There is a way of breathing that’s a shame and a suffocation, and there’s another way of expiring, a love breath, that lets you open infinitely.
RUMI, The Illuminated Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)
The deeper your practice of ego relaxation, the more you feel the living presence coming alive inside of you. Like a fountain that circulates its nectar, yet spills over to hydrate the surrounding ground, the qualities of your true nature naturally want to be embodied and extended. Quite literally, your body, mind, heart, hands, voice, relationships, all of your life’s experiences, and even your instinctual drives exist ultimately to transmit Grace. How can your human vessel be put to the best possible use down here on Earth?
The answer, as you already know, has something to do with love.
We all want love and need love at every stage of life. Yet in our culture, we bandy the word love about, Hallmark style, but in a way that often lacks gravity. We might say, “Love ya!” with a casual wave goodbye, or “I love you,” when what we really mean is, “Can you please give me some reassurance that you love me too?” This is better than holding our heart back, but love’s presence is so much deeper than a transaction to make us feel secure. It is deeper than a positive emotion. Love is who we are minus any defenses. It is our heart at rest as pure Being.
Before you can be the presence of love, you first have to receive it. Inevitably, this means relaxing your search for love. Cease demanding that it come through your preferred channels. (If you would like more help with this, please explore my audio book, Meditations on Boundless Love.) Only when you relax your demands for love can you begin to feel love’s presence already here with every breath, in every sound, in all that your eyes light upon. The more you live into the themes and practices in this book, the more you recognize that love is always here, even when you have just received a cancer diagnosis.
A DIVINE TRANSMISSION
Love’s presence is not something that can be explained or taught. I can only share how I know it and invite you to reflect on your experience. When I sit with someone who sincerely wishes to surrender, love is a divine transmission that pours out like an ocean of nourishing golden nectar. Its presence pervades my body, exuding a warm, healing glow of unconditional allowing. Eyes of the heart perceive the precious beauty of the living, breathing mystery sitting before me. Love’s presence even changes my vision. Hard edges of form disappear, stripping everything back to its pure essence. I am completely transparent in the timeless now, just being no-thing and no-one, yet utterly fulfilled.
If words are needed, they come without effort. If some gesture or action is needed, that happens. Things flow, with a richness and meaning. Being love’s presence is natural when sitting with a student, at the bedside of a sick husband, or when a friend has received some devastating news. In these moments love is all that matters. However, it can be so easy to forget amidst the busyness of an ordinary day. Living love’s presence is ongoing moment-to-moment practice.
A few days before Christmas, I was driving my usual route to Whole Foods. While I waited at the stoplight, I noticed a homeless woman. There is often a homeless person at this traffic light, but that day, I took a closer look, taking her more fully in. I read her sign, explaining that she has lost her job, her home, and is living in her car. I feel sorry that her life is so tough, that so many people’s lives are so tough. As I reach into my wallet and pull out $20, I hear the voices of others inside saying, “She will probably just drink this away,” “Don’t be a fool—better to give to a formal charity,” or even “This is just your white middle-class guilt.” I ignore their advice.
It is cold, and while I will never know whether this moment of generosity translated into a hot meal or a bottle of whiskey that night, what I do know is that as I opened the window of my car to give her that cash, our eyes met in an exchange that had nothing to do with money. It was the spontaneous embodiment of a prayer: “May the tides turn in a kinder direction for this woman and for us all. Amen.” Pervading this interaction was the transmission of love’s presence. It saw fit to deliver an important message within those twenty seconds before the light turned green: we all matter, we all have value, every single one of us is loved, and to hang in there even when things look like such a hopeless mess. So what if that message has to be delivered by a stranger at the stoplight?
Reflect on your experience, and perhaps you’ll see that life unfurls in cycles, sometimes joyful, sometimes very painful, and in proportions that often do not feel fair. We will all have to bear things that feel unbearable, whether from sickness, old age, bereavement, or watching a family member wrestle with the demon of addiction. Strangely, it is often in these extreme moments that we become receptive for pure realms beyond our making or understanding to pour through. Heaven comes to earth if we are willing to drop out of the commentating mind and just be here, keeping our heart as open as possible, flowing with what is most natural.
