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LOVE FLOWS FROM EMPTINESS

Every moment love is gently knocking

from inside, longing to flow out;

but we are busy looking elsewhere,

searching in the market place of “me’s”

to fill the Emptiness that is, itself, vast Love.1

The truth that is our essence may be called many names, but it is ultimately nameless. It is empty of definition, empty of separation, and yet this Mystery apparently loves to BE, creating out of its single essence infinite expressions of being, which it loves unconditionally as itself. Awakening to the truth of our oneness will invariably lead to love. Love seems to be the first movement of our true nature. Truth moves through mind as wisdom, insight, understanding, and discrimination. Truth moves through the heart as unconditional love, compassion, happiness, joy, and gratitude. The Heart of Awareness is the inseparability of Truth and love.

Isn’t the gift of love really the gift of being received fully? The only thing capable of seeing and receiving life in its fullness, loving it for what it is rather than for what it can do for us, is the Truth of what we are. The ego wants something to fill itself up, yet Truth’s indefinable emptiness is what moves as wisdom and love. Are we willing to be emptied so that Truth can shine through us and move in us? Can we receive the love that is trying to empty us of untruth? It has sometimes been said that love is blind, but actually love sees clearly; it simply has no attachments.

Love has many faces, but the deepest and most powerful love is beyond any feeling state. It is an unconditional love that does not discriminate, judge, grasp, or reject. Of course, our love of friends, partners, children, pets, art, mountains, or trees are all expressions of a kind of love, but I am pointing to a deeper love. It is a love that is not exclusive, a love that flows from Oneness. It is a love that flows right out of emptiness, a love that touches both our joys and our sufferings. Emptiness is the Heart of Awareness, the limitless and undivided heart that sees clearly and loves without exception all that it appears to create in its own dream.

WHAT IS EMPTINESS EMPTY OF?

In itself, Emptiness is infinite potential, or Source. Yet Emptiness cannot be separated from the fullness or forms of life itself, so what is Emptiness empty of? The Emptiness that becomes love is empty of concepts, empty of self, empty of distinction, empty of resistance. It is a seeing of the moment and an intimate sensitivity to it that is empty of “me.” To be empty means we are open, available for whatever or whoever is in front of us. To be empty means we are not stuck anywhere but can experience the flow of life. Awareness in itself is empty, is it not, until it lands on an object? Emptiness allows the world to appear and separation to disappear. Our freedom, inherent wisdom, and selfless love arise right out of Emptiness. Another word for Emptiness is Openness.

Minds fear emptiness, imagining it means loneliness, detachment, absence of love, unconnectedness, lack. The psychological experience of emptiness is based on a sense of deficiency—being devoid of nourishment, connection, or loving warmth on the level of heart or feeling a lack of purpose or meaning on the level of mind. To the conditioned mind, emptiness is regarded as a failure of love, worthiness, or purpose; egos want to avoid such feeling. We fill our lives, homes, bellies, minds, and free time with “stuff” to keep from feeling empty, or we may succumb to feelings of despair.

But have you ever allowed yourself to truly experience emptiness without a story line, to be undivided from emptiness, to be emptiness? Emptiness is nothing like our mind’s ideas or fears. There is a vast difference between the mind’s peering into its idea of emptiness and actually being empty of self, empty of definition, empty of concepts.

LOVE REFUSES TO SEPARATE

In those moments when we are free of identification with ego, oneness reveals itself and, from that sense of unity and connection, love and gratitude move naturally. Strange as this seems to our conditioned mind, this is a love that has no conditions. It does not demand that we agree with or even like the person or thing we find ourself loving. As Nisargadatta put it, “Love is the refusal to separate.”

LOVE IS KISSING YOU FROM THE INSIDE

This love can be discovered in your true heart, and when it is, you cannot believe how deeply loved every speck of you actually is. Every part of you and the world is seen clearly as what it is, but nothing is judged unworthy of being loved. There are no conditions for this love, and its felt sense has nothing to do with approval—an addiction that begins in childhood for many as a poor substitute for love. This unconditional love, a divine love, agape, comes from your own true nature. It is the love you have been longing for outside, but here it is kissing you on the inside with a tenderness and warmth that melt separation.

We may have awakened to Spirit or to empty awareness, but realization is incomplete if it lacks love and compassion. Buddhists use the term prajna to point to the true heart wisdom that does not divide emptiness from love.

WHAT DOES AWAKENESS FEEL LIKE IN MY HEART?

Just as we can inquire deeply, “Who or what am I?” we can also inquire, “What is love?” or “What does awakeness feel like in my heart?” or “How does love want to move in this situation or with this person?” Awakening to the heart’s deepest love delivers an experience of oneness, but with or without an awakening, anyone can begin to have a felt sense of his or her own warm and compassionate heart. What we give our attention to, we give reality to. Put your attention on your heart space and stay open to what is revealed. We may see the ways we are defending our heart, trying to protect a “self” from being hurt, but we can inquire whether love actually needs protection. Can love itself be harmed or threatened?

A QUIET “I LOVE YOU”

We may find there is tremendous fear around love or loving—fear of being rejected, fear of feeling vulnerable. Adyashanti once observed that there is something people seem to fear more than death, and that is love. We can stay “separate” until our last breath, but in the deepest, truest love, it is impossible to maintain separation. It is often in relationships that we find the most challenge to living from our home ground, the emptiness from which love and Truth flow so naturally.

