The Discovery of Love


From a 1999 workshop transcript with Dharma Dharini based in part on a talk by one of the female Acharyas of Sri Kalki Bhagavan. This teaching was sometimes used as part of a preliminary seeing in a yajna for Awakening the Antaryamin. A tape called "The Flow of Life" may be available on www.kosmicmusic.com has much of her original teaching:

Acharyaji has taught that there are 3 types of lives. The first is the mundane, the material or superficial life. This type of life is most often lived when people opt for a secure life or a life where they seek endless pleasure. Those in this life want a wonderful spouse, beautiful kids, a wonderful house filled with beautiful things and several cars in the driveway. Life means nothing more.

The second is the contemplative or spiritual life. This person has arrived at the question, "What next? Am I born to live like a worm-to eat and breed and then to die? Is there anything more to my life?" Such a person knows no pleasure can give lasting fulfillment yet they are not sure what to do about it or why it is this way. When they know neither the cause or solution and cannot find any answer with logic, they move inward. This person is groping in the dark but very passionate about seeing life and Light. For most people, spirituality begins when they come across an unexplainable coincidence, a spiritual experience or a tremendous suffering. A religious person is a believer yet a spiritual person may not believe at all. He has simply begun to move inward rather than seeking external answers.

The third is the mystical or divine life. After the quest we come upon the Divine. There may be a mystical experience, a personal encounter with the Divine. Some may have had a near death experience. This person has discovered that life is not understandable and totally divine.

If you look into your own life, you will see that knowledge you can get from attending a class or reading a book yet wisdom is only gained when you look inward. That is when Light and Wisdom happen. So let's take some time to look inward to discover about love. Bhagavan has said that all that is necessary on this journey of transformation and enlightenment is courage and authenticity. Are we all up to it? Very good.

In most relationships there are two needs. They are the need to be loved and the need to be loved by someone. All that we do in life, all of our achievements and positions are in pursuit of these two needs. Nothing more.

Lets take a look into the second need. The need to be loved. Look into your heart. From the day you became aware of yourself as an individual you began seeking someone who would love you unconditionally in spite of what you are or are not. No matter if you are beautiful or not so beautiful, intelligent or not very intelligent, foolish or wise the quest is to find someone that would love you and only you passionately. This quest begins as the small child seeking this from his mother or father or those that raised him. You want to be loved totally and passionately in the beginning of your life from your parents. You expect to be loved by them like they love no one else on this planet. Happily you believe this. You slobber and belch at the table and throw your food. Everyone smiles and says how wonderful and beautiful you are. Then one evening at dinner you see your parents paying more attention to your brother. A dark thought crosses the mind. They are not mine alone. Maybe they love him more. So you smile and belch and throw your jello on the floor and your mothers tells you to grow up as she is sick of cleaning up your mess. You brother belches and dumps his peas and everyone claps and laughs. You have failed miserably in your quest. You realize it is not possible for them to love you and you alone. So the mind goes out in search of greener pastures.

You go to school and you seek a friend who will love you and only you, totally and completely. She is your best friend. You want a friend that will love you taotally. But one day you see her embracing her sister and they leave you behind to go to the movie. You see once more the quest has failed. So you look to your teacher and you become his prized pupil until the day you get a C. The quest for love has been a dead end once more. Then one day you meet your life partner. Yes, he will love me passionately until the day he dies. For some time you are secure in that love until you marry him and in a family dispute he sides with his mother and clearly seems to prefer being in the office to being at home.

You have a child. Yes, you think. This being I will shower with love and she will love me and only me. The mind is very happy for some time. But the baby screams when you pick her up and clearly prefers to be held by your husband or your sister, a stranger in the grocery store or just about anyone but you. So you have another child and all goes well until he is 8 and no longer wants to be seen with a parent. The grandchildren come until one day they too do not have time for you. Perhaps then you continue this quest by taking in house pets. More and more seeking for that one being who would love you and you alone.

There is that driving need to love and be loved completely. Yet somehow you never come across the experience where someone loves you totally. Sometimes there is a moment or two when his is experienced, but then you try to hold onto it forever and your heart breaks as it slips through your fingers. We are not able to experience that love from another forever.

Look for a moment at all the desires in your life. The desire to look beautiful, the desire to be smart, the desire to be strong, the desire to be the best you can be, to be perfect, to be loving, the desire to serve mankind, the desire to be kind, the desire to be the best at something, the desire to be very very wealthy, the desire to have a lot of money to be able to give to others, If you look very deep you will discover that this desire that you carry is basically a craving- a craving to be loved. The idea that you will be loved if you become these things which you desire to be is making use of you. It is keeping you in the conflict between what you are and what you want to be.

Look at that beautiful outfit you just bought and how carefully you dressed and did you hair today. What was the idea behind it? Did you feel if you were more beautiful you would get more love? Why did you take all those classes and gather all those certificates? Could it be that if you are somebody you might get more love? When that cashier in the supermarket asked you to donate to a charity you are not particularly concerned about and you did not really have money to spare, did you donate out of compassion or did you think you would gain more love and respect in her eyes and the eyes of those in line behind you by saying yes? Simply look at it.

