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| (photocredit: kurichan+) |
What if you loved everything around you unconditionally? How would your life improve?
Have to appreciate these lessons which come in from the blue.I was standing and looking out our southern window, cozy by the woodstove in our single-digit mornings, and realizing that I loved living and working on our farm. And the next thought was: what if everything was like this?
Contrasted with this is a former work (J.O.B. - Just Over Broke) relationship I'm in the middle of discontinuing with a guy who has been an unwitting jerk - simply because of his upbringing. He can't say anything without getting in a critical remark somehow. Sad, but commonplace. (It's easy to even find people who amuse themselves solely by finding ways to criticize others - TV comedy is built on this - compare to Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Shakespeare; you'll see a marked difference.)
You can't live a peaceful life when someone is always rebutting what you say, or trying to belittle or tear someone else down when you talk to them. So I've moved on, found other work which paid better (publishing books) and have my own financial freedom well in hand.
Of course, the echo's of working with him still remain. Some shrinks say it might take as long as 12 years before such echoes erase themselves. (As in what cults do.)
Releasing is the secret that these psych's don't know - that and Silva active meditation. (See "Freedom Is", if I've lost you already.)
Anyway - the end of "The Secret" DVD had Rhonda Byrne on the beach scratching "Feel Good" into the sand. That is the moral to the story that film told.
The more you feel good, the more good things come to you. (Law of Attraction, Golden Rule, that sort of thing.)
But what if you loved everything around you? Take it one step further...
Love is a feeling, which is a perception, not an emotion. Love isn't projected, but is sensed. True, as you create the world around you with your thoughts ("We become what we think about", "The World is What You Think It Is") - you are creating your feelings as well. But it's a much finer concept, and seems much harder to master than simply "controlling" your emotions (which is by simply releasing.)
To reach this finer plane of living, you need to be able to routinely experience the "peace which passes understanding" - and that occurs when you release any fear of Death or losing your Individuality. You can simply "Just Be."
At that point, you could openhandedly love anyone, anything, everyone, everything. And not need love in return - knowing that it would eventually return to you, that what you send out might have some work to do before it could come back to you. Or it would come back to you from a different source. You don't care, actually. You've become "hootless." Your point is to Just Be - and is just a "tetch" beyond Maslow's Self-Transcendence state.
In that state, you are helping everyone around you by the peace you create. (Lester Levenson ran into this - pastors loved to have him in their congregation because the peace he created was contagious.)
Anyway, it's been awhile since I simply practiced that Just Be scene. Been too busying working and trying to accomplish things. Actually, the most effective way to bring something to you is to let it go. Again, this is all through "The Secret" and those old 1920's books on the Law of Attraction. (I was practising being inefficient, I guess. Bringing myself this lesson, among many.)
So try this out for yourself: Simply get the idea of loving everything around you unconditionally. And make it so throughout your day. No penalty for falling from grace, but the prize is a continuing sublime state beyond description.
PS. What do you do with those "unwitting jerks" around you? Ask them to do this impossible task at least 10 times: Say something which has no criticism in it at all. It will probably take some coaching. They have to stay at it until they can say 10 statements which are not critical in the slightest. If any are critical at all, they have to start over. (Of course, you may want to do this on your own before you ask them to. Old habits die hard, they say...)
