And the Greatest of These is Love.

This post is an excerpt from my book, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West.
 To purchase, click here.

The Power of Love.

On the spiritual path, we will fall short many times. It is easy to become impatient, frustrated, and overwhelmed. That is why love is so important.

Love sees life in everything. It recognizes the life that abides within every creature. This recognition begets respect. Love is patient, kind, and endures all things, as anyone who has attended a wedding knows. Our knowledge, plans, and strategies will reach their wit’s end, but love never tires.

One day, while watching my favorite television show, “The Office,” I heard those famous words of St. Paul’s yet again but this time with new ears because I was holding my newborn son. As I looked at him and heard, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love,” I understood. For the first time, I understood.

In that moment, I knew: I knew that I could read every book in the world and make plans from now until the end of time, but my knowledge would be exhausted and my plans would fall short. No strategy and no amount of preparation could ever get me to the finish line. The only thing that remained was love.

Only my love for him can bear the hardships and difficulties that our relationship will bring to the surface. Only my love for him can overcome my impatience and arrogance. Only my love for him can guide him without trying to bend him to my will. Only love is humble enough to teach him how to think without teaching him what to think. For only the eye of love sees him as his own person and only love is selfless enough to grant him the space he needs to grow into that person. Love is the only voice within me honest enough to admit that he does not belong to me.  

Truthfully, it is not “my” love and it is not “for him.” Love is the defining characteristic of the Kingdom. I do not create love. I receive it. Love is a gift.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

And as children of God, we resemble God. Love is our birthmark. When freedom from self is realized, the likeness of God is reflected in our actions. The cataracts of fear and expectation are removed and we can see the world as-it-is. When we recover the freedom to see people as they are, we see the life that dwells and sings within them, and love is our natural response.

Love is wild. It has no manners.

It comforts the afflicted, and afflicts the comfortable. Love often defies logic. It would have us embrace our enemies and be uncomfortably honest with our friends. This cannot be taught. Love does not come with a manual. It is the spontaneous expression of our True Nature.

Unconditional Love

As I said before, love is complete freedom—the freedom of God to love friend and foe as our Self. Love is complete and total freedom because it is selfless. Selfless awareness is wide open, agapic awareness. This is the all-embracing quality of Undifferentiated Awareness that recognizes and embraces everything that is real and true, regardless of whether it is comfortable or not.

Self-centeredness is the worst kind of prison. It keeps us chained and shackled to our fears and illusions, reserved to making decisions that serve our own narrow-minded agenda. Love doesn’t see the world or the people in it through the knowledge of good and bad. Love does not see what we stand to lose or gain. It sees things-as-they-are. And when you see things-as-they-are, you see the spark of divinity that lives within all things.

Gratitude

In the embrace of unconditional love, it feels like we are loved into Being. This awareness brings about a phase change. It transmutes the energy of unconditional love into gratitude. Dominion is not control, but responsibility. Gratitude accepts this responsibility. When you are grateful for something, you “tend to it.” When God told Adam to tend to the Garden, he meant love it—love the body, your fellow man, and the earth.

Gratitude is an action, not an idea. It is the act of caring for that which we are grateful. Gratitude doesn’t hang out in the oceanic presence of unconditional love. It reaches out to the world from the deep space of love. It invests, not only in the maintenance of our Self, but through likeness recognizes and welcomes the True Self in others. Likeness is a quality of Basic Sanity. It looks beyond race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and social status to find its kind in others. In this way, likeness gives rise to kindness, which is the foundation of relationship. Having established relationship, love goes through yet another conversion.

Creative Love

At this stage, gratitude and kindness give way to the creative power of love. The principle of Eros or erotic love isn’t limited to “sexual desire.” It refers to the creativity of love. Therefore, sexual union is both an example of Eros and a most useful symbol for its creative nature. We are born out of love and therefore born to love. Love is the Alpha and Omega.

Eros is the desire to make love. It is the creative force that seeks to express love through relationship, art, poetry, music, prayers of devotion, and songs of worshipful silence. Eros articulates love. In fact, creative love is art—it is the aspect of love that lends shape to the unformed inspiration of our inner life. Eros is love Incarnate.

