![]() “The completely open heart is a heart of total embrace. It even embraces the reality of suffering. The completely open heart embraces life as it is, not what could or should be. When we are completely open to life as it is, it can break your heart, but it breaks it further open. It breaks it open beyond any resistance to the immensity of collective suffering. Then we are not overwhelmed by it. We lovingly respond to it in whatever way the heart moves.” ~ Adyashanti The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Derek Walcott
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Many of us, identify a false Source of Love. The man or woman we are attracted to for example. We choose them as a Source of; Love, Validation, to not reject us. To see us. To affirm us. We make them the Source. And often, what follows is a slow, decline, away from our truth. We become what we feel they want-so they will ‘accept us’. When in fact they are accepting our false projections. In some cases, we alter our tastes, to fit theirs, to be in alignment. When in fact, we are once again sidestepping away from our own desires. We build them up on a shrine of holy significance, not seeing their own human flaws, or ways in which they are not ‘meeting us’ because we so deeply want to be met, that we often craft an illusion. We lose sight of our truth. We lose sight of reality. And thus begins the fall from Grace. From Truth. From the TRUE source of Love. We then begin to shame the other for not being who we thought they were. (Guess what they were always flawed, we just chose not to see it). We begin to demand they become what we think we Need. We put demands on love. We demand to be loved on certain conditions. Then we suffer. We suffer because we believe we were wronged. Our heart is breaking. We lost something. When in truth. We deluded ourselves. We did not look at the Truth. We wronged ourselves. It is our illusions that our breaking. It is our attachments we are losing. We made another, the Source of Love. This never works. People can evoke Love within your Heart. You will love them. Yes! But they are not the true Source of Love. And in recognizing this, we can show up as we are. We can allow others to show up as they are. And we can SHARE the Love that is for all of us. Something I have discovered for my own life, and which has invited a great deal of curiosity from some people around me, is the art of non-attachment.
Non-Attachment has been, in my experience, an organic byproduct of my ego based consciousness being composted into truth. Ego gets broken down, and we come to see, wow! I am not my attachments. I am not my needs. I am not my story. I am not my beliefs. I am not…. This break down of illusion leads naturally to Non-Attachment. How could it not? I am no longer sourcing my happiness from outside of me. It does not mean people do not inspire joy within me, they most certainly do. It does not mean I do not get attached to outcomes, I most certainly do! But I choose wisely. I don’t invest in my attachments. I don’t invest in outcomes. I let it go and let truth rise to the top. I invest, in truth. True non-attachment is a natural response to letting go of the ego’s need for control. Love, is not attaching. It just is. It just loves. It loves the way that it loves. I love to love. To be a hollow flute through which love moves through. And when I am in alignment with this, life is a melody that I am so blessed to be a witness to. But when I have been attached, I am trying to control. I have an outcome in mind. Somewhere, I believe that something outside of me will bring me truth. I know now, in a deep, penetrating way, that this simply is not true. Experiences, sensations, oxytocin rushes, orgasms, delight after a good meal. These are all transient. They do not stay. They do not fill a void. They are transient. It doesn’t mean don’t have these experiences! Have them! Enjoy them! But don’t attach to them! When I say, do not be attached, I do not mean live with no sense pleasures etc. I am speaking to not being attached to these things as the source of Fulfillment. If you get attached to something outside of you, and look to it to fill a void, you will be let down eventually because it is not the true Source of abiding peace. Attach to Truth. ![]() Written by Adyashanti The fully open heart rests in sweet unknowingness, safe in its own embrace, rushing to meet its own perceived need that dissolves in the grace swallowing it. Dancing its tender dance of sheer delight in its own loveliness, merging with itself everywhere, only this, exquisitely so. This may sound far off for some people, a place unattainable, a state made available only for a few, but I can assure you that it doesn’t require you to change or to become different at all to know this firsthand. It only requires a willingness to stop. The more we stop and the more we let go, the more our consciousness naturally opens. The more we question our conclusions, the more the doorway opens for us to have a wider and wider vision. The deeper we see into the reality of things, the more our heart opens to include everything, because if we’re really feeling into our deepest reality and truth, the heart isn’t something that would want to escape from what is here and now; rather, our hearts are already embracing everything. We can allow our hearts to be big enough to be broken. My teacher called this world “the great heartbreak”. When we really begin to wake up to our true nature, we become more conscious of the suffering around us. We feel the people and the events of our lives more profoundly, not less profoundly. We become more present here and now. What we see is that, even though our vision may have expanded, even though we may have woke up not just to reality, but as reality, still we can’t control anyone. Everything and everyone has their own life to live, and we can’t just wipe away their suffering because our hearts are open. Although we would love to have everyone wake up and be happy, part of the heartbreak is accepting this moment, this world, just as it is. Another one of my teachers said, “All true love sheds a tear. It’s bittersweet,” and I’ve found this to be more and more true. The more deeply I love, the more I taste the bitterness with the sweet. It’s not a negative bitterness, it’s a bitterness that makes the sweetness even more sweet. Life is beautiful not just because of beautiful mountaintop vistas and the pristine, clear environment of a high mountain lake. Life is also beautiful in each and every moment. There is nobility and beauty even when human beings are suffering. Our hearts do not want them to suffer; we want to save them, but the heartbreak is that we can’t do that. The quality of our love, the openness of our heart, still does have a profound effect on the world and others in it. Our hearts just can’t control it — nor would they ever want to. But don’t ever think that your presence here — your physical, material, individual presence — doesn’t have a great impact on everyone around you, because it does. You can’t ultimately control what’s going on around you, but you do have a great impact. This is the gift we have to give other: this gift of oneness, of union, of a true open heart that comes when our mind opens. Yes, it will be heartbreaking, and when our hearts break, it will be asked to open even wider, so wide that there’s nothing and nobody to hold onto the heartbreak. But the heartbreak also moves through the transparency of consciousness. If we’re willing to open that wide, to where we’re willing to not just transcend this world, but to inhabit it and embody it, then we become the answer for which we’ve always been looking. Then we become the peace that all beings are seeking. Sometimes it is disturbing to realize that we’ve been holding onto a pocketful of dreams, but ultimately , it’s liberating. We can let our hearts break; they are that big. Illusion never brings peace, never brings happiness. When we’re done being disturbed by our own illusions, then we start to become astonished — astonished that we aren’t just our illusions, that we’re something so vast and unexplainable. We’re not something that exists within Heaven or even in the great mystery of being, but we actually are the great mystery of being. One Zen master said, “The whole universe is my true personality.” This is a very wonderful saying: “The whole universe is my true personality.” If you want to see what you truly are, open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression of your inner reality. Can you embrace all of it? ~ Adyashanti Falling Into Grace A little video to add to this: Experiencing Through the Heart Love moves without an agenda. |