your own. It was never your existence. It was ours. We’re all together in this. We’re all just holding hands through it. And when you understand God, the All, the Universe, the Source, plays a part in literally every second of your existence. When you wake up to thatand acknowledge it, life changes.
Q: Can you give us some practical ways to live our lives, to make the right choices? JA: Yeah. It’s going to sound really simple, but I just tell everybody to pause for a second before you make a decision. Just 1 second. Just 1 second of pause. We tend to be reactive, right? We’re human, so we’re very reactive based on the inputs we receive, or we’re instant like a calculator. But do the math. Do it longhand. Take your time. And try to make a decision based on the infinite yourather than the desire that the human has.” Jonathan Ashford "DEAD for 3 Hours & Who He Saw Changed Everything! (NDE)" 50-minute interviewhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl3RJ-DIUiY
To appreciate where Jonathan is coming from, invest two & a quarter hours in Rick Archer's excellent, in-depth, recent interview:Jonathan Ashford: C‑Level Executive’s NDE, Life Review, and Radical Spiritual Awakeninghttps://batgap.com/jonathan-ashford/ A 40-minute documentary for a condensed overview:"The near death experience of Jonathan Ashford"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXSnS2jMY4k
“At every meeting we are meeting a stranger.” T. S. Eliot, from “The Cocktail Party (I,iii)” “Speaking disparagingly about another person can have far-reaching effects. But on an even deeper level, a mind that is seized by a frozen view of another, whether the thoughts are spoken or not, is incapable of being open & awake. So, in a broader sense, this precept invites us to not only speak of but to meet even those we think we know — such as our mother or father — as if for the first time, like Eliot’s stranger. ... When we have the courage to squarely meet what we hold on to, to acknowledge & experience it with each new encounter, then over time we find that the bondage of our holdings loosens." Diane Eshin Rizzetto, “Meeting Others as Strangers”
This is a great teaching - to assume that we know little or nothing about "the other." Wiser people than I suggest that we also know next to nothing aboutourselves or "God." What we do know about ourselves is that if we're honest, we deserve to be very humble.
Many, including myself sense that the Source (Nature, the Divine, non-dual emptiness) takes things far less seriously than we humans do. What if s/he is playing each & every one of our roles in the spirit of pure creativity & fun - like s/he werethe creative writer, director, producer, set designer, and ALL OF THE ACTORS in a play.
"What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Tryin' to make his way home?"Eric Bazilian,"One of Us"
But as soon as s/he ("we") manifests in physical form, in our world of opposites (duality), most of uscompletely forget who we truly are - otherwise, finding our way home wouldn't be much of an adventure.
“The human mind (ego) was not designed by evolutionary forces for finding truth. It was designed for finding advantage.” Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel laureate
It takes a cosmic joker to voluntarily manifest as such apparently wildly opposite personalities: the Buddha, Stalin, Mother Teresa, Putin, Jesus, Trump, Pol Pot, Gandhi, … and yet, in a way, are we not all 'just slobs on a bus, tryin' to make our way home?'
“Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Confucius 500 BCE
“The Golden Rule, ‘Do onto others as you would have them do onto you,’ is a part of every religion we have. Every religion has something about this in their creed. It’s a guideline we have to follow for most of us, but for near-death experiencers, they’ve experienced it as a law of the universe. Let me give you an example of this:
Tom was in his mid-thirties when a truck he was working under fell and crushed his chest. He had a very elaborate near-death experience (NDE). There were many parts of it, but one part was his life review. He went back over every event in his life in minute detail. He said, ‘I could count the number of mosquitoes that were buzzing around me at this time, which he couldn’t have done during the event, but in the NDE he did. And he said, ‘Not only that, but I experienced everything throughmy eyesandthrough the eyes of other people involved in the scene.’ He described one incident in particular, when he was a teenager, driving his truck down the street, when a drunk man wandered out in front of him. He jammed on the brakes, and was furious at the man for almost denting his truck. So he rolled down the window and started yelling at the man. And the man, being quite intoxicated, reached his hand in the window and slapped Tom across the face. You don’t do that to an angry teenager. So Tom got out of the truck, and started beating the man up. And he left him a bloody mess on the median strip. Now Tom tells me, when he relived this in his life review, he felt it through his own eyes – the adrenalin rush, the rage. And he also felt at the same time, through the eyes of the drunk man – the humiliation of being beaten up by this kid, the 32 blows of Tom’s fist in his face. Now Tom couldn’t have told you it was 32, but reliving it anew in an NDE, he felt 32 of them. He felt the man’s nose getting bloodied, he felt the man’s lower teeth going through his lower lip. And he came back realizing we’re all the same thing. There’s no difference between me & that man. It’s like if you’re looking at your fingers, they look like they’re separate things, but they’re really connected, and you can’t cut one off without hurting them all. So the Golden Rule for near-death experiencers is not a guideline,it’s the way things are.” Dr. Bruce Greyson - "After" - WMRA Books & Brews Feb 2023 :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViCWJWHR0a8
Recently I read that what we all desire above all is to be seen & accepted for who we are. This seems to imply by another person, BUT many feel that we first & foremost needthisdeep self-acceptance & unconditional love from ourselves.
