Katie Davis is a Satsang Spiritual Teacher of Advaita, Non-duality, Self-inquiry, enlightenment, spiritual awakening, the power of being now and presence. Since 1999, she has been traveling to offer satsang in communities worldwide. The Awake by Katie Blog is moderated by Katie Davis, author of "Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlightenment." http://www.AwakebyKatie.blogspot.com
Maren Springsteen is The Beloved Friend. The initial awakening was over eleven years ago with many profound and customary twists along the way. The universal and divine creativity that is one of the extraordinary trademarks of spiritual realization is now in full bloom.
From the moment that you were first cradled in your mother's arms, you have been love; open, innocent and free.
Even now in this moment, no matter what life circumstances you have had to endure, nothing can change the fact that:
~ You are Pure Love ~
You are life's very purpose.
It is not that you were created to be loved, as though you could possibly be separate from that which you organically are. This would imply that you would need to get love from someone else, or through some imaginary future circumstance, or maybe within other things.
What I am saying is that you can directly realize that you are far more than your form with its given name. This has always been so. As a baby, you had not yet learned that mental idea of separation. You experienced that
"I am love, all is love, I am you."
Within you now is the same unfathomable field of pure love and this realization is the crux of spiritual awakening. Consciously awake, we live as that very essence that has no form and yet is inseparable from the extraordinary experience of being human, as well as indivisible from the divine.
The greatest gift of the Heart is realizing that you are this ever-present, unwavering and unlimited love.
We do not need to believe that we are lovable or have someone else prove their love. Through deep inner exploration, you realize that you essentially are all that you have been looking for in every other.
After all, when that magical and mystical moment of 'falling in love' appears, is it not true that the love arises within you?
The great twentieth century sage Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon once said:
"I am the abode of love, stainless, the one without second, and ever peaceful."
This is an absolute truth and you are this truth.
This radical realization is the end of separation and therefore the end all suffering. It is also the conscious beginning of an overwhelming sense of fulfillment that never fades.
As the infant begins forming an ego, it learns separation; the idea of being a separated body only that is divided from all other things, circumstances and people. Most unfortunate, it is also through this imaginary division that the loving essence that you truly are seems to be lost.
True love can never be lost, you have only been attending other things.
With a sense of estrangement from love, you then begin yearning for love and its fulfillment. The problem is, you have been searching for love in all the wrong places.
You can imagine how dynamic this realization might be for you, if you had spent an entire lifetime seeking love ... and then realize that it IS you! The magnitude of that revelation!
~ You are perfect and divine universal love ~
Then, you are no longer looking for love. You are being love, an inexhaustible and infinite source, and watching for every opportunity to overflow the greatest gift of the Heart.
That original separation never happened, other than in the imagination of the dual mind. It simply is not true. Now, it is your turn to explore to see whether what I am sharing is true.
This false belief has been an alienating force in every one of your relationships. The burden of pain becomes heavier and heavier, until you feel like you can no longer bear the hurt, and just cannot carry the burden any longer. Through grace, one fine day, your attention just might turn within.
This is salvation and the beginning of spiritual awakening and healing. You realize an indestructible love that was never broken and the miracle is ... that it is you ... and absolutely inseparable from the divine.
Your mental idea of love is only relative and it contains all of your conditions that you have formed through past experience. When your partner does not comply with those conditions, that small love quickly cycles to hate or resentment. Since you believe that you are separate, you experience your partner as a separate object from whom you must get love or you fear that they might take love away.
Impossible!
Love knows no separation. Separation is unattainable.
~ You are Pure Love ~
Diversity is beautiful! Multiplicity and variety does not require separation. We are one wild and magnificent love appearing everywhere as everyone and virtually everything.
Relative love appears within time and after certain duration, it inevitably cycles to dislike and within a certain duration of time, it again cycles to relative love. Then ... we blame our partner for our unhappiness! Is that even vaguely logical? We think that love is dependent upon their every action or reaction.
As the 'inferior' ego, I believe that I am undesirable and unworthy. As the 'superior' ego, I believe that most everyone else is undesirable and unworthy. In fact, for any ego, if people cannot improve my sense of self or if I do not believe that they could be a threat or take love away, people are basically ignored and found to be rather uninteresting, boring or not important at all.
For the ego, the keywords are time, separation and body as identity.
Whereas, wise love is free of time, sees through the mirage of separation and is no longer limited to the body.
Pure love is gigantic and in fact, the only omnipotent power in the universe.
As the sage Osho once proclaimed:
"Why should anyone else enjoy being with you, when you cannot even enjoy being alone?"
Being alone, you begin realizing who you genuinely are. In that revelation, life's truest passion for loving effortlessly emerges as patience, humility, forgiveness and emotional maturity. As love, you are naturally kind and in harmony with living, instead of throwing life around.
In the human mind, we have our differences and differing perspectives. However awake living is not attached to individual perspectives and we are open to the greater whole, so that human diversity is honored and naturally respected. This receptivity encourages a broader reality for the family, spirituality, society, workplace environment, science and the arts, so that we live in cooperation, appreciation and acceptance.
It all begins with you.
The invitation is to forget about "getting" what you think love is. Instead, behold the revelation of who you really are now!
The magnitude of this first conscious meeting shatters every illusion that you thought you were and destroys every idea of what "all else" is.
