Valentine's Day: How Important is Love on the Spiritual Path?

[I've been away for over a month from regular postings and yesterday's Sunday Service was focused primarily on my trip to India. The topics, expressed below, did not get the "full Monty" so I offer thoughts on the subject below.]

Each year around Valentine's Day the service reading at the Ananda centers worldwide has had the topic title of "The Law is Perfected in Love."

It would be easy to conclude that love, according to the reading ("Rays of the One Light," Week 7, by Swami Kriyananda), is all that is necessary to achieve perfection (happiness, bliss, nirvana or samadhi).

However, even the title of the reading isn't saying that. In fact, the title is simply reminding devotees and seekers that the "way" is not the "goal." Your faith, your religion, your yoga, your beliefs, and your righteous way of life are but steppingstones to perfection in God. (Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Matt 5:48) Do not mistake the path for the goal! 

But is the reading saying, never mind the "way?" Never mind the discipline; the self-offering; the effort? No, it isn't saying that.

No more is the reading saying that than is the emotion of love the only reality in human relationships. Effort, intention, and "work" is needed to achieve success in all worthy endeavours: health, relationships, career, art, and the spiritual path.  

Even Valentine's Day (which occurs each year around the time of this reading) isn't attempting to say romantic love is the definition of marriage. (It's simply acknowledging one aspect of marriage.)

Someone asked me the other day: "How can I love God more?" In responding I was fortunate to recall Swami Kriyananda's counsel on this: "pray to God that you feel devotion; that you feel God's love." I believe he went on to explain that it is difficult to love "someone" you haven't met yet. It is difficult to love an abstraction contained in a nondescript three-letter word ("God"). To feel God's love is the gift of grace, not merely effort.

When he, Swami Kriyananda, prayed to Yogananda that he could feel Yogananda's love for him, Yogananda (who intuitively "heard" Kriyananda's silent prayer) responded saying, "How can the little cup hold the whole ocean?" One must expand the cup of one's consciousness toward infinity if one is to know the infinite love of God. 

It is easier, however, to feel love itself: love without an object and without any conditions as to who, what, when, where or how. As God is the source of unconditional love, praying to feel love is to experience even a little bit of God: the Source of love. 

Swamiji also shared with us that Paramhansa Yogananda suggested that most of us approach God through joy, rather than as love. Why? Because most people's experience of love is tainted with the all too confusing (painful, pleasurable, attached, and mixed)  human love experience. How often have I seen a newcomer's heart open to divine love only find it difficult to remain on such a high plane and thus "fall" into attachment to the nearest soul clothed in the form of the opposite sex! (Reminds me of the delightful Shakespeare play, "A Midsummer's Night Dream.")

Even apart from romantic love, however, devotees who go more by emotions are sometimes far too personal (just as those who revel in ideas are sometimes insensitive to the feelings of others). And such devotees are inclined to "love" only those who "love" them. Beyond their "mutual admiration society," duality can throw a bucket of cold indifference towards outsiders.

We, humans, you see, are more likely to know what unconditioned joy is than unconditional love!

Think of an aspiring musician: unless born with it like Mozart, even the best musicians are likely to have spent years learning and practising. Their love for their art draws them through the "law of practising" into the inner experience of the joy and love of music. Without their love of music, their playing would presumably be colourless, lacking in feeling. But without the hard daily work of practice, they could not soar high on the wings of inspiration. As I often say in classes and talks, "truth is a BOTH-AND affair."

Love is higher than the law for the simple reason that the experience of satisfaction, success or oneness is the REASON behind the willingness to "pay your dues" through effort and self-discipline. To achieve the union, perfection, and joy of love which unites lover, loving and beloved is what propels the artist, devotee, the lover, or the humanitarian to sacrifice all for the "pearl of great price!" 

At the conclusion of the reading described above, Swami Kriyananda quotes Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita saying, in effect, "love God alone and let go of all else." Poetic, romantic, even, but be careful not to rely one-dimensionally upon a convenient interpretation. 

A story illustrates the point: Krishna once counselled the devotee, Draupadi, to practice yoga. Her response, however, was "How can I practice yoga when my mind is fixed upon you?" Krishna, it is said, only smiled. 

Until you, too, can be fixed upon God alone in every thought, feeling, and action, then you should not be so quick to dispense with the "rites and writ duties" of the "Way" of right action and right attitude.

Swami Kriyananda also offered this useful thought, drawn from his own experience of encountering those who, to say the least, didn't love him: "I choose to love because I am happier loving than hating."

When, through prayer, meditation, and self-giving we feel loving, it does not require a conscious act to love anyone: friend or self-styled critic alike. It is, rather, a natural extension of your own consciousness. When you are blessed to have this experience, distil from it the joy of loving so that the alternative of focusing on loving doesn't draw you into attachment to those to whom you express that loving feeling. Instead, feel the joy of that state of the soul.

Joy to you!