“Love thy neighbour as thyself for the love of God” is seen by some as an impractical infringement on one's individual right to find & secure as much personal material wealth & comfort as possible. Fewer & fewersee it in a proprietary, religious exclusivist context.
Increasingly, people see the Golden Rule from a non-dual perspective ie that myneighbour, myself & God are one & the same - ONEentitymanifesting as infinite variety of appearances, includingeveryone & everything: spiritually independents, scientific materialists, agnostics, atheists, theists, "president-for-life" dictators, drug dealers, petty crooks, mosquitoes, dogs, birds, fish, trees, rocks, mountains, oceans, earth, sun, moon, clouds, sky & cosmos. Divine non-dual infinite potentialself-reflecting by manifesting as & exploringduality - the material world of opposites. On manifesting as humans, we tend to forget our true nature, AND alsoforget most of our wisdom. Awakening is remembering who we truly are - and -how to live appropriately as 'dual citizens' of non-duality & duality.
So, no matter who we think we are, let'sbe kind, humble & pull together like wise, nurturing grandparents.
Don't most of us take ourselves & life far too seriously? We desperately want & work tirelessly towards having everything go well for ourselves & our loved ones. But despite all our best efforts, education & technology, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”As a result, it's very easy & very common to becomehopelessly cynical - the corrosive effects of which are powerfully illustrated in the 2014 movie, "Calvary" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234003/), available on Netflix.Two thousand years before Robert Burns, the Buddha taught about ("dukkha") the inherent imperfection of everything in the world, and how chasing after & trying to hang onto stuff just creates an extra layer of suffering, and how we can end such needless suffering. Kristin Neff PhD provides ashort useful practice to deal more wisely with our own, everyone & everything else's imperfection: http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/11/self-compassion-mantra.html
There are many reminders every day that, despite the fact that life at times does appear like "a real shit show," there is an underlying loving intelligence to life, with a wild sense ofhumor. This message even comes through at the very end of the otherwise dark movie, "Calvary." Of course it's not possible to have this ratherstartling insightwhile we're chasing control with every fiber in our body, nor while depressed over the fact that a lifetime of frantic chasing failed to deliver. Only when we start to recognize the important yet very narrow role of our frenzied survival & procreation activities, that some of usbecome able to hear the whispers of our far more evolved intelligence. Some near death experiencers - Natalie Sudman in particular - and others, have suggested that we knowingly volunteer for specific, sometimes very challenging roles & situations in life, for agreed-upon reasons, with considerable humor!BUT most of us completely forget about what we signed up for, causing a lot of unnecessary confusion & suffering. Ihighly recommend watching Natalie Sudman's video AND a detailed readingof "The Bus Stop Conversation" both at:http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html
"Thus shall ye look on all this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in the stream, A flash of lightning in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream." Gautama the Buddha
It's hard not to be disgusted & angered by the brutality, criminality, war, hunger, poverty, disease, environmental devastation & suffering throughout the world. And even the most fortunate among us will see everyone & everything we love - ourselves included - change, age, get sick & die. To our usual, "normal" way of thinking these are incomprehensible & unacceptable.
YET throughout the ages mystics, saints & other deeply spiritual people,and now, more & more ordinary peopleare awakening toa radically different reality:
"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English Christian mystic
How can we have such dramatically opposing perspectives on the state of our world? Perhaps the most comprehensive, detailed research directly related to answering this question has been carried out by former Oxford professor of literature, now psychiatrist, researcher & author, Iain McGilchrist: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/ Attempting to briefly summarize several thousand pages of McGilchrist's 2 massive books, and many hours of lectures & interviews, is foolish, but here goes. Ourusual way of thinking - what most of us consider common sense ("left-hemisphere perspective" LHP) - is highly goal-oriented towards controlling our external environment for our survival. Our far broader & deeper intelligence("right-hemisphere perspective" RHP) helps us understand, relate to & be appropriate in context of "the big picture," including the most meaningful aspects of what it means to be a human being: love, values, connection, collaboration, nurturing etc. It is best equipped to deal with complexity, context, metaphor, paradox, the arts, etc - all essential when confronting topics such as spirituality & existential angst. So our two major levels of intelligence are both essential, with very differentperspectives & competencies: LHP is for linear problem-solving & running practical tasks & procedures to keep us alive; while RHP keeps everything in appropriate perspective of the big picture (our worldview / self-concept / long-term goals). Because LHP has a narrow, task-oriented focus, it can't see any need for RHP's broad perspective; while RHP appreciates many pros & cons of any given task, including LHP's "let's get'er done!" Clearly, both must work in harmony. When only one of these runs the show - eg as seen in major strokes involving either, but especially the right hemisphere - the afflicted person is severely compromised.
