“The Self alone exists; and the Self alone is real.
Self is only Being—not being this or that. It is Simple Being.
BE, and there is the end of ignorance….
If one can only realize at heart what
one’s true nature is, one then will find that it is infinite wisdom, truth, and bliss
without beginning and without end.”
—Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950),
Indian Spiritual Master
“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892),
American poet, essayist, and journalist;
author of Leaves of Grass (1855)
Love is simply recognizing
the sacred in another, in fact
the same sacred
that is in you in another.
When you live authentically,
in alignment with your Source,
you will naturally mirror the love that is your Source.
You will see the futility of being anything
other than who you really are.
Whenever you feel pain yourself, any pain,
or inflict pain on others,
you have forgotten who you are.
You are asleep and need to wake up.
Your Source knows only good;
by being an instrument of this good,
you are contributing to the collective wellness
of all those close to you
and through them, to all of humanity.
When the love in you
recognizes the love that is in another—
what is your very essence—
that’s “it,” that awareness is “it”!
The “it” is the sacred
and that sacred is in you!
Take 15 minutes and
go into silence; try to see the
many facets of Oneness
of a simple, stoic frog
sitting patiently
on a shiny, green lily pad.
You cannot hope to do great things
until you know
you have greatness within you.
Where do you think all great thoughts—
of wonder, of revelation, of hope—
come from, both big and small? From silence, of course.
Can it be any surprise, then, to discover that
this is where God also resides?
When you find love and become that love,
you will have found your true Self.
All real growth involves
the attraction and internalization of divine energy
and the manifestation of its power and relevance.
The objective is always service—
the giving of gifts for the common good.
All your searching, confusion, doubt, and anxieties
will disappear when you discover
who and what you are—love, unlimited love.
This knowing—
that you are love—
allows you to know you are worthy of every blessing,
every kindness, every thing.
Unconditional love is the one connecting link
you share with all living things.
It is literally embedded in your DNA.
When you recognize and embrace your very essence,
and accept it as who you are,
the more abundance of every kind will appear
in your everyday life, especially love.
For once you have found it, it has found you
and will manifest itself through you.
As a result, your life will never be the same.
The mind is always looking for meaning
and direction, its identity, its very essence.
If it fails to find this in truth,
it will find it in form, in falsity, in frivolity.
In other words, it will find it in EGO.
Remember that your Self or true Nature
is not something that is false or fabricated
or phony or fluctuating. It is constant, pure, natural,
and authentic. It is incorrupt and permanent. It is real.
It is also something you dearly love and
want to know more about; in fact, you want to become
intimate with it, to become one with it.
Why? Because you know when you are real, you are home.
And when you are home, you are at peace.
The power that is represented
in “all that is” is also in you.
It includes empathy, understanding, hope,
compassion, resiliency, patience, enthusiasm,
tolerance, resourcefulness, creativity, optimism—
all the glorious manifestations of love.
A raindrop is happy indeed
when it enters a stream;
it is even happier when it becomes
part of a mighty river;
and it is as happy as it can be
when it flows into a vast ocean.
For to become one with your Source
is to come home again,
and home is where you know you are loved
for simply being who you are.
Everything that happens in your life is
not meant to cause you distress and hardship
or even joy and elation;
it is meant to wake you up!
A powerful mantra, affirmation, or prayer
is simply to say, “Thank you.”
With heartfelt conviction.
You should say it at least one hundred times a day
as you go about “being” and “doing.”
This tells every one and every thing
in the Universe how much you love them.
Love is that place where you know
we are all One.
Just having an intellectual understanding
that you are love really doesn’t change things.
The change comes when you actually know and apply
this truth to a given situation. When you are hurt,
when you are ailing, when you feel inadequate or flawed,
these are the times you need to let love in
and flow through you. To “be” you.
Love heals all wounds. It comforts your soul.
It renews you in every way.
Many people think, “I am not good enough,”
“I am inadequate,” or “I am flawed.”
And the ego is fine with all of this. Why? Because if
you buy into these beliefs, this kind of thinking,
you are doomed. You are at the mercy
of the ego and it will dictate the terms of
every aspect of your life.
The result? It is the master and you are its slave.
You have surrendered your essence
and your Being to false ideas, silly notions,
to beliefs that are simply not true.
Any movement, any religion, any point of view,
if it tries to explain itself using only words,
is at risk of being misunderstood.
That’s because each word by itself is a potential error.
Words by their very nature are only words,
and are totally incapable of conveying
the full meaning of what is intended.
Of course, words can point, describe, infer and imply,
but they are a poor substitute for the real thing.
So what is the real thing?
It is that which is experienced directly and personally,
and deeply touches the soul.
Here is the lesson: Whenever you feel anything—
sad, hurt, angry, jealous, fearful,
upset, lost, rejected, ignored, or depressed—
other than deep peace, which is your natural state,
it is telling you something important.
It is telling you that you have forgotten who you are!
You just had a thought that has a large ego component
buried somewhere in it, and you are not the ego.
Your task is now clear:
Find this ego component and promptly take it out.
All of it. (It’s called an egoectomy.)
Once you do this, the particular negative feeling
you were experiencing
dissipates and simply goes away.
It has been dissolved; it no longer exists.
You are free!
Your normal state of awareness
can best be described as unconscious or asleep
because you have no idea who you are.
You are simply being consumed and distracted
by a preoccupation with both mind and matter.
You are oblivious to Now, you are oblivious to Being,
and you are oblivious to your Source.
In this, the unconscious state,
you are not the one who is using your mind.
Far from it. It is the ego that is using your mind and
for no useful purpose other than to satisfy
its own selfish interests and demented desires.
You need to know that feeling hurt or depressed
on occasion has a greater purpose behind it.
It tells you that your thoughts are not in alignment with truth.
Consider this: Feeling hurt physically sends you
a strong message: Don’t touch that hot stove!
And feeling hurt emotionally also sends you
a strong message: Your thinking is irrational or illogical;
it’s all wrapped up in the ego.
When you finally see what is going on,
you come to realize that this suffering had to happen
to wake you up. And once in this, the enlightened state,
you are able to see beyond the petty fray,
the mundane minutiae of everyday life to a new frontier,
a new understanding. Now, with this as your vantage point,
your new perspective, you are better able to see your role
in the greater scheme of things: