Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #7
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In every person, there lives an image of what he ought to be. As long as he is not that image, her ne’er at rest will be. This is the poetic thought of Friedrich Ruckert. It is very likely that you are here this morning because you have a desire to grow. You may not be consciously aware that that was your motivation in coming here. But secretly within yourself, there’s a tremendous desire to be more. There’s a feeling of inability to rest content with what you are. This is what I call the divine discontent. And it’s a restlessness which is a part of the lives of all of us. Intuitively you know that there is more in you. And I believe that the reason you’re here today, at least unconsciously, is that you know that there is a way in which you can discover something of that more. Probably all that I can do, all that Alda can do, all that any of us involved in this particular experience today can do is to serve as a midwife to help you to give birth to that more. And especially today in terms of love, which is the theme of our experience this morning.
In our study of the laws of metaphysics, we may be excited bout the new insight in truth. We may be extremely interested, intrigued with the positive ideas of consciousness, of positive thinking, or the power of the spoken word of faith, and al of these wonderful insights. But not until we comprehend and begin to actually work with the cosmic process of love does truth become a way of life and living for us.
I’m sure that many of you have read or at least can quickly recall Paul’s 13th chapter of first Corinthians. If you have not read it, then we’ll let that be a part of the homework assignment today. A dynamic treatise on love. And among other things, Paul sums up some spiritual achievements. And then he says, “If with these things, you have not love, you are nothing.” And that’s pretty emphatic. He doesn’t say that without love you’re handicapped, without love you’re gonna have difficulties in life. He says without love you are nothing. That’s pretty blunt. Yet it helps us to understand that the whole concept of love is much more than emotions, much more than senses and feelings, and sexual involvements. It’s so much deeper than all of this. Love is the completeness of life. Teilhard de Chardin refers to it as the totalization of life. He refers often to the totalizing process.
On many occasions, Jesus makes a statement “Love one another.” Now this is something that you might expect a spiritual leader to say. Be nice to one another. Love one another. But you see, this is not expressed because it is a nice Sunday school morality to love people, that if you’re going to be a loving person, you have to give a little expression of love wherever you are. What he’s really saying is you should love because when you are not giving expression to love, you are out of the flow of the cosmic process of love, out of the flow of the divine rhythm. You’re out of it. You’re not in tune with the very specific power that enables you to live vitally and abundantly. When you give way to love, when you allow this cosmic flow to come forth within you, then you are synchronized with this tremendous transcendent process, and you enter the dimension of divine completion, the totalization, which only love can experience in you.
Now again, we need to define our terms. What is love? It would be very easy at this point to say, “Well, take out your pencil and paper, or get your memory cap on, because we’re gonna give you the definition of love so that you’ll never forget it.” Are you ready? Love is dadadada, or dadadadadadada. And we go over it a few times until eventually I say, “Now I want you to repeat it back to me. I wanna make sure you know this. And I’m gonna test you on it next week.” What is love? Love is dadadada or dadadadadadada. Now you know what love is. Now you can put it back in the cubby hole and be done with it. And anytime anybody asks you about love, “Oh yes. I know what love is. Love is dadadada” But love is not dadadada Whatever dadadada is, love is doing it. It’s expressing it. It’s non-verbal. It’s something that is beyond definition.
Now we have been conditioned to believe that we come into life empty and we go forth into the world to be filled. We’re empty creatures. We have nothing. We’re born helpless and hopeless. And yet, our lives are molded and shaped by what our parents do to us, what the schools do to us, what life does to us, what society in general has an influence upon us. So we go to school to get knowledge, go to church to get religion. We go out into the marketplace to get money and to make our fame and fortune. And we look to special people for love. So love is a much needed commodity. And it’s so important to us. It’s important that we find someone to give us love. And if we find that one, then we have love to give. But if we don’t find people that give us love, then we’re empty and devoid of love. And that’s what’s wrong with our lives.
Love comes natural to us when we find the right person to love or to be loved by. This is the way that our reasoning goes about this consciousness of love. And it’s all erroneous. This isn’t what love is at all. Life for more persons is a long quest for love. We’re always looking for love, here and there and everywhere. And then experiences and relationships. Oh, someday I’m going to find my love. Across the crowded room, love comes into my life.
