We spend our life looking for love, turning many corners expecting to find it, looking into many faces expecting to find it, going everywhere expecting to find it, but first we should search for love within, then we will be able to see it out there.
We can be in either a loving or an unloving state. The unloving state could be nothing more than stubbornness, the state which refuses to love. What is this refusal of love, this stubbornness that keeps us from loving? It comes from all the things we are attached to other than love, our deliberate refusal to give them up, it comes from the separation of the self from others, a sense of mine and yours, a sense of differences, everything supporting our base desires, it comes from an egocentric perspective on existence. All that keeps us in stages of the unloving state, a state in which we are not our true self. There is the self which is part of the merging totality and the self which is separate. If we confuse the two, if we do not know the difference between them, we spend a lot of time not being ourself. This negative part of us has to be eliminated, it should not be part of us; our inclination to stay in that place keeps us from reality itself.
Love exists, God exists, and we can put an equal sign between them, God is love. When we are in a state of love we have the possibility of aligning ourself with God, when we are in an unloving state we cannot be aligned with God. Think about it this way, heaven is being in love, true love; hell is not being in love. Do we understand what these metaphors truly mean, where they direct our understanding, do we understand if we cannot be in a state of love we are taken away from Him? Hell means being taken away from Him, being separate from God; heaven means being with God.
We should learn how to love, we should be in this state of love at all times. Find reasons to love, find excuses to love, we should create situations for love. It is our ticket to God, without that ticket we cannot get through the door, the door available to lovers, the door open for lovers. The key to this door is the vibration of love, this door disappears for love, it makes the door disappear, it makes all the veils disappear, love makes every separation disappear. We need to make separations disappear, something we have to do before anything else.
Access to bliss, the bliss of being with God, is available through our access to love. We should study the foundation, understand what makes love begin, understand how it occurs and why. We should yearn for it when it is not within our reach, this means our heart must melt.
What does the melting heart mean? When something melts its form and structure disappear. Now we have given form and structure to illusion, we have given form and structure to the things separating us from love, the form and structure separating us from God, this is what must melt. Since we have institutionalized illusion we need to melt the institution, we have crystallized illusion and we need to dissolve the crystals, dissolve the self in the realm of love so that no particle remains. Undissolved particles separate us from truth. We need that dissolution, a dissolving, a melting.
For an understanding of the melting process, think about being stubborn, when we melt that stubbornness things change, attitudes change, the way we exist changes, our state of being changes. When a child is stubborn he can create a storm, but as it passes the child’s beauty comes back, he has melted, melted because of something that happened outwardly.
Outer love can melt us inwardly. Interaction with a saintly being who loves absolutely can make us melt; unconditional, unrestrained, overflowing love changes our being. If there is any hope for this world, it might lie in this kind of love being spread from person to person by people who understand its strength, its unconditional nature. Love is not diminished because people do not accept it, love does not react in anger when people do not accept it, love is not resentful. Love is a melted state, things in a melted state are liquid, a liquid finds it way around things, solids are blocked.
Lava is rock at such a high temperature it has melted, nothing can withstand a lava flow, the temperature of that lava is so high any solid in its way is consumed, it melts too. We should be a lava flow—the rock, this solid rock that we are must be raised to such a high temperature the rock melts. When this rock melts the heat affects everything it comes near. Understand the metaphor, understand what we need to become. When love is so genuine, so unconditional, it cannot be thwarted, cannot be stopped, cannot be held back, this is hope for our existence.
We pin our hopes on many things, but if we understand the reality of this love, where it comes from and where it goes, we can understand our relationship with God. This love comes from God, it goes back to Him; He created us with the ability to experience this love, this state of existence. Recognize when we are not in that state and yearn for it. To understand it and remain there must become our priority, because unless it is it will not overwhelm us. We are so busy dealing with all the things which exclude love, which do not have time for love, so busy this love can in no way overwhelm us. And yet we cannot appear to be overwhelmed by love all the time without looking like a madman, someone crazed by love for God, crazed by love. We need to understand the importance of love in a balanced state, understand how critical love is on the path to reality; only in a melted state of intense love is reality available.
God has many attributes, His strength and splendor, His patience and forgiveness, His compassion and mercy, and they are all bathed in love. When conditions demand strictness or severity they are severe because of love, they are severe within the understanding of love. Severity is not an isolated quality, none of His attributes are isolated, they have a certain cohesiveness, they temper each other, they balance each other in a way that we too, must be balanced. If we are to manifest some excess, if we are to be out of balance, let the off balance be in favor of love, in favor of kindness, of tolerance, of loving kindness. It is much safer to push ourself in that direction.
It is much easier to push ourself the other way, even though horrifying things can happen if we are off balance going in the wrong direction. It is difficult to stay in balance, difficult to walk the line of perfection. If we are going to err, to make a mistake, our mistakes ought to be on the side of compassion, of tolerance, on the side of the melted heart. We need to concentrate on this and pray for it, keep asking God to let this melting go on, to raise the heat.
Since God is the One who provides the heat we have to ask Him for it. When it comes, we must not be afraid of the fire, we need to get used to this fire which will save our soul, we have to walk through it understanding what it does. May God give us the right understanding of love, may He give us the strength to let all that separates us from this love fade away. May He grant us the ability and the effort to separate what is not ourself from ourself, to be rid of everything which is not love, which divides the world, which does not accept His truth and His reality. Can He make our love strong enough to take us towards Him unceasingly, with devotion and reverence, surrendering to His will? He reaches out for us so powerfully that if we just put ourself in His way, He will bring us to Him. We need to fall into His way, there is no other way, there is no choice but love.
There are moments when love is strong, we feel it as the body starts to tremble and we react differently. We change physically, our state changes as we recognize the truth, as we recognize ourself, as we recognize the truth within ourself. We usually hide from ourself, but these moments of grace and love lift the veils, pulling us into reality. Although we might kick and scream we cannot help but go. If we learn to relax we can do this, we can go there even if this melting process is not easy. If it were easy more of us would be in that melted state. Let us be those who melt easily, let us be wax instead of stone, then God willing, a small flame can melt us.
May we be clear about our choices, clear about the truth and its availability, no longer hidden from the truth, no longer hidden from what God has for us. He has everything that is best for us, but we are stubborn, we continue to choose alternatives, we continue to create situations which make us believe something else has value. May we make these distinctions correctly and see that one truth, His truth, that one love, His love, and make this our choice.
