The Love You Cannot Lose
El Amor Que No Puedes Perder
A teacher shares a meditation experience of all-encompassing loving compassion and is guided to examine the belief that such experiences are only available at certain times or under certain conditions.
The Love You Cannot Lose
A teacher shares a meditation experience of all-encompassing loving compassion and is guided to examine the belief that such experiences are only available at certain times or under certain conditions.
I did a meditation with my little group here, and it seems like almost every time lately I do the circular breathing, I connect with this in slightly different ways. This time, there was a recognition of a love that is so accepting, so gentle, and always there. No matter what we're going through, no matter how many tensions and resistances we have in our bodies, it is totally accepting. And there was a great compassion, a sense that people who have passed away, if they're there, they're fine. We are the ones who deserve all the compassion, all the courage it takes to go through this suffering. If you're there, it's totally home. It's beautiful. Nobody deserves judgment, really. Going through this life is the hard thing.
What you're saying is beautiful. It sounds like you're describing a realization of this lovingness that you are touching, which the image of a beloved teacher represents.
When we begin this work, that lovingness feels far away. It comes maybe only in the presence of somebody like a grandparent or a teacher, especially a teacher. But ultimately, the process is to recognize that what you're finding and experiencing there is inside of you.
The tendency to place love outside ourselves
You've encountered this lovingness in different ways, especially in the circular breathings. You can start to look into how we tend to place that in a person, an object, a situation, or a context (for example, a meditation). There is a sense that it's somehow out there, in a place or in time.
This is a really subtle exploration. In a sense, it's all about questioning beliefs, and they're very subtle beliefs. For example: "I can only experience this loving compassion when I'm in the presence of this person." That belief is valuable up to a point, because it can bring you into the presence of that person. But at some point, you can go deeper and question: is this only available in a certain time and a certain place?
I'm not proposing for you to believe that it is always present. I'm proposing that you question the belief. Just wonder: what if it's not only available at a certain time and in a certain place? I feel like you're coming close to that edge where something could really shift.
I don't know if it's the same thing, but my sense is that it is there all the time. I just recognize it more in certain meditations, in certain moments.
If you at times experience the lack of it, then you don't fully experience that it's always there.
It's clear it's always there when I recognize it. But it's not clear when I don't.
I see. When you recognize it, it is clear to you that it's always there, but then that recognition is lost, or you feel more disconnected.
As if I forget it in ordinary life.
Forgetting as a belief
So look at the fact that you forget it, and look at the forgetting itself as a belief. Seeing yourself as someone who forgets is useful at first, because it puts you in a position of openness, practice, exploration, an invitation to prayer, an invitation to meditation. But at one point it can become a loop, a trap: "I forget this, I remember it, I only remember it if I practice or meditate." The forgetting can settle into a belief that remembering is needed.
I'm not invalidating the process of remembering. I'm saying that it's useful to a point where it can become an obstacle. It can become the belief that you are capable of forgetting this. And so now you're forgetting; now you need to remember. But what if it is present now?
Direct contact with the experience
For example, what are we talking about? We're talking about a loving compassion. If you close your eyes for a moment: when I say "this loving compassion," and you refer to what you meant, what you're talking about in your experience, do you have a sense of what you're talking about, the experience of it?
Yes.
And it's not just the words. The words are pointing to the experience, which you know as loving compassion. So are you needing to remember it to know it's there?
No, but it's as if it's a subtle background, and sometimes the doors are open to perceive it. Maybe now they're still open from the meditation.
Those are thoughts. Right now, those are thoughts. Are you having the experience that you refer to as loving compassion, in the sense that you know what you're talking about because you can access the experience? See how you were tempted to believe a story that you only have access to it because of a meditation you did previously.
Yeah.
If you think of the love you felt from your teacher, that loving compassion, it will refer to a knowing of that experience. In the meditation, was the experience particular to one person?
No, the experience was a love from everywhere. It wasn't particular.
Exactly. And I was saying you could shift and remember specifically from your teacher, and it's going to have a different quality, but it's going to be the same love. As you remember it, you have direct contact with what you're remembering. It's brought up by a different image, by a memory, but the experience you're having is in this moment. The experience you had in the meditation today: you can currently direct your attention to it and you know it because you directly experience it right now. Is that correct?
I think so. I have thoughts that say I recognize it, but it's a bit more jumbled, a little dimmer. But maybe that's just the mind.
The mind's agenda
Now we're talking about intensity, how strong it is or not. But see how the mind has an agenda, an intention to convince you that you do not have access to this experience now.
