Accepting Love - Part 2
Why do we deny it?
Why? Because it makes experiencing quite different, it allows us to feel very independent. What we are wants to forget its vastness in order to experience unimaginable thrills which are only possible from limitation. Vastness cannot experience fear, vastness cannot experience despair. This makes room for the arrogance that it is to believe that you are separate, that you and you alone are the source of the power to do anything, and that you as a separate entity have the merit of your accomplishments and failures. Arrogance is fun! This position allows you to be a victim, to take credit, blame, and to delay responsibility as well as to strive to be more responsible.
Most importantly this allows you to believe that you know. We have infinite ways to create a version of ourselves that is somehow special. All of this writing has the single purpose to debunk the root of all knowing, the one belief that rules them all, ‘reality as it is is not ok’. This belief creates an illusory split in the totality and veils it with an image of what it should be, in that split we become fully separate from what is, and suffering is created.
This choice has a benefit and a cost to, the cost is the invitation and creation of suffering. In other words we want peace and wellbeing but only on their own, without the uncertainty, responsibility and freedom that comes with it. The belief that we can’t handle the freedom or the uncertainty is just a rationalization used in order to delay the choice. This itself is a way of exercising freedom, delaying it.
Delaying freedom is an act of freedom.
This denial also allows for a certain kind of adventure, an adventure into deep suffering and incredible highs. It allows us to feel a pseudo-freedom, completely independent from everything else. It is quite magical in that sense. But it also enables us to experience something that otherwise we can’t: suffering. True bottom-of-hell suffering. Hellish suffering is quite an insane experience, the root of it is extremely addictive, the root of all addiction is the desire to live out a journey of separation. And since separation does not exist we need to veil this reality in order to pretend and believe otherwise.
This veil is the activity of denying one truth, the truth that we are not separate. We all know this but if we were to stop denying it we would shatter into truth. This truth is always available, it is present, or in the present moment.
What a trap! In order to live out this journey of separation we need to deny something that is always present! That’s a lot of work, and this work is what we call suffering.
If we are unlucky enough to create a very sophisticated denial mechanism, we will suffer very little. But it will be a constant discomfort, a subtle anxiety from which we live escaping from one activity to another. More specifically, suffering is the sensation that is experienced when we decide we don’t want what is happening to be happening. It’s resistance.
The problem is that what is happening already is, we want what is to not be. Therefore we fight to change something that by definition cannot be changed. Living in that constant resistance requires an enormous effort to cover what is with an imaginary, interpretive reality. Within which we can mentally expand the interpretation of reality into the past and future, and pretend to have control over what already is.
If we were to stop resisting, reality would pour through and separation would be seen as illusory. From that connection with the real, life is a constant co-creative flow. Resistance works by rejecting the absence or existence of something. I want to have more money, I want my back to stop hurting, the pain to go away, etc, etc. Put more precisely, it’s the decision to postpone well-being until something changes. Imposing oneself on relative reality, with conditions that only immutable reality can fulfill. Fire burns, water wets, in the relative there is no peace, in the relative there is peace and war. The peace of the absolute is not comprehensible, it is neither something nor the absence of something, but it is.
We decide to believe that it is not possible to be fully content without anything in particular, we can’t accept that any moment can be permeated with a sense of full satisfaction. Everybody who suffers is an addict, and the addiction is to the same exact thing: the arrogance, sometimes subtle, the false sense of safety and power that comes from believing you know. Being special negatively or positively.
One can imagine so many ways in which this moment can be better. How could the present moment be better than all the other past moments that I remember to be so much better? Or how can this moment be better than so many more moments I can imagine? It appears not to be better because we don’t experience it fully, we don’t trust it enough, we don’t take the leap of faith. We only trust it a little when we sense it is a nice one, no danger abides. We deny the true majesty hidden in front of our eyes.
This way -in denial- we get to be children.
We get to be irresponsible.
We get to be victims, and we get to believe we can have power.
This is just for the sake of having the experience of being in control,
of knowing and being completely independent.
Once we realize we have the freedom to accept everything that happens, we are then free to choose to suffer.