So love becomes a quest for objects of love. And human consciousness, I’m sure we all realize that this is where we are much of the time. The most sordid and depraved lives that we experience out here in the world, and there are a lot of them, are really crying out, “Won’t somebody please love me?” Yet intuitively, within ourselves, we know that love is an inner power, not an object, that our need is not to be loved. Our need is to love. Our need is to be love, not loved. Our need is to become aware of something within ourselves. Within every person, there’s a hunger, you see, and a thirst to express love, to radiate love, to get ourselves in tune with the cosmic flow at the root of our being, to simply plug in, to turn the lights on, and to express out of the overflow of this inner love, a lovingness toward life. We have a hunger for this, but we don’t understand the process you see. So we’re out looking for it somewhere else, but all the time it’s within ourselves.
We’ve been mislead to a large extent by psychological teachings which have been pretty general in this area, that the greatest need of man is to be loved. And so we think of love as a commodity rather than a cosmic process. We suppose that our lives lack love because we have not been loved enough. So it’s so easy to put the blame on our parents, on our teachers, on our environment. The fact that our father mistreated us, and our mother did not love us, that’s the reason for all of the scars and all of the problems in our life. And it’s so easy to get into this kind of psychoanalytical conclusions, which are erroneous. And we need to unlearn the error of thinking of love in this sense. We need to redefine this thing called love, or to undefine it, to get it out of the terms of definitions.
We’ve accepted the bible’s statement, “God is love,” as if love were a commodity that God has, and then God gives it to us, and then we have it, and we pass it along to other people. Actually, it is more a description of what God is than what He does. God is love is expressed much in the same way as God is life. God is intelligence. God is power. God is love. But you see all this is simply abstract generalizations until we know whatever else God is, God is me. Does that surprise you a little bit? Whatever else God is, God is me. I am the activity of God expressing itself as me. God is life, and I am life manifesting as my body tempo. God is intelligence. And I am that intelligence in the form of the wisdom of my mind. God is power. And I am that power in the form of my strength and my creativity, my ability to form and shape and build.
God is love. And I am that love expressing in and through and as my loving heart. But I have no love of my own. My love is my attunement with the cosmic flow, which is centered in the great heart of the universe. So it is not love that is, not love that is the greatest need in our lives, but loving, giving way to this cosmic flow of love. It’s not the need of being loved by people so that people can give us this commodity. The need is to touch the deep spring of our own nature, turn our own lights on, and be love. Be what we really are, which is Meister Eckhart’s thought when he says, “Let God be God in you.” Let love be love, at the root of your being.
We need occasionally to remind ourselves of our roots, of our divine origins. We think all too much about the fact of being a child of these parents, or a child of misfortune, or a child of certain difficult experiences. We need to realize that we are a child of God, to know that we’re rooted in this divine process, so that when we get the realization, created in God’s image likeness, this is the divine imprint. But you see, this is little more than a cliché unless we personalize it. It’s not enough to say, “I’m created in God’s image likeness.” I wanna know God created me in His image, and God is love. And therefore I am created in and of love. It’s my nature. It’s the root of my being. God loves me. God is love in me. And I am the very activity of love and expression, which means then, startling enough, that I have within me all the love in the universe.
No loving person ever lived who had more love than I do. And that’s hard to accept, because we’ve conditioned ourselves so long to feel that we’ve been bereft of love, that we haven’t been loved enough. I have within me all the love in the universe. I have enough love, enough energy within me to love every person, every situation, simply because every person and every situation is also created in and of love. Love is the heart and root of all things. There’s no such think as an absence of love. There’s only a frustration of it. There’s only a case of, as Jesus puts it metaphorically, hiding our lamp under a bushel.
Now it’s important to know that to love someone, when we say I love this person, I’m not giving him something. I’m not taking something that I have and gibing it to him so that now I have less, because he has more. In other words, there’s no strain or drain in the loving. You’ve heard it, and you may have expressed it yourself unthinkingly, perhaps self-pitying. I’ve loved and loved, and loved until I am just exhausted. Parents often say this. A mother often says this about her child. I have loved my child. I have lived and loved land loved. I’ve loved my husband. He’s been wayward. He’s been a spend thrift. He’s been a wastrel. But I love him, and I love him, and I love him. And I am just exhausted because there is no return. But there’s no strain or drain in the loving.
If a person feels a sense of strain or drain in the loving, it’s because he is out of tune with his own inner flow. He’s in human consciousness where he thinks he’s loving. He’s judging. He’s saying, “He’ll a heel, but I’m gonna try to love him anyway, you see. He’s trying in human consciousness, through willpower, to overcome things which his consciousness is basically centered on. But he’s out of the love flow. Loving another person is simply centering yourself in the divine flow within you, seeing out of the that consciousness of the divine flow, centering yourself in the divine flow with Him, and seeing that divine within Him. It is love within me uniting with love within Him. And if we love each other, then I love out of the depths of my love. He loves out of the depths of His love. And there’s a union and a communion. But there’s no actual exchange of anything. There’s only a intermingling of sight, intermingling of consciousness. And its so important that we understand this.