While creative love is the principle that underlies the great works of art, it is not limited to painting, music, or theater any more than it is to the bedroom. In fact, creative love is most active in our daily life. It is the aspect of love that expands the field of practice. It brings our spiritual practice out of our home and into our day.

Love in Daily Life

The Upanishads say, “And then He realized that he was this creation, as it had poured forth from Himself. In this way, He became this creation. Therefore, he who realizes this becomes, in this creation, a creator.” To become a creator is to bring the divine image to fruition. Having discovered an untapped inner wealth, we are no longer dominated by our poverty mentality. We are full. We seek to give back, to create.

Eros transforms our life into an art form. It is the art of living. When we consent to the power of love, it shapes our life in the same way Michelangelo chiseled his sculpture of David from raw stone. This happens in relationship. We cannot wall ourselves off from the world and call it spirituality. Without relationship our practice is incomplete. Commitment connects the responsibilities and obligations of our daily life to the indwelling reality of our True Self.

Committed relationships are difficult because they demand that we give of our Self. This is hard because the false-self is selfish. It wants to avoid discomfort and clings to immediate gratification. Creative love matures us by reminding us that we cannot hope to grow into our True Self without something demanding our false-self in return.

The resurrection of our True Life is proportionate to the death of our inauthentic life.

The false-self is incapable of accepting this truth. It is bound to itself. Love is free to accept this maxim. This is the power of love to endure all things: marriage, divorce, success, failure, friendship, rivalries, heartache, and death. The freedom of love enables us to adapt to life’s changing circumstances. From the point of view of creative love, there are no problems, only opportunities. If the problem can be solved, it is not a problem, just something for you to work with; if it can’t be solved, it is not a problem, just something to accept and move on. Creative love sees everything as workable.

Without struggle there is no growth which is why Shantideva writes, “All enemies are helpers in my spiritual work and therefore they should be a joy to me.” Where there is an enemy, a shortcoming, or an obstacle, creative love sees a gateway. When we are angry, afraid, jealous, depressed, or obsessed, love knows there is an underdeveloped aspect of our Self struggling to be born into the world. Love seeks to cultivate it. It loves our devils into the present moment; it does not reject them. We may be intellectually sympathetic to this idea, but only the power of love recognizes this on a practical level.

What we call spiritual principles live within us as potentialities embedded within the structure of Being, but just as the capacity to walk is a potentiality that has to be exercised by toddlers, these potentialities have to be actualized through the struggle of daily life. In this way, God is born into the world.

Spirituality is about accepting our obstacles as the path, not avoiding them. Only love is capable of seeing the relationships and tasks that present us with difficulty as the plots of land that we must cultivate. In short, what we call obstacles, love calls the path, and all paths intersect.

If we look closely, we will see an intricate web of interdependence emerging. It may appear that we are attracted to this person or that job for one reason or the other, but if we look closer—beyond the veil of the false-self—we will see that the power of love has brought us into this relationship. “Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being,” writes Teilhard de Chardin, the brilliant Catholic theologian.

It is as if the universe is working as a midwife, assisting in the birth of our Self. But love is never a one-sided situation. The forces of love are at work in the other person as well. The universe is using us to assist in their birth. There is something deep in the other that yearns to be realized, and it has identified a relationship with us as part of its path. We are there to aid in their birth, just as they are there to aid in ours.

While love may bring us together, it does not chain us to one another. It binds us to the truth in our hearts. So in love, there is solitude. “For the pillars of the temple stand apart,” writes Kahlil Gibran, “and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” Selfish love—which is no love at all—sees the other as an object to be exploited or a hostage to be taken; authentic love recognizes the symbiotic structure of the relationship. A healthy relationship moves back and forth between solitude and communion. It sees both interdependence and independence.

* This is article is excerpted from Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West by    Benjamin Riggs. To purchase, click here.