GRACE BRINGS WHAT IS NEEDED
Every one of us is capable of being a Grace-delivery device, in and amidst the ordinary moments of a regular day. It does not matter whether you have a degree, how old you are, or what you think you know spiritually. One of the most powerful transmissions of Grace I have ever seen poured through the tiny frail body of a ninety-year-old great-grandmother. Her time-worn hands moved to tenderly cup the face of another in an impossible moment of loss. The living presence radiated pure, simple, perfectly attuned words, but the Grace poured not just from her mouth. Like a powerful beam of light penetrating through her entire vessel, it poured directly into the marrow of another, saying, “You are not alone. Love is here. You will get through this.”
It is stunning how the mystery of Grace always brings forth precisely what is needed. Often this is different than what you think you need or what you think another needs. If you stay present as love, without an agenda, the specifics come forward naturally. Love’s presence does not even need words. Often, love is most eloquent in the silence we share, through a kind gaze, a warm smile, or a humanizing goodness that lets another go first in the traffic. Ego relaxation gets your mind out of the way so the fountain can flow deeper into this world.
MAKE PRESENCE YOUR PRIORITY
Being the presence of love hinges on your capacity to be more fully present. That means the commentating mind is dropped into the cave of the heart, grounded in the immediacy of the body, here and now. Staying intimate with your direct experience, relishing the rise and fall of each breath, and feeling the sensation of your feet on the ground helps you live ego relaxation while making your children’s lunch, speaking to a colleague on Skype, or driving to your various errands.
Even when you are dedicated to embodying Grace, it is easy to become preoccupied with your concerns and creative projects. A subtle narcissism can creep in, making you oblivious to the invitations within the seemingly minor interactions of any day. Perhaps the greatest challenge to being the presence of love in our present culture is bowing down to the false god of technology. Automatically obeying the demanding ping of every text, email, and Facebook notification will scatter your energy in multiple directions. This is a disaster if you sincerely wish to embody a more graceful way of being, as it will keep you living on the surface of yourself.
Although our present culture worships speed over elegance of action, neuroscience has verified what we intuitively know, that multitasking is significantly disintegrative to the brain. Your budding realization, not to mention your health, social, and relational well-being, requires that you have some uninterrupted time to just be. Furthermore, your presence cannot deepen without cultivating one-pointed concentration. I highly recommend turning all unnecessary notifications on your electronic devices off. Besides, who really wants to receive a Facebook post reporting on what you ate for dinner? Let us use technology wisely in ways that support the embodiment of Grace rather than hamper it.
LOVE AMIDST THE GRIT
Being the presence of love is not all sweetness and light. Inevitably in our loving of one another, we arrive at junctures that can be very challenging to navigate gracefully. What does it mean to be the presence of love in the face of relational friction?
Love itself does not force, yet it is the most powerful force. It wants to melt your armor, melt anything about you that is fixed, frozen, or fake so it can unfold deeper into this world. Often we do not even know cobwebs of closure exist in us until someone we live with shines a light on them. If you have been in a committed relationship, you know how challenging it can be when you trip over that same old argument you have been having with your beloved since the start. One night, when my husband and I were bumping up against a stubborn wall, I prayed a very practical, honest prayer: “Help! And help us be receptive to the help!”
The details of how our prayers are answered, heard, or even matter is a bigger conversation for another book. But later that night, after giving it up to Grace and hanging out in that mystery of unknowing, I began to feel the loving presence coming online inside, as if a blocked fountain was starting to gurgle again. A game-changing insight arrived: “Love always includes and integrates only what is true in all diverging perspectives.”
