Be Love Now
Imagine feeling more love from someone than you have ever known. You’re being loved even more than your mother loved you when you were an infant, more than you were ever loved by your father, your child, or your most intimate lover—anyone. This lover doesn’t need anything from you, isn’t looking for personal gratification, and only wants your complete fulfillment.
You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don’t have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success— none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.
Imagine that being in this love is like relaxing endlessly into a warm bath that surrounds and supports your every movement, so that every thought and feeling is permeated by it. You feel as though you are dissolving into love.
This love is actually part of you; it is always flowing through you. It’s like the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything. When you tune in to that flow, you will feel it in your own heart—not your physical heart or your emotional heart, but your spiritual heart, the place you point to in your chest when you say, "I am."
This is your deeper heart, your intuitive heart. It is the place where the higher mind, pure awareness, the subtler emotions, and your soul identity all come together and you connect to the universe, where presence and love are.
Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not “I love you” for this or that reason, not “I love you if you love me.” It’s love for no reason, love without an object. It’s just sitting in love, a love that incorporates the chair and the room and permeates everything around. The thinking mind is extinguished in love.
If I go into the place in myself that is love and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That’s the entrance to Oneness.
-- Ram Dass, excerpted from "Be Love Now"
What does extinguishing the thinking mind in love mean to you? Can you share a personal experience of a time when you were in the state of being love? How can we develop ourselves to be love?
Living within God's presence, we come to "this place" Ram speaks of. One in Spirit . . . Heaven and earth's truest/ultimate love form and connection!
Thank you, Ram Dass for your words.
A true blessing this day!
Love
This message could not have come at a better time. Since I woke up my mind has been busy with chatter that is not constructive for me or anyone else. I would really love to learn how to extinguish my thinking mind. For me I can relate with the state of love and not thinking, just being and accepting. when it happens it is often triggered by some positive experience, like right now I can sense the change in the feeling from anger and irritation and a lot of conversations to calm and appreciation. Thank you for this gift and the awareness it has brought to me.
This passage starts with the word 'imagine' which makes me wonder whether that state of being cannot be somewhat self-induced? The author's approach is not unlike that of sophrology: taking hold of one's imagination to create a serene climate within. Using the thinking mind to induce a certain state of being. And this is best done when relaxing and sitting quietly. I am not saying that this is wrong but I wonder if a more direct way is not to deliberately let go of the thinking mind as one comment suggested. This means accepting being vulnerable in relationship, a very difficult thing to do if one tends to be headstrong. I think this willingness is an expression of love. It creates space for all to flower.
I am clearer after reading this passage from Ram Dass as to the reality that lies beyond the words:'unconditional love'. Such sets of words may sometimes end up sounding like mere incantations, something detached from daily living or somewhat reserved to a few very saintly people. This reading reminds me that such love is not an abstraction and that I have already met its living expression although I may not have recognized it a such.
This passage is very dense with meaning, very accurate in its wording and I feel I may need to spend further time on it before I can fully digest it.
To me extinguishing the thinking mind equals Listening to your heart. Deeply listening. Letting go of the chatter, the noise in one's head that sometimes blocks the LOVE in the Heart. I have felt this love more than I can express. It washes over and it is like a state of bliss. It permeates EVERY part of you. It extends outward and inward at the same time. I believe we can develop this more by going into our hearts more and not being in our heads. Our heart feels this naturally, but sometimes our heads talk us out of it. Wishing all of you to feel this kind of LOVE, it is Beautiful. and Possible. HUG from my heart to yours.