If I have a feeling of love for another person, it is because I have to that degree felt a sense of love within myself. Therefore I love that person out of my own self love. And I must feel good about myself. It I don’t feel good about myself, I can’t really feel good about another, and vice versa. The romantic song, and there’s so many of them like this. “I can’t give you anything but love, baby.” The fact is, I can’t give you love either, baby. This is the misunderstanding we have about love. Love has become a great cliché. It’s a plaything of human volition. We talk about it. We sing about it. And it’s all up in human consciousness, all in the emotions, all in the senses, but cut off from the divine source, from the divine flow. This is why we have such problems in our human relationships. I cannot give love to anyone, and no one can give love to me.
Now don’t misunderstand this. I can be loving. I can create a loving environment. I can bathe this person in the light of love as I see this person in love. But I do not exchange anything. I don’t feel any loss because I’ve loved this person. Nothing has gone out of me. But when I love a person in that consciousness, and that person suddenly feels relaxed, feels secure, feels able to let down his own natural resistance, which is always the only problem that ever we have in our lives. And as he lets down his resistance, he communes with the light of love within himself and love flows easily forth through him. So he loves himself and I love myself, only in a transcendent way, in a spiritual sense. And out of this consciousness of self love and seeing in the light of love, then there’s a commingling and a beautiful relationship ensues. But it’s a relationship that is built on a foundation, on a root consciousness of the divine flow of this cosmic process.
How important it is to realize that the central core of truth, the teaching of truth, is love. This is the central core of Jesus’ teaching. It becomes very obvious. This is what He talks about most of the time. But we miss the point if we think of love as something that is a thing, something that is given in exchange, something that is a commodity. Remember Jesus says, “Love thy neighbor.” And of course, this is a great cliché. It’s a fundamental part of religious tradition, and it’s something that you must always love your neighbor, no matter who your neighbor is. And we have all the clichés of people who say, “Well, I love my neighbor, as long as I can choose who the neighbor’s gonna be and who I live nextdoor to.”
But the point is, this idea of loving one’s neighbor tends to give us problems, because we say, “How can I love people who I don’t like?” In other words, it’s like being asked to go out on the street and give money to strangers. I don’t mind giving money to a friend, but I don’t wanna take something out of my pocket and give it to someone I don’t even know and don’t care for, someone who I’m sure is gonna misuse it. This is the way we thought of love.
You see, actually, the word “Love thy neighbor,” in the Hebrew should be translated, “Love to your neighbor.” It’s an entirely different thing. You see, it means then not giving something to him, but acting lovingly toward him. This is the intent of the commandment, not love him, but be loving. To love him deals with something you give him or something you do to him. But being loving deals more with what goes on in you. It’s your attitude. It’s your perception. It’s the way you see him. It’s not something you bestow upon him. You can say, “But I’ve loved him, and then my responsibility is over.” But I see him in love, and I have to keep seeing him in love. It’s an attitude. It’s a perception. If I stop seeing him in love, then actually the light goes off in me. So it requires a discipline.
Jesus makes it more emphatic. He even goes on to say, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, the manner in which you treat the neighbor comes out of the esteem in which you hold yourself. You cannot know and love another person truly unless you know and love yourself. That’s why he says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Be loving to your neighbor out of the overflow of your own innate awareness of self love. In Jesus’ teaching, you see the emphasis is always on you. And this is why I like Jesus. That’s why I like this man. That’s why I feel that He has so much to offer to our day. Because He wasn’t preaching. He was talking about you, not about the fact that you should do all sorts of nice things for the world and do things for people, and do things for your neighbor and your loved ones, and your family. Do things for yourself in a transcendent sense. He’s always concerned about what is going on within you, because you live in this world. And it matters not.
You can, as many folks have found. They’ve been very generous and loving, in a human sense. And they’ve given their money away, and they’ve done nice things for people. And they wind up bereft themselves and feel terribly sorry for themselves. A lot of folks are giving in this sense, but learn basically because they’re not good receivers, that ultimately they find that they come to know want. But the want is because they give in an outer centered way, and they love in an outer centered way. They love people, but the don’t love in an inner centered way. They don’t love out of the overflow of their own consciousness of oneness.