Our man-made ecological/climate disaster is finally forcing us to end this"hyper-rational" phase, where our heavy bias towardsLHPwas focused on one task: exponential growth in profits. Meanwhile, RHP was almost taboo, so contextwas completely ignored, devastating the quality of our air, water & soil, and with it thequality of human life, in fact posing an imminent threat to our very existence! It's as if the human race has suffered a devastating right-hemispheric stroke, and is now in the ICU.
“Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind (RHP) a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind (LHP) was a faithful servant. It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.” Bob Samples
“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.” Neils Bohr
We "Make sense with stories. If you give people facts without a story, they will explain it within their existing belief system. The best way to promote a new or different belief is not with facts, but with a story." Dave Gray. “Liminal Thinking. Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think.” Two Waves Books, 2016.
The Bus Stop Conversation - by Sue Morter "Just imagine you’re going to the bus stop one day, to catch the bus to come to earth, and while you’re there, you strike up a conversation with others at the bus stop. You ask them, 'What are you going to experience when you go in?' And the other person does the same. Somebody else says, 'Well I don’t know, I’ve never been.'
And somebody else raises their hand and says, 'I’ve been there before, crazy place, super wild. The last time I left, I accidentally, like coincidentally did this thing that they call "forgiveness," and it felt so amazing, that all this energy just rushed through me, and I let go of all these things that I’d been carrying around forever, and boom, I just had this amazing revelation, and it was over, because I was on my way out. So I’m going back, and I’m going to do that again, but I’m going to do it sooner, and do it bigger. So I’m going back for a level-10 forgiveness, and I can’t wait, because what I felt was amazing, and it’s going to be ten-fold of that.'
So another person at the bus stop goes, 'Woah, sounds great! How are you going to do that?'
'Well,' the first person answers, 'I guess I’ll have to experience something that’s nearlyunforgivable. And then I’m going to live with that, be angry about that & frustrated, compress it inside myself, get down the road & feel the physical effects of that, my health is going to decline, I’ll live this contracted & compressed life, and at some point, I’m going to get sick & tired of being that way. I’m going to reach inside myself and going to find some part of me I didn’t even know I had, some in-depth level of forgiveness, reach down and express it out there, and I’m going to have this huge experience of forgiveness, and get to know a part of myself I never would have known.'
So the other people at the bus stop are saying, 'Woah, sounds amazing. How can we help?'
And the person says, 'Well somebody’s going to have to do something that’s nearly unforgivable – you know, like drink too much at happy hour, get behind the wheel, cross the center line, hit my car, take my loved ones, cripple me – these kind of things that could have been avoided, it has to be completely wrong, the wrong of wrongs. And so who will help me?'
And everybody’s, ‘Not me! I don’t want to be that guy! Who wants to be that guy?’
And so the conversation goes on, and the guy says, 'Come on, I bought my bus ticket, here I am, here’s my chance, don’t leave me out.'
And so finally, somebody in the back raises their hand and says, 'OK, I can see how much this means to you, I’ll be the one, I’ll be the perpetrator, the one that does these nearly unforgivable things.'
So this story can be interpreted in many different ways, in many different peoples’ lives. Invariably when I share this, people are crying, recognizing, ‘Oh my God, the person who abused me’ or ‘The person who abandoned me, actually was the one who finally raised their hand and helped deliver this scenario for me that is going to allow me to reach inside and find maybe a level-10 self-love that I never would have found had I been up against the adverse circumstance, the friction that was created from that dynamic.'"
Interviewer: “Which is not to say that an abuser can say, ‘I’m doing this for your own good.’
Sue Morter: "No, so, it’s not that we ask for it in that way. And ultimately that abuser is going to have to take inventory on what they’ve come here to learn. So it might be self-forgiveness, it might be redemption, it might be something along those same lines, that they will have to come to terms with, whether it’s now or whether it’s a few lifetimes later, it does resolve, because that is the way the universe works. It does abhor a vacuum, it wants to fill it, it wants flow & unity, so these kinds of concentrated energies that are unresolved cannot maintain themselves. So we’re here to resolve them consciously on the spiritual path so that we don’t have to pay it out karmically in some kind of unconscious manner, we can resolve that right here with our own awareness and intentions.
