FROM KNOWLEDGE TOWARD LOVE (Part I)

"Awakening is not the end of things.  Awakening is only the beginning.  When we awaken, the real affair of love begins.  It goes on forever.  It is as if one has been finally qualified for the depths of Love."

These words written by Ramana helped me realize what the path has always been and now consciously is for me.  I have awakened to the meaning and purpose of the awakening.  I believe I have awakened to and known Divine Love itself.

My awakening occurred in May of 1999.  A student of mine invited me to a private home in Youngstown, N.Y. where a spiritual teacher by the name of Ramana (Yukio Hasagawa) was giving Satsang.  It was the end of the semester of teaching at college.  My summer was open.  I had no plans.  There was nothing I really wanted to do.  I was feeling relaxed and ready to enjoy whatever came along that summer.  What did come along was radically transformative-- an awakening to Self-Awareness and Love -- the very thing I believe the incomparable Plato spoke of in his dialogue, The Symposium, the Beautiful One beyond knowledge and reality.

Ramana conducted a brief workshop exercise at the beginning of the Satang session.  We gazed at a pencil we held in our hands.  In short, he asked us to finally become aware of the awareness that gave us the perception of the pencil.  Suddenly, something burst through.  I lost awareness of the pencil and became aware of a universal consciousness.  I felt an absolute love for myself and realized that my life, a failure, had been an attempt to achieve this love through success and the approval of others.  It was a vicarious love that I sought.  But here in this moment of bliss I experienced a love for myself that I had never before experienced in my life.  I was free of my life.  I was the Love which was my Self.

Becoming Like the Little Children

In my last post I suggested it was obvious why Jesus would say 'become like the little children.'  Well, maybe it isn't obvious.  Ramana Maharshi is of considerable help here.  In his large collection of Satsang, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, p. 3, he says in response to being asked why a Sage is like a little child:  "A child and a Sage (jnani, or, yogi of knowledge) are similar in a way.  Incidents interest a child only so long as they last.  It ceases to think of them after they have passed away.  So then, it is apparent that they do not leave any impression on the child and the child is not affected by them mentally.  So it is with the Sage."  

THE TRUTH OF LOVE

A well-known Satsang teacher by the name of Jesus once said that "You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free."  What is that Truth?  It is that you are Love.  Not the being of Love.  But the very Source of being called Love.  When One has fallen into Love, One does not need to "do" or "experience" in order to be 're-born,' to live form the Oneness of the Eternality of Life.  All is always new, re-newed, re-newing--All is always already being born again.  This is presence in which the Self is at one with the One. 

Love gives birth in feeling.  Love feels.  Getting emotional is the sign that one has moved away from Love and become merely One's 'self.'  That is, One stops feeling.  When I get emotional, upset or annoyed with my boys --those two little Lovers at the top of the page-- I not only become less than I Am and what life can be but I fail to understand them in their truth.  They need someone to feel their love with them; they need someone to bring them back to Love, not to be reprimanded or disapproved of, once the connection to the Source has been broken by my or your emotionality.  I am fortunate, blessed by the grace of my little boys as my guides, my signs of where the "I AM" is and when the emotional self takes over.  That same Satsang teacher mentioned above reminded us to 'become like the little children.'  One need not wonder why.

KNOWING THE TRUTH

Once one has known the Truth, feelings as emotions are irrelevant.  Feelings as feelings are not irrelevant.  The emotional life is interwoven with beliefs that keep our world fixed, lived from and by the past.  Feeling is lived from beyond time and belief and is constituted by and as love.  Such love is a compassion and care that is not concerned for it knows that all is well, one need not worry and all pain is always already surpassed by the Truth.  This Truth is a transcendence of the need to be loved for it knows that it is Love.  It knows that such loving is the greatest good whose joy cannot be improved upon by being loved.  It is the joy of not needing anything, being able to enjoy everything but not really wanting to do anything.  All has already been experienced, all has already been loved.

Immanent Awareness Meditation

The acronym of this Post Title points to the existential yet spiritual fact that "I  A M."  That is, it points to what I am(and you are): "the" I AM.  This I AM is an utter, irreducible simplicity, not synthesized into nor determinable by any prior presence or experience.  It is One, the One whole, the Real.  It has the "last word."  It is moreover the first "word," as inscribed in the Gospel of John which says, "in the beginning was the word."  I would say, "in the beginning is the Word."  Christianity means to say the same thing.  That is, the IAM is neither past nor future; neither before nor after.  It is always 'alongside' as the One Real I AM without which nothing would be.  It is This that meditation, authentic meditation, locates and "realizes" even though it is what does the "realizing."  It is the Truth that turns life into a Communion, a non-idolatrous discourse(satsang) and meditation. 

Immanent Awareness lets the real be Real without trying to eliminate the intrusions of the real or making the Real more than it is, namely, the One and only One.  That is, IAM reveals the obsessive illusion of seeking after "bliss" or "peace" or "happiness."  At best such obsessive journeys end in being 'blissed out about,' 'blandly indifferent to,' or 'giddily grinning in regard to' the whole of life.  This latter is the loss of self and soul.

Locating the IAM allows the "real" to be "Real."  That is, It allows it to be without judgement of, believing in, trying to explain away or deny that which happens in One's world.  It suffers the world of the real without suffering it and turning it into a 'desert of the real.' 

The I Am is I myself, alive, present, aware and simply silently still.  Without regret, reaction, resistance, agenda, wishing or willing, yet just loving.

MEDITATION, THE WAY OF FREEDOM

Meditation is a way of life that heals, calms and strengthens body, mind and spirit.  It is a rooting in the Self that abides resolutely in the world yet always as one’s Self.  While it is a way that does not fight or deny its being in the world, it is not of the world.  It is a return to one’s Self as OneSelf, in the world but not of the world.  It enables the presence of OneSelf first and foremost as one is present in and to the world.  It is ‘spiritual’ but not spiritualist, merely mystical or quietist in nature.  As a holistic discipline it utilizes the way of mantra or focused, contemplative meditation.  Secondly, it incorporates the capacity of mindfulness.  Moreover, thirdly, it resides in the immanent self-awareness of self as in the vichara teachings of Ramana Maharshi.  Such meditation is of the nature of “Satsang,” meaning a communion with truth, while abiding in the experience, understanding and activities of the world.  It is the Truth that sets One on the path of freedom.