So Jesus puts the emphasis on you. Loving is keeping in the flow of the cosmic process. It’s letting your light shine, keeping the lights turned on, not essentially because the world needs the light. It probably does. Now essentially because your family needs the light, and they probably do. But because you need to keep your light turned on, or else you and your own consciousness are going to suffer want. This is the key. If you’re not centered in love, then you’re not letting yourself be loved. And you are dependent for security on whether some other person acts lovingly towards you. And in this consciousness, every change in people, and every change in condition in your relationship is a threat that triggers in you a reaction of hate or resistance. Because you’re always thinking about, “What are they gonna do?” Or you feel jealous, or upset, or angry because, “I’ve loved this person, but he hasn’t responded. He hasn’t returned it. I’ve given him so much, but where’s the thanks? Where’s the gratitude,” you see. If you feel a sense of ingratitude over the fact that someone doesn’t seem to return or reciprocate your love, then you really didn’t love. You really didn’t love. You were bartering. You were looking for attention. You were looking for something from him. Now that’s a hard lesson, but that’s the kind of lesson that is implicit in this consciousness of truth.
But you see, Jesus carries the process further. You may be able to weasel out of it so far. You may be able to say, “Well after all, I do pretty good at this.” But then He goes all the way. Jesus, there’s something about the man. He will not ever let you settle for less. You’ve gotta go all the way. So He says, “You have heard it said of old, thou shalt love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies and pray for those that spitefully use you, that you may be sons of your Father.” Now that’s too much. I mean, what do you expect? I mean, it’s nice to get a consciousness where you can be loving and can express love to lovable people. But to love enemies, to love people who despitefully use you, that’s ridiculous. And that’s the very consciousness and concept that has caused a lot of folks to turn away from truth, turn away from the teachings of Jesus, turn away from the fundamental process. Because they say, “Well that’s ridiculous. Nobody can live that way. If you do, you’re a hypocrite.
“Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute, that you may be sons of your Father.” So the key is involved in it, but it’s rarely looked at. Now you love your enemy, not because he’s deserving of it. Why should I give him something? It’s like saying a man is stealing from me, but I give him money. Why should I give him more money when he steals already, you see. But the point is love your enemy not because he deserves it, but because you deserve it. Again, the emphasis is on you. If you are upset, and confused, and bitter, and resentful, and resistant, and fearful, and angry because of an enemy, the basic problem in terms of the cosmic idea is that you have enmity.
And the enmity is in you, not in him. Now he may have done all sorts of things. And you may wanna get the law against him, and you may well should do it. But the important thing is what is going on in you? If you have enmity, you have a problem. You have a red light on the panel. And as long as you hold that enmity, you’re going to suffer the consequences. This is why Jesus says, “Resist not that which is evil.” This is why He says, “Go the second mile.” Not because this is a nice thing to do in the world, but because you have to be very sure that you do not allow yourself to be centered in a conflict, to turn off the flow, because the process that makes for life, and vitality, and harmony, and health, and all the good things that we desire, depends on keeping the contact within yourself in the centered flow of love, the totalization process.
So Jesus again is centered with you. If you resist or resent, you frustrate the flow within yourself. To withhold love, regardless of the reason for it, and we can think of lots of reasons why we should not love certain persons. I mean, I love this, and love that. But that one, no sir. We can think of all sorts of reasons. But to withhold love, regardless of the reason, is to withhold the vital power, the only power by which you can be healthy, and happy, and successful.
We have an old cliché, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have your enmity and have health. You can’t have your conflict with people, your resistance and your resentment, and still have peace, or have the kind of flow that makes for success and harmony in your relationships and your affairs. There’s no way. You can’t have both. Now we may think at times that we have good reason not to love someone because of what they’ve done or what they are. But we can never afford to entertain thoughts that separate us from the flow of divine love.
So Jesus uses a metaphor which is often misunderstood. It’s one of these things that either it’s taken out of context or else it’s totally overlooked all together. He says, “If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out. If thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off.” Well I suspect there were fundamentalist fanatics around the Medieval times that really thought that that’s what you should do, cut off your hand if you find yourself getting involved in some sort of resentment. But this isn’t what He’s talking about. He’s simply saying, “Stop thinking negative thoughts.” If you resist someone, don’t be so concerned with why he’s causing you resistance, but why are you resisting? Get out of the consciousness of resistance. If you’re upset, and it’s because you’re upsettable.
So why are you upset? What’s wrong within you? If he’s done something, you say, “He’s done this to me. Why does he do that to me? Why does he say those things to me?” I always say the “to me” is the little fish hook. That’s the barb that hangs you up. In other words, the first to replace, get rid of the fish hook. Pluck it out. Cut it off. And then ask the question again. “Why did he do it?” Not to me. He didn’t do it to me. He did it. If it’s to me, it’s because I got hung up in my reaction, in my resistance, you see. Why did he do it? Then I can see him objectively, and ultimately I can see him lovingly. I can see he did it because he’s confused. He does it because of certain problems in his own life. A feeling of lack of love in his own consciousness because he’s cut off from this inner flow of love himself. And he’s lashing out at life. So if I can understand that, and instead of taking it personally, I keep myself free. I cut it off. Pluck out the eye. Get rid of the limitation in my own consciousness. And then I can center myself first of all in my own love flow. And out of that love flow, I can see him lovingly.