So this experience: where is it happening? Is it happening two hours ago in the meditation? Is it happening tomorrow? Is it happening now, and is it inside of you?
I don't know.
You feel you've lost access to the experience of loving compassion. Ask yourself: how do you know what you're talking about? What experience are you referring to? What is it like? And you will touch loving compassion. Where are you touching it? Here and now, inside of you.
The mind is going to do all sorts of trickery to convince you of beliefs: you don't have access to it here and now; it's over there; it's in the past; you need to do this or that to get there; you are no longer able to get there because you're no longer in the right conditions. And so on.
What we're doing now is working on those more subtle beliefs. As you work on them and really see how you have an agenda, you'll notice there is a desire to disown this loving compassion, to not take responsibility, and to have it depend on something or someone, a situation, a place, not here, not now.
The impulse to disown
You will have an impulse to disown it, and then the mind will come as a servant of that impulse. The impulse says, "I don't want to take responsibility for this. I want to disown this." And the mind says, "Well, here are some stories and beliefs to convince you of that. Why don't you believe that you only have access to it because you just had a meditation?" Then layers and layers of beliefs accumulate until you don't even try to connect with and invoke loving compassion, because it's "not available," because you "know" it's not.
There are aspects of our nature we cannot lose. I can lose this cup and have to find it. But what is our nature? We can only lose it by pretending, by believing that it's not. That's why this work is called realization, or waking up. It's not achieving something. It's discovering your true nature, waking up to your true nature. Who are you? Seeing who you are is seeing who you are not. As you see who you are not, you discover your true nature. And there are qualities of our true nature that, if we take responsibility, we have access to always, because they are our true nature.
Freedom and responsibility
What is the impulse that wants to disown it, that wants to not take responsibility? It is literally the desire to not have responsibility. We can talk about this in many different ways. There's an aspect that is evolutionary: a child is born without the capacity to be responsible and needs to learn responsibility. But at this level, it's more of a spiritual responsibility.
The best description of this is actually from the Bible, the story of the prodigal son. There are two sons: one who is responsible and one who is not. One goes out into the world, wastes his inheritance, parties, destroys himself, and then comes back to the father. And the father embraces him.
It's a very paradoxical part of our nature, but the father and the son are one and the same. The son who chooses freedom is the only one who can be embraced by the father. The son who never left home, who stayed to be obedient and was never free, never really chose the father. The son who left the father's house and then returned chose the father. That's why the father embraced him and celebrated: "My son who had left has returned." The key is that he left and he returned. He chose. And that is why the father celebrates.
The pull toward non-responsibility is the exploration of our freedom. Ultimately, our freedom includes the freedom to suffer if we choose. Not taking responsibility and suffering is a choice made in freedom. And then we can still choose to remember our true nature. The problem in the end is that once you recognize it, you can't go back. And so there is this constant postponement: "Just one more day. Just let me party one more day." This is what a teacher I knew was pointing to when he would say: we are pretending not to be enlightened.
I was noticing how the mind wants to turn everything into strategy, like, "Okay, so now I have to recognize that it's there all the time." But all of that is useless. It's there. That's the end.
Yeah. You run out of problems. But you're still going to find a way to convince yourself there's a problem and believe that story. It happens every day.
Choosing suffering
Just look at this: whenever you're struggling or suffering, wonder, "Maybe I'm choosing this." Not from a place where something over there is choosing it and you're the victim of a choice that a part of you is making. I mean: I am choosing this. I wonder why I'm doing this. What am I getting out of this? Then you can stop having a conflict with your choices and understand more deeply why you're making them.
We have habits. For example, you have a habit of eating chocolate every morning. Every morning you crave chocolate. Imagine chocolate were even more addictive, because our habits can be really addictive. It's hard to just stop eating chocolate. You need to understand why you're choosing it. And it's going to be: "If I don't eat chocolate, I feel anguish." So instead of trying to force yourself to stop, you can realize you're choosing it. Why? Because it takes away the anguish. You see it's a completely free choice you're making. You're just choosing not to feel the anguish. Then you can choose: do I want to eat the chocolate, or do I want to feel the anguish?
At one point, if you've eaten the chocolate enough that it starts to feel wrong, and over months and years it's really making things worse, you might change your mind and start feeling the anguish.
The consequences of recognition
That's what we're talking about here, because recognizing this loving compassion will have a lot of consequences for your life, to recognize that it is always you. And so we would have to face those consequences, or keep pretending it's not available.
I hope I don't pretend anymore, because it's amazing. I can't imagine living all the time like that.
Anything is possible.