Love Remembered; A Life Worth Living

Love Remembered... this is such a great exploration into the nature of Love and the opportunity of being human. It was recorded at a small group event in Denmark while streaming live online. Enjoy.  

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This is part 1 of a 4 part course

Welcome to Satsang.

Satang, for me, is an opportunity to rest in this space of stillness and to allow for, what we might call, an answer to show itself.

This answer that shows itself is to a question that resembles “What the hell is going on.” So often, we find ourselves asking that. We say, “wait, what is going on?”

Usually invited through some sort of pain of being human. Frustration, tension, anxiety, sadness, a fear.

We are alerted to this question through recognizing something within us that feels out of alignment with a harmony that we long for. This is delightful to recognize that in some way or another, what we crave is a harmony. In the softest, most gentle way.

You know, like beyond all of the things that the mind says it wants to happen. “I want this to happen and this and this and this.” Really, when you get down to it, it’s like, “you know what? I’d like to be able to relax. I’d like to know that all is well. I’d like to know that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

You see, it’s a it’s a very subtle sincerity, but very sincere, very sincere. We get to see beyond all the noise, everything that we think we want.

Naturally, as I always point people to see, is that this investigation of what the mind thinks it wants, we ask, why? “So that I can relax.”

In a very subtle way, the sincerity of this is like recognizing when you might be with somebody who is freaking out and you asked them “what’s wrong,” and they go on and on and on and on and on about what’s wrong. Then, the more you sit with them and the more they get it out, the conclusion you get to is… “I’m just scared.”

“That’s really what it is. I’m just scared.” In the same way the mind thinks, “oh, I want this and I want this, and I want this. I just want to know all is well.” It helps to recognize the simplicity in this, because as we attempt to answer the question, what the hell is going on? The answer to this question is quite simple. It’s quite simple.

The answer isn’t going to be found in satisfying all the wants. The answer isn’t going to be found in solving the ten thousand problems that we think are problems.

The solution is going to be a very profound yet subtle recognition that “actually, all is incredibly well, not just well but incredibly well.”

The title of this evening’s session is “A Life Worth Living, Remembering Love.” I love the investigation of love. It’s something that you can’t quite capture. But, you know, it’s what you long for; and you know, when it feels like it’s missing.

This is interesting, this play of love, not merely in a romantic sense, but something much more authentic to one’s core. You see, there’s a pain in life, of feeling separate from love that is much more painful than any physical pain you’ll ever experience in this life. To the degree that if you had your choice, you might choose a broken bone over a shattered heart.

Love, when you investigate the subtle quality of life, you start to recognize that love is actually interwoven into the fabric of our human experience. In such a way that every emotional experience you have, defined as positive or negative, the positive emotion is some sort of remembrance of love. It’s a recognition of love. The negative emotional experience is some sort of perceived separation from love. Love is lost. Love is distant.

The touch between us and our physicality, it’s a touch of love’s remembrance or it’s a violence that fears love’s loss. Please see this. It’s interwoven.

Could you imagine this human experience without the element of love? All of love’s flavors, appreciation, kindness, intimacy, connection. You see, these are all flavors of love.

Do you see how irrelevant life would be? These moments when such things feel so distant, impossible to find. Don’t you feel like you just want to die? What the F is the point, if there’s not love? Which points our heart in a direction, that maybe we can see… if life is about anything, maybe it’s about love.

In all the things that the mind is scared about, is it scared about anything other than losing that love? Everything that you might want to happen tomorrow. Is it not some reflection of desiring connection with that love?

We can tell infinite stories about this love, what it might look like, how it might take form, but love, nonetheless. Every single human being on the planet, same quest, looking for love. Fearing love’s loss.

Just take a snapshot for a moment of all the beauty in life between human beings. You see, it’s an expression of love. All of the violence expressed through human beings, the fear of love’s absence. So much noise in the world, but yet so simple, so, so, so simple.

Just in these little recognitions, lots of noise begins to fall away. It’s like, “oh, yeah, I turned this into something that it wasn’t. Lost in the story I was telling about it, rather than feeling deeply the point of it all. Trying to get to it rather than resting in it.”

Naturally, this leads us to the question. What is love? Do you see that the question itself implies that love can be measured, that it can be defined, that it can be captured. See that, just the question. What is that?

I’ll tell you something, if love is really interwoven into everything, good luck counting it. That’s a lot of everything. For there are the things that you can see and then the things that you cannot see.

This is what we attempt to do, is define love. We want to capture it. For it is the one thing that we crave more than anything. Surely we feel that if we can capture it, then we won’t have to fear its loss.

I heard it’s been said that “love is not enough. you can’t just have love, there’s lots of other things.” I would suggest that if you think love is not enough, then you misunderstand what love is. To see what love really is, you will see that love is everything.