So the Bus Stop Conversation is to allow this understanding on more of a personal note that there is purpose, that nothing is bigger than us, that we managed it, that we requested it so we could awaken ourselves in certain ways, that we are bigger than these individual circumstances that we are facing in this life.” EXCELLENT interview: https://batgap.com/sue-morter/
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet, William Shakespeare
The 2022 movie, "Father Stu" on Amazon Prime, is imho an excellent, powerfully-portrayed true story of a transformative NDE.
Actual example of a Bus Stop type of conversation: "My Near Death Experience in Iraq - Natalie Sudman"
Everything depends on my love in every moment. Other names for this essential ingredient include heart, wisdom, or life force- 'may the force be with you.' Everything? Absolutely! Abandonment, neglect & other major abuses, by those on whom infants totally depend for love, shelter, protection & nurturing, often cause catastrophic physical, mental, emotional, psycho-social-spiritual chaos, for generations! This has been thoroughly documented in "adverse childhood experiences (ACE)" studies, since the late 1990's. Lack of love is severely traumatic, devastating lives like a raging forest fire. Most people who commit violent crimes, suffer addictions & incarceration came from unstable, dysfunctional homes.
Despite far-from-ideal childhoods, some children still grow up to be functional, loving adults. Most, perhaps all such resilient children, had at least one loving, nurturing adult to inspire & energize them to survive, and maybe even thrive.
Many of us, at least subconsciously crave to be loved unconditionally, without judgment or expectation, just for who / what we are. Our deepest desire is to receive love like this forever.
“A single force, love, links and
gives life to infinite worlds.” Jordano Bruno
How to wisely keep open our heart energy center is exceptionally-well dealt with in: Michael A. Singer. “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself.” New Harbinger, 2007.
"Experiencers" - those who've had near death experiences (NDEs), and the many others who have, by various other means, glimpsed beyond the narrow perspective ('veil') of this physical dimension, consistently agree on the absolute primacy of love. The highlight of their strikingly vivid, overwhelming spiritually-transformative experience is the certainty of being loved unconditionally. Nothing compares to this, the most important message which they all share. To the best of their ability, they resolve to be the source of unconditional love for the rest of their lives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwkOnahGlsc
Thispivotal spiritual shift from craving for to being the source oflove, arises from the remembered capacity to recognize in oneself the exact same perfect source of love, as is present in all other people, animals, plants & things - as expressed in the greeting 'Namaste.'
“If you don’t find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further.” Gandhi
The only relief available for the worst possible pain - that of losing one's child - is the meaning derived from being able to provide wise loving support to others going through this same terrible pain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suhc428VJLc
Withevery person we meet, the task is to recognize their perfect loving ('divine') true nature, which helps them recognize their own perfect true nature. It's about creating a nurturing, harmonious resonance of authentic beings. We are being asked to radically accept & get beyond our differences, and that's not easy. To finally recognize each & every one of us, including ourselves, as fully divine AND AT THE SAME TIME having a fully human experience, in ALL circumstances - joy, boredom & agony!
"There’s only one happiness and it’s who you are. There’s only one place to find lasting happiness, and that is to know who you are and to be who you are.” Francis Lucille
"It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men." Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merelytoseek and find all the barriers within yourself
At birth, and until we're around one & a half or two years of age, we feel at one with everyone & everything around us, perfectly loved, perfectly at home, perfect: http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/01/bouncing-into-graceland.html I suspect that most of us, at least vaguely remember this wondrously perfect direct experience, have no words to express it, but try desperately to recapture it for the rest of our life. The result is an almost universal sense of 'lack': http://www.johnlovas.com/2019/05/our-sense-of-lack.html. Artists, those with addiction disorders, perfectionists, and perhaps most successfully, mystics are drawn towards the tantalizing perfect love that's almost within reach. Brief as well as more prolonged re-connection, re-membering of this perfect love (a "heart opening") occurs in mystical experiences: awakenings, near-death experiences (NDEs), "trips" on entheogens, post-traumatic growth experiences, etc. Even listening to people recount their NDEcan help us to remember our own direct experience of having been loved unconditionally, and thus can be a profoundly meaningful, healing experience. I invite you to immerse yourself in these profound, transformative experiences:
Of course, we all know people who respond to this powerful calling by turning away from perfect love, denying its existence, and fully committing to fear, meaninglessness, materialism, cynicism, bitterness, anger & hatred. Here's the powerful NDE of a man who pushed this approach to the max, and how that worked out:
We can choose to be the source of love, nurturing everyone & everything - OR - to take all we can away from everyone & everything. This choice between being an evolved human being or a narcissist is always ours, moment-by-moment, with very different effects on everyone. EVERYTHING depends on this choice, and clearly, we can all be choosing MORE WISELY!
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of loveLeonard Cohen