That doesn’t mean I have to condone what he does. Doesn’t mean that I have to let him go Scott free if he’d broken the law. Not that at all. But it means that I cannot help the world or anybody, and certainly myself if I try at all costs to cause someone to pay the last farthing at the expense of my own self. ‘Cause then you have two frustrated people. You have two people out of the flow. And the important thing is I must keep myself centered. I must keep myself in tune. And out of that centering consciousness, then I can be an influence. Then I can help. Then I can radiate the consciousness of peace to people and to the world.
The time to salute the divinity in another person ... You know, we use this term salute the divinity from the Hindustani Namaskar, which simply means the divinity within me salutes the divinity within you. We play with this. Oh it’s wonderful to say Namaskar to my friends, and Namaskar. People answer the telephone, “Namaskar.” It’s beautiful. I just love to hear it. It’s wonderful to know that you’re saluting the divinity in people. But the time to salute the divinity in people is the very time when it’s most difficult to do. If someone has irritated you, that’s the time to get the Namaskar consciousness. Not because he deserves it, but because if you’re irritated, there’s an evidence that you’re out of tune, and you can’t afford to be out of tune. You know, even our medical doctors will tell us that this day. Psychologists will tell you that. Anybody who’s involved in psychosomatic processes of illness will tell you that any time you get out of tune, you’re gonna experience headaches and stomach ulcers and all sorts of problems. You can’t afford it. So the point is the time to say Namaskar, I salute the divinity within you, sincerely, is the very time when you’re upset, when you’re angry, when you’re inclined to say anything but Namaskar.
But the important thing is this. When you keep centered in your own love flow, you begin to function at the level of life’s completion. This is why Teilhard calls it the totalization process. Because you cannot function as a total being unless you’re in tune with love. And it’s so important, because suddenly when you’re in tune with love, you experience what Thoreau calls the license of the higher order of beings. Suddenly then, you can experience life at its fullest. Suddenly you can experience life at the depth and the height of your own potential, and you can do all sorts of things which otherwise you couldn’t do. And you’ll be protected from all sorts of things that otherwise you might unthinkingly experience.
Some time ago, a man told me of his own problem that evidenced the demonstrating power of love’s transcendence in a way that was quite unique. And the problem is very down to earth, and very routine, and yet something that you might be able to identify with. It seems that a writer friend wanted to write the story of a very unusual incident in which this man had been involved. It involved a lot of people, but it involved this particular man. And so he asked the man for his permission. But the man felt sure that certain phrases of the story might be embarrassing and even harmful to the other people involved, so he refused to let the friend, the writer, publish the story. And the man was furious, because he’d written the story. He’d put a lot into it, and he felt it was something very important and very good. So he said some very unpleasant things, and he stomped off in anger.
Well this was disturbing to this particular man, because he said this friendship meant a lot to him. They’d been friends for many years, and they really liked one another. So he struggled with his conscience, because he wanted to do the right thing. He felt very sure and very committed to the fact that this was going to be injurious to certain people, and that it shouldn’t be told. And yet at the same time, he wanted to have a good relationship with his friend. So he weighed in the balance the process. And he felt tempted for a while to say, “Oh well. I want my friendship more than anything.” But he stood by his principle.
Now the friend was out in San Francisco, and he was here in New York City. He wrote some letters, and did anything and everything short of pleading with the man to understand so they could continue their friendship. But the man refused to answer. He was really upset. So then he finally realized that he was going to have to get himself straightened out. And he began to deal with actually what we’re talking today about the cosmic process of love, to enter into the dimension of divine completion. So he would take frequent times in stillness, not to pray about his friend. This is the mistake that we often make, you see. We say, “I’m gonna straighten him out through the consciousness of truth,” or, “I’m gonna send bullets of love to him. I’m gonna do things to him to change him.” You see. Let’s deal with ourself. Forget about the friend for a while. And this is what he realized. He took time in stillness to get himself centered in the consciousness of love, to get himself filled with the realization that in this divine flow of love, there can be no separation. There can be no confusion. There can be no ill will, no hurt, no anger.