~

Eros recognizes disappointment as part of our path. It doesn’t see tribulation as something to be avoided. The Dalai Lama once said that we cannot view a beggar as an obstacle, if we hope to grow in generosity. This axiom can be applied to all other virtues as well. Patience is an indispensable spiritual principle, but when given the opportunity to grow in patience, many of us reject it. We rail against the person trying our nerves. We label those who try our patience as “assholes,” but without an obstruction or an “adversary” there is no growth. Creative love knows that we cannot grow in patience without an asshole in our lives and binds our actions to this principle.

Practicing Spirituality & Citizenship in the Era of Trump

Erected between the Church and the State is a "Wall of Separation."
But within the envelope of my skin, there is no line of demarcation segregating politics and spirituality. 

We do not live in a totalitarian state. As members of a democratic society, we have a civic duty. Our government is held in check by "we the people." In a democratic system of government, politics is just another aspect of daily living.

Spirituality is not an other-worldly affair. It is a principled worldview coupled with a system of practice that orients our whole being to the world in which we live.

Politics is not a distraction from spirituality, but one aspect of daily life with which spirituality is deeply concerned.

Saying that politics is a distraction from spirituality is like saying relationships or work are obstacles to spiritual practice. They aren't obstacles, they are opportunities for our spirituality to be born into the world. Segregating politics and spirituality is an attempt to closet your spirituality—to shield it from things that push your buttons, rather than turning into your struggles and learning to move beyond stress, fear, and anger.

We are not called to hide behind a vapid smile or to look the other way. Any spirituality that hides behind a distraction is not a spirituality but a defense mechanism. It is spiritual bypassing not spiritual practice. This is true regardless of whether our practice is rooted in Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, or lacks religious affiliation.

Gandhi once wrote, "Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is...Indeed, religion should pervade every one of our actions. Here religion does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe. It is not less real because it is unseen. This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. It does not supersede them. It harmonizes them and gives them reality."

A living spirituality is politically conscious and engaged but not obsessed. And this is the catch.

It is hard to be mindful and politically engaged at the same time. It is difficult to watch the news or read the papers without getting wrapped up in it, especially this day-and-age with a 24 hr news cycle and a controversial President that dominates every minute of that cycle.

Mindfulness and activism often feel mutually exclusive. But uniting the two is our path. We have to root our politics in mindfulness and silence. If we fail to do this, we will either neglect our civic responsibility or our politics will be tainted with fear and aggression.

You can be present and centered while protesting or voicing concern—Dorthy Day, Gandhi, King, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Dalai Lama are perfect examples.

While the basic outline of spirituality remains unchanged, the terrain that path must traverse changes with each generation. And it is no accident that these great icons of mindful activism have come before us, showing us the way. They have outlined the path before us. Their activism is rooted in prayer and meditation.

Venturing into the realm of politics without tethering the mind to reality is the way of madness.

Meditation anchors the mind in the present moment. But it is not enough to sit every morning. Mindful activism is meditation in action. We have to bring the principles of meditation—letting go and returning to the simplicity of the present moment—into our daily life. In the presence of injustice, we often feel fear, anger, and aggression. But we must disown the fear, anger, and aggression, not the awareness of injustice, which is grounded in reality.

Our conscience must rise above our fear of confrontation. We have to speak truth to power. Our words must not be weighted down by anger and resentment. 

Politics devoid of compassion is just another way to vent resentment. And our body politic is already saturated with resentment. Prayer connects the mind and the heart, melting away resentment. William James wrote in Varieties of Religious Experience, "Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer." And the heart is the principle from which the mind draws life. But once again it is not enough to pray only in the morning. We have to see aggression as a reminder to pray throughout the day. When are afraid or angry, we have to pray for those that arouse our bitterness. We have to pray for those in need. Prayer gets us out of our head, out of our self-centered mind. It awakens the spirit of selflessness and sanity.

Spirituality reminds us that it is our responsibility to be a voice of sanity, a light unto the world. I say that not with a condescending tone, but with an awareness that I too must work harder to bring mindfulness, compassion, and sanity into my politics. Politics is a sticky subject. It is easy to get caught up in politics. But the spiritual path always cuts through our obstacles. It never goes around them. This is the path we in the era of Trump must trudge and we have to do it together.

