On my site entleartofblessing.org/listening-to-the-divine/ you will find a narrative of an amazing encounter in an airplane with the allness of infinite Love, and that has been the crowning experience of my existence.
Many years ago, I prided myself on being an intellectual who wrote a 900 page dissertation with close to 1000 references for the doctoral thesis I used to be so proud of. But as time passed, I saw the total vanity of such pursuits from a spiritual point of view and ultimately threw away the last copy of my dissertation. (They were not on internet in those prehistoric times – the seventies). Now I read less and less, even spiritual literature, and try and listen more and more, for as the great American mystic of the last century Joël Goldsmith teaches – the only thinker to have taught me something vital about what authentic prayer is – you can really only learn to listen to what this incredibly loving Being is whispering to you.
In the past weeks, thanks to a brief text on unconditional love by Ram Dass, one of the great spiritual luminaries of the second half of the last century, I have been pondering again this essential theme daily:
“Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not “I love you” for this or that reason, not “I love you if you love me.” It’s love for no reason, love without an object. It’s just sitting in love, a love that incorporates the chair and the room and permeates everything around. The thinking mind is extinguished in love.…….
This love is like sunshine, a natural force, a completion of what is, a bliss that permeates every particle of existence. In Sanskrit it’s called sat-cit-ananda, “truth-consciousness-bliss,” the bliss of consciousness of existence. That vibrational field of ananda love permeates everything; everything in that vibration is in love. It’s a different state of being beyond the mind. “(Excerpted from Be Love Now)
I can stay for very long moments just on the first paragraph. Ultimately, I almost feel it is the only thing I really need to understand spiritually, as absolutely everything would flow from its practice.
Try it out. It just might just be the greatest New Year resolution you ever made.
Pierre Pradervand
January 2022