Understanding Love and Energy🔗

If you can just love without a reason, it is pure love; that's all. Pure love is not dependent on anything outside; it is dependent only on yourself.

If you just decide to let go at least once, you will feel such a tremendous freedom, such liberation inside yourself. You need courage to let go and become loving. As a first step, at least become aware of this deep inside; it will then automatically happen. Awareness is the key to open any lock.

Love as much as you can, without asking for anything in return. Loving for a reason is not love; it is just a business deal. When you can love without a reason, when you can love anything and anyone that comes your way, you will experience tremendous inner energy and beauty. You will appear simply beautiful, irrespective of whether you are physically beautiful or not.

Also, when you are brimming with love, you don't feel yourself, you feel only love, you become love. When you become love, you automatically exude compassion towards everyone and everything around you. You take up a lot more responsibility around you. This responsibility is not out of the egoistic need to serve people, but out of the overflowing energy in you.

And one more thing, don't think that unconditional love will not get you back anything, it will get you back things in more than one way. But you should evolve to an extent where you see these things coming to you and you remain unaffected by them and continue loving for the sake of loving. Your intelligence will make you see the things that you get in return and the same intelligence will keep you blissfully untouched by them.

There will be a revolutionary change in your heart and you will be a new person. You will find the change in you and so also will others. People will develop a new kind of respect for you. They will see that you are flowering in a way incomprehensible to them. They will be able to feel the energy that you radiate.

We are all capable of sympathy. When someone tells you about their suffering, you just confirm their suffering for them; this is sympathy! They in turn tell us that we are so caring and they love us for it. Actually they love us because they feel good when we tell them that they are suffering a lot, it is a subtle ego boost to them.

Empathy is when you feel another's suffering in your own being. It is when a person does not have to tell you his suffering, but you simply know because the Existential energy in you feels it. Masters are one with you, because they are one with Existence, and you are a part of Existence, only you see them as separate. And because they are one with you, they feel your pain in their heart. They don't know any other way. And they have the capacity to accept the suffering that comes with it also.

Daily Awareness Practices

Don't worry about trying to love God or any Master. You don't even know God, then how can you love Him? It is very difficult for you to love something you haven't seen. But you can love all that you can see, can you not? You can love the animals, the plants, people and what not. Simply love them for no reason except the joy of loving, the plant on your window sill, the neighbour's cat, anything that comes into your view.

If you love without a reason, you will expand like anything. Your world will suddenly seem larger than life and so ecstatic. You will feel the source of your own energy within you, not outside. You will become an energy source to yourself first and then to others. The energy in you has to touch others. There is no other way because you will be overflowing with it. Others will be naturally drawn to you. You will become total and loving! Simply feel a deep connection with people and nature and love them. Once you start doing this, you will develop a certain faith in Existence because Existence is the common thread that runs through all these things.

Develop your faith through allowing your energy to move out in this way. When faith happens, slowly, your love will become love towards Existence, towards God or the life force, which is the common thread in all these things. Then you will start exuding love towards Existence, and the ultimate religion will take root in you - the religion of gratitude and love.

Stop asking and start giving! We need to radiate energy instead of asking for energy. But we don't even know how to shift the focus from us to the other. We are so used to seeing ourselves as the center of attention. We need to start seeing the world outside as the center of attention.

See yourself as in the center of a small circle. Imagine all the people in your world as being in concentric circles moving out from the center. The closest people to you are in the first circle your husband or wife, parents, children, etc. Then, the next circle would contain close friends and relatives and so on. Finally, the last circle would include acquaintances. Outside the last circle would be everyone else on the planet. Now see your energy as moving out from you, through each circle. This is your world and you are responsible for it. You need to keep your world energized and full of love. If you do this, soon the different concentric circles will disappear and everyone will become the same to you as far as showering love is concerned. There will not be any difference between family, relatives, friends or strangers. The whole world will become one to you. If you see your world in this way, you will radiate energy causelessly and you will be fulfilled.

Exercise

Try this small exercise: choose a partner from amongst your acquaintances or work-related colleagues, of the same gender. Look after that partner completely without letting them know you are doing this as an exercise.

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Your first concern should always be for the other person's comfort. You should always look to see if he or she is happy and comfortable. Find out if the person needs anything. If you are at an office function, give him or her a plate before grabbing one for yourself. Don't choose your friends or relatives or people with whom you would like to be friends later! Just choose at random.

Almost all our lives, we worry only about ourselves. Besides ourselves, at the most, we worry about our close family, more so because we feel that it is our duty. But we think that it is love. When you start doing this exercise, you will get a chance to see what selfless love is like! It is selfless because you don't expect anything from the other person.

Understanding Letting Go to Existence

Understand that when you start loving beyond names and forms, you are not losing anything. You are only losing what you are not - the illusion which you need to lose. What you have gained is reality. So just have faith and don't fear when you find yourself merging with the whole.

Existence is waiting with open arms to engulf you, to dissolve you into itself, but only if you are ready to let go. Just have the courage to let go with an open heart. You will merge with it! When you are ready to feel the embrace of Existence, you rise to a higher plane; a plane of higher consciousness. You enter into a space you never even knew existed. With Existence, you always fall in to rise.

Don't give up. Keep on loving with all your heart. See Existence in everything. Feel the plants with tenderness in your heart. See the animals as if they were your own. See every human being as a part of God. That is real worship. It is easy to worship God in the temple. The real worship is seeing everything as God; seeing your neighbor as God.

Have the courage to go deep inside and love. You will start feeling the common thread of Existence in all that you see. You will understand that all that you see are illusory happenings held together by the real thread that is Existence. Automatically, you will start loving everything in the same way without any trouble because you will see only Existence in everyone and everything. Of course, you have to allow this transformation to happen in you, only then it will happen. Any change in you is a shift in consciousness. Love is the only thing that can make you feel that you are a part of Existence.