Part of doing it together is holding each other accountable. When we see someone with good intentions lash-out or become disrespectful, it is important to point that out to them. We have to remind them that how they say it is every bit as important as what they say. Yes, we are obligated to speak the truth, but we are also obligated to do that in a skillful manner. If we oppose hate, then we have to oppose it even when it is attached to a message that we agree with because hate--in any form--only adds to the problems that we face as a nation. Hate is not the counter-measure for injustice. As Martin Luther King said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

_________________________

Also available on iTunes: http://apple.co/2lK4hb4

Politics and Spirituality

Erected between the Church and the State is a "Wall of Separation."
But within the envelope of my skin, there is no line of demarcation segregating politics and spirituality. 

We do not live in a totalitarian state. As members of a democratic society, we have a civic duty. Our government is held in check by "we the people." In a democratic system of government, politics is just another aspect of daily living.

Spirituality is not an other-worldly affair. It is a principled worldview coupled with a system of practice that orients our whole being to the world in which we live.

Politics is not a distraction from spirituality, but one aspect of daily life with which spirituality is deeply concerned.

Saying that politics is a distraction from spirituality is like saying relationships or work are obstacles to spiritual practice. They aren't obstacles, they are opportunities for our spirituality to be born into the world. Segregating politics and spirituality is an attempt to closet your spirituality—to shield it from things that push your buttons, rather than turning into your struggles and learning to move beyond stress, fear, and anger.

We are not called to hide behind a vapid smile or to look the other way. Any spirituality that hides behind a distraction is not a spirituality but a defense mechanism. It is spiritual bypassing not spiritual practice. This is true regardless of whether our practice is rooted in Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, or lacks religious affiliation.

Gandhi once wrote, "Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is...Indeed, religion should pervade every one of our actions. Here religion does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe. It is not less real because it is unseen. This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. It does not supersede them. It harmonizes them and gives them reality."

A living spirituality is politically conscious and engaged but not obsessed. And this is the catch.

It is hard to be mindful and politically engaged at the same time. It is difficult to watch the news or read the papers without getting wrapped up in it, especially this day-and-age with a 24 hr news cycle and a controversial President that dominates every minute of that cycle.

Mindfulness and activism often feel mutually exclusive. But uniting the two is our path. We have to root our politics in mindfulness and silence. If we fail to do this, we will either neglect our civic responsibility or our politics will be tainted with fear and aggression.

You can be present and centered while protesting or voicing concern—Dorthy Day, Gandhi, King, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Dalai Lama are perfect examples.

While the basic outline of spirituality remains unchanged, the terrain that path must traverse changes with each generation. And it is no accident that these great icons of mindful activism have come before us, showing us the way. They have outlined the path before us. Their activism is rooted in prayer and meditation.

Venturing into the realm of politics without tethering the mind to reality is the way of madness.

Meditation anchors the mind in the present moment. But it is not enough to sit every morning. Mindful activism is meditation in action. We have to bring the principles of meditation—letting go and returning to the simplicity of the present moment—into our daily life. In the presence of injustice, we often feel fear, anger, and aggression. But we must disown the fear, anger, and aggression, not the awareness of injustice, which is grounded in reality.

Our conscience must rise above our fear of confrontation. We have to speak truth to power. Our words must not be weighted down by anger and resentment. 

Politics devoid of compassion is just another way to vent resentment. And our body politic is already saturated with resentment. Prayer connects the mind and the heart, melting away resentment. William James wrote in Varieties of Religious Experience, "Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer." And the heart is the principle from which the mind draws life. But once again it is not enough to pray only in the morning. We have to see aggression as a reminder to pray throughout the day. When are afraid or angry, we have to pray for those that arouse our bitterness. We have to pray for those in need. Prayer gets us out of our head, out of our self-centered mind. It awakens the spirit of selflessness and sanity.

Spirituality reminds us that it is our responsibility to be a voice of sanity, a light unto the world. I say that not with a condescending tone, but with an awareness that I too must work harder to bring mindfulness, compassion, and sanity into my politics. Politics is a sticky subject. It is easy to get caught up in politics. But the spiritual path always cuts through our obstacles. It never goes around them. This is the path we in the era of Trump must trudge and we have to do it together.

