Accepting Love - Part 1
“The universe exists. The illusory universe that Hinduism and Buddhism speak of is a universe that we superimpose upon the universe (…). The fact that it is relative in its manifestation does not make it unreal. Now, normally one lives in an unreal universe, because there is a second universe superimposed upon the relative universe, — relative in the sense of absolutely changeable, depending on how it manifests and the manifestation is tied to perception and not apperception — that is the universe to transcend. It is not transcendable from the mind in construction, it is transcendable from the mind in the act of acceptance. This is acceptance par excellence.”
Introduction
This is a story where everything stated is false, questionable and debatable. No matter how assertive the claim, it is still false and just part of fiction and storytelling. But I would also say it is possibly closer to truth than anything you could say that disagrees with it.
I suggest you consider it as a better map of reality than the one you currently have. And by map of reality I mean the story you tell yourself when you have an inner dialogue, what you think about when contemplating who you are and whatever you believe this life is.
There is a reality beyond thought where thought appears and where the I who thinks is also known as a thought. None of that needs to go away, it is the beauty of existence. How nice it is to see we are not what we think we are, what we are is unknowable.
If this text is of any use, it is to counteract, question or eliminate some of the fundamental beliefs. These are the beliefs that allow the individual to function under the illusion of being an exclusively separate entity, which is manifested as suffering.
Remove a thorn with another thorn and then throw both out, or you can also put both in where the first one was if that suits you.
Image by Katherine Young
Accepting Love
What if I told you that right now, right in your face, and not deeply hidden somewhere in some unconscious, hard-to-access dimensions of your being, but right in your face, right in the forefront:
You love everything that you are experiencing.
You love everything that is happening.
Always.
Always have, always will.
Of course you will deny it, try to explain why this is not true. But try it as a hypothesis, as a thought experiment, as a way to interpret or conceive of reality. Take some time to explore the possibility that this is one hundred percent true, one hundred percent of the time. In fact, you create, by choice, everything that you struggle with.
Ok, that was too soon.
Let’s go back to: ‘This is not true, this is not my experience!’.
But why isn’t this our normal experience? There are a few ways to explain it, the truth is too simple to put in words. So if words are used they have to either be very poetic and ambiguous, or a whole complex philosophical tome full of apparent contradictions.
Image by Katherine Young
Dimensions
Let’s try a mid-way version: Imagine that there are two dimensions, the unchanging reality, and the changing relative reality.
In the first unchanging deeper dimension, there is peace and a love that accepts everything that is happening. You don’t really forget this, you don’t lose touch with it. It’s not a thing that you can glimpse and then lose, falling back into old habits of darkness. No, it’s absolutely true, always. The thought or belief that it is not currently available is absolutely always, entirely and completely false. It is present by definition.
In the secondary dimension of relative reality, things are real only in levels or relationships to other relative things and all depend on the unchanging. Here, in the relative, we want change, everything always changes and that’s how we like it!
The problem is that the aspect of reality we are ever aware of is this secondary relative dimension. This is because it is less ever-present, it comes and goes, it moves infinitely. More so, we are constantly interpreting and misinterpreting it.
When something goes away, you notice it, when a thing appears, you notice it, otherwise how would you? Change is noticeable. And also this wanting of change is very rational, it’s undeniable and divinely beautiful. Who in their right mind would not want change, for themselves, for loved ones and strangers, for all sentient beings? And also because it’s the great dance of life!
The universe is infinite possibilities.
The problem is not that everything is perfect as it is, it’s not perfect in the relative dimension. Perfection is only in completeness, the totality that binds perfection and imperfection. A perspective that sees exclusively from within the relative will by nature be incomplete, in distress, in need, imperfect, etc.
As the understanding of the changing becomes more and more complete, the perspectives focused on the perfect and the imperfect merge into a greater view that reveals a certain kind of higher perfection, totality. This has been called God but then so many things have been given that name that it is just prone to confusion, we’ll just call it totality.
As a metaphor pointing to this, imagine a child who makes a drawing and is very happy with it. One can see all the imperfections, how poor the drawing actually is, at the level of the drawing.
But it is also possible to see that the joy of the child is beautiful, so is the playfulness and the pleasure of the creative act. The fact that the child is playing, enjoying and also in a process of learning, growing and development completely redeems any kind of imperfection in the drawing. And from that perspective the drawing is perfect, there is no need for it to be any different. The imperfection only exists from a narrow perspective where there is a judgment that leaves out the context. With a greater understanding, the drawing is perfect, it is whole, total.
This also applies to moments that are relatively not ok, for example a child who in a bout of jealousy hits a sibling, causing pain and possibly fear. This is not a perfect act and so the correct intervention would be to educate the child, regarding feelings of jealousy, apologizing and teaching empathy, etc. From a perspective of both children and a parent, this is not ok. But from a perspective that looks holistically at the development of the family, values of love, respect, caring, human evolution, etc. This event is a perfect opportunity for educating, for learning and growing, and if this learning and growing is carried out properly, that event is perfect. And if it doesn’t get carried out properly, then that is the new opportunity for learning and evolving.
This relative changing dimension is where contrast exists, with change we can notice the existence of things. Just like we notice night from day and day from night, because of the contrast between them.
If the sun always shines, there would be no concept of night and day. If everything was wet like water, there would not be a concept of wet and dry. The mind only grasps what it can conceptualize in opposites and gradients between them. This is why it is said that consciousness is beyond the mind, it has no color, no taste, no form, no time, no space. All color, taste, form, time and space appear and emerge within it. It is the container. The contained emerges from it as the waves emerge from the ocean.
The unchanging dimension is always there in your face, as the ocean is for a fishy swimming in it. Even more in-the-face than the ocean is for the fishy’s face, since the ocean is in front of the face and the unchanging is nowhere and everywhere. To be more correct we should say that we are both the unchanging as well as the changing, we simply deny our unchanging nature.
If you believe that consciousness is generated in the brain, then imagine that what I’m talking about is the actual life juice that powers the neurons that generate it. And you can be aware of this life juice as it flows through cells, trace this life juice to the origin and you will find it is inseparable from the entire universe. But of course this is a metaphor and everyone knows consciousness is not generated by the brain, or do they?
The final point is that it’s not something you can become aware of, it’s something you can decide to stop denying. When this resistance ends the deep dissatisfaction caused by it dissolves. We see clearly that our struggle was just this impossible problem of changing what already is. And it is completely unnecessary, since all of the energy invested in this effort is freed up to serve an infinite process of growth and deepening that is no longer in service of this fundamental feeling of lack.