Strangely for ll the seeking and craving if you really looked into your life you may mind that you never got this experience of being totally loved. ho on this planet can say that they he has been loved unconditionally by another person, as deep within there is a void that refuses to believe you are loved when you really are. There is that vacuum, that emptiness, that terrible fear of losing the love that you have that keeps you in line-hat keeps you in the state of a love beggar.

As we live our lives we come across our relationships that we have not chosen at least not while living. We can call them destiny relationships. Examples would be your parents, your siblings, your other relatives. You have not chosen them. They just happened to you. Then there are the other relationships that we chose to get into like with our friends, our spouses, or spiritual teachers. In each one of these relationships there is an strange uneasiness as sometimes a sense of guilt as deep down inside we know that we are selfish. We know that we are making use of the other person for our emptiness and needs.

Your friend calls you on a Saturday. What are you doing? he asks. You tell him you are moving a piano up a 5 flights of stairs. Can I come over? I will help. He says. What he is telling you is he is so lonely that he would rather shove a heavy piano up 5 flights of stairs in the middle of July than be alone with himself. You say sure! It will be great to see you! Silently relieved as you can make great use of his muscles.

Look into your life. Why do you work like a servant to those in your house. Cooking, cleaning, picking up after people and smiling all the time. Why do you work all that overtime to buy your wife beautiful things. Could this be true?

The mother keeps urging her child to become great who is living through her-hoping to experience through that child what she did not experience in her own life. The father goads his child to be good at sports. The teacher wants her students to be the best. Somewhere, deep inside we know we are making use of other lives to fulfill our own needs. What the mother did not fulfill in her life, she wants her child to achieve for her. We want our children to bring glory upon us. Deep down we know this even if there is a refusal to accept it. We know that we are selfish in our relationships. We also know that in spite of what the other person is, no matter how wonderful, we are not able to love that person totally, completely, wholly. The relationship or perceived unconditional love can turn sour in an instance with one misstep, one word, one action, one inaction. We tread carefully and lightly, reducing our relationships into a management show.

Deep down there is the question, "Why am I not able to love this person totally with all my being? WHat is the reason? Even though I want to why can't I just melt into the other person you wander. Why does every relationship become boring after a period of time. Why is it that I start taking others for granted?

This need to love also has remained deeply ingrained and it has survived in spite of the lovers, the kids, the grandkids passing pay, 10 years, 20 years, thirty years. For some It has survived 5 dogs and 17 cats. Still this love has not been completed. Still the vacuum in the heart remains.

Ask yourself this question: Can I do anything about this? About this internal condition-this absence of love? Can you do anything about it? What if you were to take a decision to love through effort. Is it possible? Can you pump it into and out of your heart? So what if you were to decide that today you will start to practice love. Fake it 'til you make it so to speak? Is it possible? Practiced love is a dead thing just as practiced virtue is a horror show. It comes from the mind. It is made of thought not of emotion of the heart. Forgiveness that is practiced as a matter of policy, peace practiced as an idea, and love that is practiced as a matter of cultivation all are devoid of life. They are useless. If practiced too long you may become highly reformed. You will think you are enlightened or spiritually evolved because you no longer feel deemed negative emotions like anger, hatred, jealousy and so forth, but the fact of the matter is in a high state of reformation you feel little at all. You have become like a living corpse. Why do you want to cut the experience of emotion? Emotion is life.

What is required is a spiritual process-a yajna or a happening where you have this explosion of love, where your heart begins to flower. This experience of love it should happen to you-not that you tried to make it happen.This process in this dharma makes this happening possible for you. It does not preach love. It helps love happen to you.

Some will come to me at lunch to tell me that they love their children or perhaps someone else totally and unconditionally. That this is all wrong and how can it be suggested that they do not totally and completely love their relatives, their husband, their parents or whoever. I would like to give you a frame of reference. The ancients defined love as acceptance. Hatred was defined as non acceptance. This is evidenced by a desire to change someone or something. For example a someone might say I hate my old dirty carpet. I want to change it. I cannot stand my hair another moment. I am going to have the hairdresser change it. I love my husband but it would be good if he would change a habit. I love my country but we must have change so I will campaign.

Look into your relationships with the ones you say you love unconditionally. What have you tried to change about that person recently. What do you wish they would change. What are you pushing your children towards or away from? See if there is a desire for change. There you will find the non acceptance-the hatred. On one hand we had the hippie movement preaching peace and love yet singing about changing the world. Ask yourself in a dependently arising creation can you really project non violence without projecting violence?

Become very aware of the absence of love in your life to become aware of your present state. This is of the utmost importance in the discovery of love that you see this and stay with it. Do not move from it. Stay with this painful absence of love. Achayaji teaches that most important lesson is the lesson of love. When you discover love only then will love let go of you. Unless you pass this test you cannot move on. Life without the discovery of love become stagnant like a muddy pool. In the discovery of love is becomes a flow- a beginningless beginning and and endless end.

Stay with this feeling and we will break for a light lunch. When we return we will go further on our journey into the discovery of love. Some of you will experience the Awakening of the Antaryamin-the Indweller- that will move you from belief to discovery, from reformation to transformation to the discovery of love.

Namaste,
DD

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