Part of doing it together is holding each other accountable. When we see someone with good intentions lash-out or become disrespectful, it is important to point that out to them. We have to remind them that how they say it is every bit as important as what they say. Yes, we are obligated to speak the truth, but we are also obligated to do that in a skillful manner. If we oppose hate, then we have to oppose it even when it is attached to a message that we agree with because hate--in any form--only adds to the problems that we face as a nation. Hate is not the counter-measure for injustice. As Martin Luther King said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

_________________________

Also available on iTunes: http://apple.co/2lK4hb4

Lack the Motivation for Spiritual Practice?

You can still practice, you know that, right?

As the famed monk and author, Thomas Merton, once said "we invite useless trouble upon ourselves" when we expect ourselves to always be moved toward spiritual practice. The fact is that many days we will not want to sit. This is where discipline comes in.

Discipline make practice very ordinary, very boring. So our spiritual path becomes a sort of internal struggle, but the meat is in the struggle.

It is precisely because we don't want to practice that practice is a practice. Engaging in a discipline is becoming a disciple. We are you learning to worship something other than our own finicky self-interest. We are learning how to step beyond the limitations imposed on our lives by our self centered framework. We are practicing and cultivating our capacity to do what we do not want to do and not do you want to do.

We are exercising our inherent freedom.

God & Meditation: The Rise, Fall, & Redemption of Western Spirituality in 371 Words.

At one time, we were all connected, so to speak. There was an intuition of being. We were aware that we were awareness. “God” wasn’t over there; it was at the core of who we were. There was a rawness about us—we were open and willing to be embarrassed. Furthermore, this way of being was so natural, so instinctual, that we didn’t even think about it. But somehow we caught the sickness that was being passed around.

Society was intimidated by our freedom and confidence. Societies are dependent upon conformity, and neither freedom nor confidence conforms to external expectations. Caught in the psychological momentum that installed the very insecurity that now compelled them to act, they transmitted their pervasive sense of dis-ease—they taught us that we were separate or other than the immediacy of direct experience. First, they assured us that the power of being, from which our life emerged, had a name and that name was “God.” Then, they drove home the idea that God was out there. In subsequent lessons we were taught shame—that grace was afforded only to those individuals who achieved a standard of perfection that was situated just beyond our grasp. This is “The Fall.” This is what happened. This is how we came to be ashamed of our own existence. This is how we became they. Sad L.

If You Believe In God, Read This.

“The man who fears being alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people…

A Morning Meditation with the Master- Meister Eckhart

(photo of Eckhart's portal in Erfurt courtesy of Michael Sander)

The passage below is an excerpt from Matthew Fox's book, "Meditations with Meister Eckhart." Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and Christian mystic. Thomas Merton said of Eckhart, "He is the one person since Jesus Christ from whom God hid nothing!" Coming from a man like Thomas Merton that is a serious compliment! So here is a glimpse into the works that inspired Merton's praise...

"This I know. That the only way to live is like the rose, which lives without a why. You might ask life itself over a period of a thousand years the following question: 'Why are you alive?'And still the only response you would receive would be: 'I live so that I may live.' Why does this happen? Because life rises from its own foundation, and rises out of itself. Therefore, life lives without a reason- life lives for itself." - Meister Eckhart (translation Matthew Fox)

If you liked this you might also like these posts by Ben:
* Life As Meaning

Thomas Merton on the power of Love.

If you have never heard Thomas Merton, the great Christian Contemplative, speak please listen to the lecture below. He is a brilliant man, with incredible insight...

The talk is about man's true vocation, namely to Love. He suggests that love is at the center of our being, and that man is happiest when he allows this love to express itself naturally. In the talk he says that the power of love is so strong in man that he can not help but love. The only question is whether we can love according to nature, or will this love be dominated by fear...

A love dominated by fear and expectation, according to Merton is, "to twist them(others)to fit our own image." This is a selfish love because from this point of view we "love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." True love or "the beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves."

Merton believed that a natural love would heal the world; "Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can."