Swami Hrimananda

"To thine own self be true"

At a recent Sunday Service the subject was ego transcendence. Much is made in religion and the spiritual path of the need to rise above the demands of the ego to realize one's divine birthright as a child of God. This idea is expressed in many different ways by great spiritual teachers and representatives of orthodox faith.

My interest is not the philosophical idea but the process of attaining the goal of God-realization (or, Self-realization). Paramhansa Yogananda defined "ego" as the "soul identified with the body." A pithy definition, to be sure, but it is a workable one, ripe with introspective fruit.

No one ego can ever be fully secure. Not only is there the inexorable fact of mortality, but there's injury, illness, and innumerable threats to one's person, reputation, financial security, marital, family and job stability, and on and on. Even when, for a time, a person can be on top of the world, oblivious of these nearby shadows, there's something deeper, even sinister that lurks around the fringe of one's self-assertive confidence: an existential incompleteness; "Something's not right. Why am I nervous about, well, nothing? Or, maybe, everything?" Most people don't even try to live in a false bubble of self-confidence.

I have lived in intentional community for most of my adult life, over thirty years, anyway! I have taught hundreds of students meditation and yogic philosophy. I have counseled and talked more deeply (than just about the weather and sports) with countless sincere and intelligent people.

My sense of people, including myself, is that most intelligent, self-aware, sincere and energetic people find themselves all too often on the short end of the sensitivity stick. The spiritual path, especially the inner path of meditation, will expand our sympathies and awareness of subtler things (like the thoughts and vibrations of others). In so doing, however, it can make us vulnerable, if not to others, then, at least to becoming self-preoccupied about what others think of us or about how slow (or worse) is our spiritual progress---all too often in comparison (we believe) with others (who invariably seem to be progressing farther and faster than we!).

In a talk given by my teacher, Swami Kriyananda (1926-2013), he stated that "Self-acceptance is the first step towards ego transcendence." This is an interesting and fertile statement to ponder. One of the things I've admired and appreciated about S.K. is his transparency: his almost child-like willingness to be wrong, to share what he feels, and, in general, to simply be himself!

Living all these years in spiritual community and being blessed by so many souls deeply centered in God I observe that far from becoming an indistinguishable "nothing" the soul's emergence produces vigor, vitality and a unique individuality that is transparently genuine---so unlike the imitative caricature that most worldly "characters" assume or affirm.

What I am describing is no less the question of "What does it mean to 'love yourself'?" While I prefer to couch this in terms of self-acceptance (it seems somehow more objective than self-love), I doubt there's any real difference.

The example I gave in my recent talk goes like this: if you go to a shopping mall (perhaps one that is unfamiliar to you), and you are looking for a specific store, you must first find where in the center that store is located, and then you must find "You Are Here!" We must always know where we are in order to know how to get to where you want to go! This, in my view, is "self-acceptance."

Thus self-acceptance is therefore not an embracing of all our foibles and faults and pretending "I'm good." Rather, its the acknowledgement of where I am. Paramhansa Yogananda, the now well respected world teacher of yoga and author of "Autobiography of a Yogi," used to give his students a self-assessment psychological inventory to complete. (I doubt the students handed it in to him!)

In this way, we begin the habit of objectivity in our introspection. Ruthless self-honesty is, I believe, a prerequisite to spiritual growth. This does not mean we necessarily parade our yaw-yaws in front of every "Tom, Dick or Harry" ("Sue, Sally or Molly"). How often I've seen devotees disguise their desires with well-meaning platitudes and scriptural quotations. "I feel God wants me to ............ "

One arena of human life where we can readily test our resolve in the direction of self-acceptance and self-honesty is that of criticism. I've been told that I "never" say "I'm sorry." (I'm practicing it by typing it.) Criticism is a funny business because much of the time we only imagine that we heard even but a hint of criticism. Follow the banter in people's conversation and look for the hints of self-protective, self-justifications. Self-justification is like an acid that corrodes the sharp spiritual edge of introspection.

If, however, in fact, you are criticized directly and in person, you might tentatively say, "Perhaps you are right." Then, consider whether there's any merit. Do what you can to rectify an error or to change your behavior, including to make amends, if appropriate. Be willing to thank the other person, even a self-styled detractor, for pointing out something that needs correcting. If, as sincerely as you are able, you can find no cause for the critique, then say, then, let it go.

Now there are some situations where there are principles at stake or a larger issue at stake and you might need to defend the shared goal or principle, but that's a different matter than defending yourself.  Spiritually speaking, defending yourself is, well, very, very tricky territory. (If in attacking me, a person is attacking Ananda which I represent, then I might defend Ananda and to some extent, therefore, myself, but this must always be secondary. Yogananda was assailed by lawsuits and slander and he would defend himself in the name of defending the work he represented.)

At night before bed, pick out the fleas and burrs of attachment and self-definitions based on upbringing, social status, gender, age etc. etc. and flick them into the fire of wisdom: Tat twam asi: Thou art THAT I AM!

Blessings, I AM your very SELF,

Hrimananda