And he waited until he could get himself so completely at ease in this consciousness before he did anything further. And then what did he do? He did the kind of thing that sometimes we overlook doing. He simply looked up from his consciousness and looked out, and looked at his friend across the miles. And there’s no distances in truth of course. He simply looked at this person, wherever he might be, and saw him with eyes of love, saw him in the consciousness of love. He didn’t try to send anything to him. He didn’t try to project any thoughts. He didn’t try to speak a lot of words across the miles. He just saw him in the consciousness of love. And within 48 hours, an airmail letter came saying that the friend had suddenly felt very foolish in his attitude. He’d felt led to talk to a lawyer about it. And the lawyer had told him that he might well have opened himself to charges of libel if he had published the article as he’d wanted to. So he apologized. He even thanked the man for committing himself to the process of truth, for holding to that which is right, and saving him from a great deal of unpleasantness. And saying incidentally, “I’m so glad that our friendship has not been destroyed, and I can hardly wait to see you again.”
So in a sense, love had done it’s healing totalizing work. But let’s take a look at what happened. Love didn’t go out to San Francisco and shake this man up, and make him know that he was wrong. See because that’s all in human consciousness. We tend to do this so often. We have this thought, “I’m gonna straighten him out.” Quite often we bring that thought into us when we come into truth, and we carry it over, glossing it over with metaphysics. The need is not to change people, not to set them right, or to straighten them out, but to see them rightly, and straighten out our own projected consciousness. Always this is the case. It’s what is going on in me, not what’s going on in him. “But he’s the one that’s wrong, and I’ve gotta make him make sure that he knows that he’s wrong.” He’s not wrong. He’s where he is, and I’m where I am. The only wrong involved as far as I’m concerned, is that I’m seeing out of a negative consciousness. And I have to straighten that out.
And that’s all I can ever do, all I can ever do. But when I straighten out my thoughts and get myself centered in the consciousness of love, not a love that is human, not a love that is willful, not a love that I feel can do certain things out here. But love that is attuned to the divine flow and which is not mine at all, but simply the overflow of a divine process within me. And when I get centered in that consciousness, then suddenly I feel good, and I feel compassionate. And it’s a case of love your enemies. Love those that despitefully use you. Love wherever there is difficulties. I feel compassion. And the compassionate is not so much what I’m giving the person, as what I’m giving way to within myself. And suddenly out of that consciousness of compassion, I see clearly. I see clearly. And out of that clear sight, I see through eyes of love. Now I can look at that person not with the thought of, “Gee, why doesn’t he change?” But I see beyond the difficulties, beyond the seeming inconsistencies, and I see what he really is deep down within himself.
That’s all there is to it. That’s the beautiful part of it. There’s no willfulness, no determination, no long prayers, no affirmations, no calling people and saying, “Help me to bless this person.” I simply see him in the consciousness of love. And suddenly I create the environment. That’s all you ever do in a loving relationship. I create the environment. Doesn’t make a difference whether it’s the man next door, or the man on the other side of the world, or a man on the moon. It doesn’t matter. There’s no separation in truth. I create an environment in which suddenly he feels secure, and he can let his own inner consciousness express. And suddenly there is an influence that is almost unbelievable. He doesn’t know what’s happening. It’s not that he’s being brainwashed, not that he’s being hypnotized. Nothing like that is happening at all. But suddenly there’s a feeling of freedom in which he can see himself. He gives up his resistance. He gives up his willfulness, his bullheadedness as it were. Suddenly he sees clearly. And he begins to see with eyes of love. And suddenly there’s understanding. Whenever two people really see each other clearly and truly out of a consciousness of love, there’s always understanding. This is what understanding really is.
You see, when you resist a thing, when you fight a thing, you function at the lowest level of consciousness. And you send out and receive the most negative of vibrations. And quite often we do this unconsciously. Even persons who are trying to project thoughts of love quite often are projecting thoughts other than love, covering it up with attitudes of love, covering it up with platitudes we might say. But actually they’re really resisting and resenting, “Why doesn’t he change? I love him. I love him. I love him.” And quite often we say, “I’m gonna love him if it kills me.” It’s unfortunate we make such a statement, because by and large, that’s exactly what can happen, ‘cause it’s destructive. But when you ignore the situation, stop resisting it, cut off the hand, pluck out the eye, as Jesus says metaphorically, get out of the negative reaction. Instead, enter the totalizing vibration of love, which is not your love, not human love, not willful love, but it’s a cosmic process that flows through you. And suddenly your negative feelings fade away. The sense of urgency and trying to change something fades away. And suddenly you begin to see the clouds break through, and suddenly there’s understanding. As you keep centered in the cosmic flow of love, you’re not only protected, but a miracle change takes place, and all those whom you feel has had any kind of enmity towards you.
