(This is Part 16 of a continuing series. Go back to Pt 15.)
10. The Principle of Love
To illustrate the last of the ten principles, I'd like to tell you a true story:
Some years ago a friend had an alcoholic daughter. Her 19 year-old daughter would come home drunk every night at 3 or 4 am. My friend would wait up for her and scream at her when she came in the door. "What are you doing!!! How can you do this!!?" and so on.
Now did this have any effect? None at all. Her daughter continued to come home drunk at all hours of the morning. This went on for months.
Then an unusual thing happened. My friend woke up. She broke through her ego one day and literally woke up to who she actually was.
After that my friend's daughter would still come home drunk at 3 or 4 in the morning. And my friend would still wait up for her. Only this time, when her daughter came through the door my friend would just say, "Sweetheart, I love you." And she meant it. That's all she wanted to say.
My friend was no longer concerned about who or what her daughter was. She just wanted her to know that she loved her just as she was, without conditions. She was no longer trying to change her daughter, but just extending unconditional love.
Did this have an effect? Indeed it did. Her daughter at first couldn't believe it, she was so used to being condemned, screamed at, made wrong, etc. But then one day she came to her mother and said, "Mom, help me. I need help." She knew now that her mother was her ally.
Notice that love accomplished what being resentful and critical and condemning could not. This is our destiny—you and I and all sentient beings in the universe—to express love, to embody love.
And not just any ol' kind of love, but unconditional love, the kind that doesn't love you because you're behaving well or making good grades or being a good daughter or boss or whatever, but rather, loves you just as you are.
It's not difficult to be "spiritual" on the mountaintop, to be conscious and loving while we're meditating in the mountains. The real test is: Can we be conscious and loving while we're down in the valley living everyday life?
Being critical and condemning in everyday life is an exhibition of great desert spots in our consciousness. Deserts need rain, the healing rain of love, the healing rain of compassion and appreciation and thankfulness.
Jesus changed water into wine. And so can we, as we turn negativity into love, complaining into thanksgiving. We can beautify our lives and the lives of others with the red wine of gladness and thankfulness for this mystery hidden within ordinary reality.
This doesn't mean that we condone misfortune or hurtful acts. If we see something unfortunate happening to someone we might very well help. It simply means that we end the resistance to reality, that we stop the endless condemning of existence for being the way it is.
It means that we say an internal "Yes!" to everything. Externally we say either "yes" or "no," but internally everything is a "yes."
We go on the green and stop on the red, but internally we say "yes" to red and green both. If someone asks us to have sex with them we might say "yes" or "no." But internally we have a total "yes" to that person being the way they are and asking that question just as they did.
We come out of a vast, vast process. And then we turn around with our amusing three-pound brain, face this vast process and say, "You know, you got a lot right. But let me fix the rest for you." Perhaps existence is its own standard for how things should be.
If our daughter is an alcoholic (substitute whatever you like) and we've been wishing and praying and ranting and hoping for ten years to change her and it hasn't worked, let's see where the problem lies: Maybe it lies in our perception.
Can we really know what's best for anyone else? Does anyone else know better than you what's best for you on your path? Everyone is following their own sacred path in life and we can't really know how that will turn out.
The elderly English king Henry IV had a problem: His problem was that his son, Prince Hal—who was going to inherit the throne soon—was a wastrel. He spent his days in bars, drinking and wenching. And yet he went on to become the greatest king in English history.
Can we absolutely know what's for the highest good of this universe? I doubt it. But what we can do is to fulfill our role in the play with as much love and compassion as we can, and trust the outcome to be whatever it is.
When we do that, when we bless everything in existence, red and green, black and white, "just" and "unjust," then we are expressing God's love. You are the way that reality blesses itself. It has no other way except through you.
We can bless our past, our "fortunes" and "misfortunes," we can bless everything that has gone "right" in the world and everything that has gone "wrong." Nothing left out. And from that unstressed place we'll be much more effective.
If we're working to save the whales, for instance, we can focus on the whales dying out and be depressed or we can focus on how lucky we are that these beautiful animals still exist on the earth—and be much more effective from that positive place in saving them.
Love is the ultimate solution to all problems, to all issues. Love for yourself, love for those around you, love for the world-as-it-is. Then we are instruments for divine love, which through us is able to shine on itself.
The compassion of reality is that it doesn't move for us while we're busy resisting it. If it did, we could never discover who we really are. By staying the way it is, by staying true to its own nature, reality allows us to discover at last the true source of our joy and happiness.
—jim sloman, 1.6.04 for Aug 23
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