If it seems like love is not enough, then be still and ask yourself, “what is love really?”

Have you noticed that throughout your human journey, this quality of love, again, in all of its different flavors, has been expanding in your being. Whereas, you’ve become more peaceful, more kind, more open. More willing to listen. Life has sort of soften the edges around a rough heart. Is this not what makes life worth living?

Almost as if without even knowing it, you’re being trained in love. Just by being in life, just by being in life. For the one who is open, this is incredibly obvious.

If there has been such an expansion, so to speak. You can see that if there is more love, then, in a way, there’s less fear. It’s very difficult to love when you’re with fear. See that for a moment. When you’re with fear, you become defensive.

When you’re with fear, you push away. You put up walls, you protect. Almost in a way that says it’s not safe to love. What we learn over time as we naturally become exhausted holding up these barriers, sooner or later, we feel the pain and we collapse into this love. Letting our walls fall down. Which in the spiritual way simply means we spend less time defending the ego.

Essentially realizing that the person we think we are doesn’t matter.

That’s really, really important to see? I can see in my own personal experience, even way back when, like the real the real problematic times in my life, man, I thought I was important. I thought that my ideas were the right ideas. I thought that other people were wrong. I thought I knew where I was going in life, who was going to become, I thought I knew who I was; carrying an idea of myself around in the mind.

On that journey, I just found that life didn’t care. Life was going to keep being life, which is very interesting to notice. This is people’s difficulty with life, arguing with the way of things, because the way of things don’t help you build an idea about yourself.

In a very simple way, it’s like we have plans for the weekend to go play out in the sun and fulfill our importance, then it decides to rain, we think… “that is rude. I had plans.” But life’s like, “I’m sorry but it’s got to rain. It has to rain so that life can be life.”

In this, you recognize that life isn’t so concerned with what you think you got going on. Life is going to do what life has to do in order for this miracle to keep spinning.

It’s not it’s not a negative thing by any means, but see that we’re swimming in a miracle that consists of, again, infinite pieces organized beyond the mind’s comprehension. Like, do you realize for our solar system to be our solar system, the universe has to be the universe. That’s a big universe. There’s a lot going on.

Everything is perfectly placed in the universe so that this moment can be this moment. In such a way that the weather pattern is doing exactly what it needs to be doing to maintain the balance of this moment, to provide you with oxygen, to provide the space, the container for being alive. Look how easy it is for us to argue, to think “life got it wrong. It’s too cold. It’s too. I had plans.” As if life was about getting somewhere.

I invite you to recognize just very, very gently throughout your whole life the movement of trying to get somewhere. How’s it going?

That’s my favorite question in my job. “How’s it going.” Because we see that this is the anxiousness that we have, the idea that we can get somewhere. That we can get to somewhere that’s different than here, but yet we always find ourselves back at here. Always find ourselves back in the presence of now. It’s the same now that doesn’t seem to care about your plans. So, we try really hard.

It’s wise to gently, beyond any self judgment, acknowledge the massive amounts of energy that is spent trying to get away from this moment. Spent arguing. You can see that that energy comes from the space of fear. If it’s coming from a space of fear, where’s the love? Where’s the presence of being? Where’s the listening? Where’s the connection? Where is the kindness?

Naturally, as the journey goes, the path that we travel is one of bumping into our illusions, which is that which is not real, but believed to be real. As you see that they’re not real, you let them go in. You’re letting them go you’re much more available to be present, which means you’re much more available to love.

So, naturally, the expansion of this life is letting go of the unreal and connecting with real. You’ve seen that this has been your human journey throughout any suffering you’ve ever had, you’ve been holding onto something that you thought was real and life was showing you that it’s not. It will come and go like everything else.

Then after we throw a tantrum we let it go, and then, what do we realize? “Actually, I’m fine.” Yeah, you’re fine.

Even outside of the scope of a “spiritual journey,” you’re already interwoven into this expansion. It’s happening regardless. Why? Because life is about love. That’s why. My goodness.

What if that’s what it’s really about? Consider the possibility here for a moment that you’re literally swimming in a miracle. That is not just some random occurrence. Naturally, this is what inspires the devotion. For one can go on living their life thinking it’s about this, that and the other perfectly fine. But sooner or later, after you’ve hit your head a number of times, you wake up to the realization, “Holy shit, it’s not about any of that. What am I doing? I’m literally spinning on a wheel going nowhere.”

You see, this human being thinks they’re going somewhere, that there’s a destination. Which is hilarious because you watch the planets spin around the sun hurling through an infinite universe. Where’s it going? Does it have a date?