Many persons have a resistance or a fear of danger or attack, and walk constantly under a shadow. And there’s a lot of that in our society today, because we read so much about the dangers of the streets and the dangers of people. You can’t trust people anymore. So there’s this consciousness of walking under a shadow everywhere. It becomes almost an attracting force. One of the things that we need to understand, and I know that most of us understand it intellectually. But we need to get this understanding deep within our consciousness. Job says, “That which I fear comes upon me, that which I resist, that which I’m even trying to change through love,” which underneath is a resistance and a resentment, you see, “is actually gonna destroy me.” When you’re out of the vibration of love, you’re in a consciousness in which chaos is always a possibility.
Now that’s important. Doesn’t mean that you’ve created the situation. But the situation can happen if you have that potential within yourself because you were out of the center of your own love vibration. If there is fear and anxiety, then pluck it out. Cut it off. These are danger signals that should never be ignored. Never allow yourself to go very long fearful or anxious. You may cover up your fear and anxiety by all sorts of metaphysical attitudes and platitudes. That’s not enough. Pluck it out. Get rid of it. Get yourself centered in the consciousness of love and know that in your love center, there’s security. There’s freedom from all harms, from all difficulties, from all confusion, because you’re centered in God, for God is love. And remember that love is not giving something. It is being something. Out of your insecurity and lack of self love, you tend to resist the idea of loving the enemy. You may say, and people often say this. “I try to love this person. It’s so difficult, but I’m trying. I’m working at it. I’m constantly working on it. But it’s hard.” And I say to that person, and I say it often, and you’ve heard me say it before. “Don’t try to love at all. Never try to love anyone.”
Quite often people who get involved in the cosmic process of love in a intellectual sense say “Well, I guess my need is to love everyone. So wherever I do I’m trying to love this person. I’m trying to love that one. I’m trying. I look on the subway across from me, and I say, oh, I try real hard to love this one. Oh, I’m a good truth student. I’m trying to love everybody.” And I say, “Don’t try to love anybody.” Because to try to love is not to love. If you’re trying to love, it’s up here. It’s in human consciousness. If you try to love, it’s a judgment. You say, “He’s terrible, but I’m gonna try to love him.” But your consciousness says, “He’s terrible.” And the thought, “I’m gonna try to love him is all here in your human consciousness, the rationalization. There’s no way that you can love him through trying to love him if you’ve already established the realization that he’s terrible, you see. To try to love is not to love. To try to love is human. “I’m gonna love. I’m gonna love. I’m loving, loving, loving.” It’s ridiculous. It’s a waste of time.
Worse than that, it’s a inner confusion. Quite often, what it is saying is that, “You’re really not worth it, but I’m gonna be magnanimous and love you anyway.” So don’t try to love ever. Don’t try. Let. To try is something you’re doing, something you’re giving. To letting is something that you’re simply being a channel for. This is the kind of thing that many of you have come to experience in testing the biofeedback equipment, where you put these little electro sensors on and try to make a needle move up by changing the heat in your hand and so forth. If you try to do it, it doesn’t work. Instead of the needle going up, it’ll go down if you try to do it. But if you envision yourself doing it, and then get into a consciousness of what I call I don’t give a darnness, sort of a divine indifference. But you see yourself doing it. Just the exact opposite or trying, it’s letting. Suddenly it happens. The temperature changes. The needle goes up. It’s beautiful.
And it’s exactly what happens in the flow of love. Don’t try to love. You have someone in your experience who’s being a difficult person to you, or being a pill as we sometimes say, don’t try to love him. Love is the answer. And love will solve all sorts of things. And love will solve this problem. But not through willful determination to love, you see. Stop trying to love. Get yourself centered first of all. Block the situation out. Stop looking at the person. Get yourself centered, so you realize you’re one with the divine flow, loved with an everlasting love by the infinite process that can never be anything else but love in you because God is love, and you’re created in and of God. You’re created in and of love. So you let this consciousness become filled and thrilled in your nature. And then out of this consciousness, you simply open your eyes, and see. But you see not with human judgment.