Adyashanti once gave a very simple practice for connecting with our heart and connecting with one another through love rather than fear. The practice was one of saying “I love you” quietly inside before having a conversation. Before engaging or even just encountering someone or something, we pay attention to the field of our shared essence and connection. Saying “I love you” can open our experience of the true heart. While this exercise was initially given as a way of connecting in conversation, I found myself engaging in this practice with every single aspect of life. Just saying a quiet “I love you” to everything, in random moments, began to happen spontaneously, and it pulsated through my whole being. It kept opening the felt sense of the heart beyond my wildest imaginings, and with each pulsing of love, there was a moment of deep joy.

Here are some examples. A stranger walking down the street: “I love you.” The person I am sitting with in my office: “I love you.” The waitstaff and cooks in the restaurant: “I love you.” The driver of a taxicab: “I love you.” The belly I am washing in the shower: “I love you.” The knee that has a twinge of pain: “I love you.” The empty bottle tossed on the street: “I love you.” The grass growing in the sidewalk crack: “I love you.” A moment of worry about the future: “I love you, little thinking mind.” Sitting with other women waiting for results of a mammogram: “I love you.” Reading a news story about a victim and perpetrator: “I love you both.” The sound of rain on the roof: “I love you.” Ramana Maharshi: “I love you.” Adyashanti: “I love you.” Before going to sleep at night: “I love you to all who come to mind.”

MIND IS NOT THE AGENT OF LOVE

Now in this exercise, the quiet words “I love you” are simply evoking a remembrance, a felt sense of the love we are. The words are inviting Consciousness out of its identification with thought and judgment and into its deeper expression of love. It is not that a separate “I” is trying to love a separate “you.” The one you may imagine is supposed to be trying to love everything is not able to do so. This is not an affirmation for egos. The truth in You sees through the eyes of love. Our mind is not the agent of love, but our unique expression of Being can become a clearer and clearer reflection of the emptiness and love that are synonymous with the Heart, the Self. We cannot really “love our neighbor as ourself” until we know the truth about our Self.

After inviting a meditation along the lines of saying “I love you” quietly inside toward anyone or anything that comes into view, one man told me, “I used to think that I had to feel love first before I could say ‘I love you,’ but saying it first, inside, seemed to evoke love and expand my heart.” A woman who had been using this simple practice for a while exclaimed: “It’s so efficient! For years, I tried using affirmations, therapy, all manner of things to try to become more loving, but this opens the heart immediately. And I find that now, even my mind seems to be getting on board. And you don’t have to even like or agree with the person you are loving!” You may prefer just using the word and felt sense of love, dropping the “I” and the “you.” This may be a more accurate reminder of the love that flows from oneness.

For those who think this is a “fake it till you make it” practice, I see it differently. The one who feels he or she would be “faking it” will never be the source of love; we are simply directing our attention and our consciousness to the Heart that is already love and loving. The reason the mind may eventually “get on board” is that it feels so much better to love than to judge.

EYE GAZING

Another useful practice, for those open to doing it, is an eye-gazing exercise that is actually a form of meditation with a partner. Quite simply, we quietly and innocently begin to look in the eyes of a partner, a friend, or our beloved as that person gazes back into our eyes. This is not a staring exercise, and we are not trying to fall in love with anyone; we are simply looking into the looking. We may find ourselves feeling vulnerable, afraid our partner may see something we don’t want seen. Or we may find our mind getting caught up in trying to figure out what is going on in our partner. We can close our eyes for a bit and notice what is happening inside, perhaps inviting ourselves to pay attention to our heart, but then perhaps open the eyes again and simply look. Notice, when you pay attention to simply the looking itself, whether there is any place “your” looking or your partner’s looking stops or starts, any place it divides itself.

Regardless of our mind’s thoughts, is there any separation in the looking itself? We may discover, as Saint Francis of Assisi did, “What you are looking for is what is looking.” In using this form of meditation for many years myself and inviting it in groups, I have found it a powerful way to wordlessly touch and open the heart—even if what we may initially discover are fears or defenses against loving. In doing this practice, the emptiness that is simply aware of whatever arises will begin to become conscious of itself in the looking and becomes love just gazing at love.

BEING LOVE RATHER THAN SEARCHING FOR IT

We may be longing for love but afraid of love, afraid of being seen to be flawed, unworthy, unlovable; we may fiercely guard our separation. What is frightened is a false self. We fear being seen as we see ourselves: limited, unworthy, imperfect. But true seeing is identical with loving. The love you are sees its own radiance in you and in the apparent other. To truly see is to love. When we open our heart to anything—a flower, a person, the sky, grief—we feel alive, touched, tender, and often vulnerable. We may feel we have been hurt in love, but love itself is eternal; it cannot be harmed; it cannot be destroyed. In love, there is no “other,” only the appearance of another. Understand that longing for love is a divine longing. We are searching for our deepest Self without knowing it.

Contrary to the lyrics of many love songs or the lyrics of our life story, real love has no beginning and no end. It arises spontaneously in freedom. It is indiscriminate and, like the sun, “shines on the just and the unjust.” It gives itself to the moment without asking for anything in return. It is unselfconscious. Love’s sensitivity to life excludes nothing and no one. It has no opposite called “hate.” This is a love that knows no division. It touches life as it is. It is undivided.

Consider what it is to be love rather than to seek it. Consider doing the small things in your daily life lovingly instead of grudgingly. Love’s gifts are endless; your life is one of those gifts. Love’s greatest gift is itself. It has a wisdom that moves with no one to figure it out. It does not see an “other.” In the deepest love, there simply are not “two.” And yet love pretends to be two in order to dance. The dance includes both joy and suffering.