Love: One Earth, One Love 4

Inner Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

Inner Work

For the weeks of September 23 & 30, 2019

Love

When love warms our heart, we experience a deep sense of rightness. This is how life is meant to be: a life in love. Love transcends the personal. It is not a matter of "I love." It is about being "in love." It is about living in love. We do not conjure up love; we let go into it. We do not need to find the right person to love; every person is that person. Within the space of love, we feel immersed in the very root of reality, in that sublime underpinning that makes the whole whole, that knits our world, our life into one seamless glory.

We can practice opening to love at any time. We find that place in our core and relax our defenses. Love is already there. Relaxing deeply, physically, emotionally, and cognitively, opens the door to love. Relaxing our very self illumines the porousness of the walls that define and limit us. Letting go into simple being, into clear awareness, allows those walls to vanish altogether. This may not be dramatic; it may just feel normal, though perhaps unusual. Yet the more we practice this, the more vivid the unity, the more freedom in the release from our separateness and inner isolation.

Love is served by presence. The depth and breadth, the purity and reach, the very reality of love depend on presence. Love is always and everywhere. Presence enables love to touch us, enables us to emerge into love's embrace. Presence helps sustain love, helps us stay a little longer in the place of love. In presence we can let go of our inner separateness.

Practicing love has ramifications. It provides an opening for love to enter this world, rather than remaining hidden behind it. Like kindness, love begets love. It makes room for others to drop their walls, for in love there are no others, there is only the unity of all. In love we open to the beneficent global will, responsible for and embracing all, responsible for and embracing our one Earth. In those moments when we open to love, we participate in that global will, giving it a broader base and wider reach. In that way, through us, love touches the solid world of living beings.

If we look through the cracks in ourselves, in our society, in our world, we find love waiting for us. Love heals those cracks. Can we help heal this planet? Can we bathe the Earth in love?

One formulation of the aim of the spiritual inner life is to become a bearer of love, to allow love to inform our attitudes and actions, to allow love to shape our very being. This means letting go of our inner separateness, of the feeling that I am here and you are there. Instead we open to we are here. At first we struggle to understand what that could even mean. And after we begin to understand it, we see our isolation and alienation, our separateness, more clearly. Yet if we persist in dropping our inner barriers, in the hope and confidence that love really is there, awaiting us, there come moments when the world is made new, when the sky of love spreads over the city, over the land, when we feel embraced by love, embedded in love.

For this week, please practice letting go of your inner separateness, letting go into love.

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