Remember Jesus says, “Judge not according to appearances, but judge righteous judgment.” You don’t see it with human judgment. Suddenly you see, almost with a spiritual peripheral vision, that enables you to see beyond the limitation, beyond the outward evidences that are causing you problems. You see what a person really is in truth. And you see him in that consciousness, see him in a consciousness of love. And suddenly you create, without trying to create, an environment, an environment. And in that environment, the person suddenly feels secure, and he can let down his guard. Most of the hostilities, most of the confusion that emanate from people come because of fear, because the person is resisting other people, resisting things, because he doesn’t feel adequate. But if he’s surrounded with the supportiveness of this site of love, this insight of love, suddenly he feels secure. He allows his resistances to fall down, his defenses fall away, and suddenly out of this comes the ability, the free expression of his divine potential. You’re not gonna make a person into a Christ overnight. You’re not gonna make yourself into a Christ overnight. But you’re gonna work wonders. But you’re gonna do it not by trying to do it, but by letting the cosmic process flow.
Interesting this is this all involves the ability to see. Now I’ve used this expression often, and it’s a very important thing. We’ll sum it up with this right now. The work I comes from the Sanskrit root word which is ayin, A-Y-I-N, A-Y-I-N, which literally is defined and translated fountain. Throughout the scriptures, you often hear the statement the fountain of the eye. The eye is a fountain. Seeing, from a psychological point of view is taking images from the outside and having them implant themselves on the nerve endings of the inner eye itself so that you’re getting outward evidences into your consciousness. But transcendent seeing is a fountain that flows. As the eye looks out into the world, it’s like a spotlight. A spotlight doesn’t give anything out here. But it reveals things out here because of the light that it expresses. So the eye is a fountain, and when you see out of this inward attunement with the cosmic flow, whatever you look upon suddenly is illumined, not because you’re a holy person, but because you’re wholly in tune with the divine flow.
And suddenly you see differently. And when you see differently, the fountain of that consciousness flows forth and the other person feels it. You may not know how it’s happened. It’s not because you’ve said a lot of words of truth, or mouthed a lot of affirmations, said, “Oh yes, I know what love is. Love is dadadada.” So I say to you, “Dadadada. Dadadada. Dadadada.” But that’s all up here, you see. But you simply see him in a consciousness of love without any intellectual process at all. And out of that comes the clearing of your own resistance and resentment. And suddenly an environment takes places, and he feels relaxed, and unthreatened, and he expresses what he really can be. And miracles can happen in this. And all I can say is, this is something you gotta practice.
So this is our homework exercise. This is probably the toughest exercise we’ve had so far. And the point is first of all, you’ve gotta commit yourself to actually work at it. Otherwise it’s worthless. It’s silly for us to sit here and talk about love for too long. But it makes no sense at all, you see, unless we’re really going to do something about it. Not this way, but this way. So I’m saying practice seeing with eyes of love. First in an in impersonal way, and you can do it impersonally by, if you’re sitting in a subway or bus, and you see someone opposite you, take the person that it would be the most difficult one to salute the divinity within, and let that be your little exercise. Close your eyes. Don’t try to love him. Close your eyes. Get centered. Get the feeling of oneness with this divine flow, til you feel that warmth of compassion flowing forth through you. And then open your eyes, and think of this compassion, this consciousness flowing forth. Not bringing the image out there into here, but flowing forth from here like a light, a light that is revealing things that otherwise you can’t see.
And don’t try to see changes. Don’t try to see things happen. Don’t let the ego get involved. “Oh, look what I did,” you see. Let it go. Just see with eyes of love, and then turn away and try it in another situation, you see. So often we wanna see it happen. We wanna be able to say, “Hey, you know what I did on the subway the other day? I looked at a guy and he changed overnight.” It’s all up here in human consciousness, you see. So don’t look at it in that sense. Just get your own self clear. Get yourself in tune, and see with eyes of love. Practice this. And then, when you feel that you’re beginning to get adept at it, then practice it upon those close to you, your errant son, your husband that’s been a problem to you, your boss or your employers or your coworkers. And actually look at them in eyes of love.
And you’ll begin to see that the first and foremost thing that will happen, changes will take place in you, your own consciousness, your own attitudes. And changes will begin to take place miraculously out here, and you’ll wonder how it ever happened. “I didn’t do anything.” And of course, you didn’t. I of myself can do nothing. But the Father within me does the works. So this is basically what it’s all about.
Let’s be still for just a moment. And in this stillness, I want us to just remember that scripture of injunction. “Behold, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” You are loved. You are the activity of the divine process of love flowing forth through you and as you. And right now, you are centered in that contact with the inner flow of cosmic love. And thus all the love in the universe is at your command. No one in all the world has any more love than you. And yet it’s not something to give away. It’s something to enable you to feel secure and an energy process so that you can see through this consciousness, see life in general, see the world out there, the sordid things that the news accounts reveal. The people around you, the people close to you, that you can see in the consciousness of love. And in this consciousness, you’re going to find a kind of freedom that you’ve never known before. Praise God for the truth that makes us free. Amen.