I recognized that this is the evolutionary pulse at work in nature. She gracefully allows death of forms that are no longer useful but at the same time does not reject or waste anything. Everything is integrated into a higher expression that is more useful in the now. The winter ice pack melts to become waterfalls. Plants harmonize around one another, adapting to survive specific climates. I was asked to make space for the truth in my husband’s perspective but not the ego defense in it, and to include the truth in my perspective but not the ego defense in it. We are never asked to surrender to any ego distortion, only to a deeper truth. I have found this resolves any battle of wills because it evolves us beyond the attachments, positions, and identifications of “I” and “my.” This is how love triumphs, and everyone wins. Thank you. Amen.
Embracing the grit within our human relating is how love’s presence continues to evolve us. It always provides an opportunity to learn something, to let go of something, to allow space for more love to extend itself. This awakens you to the fact that your relationships with others, even with their imperfections, are such gifts. If you knew you were seeing your dear friend or beloved spouse for the very last time in this world, wouldn’t the most real thing you could possibly say be, “Thank you for everything. It’s been a privilege. I love you.”
TRUE EXPRESSION OF LOVE
Authentic awakening always results in feeling more love toward all beings. The more your sense of separation dissolves, the more a spontaneous kindness pours forth, and that makes you less self-centered and naturally more generous, not just with a few special people but with everyone. While your mind feels deliciously empty of that crackling old radio station of the past, your heart takes on a fullness, expressing many of the most important qualities of humanity: compassion, empathy, joy, strength, courage. You start to feel the palpable presence of love as your deepest heart.
Given that our world is often so lacking in real love, you will likely feel the nudge to not hold back from expressing it. Aldous Huxley, in his final summation, said, “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.’”1 While you are at it, see if you can be a little more appreciative.
Acknowledge your brother or sister for the tireless work they are doing on behalf of your aging parents. Say a sincere thank you to your husband, your mother, or your friend for bearing with you through the latest trial or simply for cooking a delicious dinner. Be a little more patient with your children as you encourage them to do their homework. Be a little more forgiving with yourself when you stumble in ignorance, again.
When love’s presence is moving freely, that hollow sense of deprivation is no more. You become naturally generous because you are abiding within and part of the abundant source. Just as the water moves through the central axis of the fountain’s vessel and evenly extends outward before it loops back up again, love’s presence circulates through your body, heart, and mind and dissolves self-centered concerns. It also dissolves the sense of who is “giver” and who is “receiver,” eradicating any sense of sacrifice. Rather, you feel the flow of Grace, circulating through your human vessel.
MAGNETIZING THE MIRACULOUS
One of the questions I am asked most often, usually toward the end of a retreat when everyone is feeling their inner cup running over, is how they can help someone who seems desperately stuck or sick. I am sure there is someone in your immediate circle of family, friends, or loved ones who is in a bad way, whether through addiction, deep depression, an eating disorder, or worse. These pernicious forms of suffering always require specialist treatment. Yet is there anything spiritually that you, as a family member or caring friend, can do to help? Yes, there is.
Being the presence of love can take the form of holding the vision of another’s highest nature and refusing to see them only as their problem. This is a much better use of your energy than worrying about them or judging them for walking down a dark path. You might recall that trust is really the placement of your psychic attention. Right now, try this experiment. Consider the person whom you wish you could help (you could also do this for a country or a specific group of people). First, notice how it feels in your body, heart, and mind to place your trust in the forces of their ego. Now, notice how it feels in your body, heart, and mind to place your trust in the forces of their true nature to emerge through this and thrive.
I am sure you notice an immediate difference. One leads you to feel hopeless and worried and might result in you withdrawing from being present as love with that person. The latter will make you into a powerfully healing presence in their life, even if there is nothing specific that you do or say. Your trust in their capacity will transmit in some way as love. Imagine how it would feel if the roles were reversed. Would it feel more helpful to be around someone regarding you as your problem or someone who is holding the vision that you are more than this, that you will find your way and might even come to thrive?
