The Embodiment of Love

[Guest guest]

The Embodiment of Love

By Robert Rabbin

" Everything that lives, lives not alone, nor for

itself. " --William Blake

We are each expressions of a fundamental reality, an

essence that some call God, some spirit, some consciousness, some love. It

doesn't matter what you call it. It doesn't care. It is beyond names. But it is

real, and thus we all belong to the same family. My blood is the same as yours,

my heart is the same as yours, my body is the same as yours. We seem to stand

apart from each other, but our essence is one. We only seem to be different,

but we are all parts of a whole. Naturally, whatever any one part does touches

and affects the whole. If we think that we do not effect the whole, we are

wrong. We can say that whatever we do to ourselves, we do to each other: each

action is a stone thrown into the pond of our common existence. Within minutes,

or hours, or days we will feel the ripples of our actions wash over everything.

This is why we cannot war our way to peace, because the killing keeps coming

back. We have to wage peace, not war. And then peace will keep coming back.

Not only do we belong as brother and sister to other human

beings, but we belong as brother and sister to all living things. We are not

meant to have dominion over other creatures or the Earth, though we behave as

though we are. This wrong thinking is based on the idea of separation, of being

independent from the whole. This wrong thinking leads us to believe we are

entitled to do anything we please, to usurp Nature for our own purposes. We are

not entitled to do as we please. We must live within the law of universal

truth, within the heart where we are all brothers and sisters under one roof,

in one house, with one father and mother.

The crux of wisdom is the experience of Oneness. This is

not an idea or a theory or an ideal. It is the most salient fact of the

mystical experience and it is universally true. We each exist as expressions of

the same fundamental reality. We are each unique expressions, yes, but of the

same essence. This is both spiritually true and practically true: whatever we

do to another, we do to ourselves. Every thought, every word, every slight

touch of our hand sends energetic impulses racing outward on the trillions of

strands of connective tissue that enfolds us all in the One. To believe

otherwise is the source of all suffering and violence and pollution on this Earth.

 

It is not just the belief in separation that creates

problems. Beliefs in general separate us from the whole of existence and lock

us into the prison of our thoughts. Thoughts, beliefs, concepts -- these are

tools to navigate the limited, physical plane of reality. They are not in any

way capable of understanding the limitless truth, which must be felt with the

heart. We cannot think our way through life, we have to love our way through

life. The biggest problem in the world today is that people have come to

believe that what they think is what is real. This is wrong. Reality -- truth

-- lies between thoughts, behind beliefs, before concepts. Truth is revealed in

Silence, and Silence restores our connection to the whole. This is where

humility comes from: Silence. Silence reveals that our thoughts do not describe

reality, they hide reality. We must listen to Silence. Silence is where our

conscience is born, where we rediscover that love is our essence, and where we

remember that true happiness lies not in personal fulfillment, but in service

to others, and thus to our true Self, the Self in which all exist as One, in

which all life is our life. Silence is where the arguments and arrogance of

egocentric living are dissolved as salt into the sea of wisdom.

When we come to the end of our life, we are likely to have

misgivings. This is because the purpose of life is to realize, consciously,

that we are the embodiments of love; and many of us have not sought to realize

this. When we realize that we are a manifestation and embodiment of love, we

become full and complete from the inside. All of our materialistic pursuits are

called into question, and we find that we need far less than we might have

thought. We realize we don't have to live in a state of constant becoming and

acquiring. Within each moment we find peace and deep contentment, which are

inherent in our essential being. With peace and deep contentment filling us

from within each moment, we do not need to manipulate external circumstances to

attain happiness. We do not have to tear at the fabric of life. We do not have

to be greedy. We do not have to be afraid we will not have enough, or be

enough, or do enough. We can live simply. We can simply live. Once we recognize

who we are -- underneath all the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs we hold about who

we are -- this will happen naturally.

With peace and contentment filling us from within, we open

without effort to the surrounding beauty. We have created a lot of ugliness to

be sure, but underneath that is the natural beauty of life itself. Life is so

beautiful. Everything is alive! The same conscious presence that lives within

you lives equally within all. Is it not amazing to feel the living spirit in

this way? You feel yourself in others. You feel yourself in all that exists.

Feeling this, how can you harm others? How can you not feel the fear, or

suffering, or despair of others? How can you throw ugliness onto beauty? We

cannot do these things anymore.

Feeling is the key. Feelings and emotions are not the same.

Emotions are mind states like jealousy, anger, and fear. Emotions are sponsored

by thoughts. Feelings are sponsored by the heart and are signs of wisdom: love,

awe, joy, wonder, beauty, connectedness. Feelings are the consciousness of the

heart. The heart feels, the mind does not. The heart is alive, the mind is

inert. The heart experiences, the mind conceptualizes. The heart joins, the

mind separates. This is why we must emphasize heart, not mind. If we do not

live from our heart, we will be unable to account for our own actions, because

all our thoughts will be in the way. We will be victims of our own thinking,

looking elsewhere for the one " who did us in. " It is no one but us.

Our thoughts are good servants, but terrible masters. Our thinking must reflect

the wisdom of our heart. We cannot allow the mind and its constant stream of

thoughts, beliefs, and concepts to persuade us that the heart is not real, or

true, or useful. It is indeed the only thing that is. We have forgotten this,

and now we must remember.

We are all born as embodiments of love. We are all born

with this knowledge; it is not lost, only ignored; not forgotten, only

disregarded. What we once knew can be known again, right now. We have only to

enter our heart to remember who we are. I entered my heart, and I remembered

what I once knew. I remembered light coming from everywhere. I remembered peace

coming from everywhere. And love, such love, the kind of love that dissolves

all fear and separation and anger. The kind of love that fills us with

forgiveness and peace and compassion. What else? Just this: Every human being

wants to touch and taste the same happiness, the same goodness. And so we are

all joined together, we are all as one in our desire for happiness and

wholeness and love. This is ours, from the beginning. This is what I remember;

this is what I know; this is what my heart teaches me: all things are sacred;

do not harm or kill others; do not pollute natural beauty. Love created this

universe and it is the nourishing nectar of all creation. Love is heart and

pulse, yes; but love is tendon, too, in that it binds all existence together

into one body. I am one who has remembered that love is the power of creation

itself, love is the world, love is the law to which we must all surrender. All

of creation comes from love, is sustained by love, and returns to love.

As the embodiments of love, how shall we live? What shall

we do and what shall we not do? How shall we live? How shall we demonstrate

what we know, deep in our heart? How are we to make real in this world what

moves silently within us all? It is not enough to ask and answer, Who am I?

That is only half the equation of wisdom. The other half is to ask and answer,

How shall I live? But answer slowly, and deeply. The first shout is likely not

it. You've got to get down below the surface.

How shall I live? is the question that brings us from the

mountaintop of inner realization to the valley of daily living. Here, in the

valley of daily living, is where our realization is polished and tested. This

is where we show ourselves, where we tell the truth about our love and loves,

where we finally make sense of the whole thing not in words and ideas and

theories, but in the simple way we touch living things. In our daily living is

where we demonstrate what we know about being an embodiment of love.

Yes, love is a feeling, but it requires action to become

complete, to become whole, to become realized. What actions will we take,

moment to moment, in our daily lives, that demonstrate our love?

 

As a pioneer in the field of executive coaching, Robert

Rabbin founded The Hamsa Institute for Enlightened Leadership in 1990, and as a

skilled and inspirational keynote speaker, leadership adviser, and

self-awareness teacher. For more information, please visit the website: Robert Rabbin.com [http://www.robertrabbin.com/].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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