But in this case, when suffering is chosen, once we stop pretending we’re not free, this suffering is no longer happening at the level that it used to. So it is no longer true suffering, it’s just part of the miracle and beauty of experiencing. This is usually expressed in metaphor, for example it is like being in the storm but also above the storm simultaneously, a part of us untouched.
Another modern metaphor is the experience of watching a drama or a horror movie, completely identifying with the characters but at the same time knowing we are perfectly safe observing from the couch.
When we realize this, things flip inside-out, there is a reversal of the equation, the higher becomes the lower and the lower, the higher (Christ’s expression). This has been described in many other ways. I am nothing and everything, everything is inside me, everything is outside me. There is a peace that transcends understanding, it is somehow there but it cannot be understood in any way.
It is suddenly or gradually known to be, but it is impossible to think about nor understand what caused it, nor when it started. Because it is outside of space and time, it is uncaused, atemporal and not located in any part of our experience.
For this to be how we live our experience, we need to let go of something. It is often said we need to wake up, we need to mature, grow up, become responsible. If we were to take the principle of responsibility to its maximum expression we would realize that all suffering is self-inflicted. It can be interpreted as an insult but it is actually the door to freedom, your well-being does not depend on anything that is happening. Arriving at this is not so much a process in time, but rather a choice that has to do with how we interpret our experience.
When we ignore the absolute and interpret the relative as primary reality, we create heaven and hell as a reality we can inhabit. Heaven and hell is the collapsing of the absolute into the relative. We interpret the relative as the absolute and in that act we cover it with a veil.
But when we see things for what they are, the real reality, the absolute as primary and all other as relative realities, contained within the primary. From there, heaven and hell appears as contained within the substantial reality of peace.
The veil of false interpretation lifts.
Finally, there’s the matter of how to live once we have our reality discerned in the adequate sense.
From this true reality,
We can see what we don’t like,
And change what we can.
We can be in service,
And learn to love.
Day by Day
So the solution is this: to realize that you can accept everything at all times, to realize that you are already doing this, but pretending that you are not. That is the key, because the step is a realization of something that already is. Then, from this new position, once one chooses it fully and sees that it is always a choice, it becomes possible to change the things one already accepts. From this new position we co-create with the universe on our side rather than rowing against the river. As we start from an acceptance of what is, rather than a resistance and a struggle with it.
It’s a very practical and rational thing, you can accept that some difficult thing is happening, the absence or existence of something. A thing that for you is horrible, or at best uncomfortable, accept it to the point that you see its absolute beauty. Accepting something fully also makes it easier to change, as you are able to look at it directly and without much bias, objectively.
This acceptance is not an act, not a creation of something that was missing. It’s the dropping of an effort, a resistance, a pushing away. It’s a realizition of the love you already have for it, so you see horror with love, and then you can try to change it, or just love it. This cannot be forced, it can be discovered as something that was always there.
It cannot be believed as it is the absence of beliefs, it has to be discovered. One way to approach this intentionally is to experiment with the possibility, to be open to it as a possible reality.
In a way it is an act of faith but it can be approached in a more rational way. It doesn’t have to be a blind and total faith, it is possible to give it the benefit of the doubt. If you read “You always love everything you are experiencing” and it is not possible for you, it does not have to be a complete act of faith. The act of faith is simply the correct doubt. What if it is possible for me to love everything I am experiencing, always? Giving it even the slightest benefit of the doubt is an act of faith.
We tend to see something horrible as something unlovable, this is only from the relative secondary dimension. When we drop that, we love everything, even the horrible things that happen to others or to ourselves, and the very small minor discomforts. Loving is not the same as letting it happen if we can stop it. It’s not condoning it, or interpreting it as ok, or god’s plan.
The appropriate balance is to take full responsibility of the relative and be open to the absolute, which is also what you are. One of the best images for this is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The dance of the two that are one, co-creating the universe.
You can already imagine that when I speak of love it is not something that can be understood, because “loving the horrible things that happen to others” only makes sense if we are referring to a clearly evil person. This love I am pointing to is not for the faint of heart, it is completely incomprehensible.