When you place your trust not in another’s ego, but in their higher nature, you are spiritually calling it forward. With that woman at the stoplight, love’s unspoken transmission was also communicating, “It does not have to be this way.” Sometimes we need another to hold a possibility for us that we struggle to claim for ourselves. At this joining, not at the level of personality, but essence to essence, the door for the miraculous can open. I have witnessed so many extraordinary leaps in consciousness that it has taught me never to give up on anyone—to always hold the possibility for another’s transformation, even when it looks hopeless. Through Grace, it never is.
LOVING PRESENCE IN BODY, HEART, AND MIND
In time, with sincere devotion to your practice of ego relaxation, all four dimensions of Grace begin to synthesize. You feel a fuller, freer flow moving through your three primary centers: body, heart, and mind.
Your body takes on a grounded immediacy. You feel more substantial, as if truly inhabiting this vehicle in the present, even though you likely feel way “bigger” than your physical form. Presence itself always has that sense of fullness, of is-ness, making your actions more direct, clean, and potent. Just as a plant is nourished by its roots in the soil of the Earth and its leaves reaching toward the activating light of the sun, you feel what Vedic philosophy calls prana flowing through your body. You feel alive, more open, and energized. You might have felt a hint of this in the meditation in the previous chapter.
Love’s presence is by definition heart-full. The more you discover that nothing bad will happen if you stay present and feel everything, the more your heart can open. Compassion, empathy, joy, kindness, and courage can flow. When a hurt closes the door of your heart, compassion and forgiveness help it heal. In the process, it calls you into a whole other depth of heart where everything is resolved and absolved. On first glance this might look rather wet, sentimental. Interestingly, love’s presence also purifies the heart of attachment to your story. Thus, the fountain flows through the heart with objectivity, supporting not just personal expressions of love but universal love.
Love’s presence has a deeply settling effect on our entire being, and this includes the mind. Often the mind will not calm because you likely have been living too long in a state of agitation. Love’s presence first soothes and then settles a jumpy mind so you drop out of the patterned ego mind that is always referencing the past. Then, love’s presence is powerfully peaceful. It might feel as if your head is a vast open window to the sky, pervaded by a loving light and shimmering awareness. You see and know, yet not through historically based filters. This refines and expands your perception, giving way to unified vision.
Perhaps it makes more sense to you now why the instructions for every inquiry practice in this book have encouraged you to let the questions into your somatic experience, your felt experience, as well as your awareness. Including all three centers of your vessel as you practice supports a balanced, integrated awakening. You might even start to feel as if your deep belly, your heart, and your head are three specific spouts of the fountain that begin to overflow in synchronicity, circulating the nectar of love’s presence exponentially.
The following inquiry supports you to move through your day as a living fountain.
INQUIRY Being the Presence of Love
At first, I recommend sharing this inquiry question with a friend or else meditating into it as you have already been doing. Then, write the two questions on a sticky note and place it on your computer, the dashboard of your car, your fridge, or wherever you like. May it remind you to continuously yield to the living presence that knows exactly how to be love in and amidst the flow of your everyday life.
What’s it like, in body, heart, and mind when presence is your priority?
Get detailed and familiar with how it feels, in all three of your centers, when you are truly at home inside. Stay with this for at least ten minutes.
What does it mean, right now, to “be” love?
Being the presence of love is dynamic and ever unfolding, ever fresh, and precisely attuned to each situation. Perhaps it means being present and engaging with the checkout clerk at your supermarket, enjoying the exchange. Sometimes being love means listening more substantially, not just to words but to the unspoken. If you stay close to these questions, a most potent, beautiful, complete embodiment will find its way through you, moment to moment. ~
If you are sufficiently present, you recognize there is a deep sweetness to life itself. Ramana Maharshi beautifully said, “When your real, effortless, joyful nature is realized, it will not be inconsistent with the ordinary activities of life.”2 The simple moments where love is being radiated and circulated have the most meaning. At the end of life and at the beginning of life, when the veils between the realms are thinnest, we often see clearly what existence is really all for—love. You are an embodiment of the deepest Grace. Love is its signature.