Daily Awareness Practices

In order to discover the quality of your being that is love, two things can be done. First, repeatedly listen to words like these so that they create a conviction in you about what is being said, so that they create a space in you to start the process of transformation.

Secondly, meditate so that the transformation can actually happen. Meditation will take you to depths inside yourself that will help you rise above these misunderstandings of love. Meditation will work at the being level. That is why it is a short cut! When you have to go through life and know by yourself, it will take you a lifetime. But with meditation, a space opens inside you to experience these things clearly for yourself, whatever your age may be. So make space in your life to hear the truth and to meditate.

Mahamantra Meditation

(Total duration: 30 minutes)

The Mahamantra meditation is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist technique to awaken the anahata chakra, located at the heart center. This meditation makes your mind firm and stable. Your mind is always oscillating with thoughts. This meditation makes your mind still by making it enter into the zone of no-mind. It is like a jumping board to enter into infinity.

This meditation will create a good energy flow in you. It is a technique that fills you to the brim with energy so that you may stop seeking attention from others and start giving energy and love to others as a result of overflowing energy in you. While doing this meditation, wear your mala around your neck. It will serve to store the energy that you create during the meditation.

Do this meditation on an empty stomach, either early morning or two hours after any meal. It can be done either alone or as a group. When done as a group, it effectively energizes the place where it is done.

Step 1 - Intense Humming (Duration: 20 minutes)

Sit cross-legged in a comfortable position on the floor. Your head, neck and spine should be in a straight line. Those of you who are not able to sit on the floor may sit on a chair. Feel relaxed and close your eyes. Even after we close our eyes, we see forms and images from behind the eyelids. To handle this, imagine that your eyeballs have become stone-like. Just harden them with mental pressure; then the images will die. The movement of our eyes is very closely related to the movement of thoughts in our mind. That is why you are asked to arrest the movement of your eyeballs. Don't be too worried about keeping them arrested. Just proceed with the meditation.

Now, produce a humming sound as intensely as possible, as loudly as possible and as lengthily as possible. Keep your lips together and produce the sound 'Mmmm…' from inside, from the navel center. If you were to put your face inside an empty aluminum vessel and make a

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humming sound, the sound generated will be like this. Note that this is not 'Hum…' or 'Om…', it is simply keeping your lips together and producing the sound 'Mmmm…'. Don't make an effort to take in a deep breath after every 'Mmmm'; the body itself will take breaths when needed.

Don't become tense. Put in your whole being and energy into creating this vibration. Become the humming. Let your whole body be filled with the vibration of the humming. After some time, you will feel that the humming continues without your effort and that you have simply become a listener to it!

Y Step 2 - Watch Your Thoughts (Duration: 10 mins)

At the end of 20 minutes, stop the humming. If you are playing the cassette or CD, you will hear 'Stop!' Stop where you are, abruptly.

After stopping the humming, keep your eyes closed and remain silent and inactive for 10 minutes with a smiling face and blissful mood. If any thought comes to you, let it come. Simply watch your mind as if you are watching television, without resisting your thoughts or passing any judgment on them.

Remain silent and blissful. During this time, the energy created by the 20 minutes of humming will enter all the corners of your Being and cleanse it deeply.

At the end of 10 minutes, slowly, very slowly, open your eyes. Carry this silence with you.

IN A NUTSHELL

The anahata chakra is located at the heart center. It is blocked by seeking attention (attention need) and is made to flower by expressing self-less love.

In the diagram overleaf, we see a woman facing the left side of the page, and a mirror image of the same woman, facing the right. The experience of the woman on the left is the 'normal' experience of people trying to fulfill their lives through their relationships, feeling depressed and lacking energy. The woman on the right has taken the steps necessary to become aware of how she creates her own unfulfilling experience through trying to extract energy from her environment. Her anahata chakra is now an outpouring of selfless love and she feels fulfilled and blissful.

Like the woman on the left of the picture, when our anahata chakra is not open, we feel lacking in love and look to find it in our interactions with other people. Their attention feeds us the energy we need and the feelings that we lack. When the anahata is open, on the other hand, we feel that we are flowing with boundless love which spills over and fills everything we come in contact with.

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When we buy something for ourselves, we look more at what kind of reaction we will get from our friends than the utility value of the article. This is depicted in the diagram as the 'Drop Dead Coat'. The woman is looking to buy a coat which will make her friends 'drop dead' from envy.

In our interactions with our family, friends and partner, we are all the time seeking their approval. Only when they approve of us do we feel that we are worthy. We are not centered in ourselves, but we are centered on others' opinion of us. When even one person withdraws their approval, we find ourselves feeling depressed.

Our self-image is built upon the opinions of others. This is depicted by the house of cards built out of the 'certificates of approval' which we are always after. In our relationships, we constantly have expectations of others and how they should behave. This actually locks up energy which we could be using for our own growth.

Some couples constantly fight with each other because it gives them the attention they crave. It has been shown that humans cannot live without attention, and so, if we cannot get it in a constructive manner, we will look for it in other ways. Fighting creates energy.

We are so used to relating in ways subconsciously designed to get attention, that we are not aware that most of our relationships are actually transactions. 'If I do this for you, you should do that for me'. This is not love; it is a business deal.

When we are centered in ourselves, we are not caught in the grips of emotions like anger which attack us everyday and overpower us. When we experience our true nature of bliss, we can use the anger energy also correctly to the optimum level. Then the love exuding from us will be truly selfless love because it is spontaneous and there is no need to get anything in return for it.

As we become aware of our attention need through meditation and through a sincere desire to become centered in ourselves, we will begin to experience the flow of love emanating from our own being. We will have boundless energy and love.