The seasons cycling amongst themselves on repeat, is winter and looking a better version of winter? No. Why these infinite cycles? So that this moment can exist. Now can be now. The more you see now, what’s actually here… is that not enough?

I’ve been very casually and playfully exploring scriptures recently and I love scriptures from different religious text because they’re all staying the exact same thing, and they’re told in different ways.

It’s so funny to the degree that man can misunderstand what they’re saying and then go to war over it. It’s hilarious.

I’m terrible at reciting these things, but I’ll kind of do the best that I can. I was reading something in the Bible that spoke to Either God or Jesus was saying, “don’t worry, man. Chill out.” Some something like that.

He says, “you know, look at the birds. Are they concerned about what they’re going to eat tomorrow? Look at look at the seasons. You know, look at life. There’s no worry, man.”

Then he says, essentially, “Listen to what I’m going to say. Seek first the kingdom of God and then all of these things will be added unto you.”

“All of these things. But seek first the kingdom of God,” which is saying what? “Seek first the truth. What’s real?” Which is also saying what? “That your first question is what is real? What is true. Not… What do I want?”

You see the question, “what do I want?” Isn’t seeking first the kingdom of God? And… how is that going? What do I want? What about what I want? Trying to get somewhere.

Again, perfectly innocent and fine, but how’s it going? It’s been the source of the anxiety, the agitation, the violence, the idea that you’re missing something. You want that thing that’s missing. If you feel like you’re missing something that you want, the last thing you’re gonna do is relax because you have to go get it.

The value in seeking first, the truth as such in Satsang is we investigate and we realize that what you think you want isn’t what you want.

What’s underneath it? “I want love.” Oh, is that even missing? Be Still. “Is it out there in the world? Or is it with you? Be Still.”

This is when it becomes added unto you, is you literally see that everything that you want, you have it; the releaseness of what you want. Not to be disillusioned with the minds, images, creating things that aren’t really things, but to see underneath it.

Then another verse says, essentially, “if you want to inherit the kingdom of heaven, you’re going to have to return to being like children,” which is great because it’s saying, again, “chill out, relax and play.”

You see, I would make a bet that everyone in this room at some point thinks in their mind, “I wish I could just go back to being a kid. I wish I could go back to just playing and not taking all this so seriously. I remember as a kid, the adults were telling me what it was like to be an adult. I was like, “I’m not doing that, that sounds terrible, a bunch of seriousness.”

The thing about being childlike, do you notice how quickly children forget? They forgive. They’re quick to love. To trust. They’re on a great adventure, a discovery. There’s an innocent sense of wonderment that says, “what is that?” Notice this.

Do you see how that’s similar to what’s true? “What is this? What’s going on here?”

Another verse says “it’s easier fora camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Which essentially is saying the “rich man is the adult. The one with something to lose.” To take it at face value, you can kind of see that a rich man has lots of stuff, right? That’s the difficulty, letting go of all of this stuff. That’s an adult. The adult walks around with a backpack full of all sorts of things, possessions, resentment, judgment, excuses for not loving. It all becomes very heavy.

The very last thing you’re gonna do is lay down the backpack. Not realizing you force yourself to carry it. Which I think is interesting.

I’ve told this analogy before, but it’s like going to the gates of heaven. You see the angels there and they say, “Yeah. Come on in,welcome to heaven. We’re having a party. By the way, we have a no backpack policy.”

And you’re like, “oh, no. What about all my stuff?” Heaven says, “no, you can come in. You know, you the realness of you. We just can’t have everyone bring in their backpacks. It’s not for that.” You sit and think about it, “well, maybe I’m not ready.” That’s fine.

Sooner or later, you’d become exhausted carrying that backpack. That’s when you start to question what the hell is going on here. We sit in Satsang and we investigate this backpack, and what we see is it’s full of llusions, full of impossible things that are mistaken to be real. Understandably so.

What I invite you to see, again, this is a space to judge yourself for it, it’s an innocent inquiry. Notice that everything in that backpack that weighs you down are excuses for withholding love.

They are excuses that say why you can’t be free. And again, understandably so, because they’re believed to be real.

Don’t go looking through what you think is other people’s backpack. Look in yours.

As you slowly remove these items that have been weighing you down, you feel lighter and lighter and lighter, which is Love’s expansion. You remove the barriers from this loves flow.

Part of the drama, and again, I’m speaking directly but gently, part of the drama of being human is we have these assumptions that other people put things in your backpack and force you to carry it around.

Do you see how that’s just a belief? Do you see how powerless you are with that belief? Do you see how you could never be free if that was true? If it was true that other people put stones in your backpack, you could never be free.

Do you think that’s the miracle you’re swimming in? You think it’s a prison sentence? Of course, this is what describes Hell.

What’s really going on here?