Infinite Love

Tonight's talk is about Universal Infinite Loving Awareness.

What we're doing on this retreat is increasing both awareness and love.

The ordinary mind is identified with thoughts and emotions,

And most of you know the suffering of that.

And on retreat,

We're trying to upgrade our operating system from identified with thoughts and emotions to identified with awareness,

And hopefully even infinite awareness.

And what John and I are trying to do in this retreat is really kind of to take you to deeper and deeper pools,

Like if you've ever been in these tiered swimming pools and you walk into the deep end of that one,

And then it drops down to the next.

So each one of these talks is designed to take you a little deeper.

So tonight's talk,

I want to take you to an even deeper level yet.

We talked about abiding in awareness,

And I want you to catch in this talk the tendency to abide in personal awareness,

To personalize awareness.

The mind is really subtle,

And it kind of likes to make its mark on everything.

And even an awareness will create the illusion of a my awareness,

My perspective,

My experiences.

And really doing this is like putting a rope on a pond.

You see these swimming holes here in Indiana,

Ohio,

Where they've roped off an area,

Right?

And the I,

Me,

And mind is like it's swimming in this little area,

And it gets tighter and tighter.

It's such a small area.

So what we're doing with taking away the my awareness is taking away the rope or going under the rope.

So you can see that you're the whole pond.

The rope is just a distinction we made.

You're not only the whole pond,

You're the land surrounding the pond.

You're the whole state,

The whole galaxy.

Another analogy I like to use around the personal awareness is like an ice cube in the ocean.

You know,

We're like we have this permeable see-through boundary.

My teacher jokes,

He goes,

You know,

The human body is like a water balloon.

It's so fragile it can break at any time.

And it's just this permeable boundary of this ice cube.

But it's in the ocean,

Right?

So it's part of the ocean.

And eventually it's going to melt and become the ocean.

But where is that boundary?

We create a boundary of ice cube,

But it's really just water on water.

And eventually,

This is the good thing about our practice,

It'll return to just water on water,

Even if you have this personal ice cube boundary for right now.

You only conceptually cut yourself out of infinity.

Remember that.

It's only conceptual.

In the real,

Nothing divides anything.

Nothing divides anything.

Meditation teacher Joan Tollison,

She talks about this,

And this is from one of her writings.

Ultimately,

All dividing lines between one thing and another are conceptual.

They are like the lines on a map.

Where exactly does the mountain become the valley?

Where does the body end and the environment begin?

Where does inside become outside?

Where is the boundary between the screen and the movie?

We can't deny difference and variation,

But we can't find any actual separation.

This recognition is what non-duality is all about.

It seems to me that the common thread in all the different versions of non-duality is a sense of wholeness and an absence of separation.

So beautifully put,

We're this field of wholeness she's pointing out.

Right now,

Not later,

Right now you're this field of wholeness.

The Tibetans,

Another analogy the Tibetans have,

That looking through the world through your sense of self is like looking at the sky through a straw.

Imagine this big blue sky and you're looking at it through the straw of the my awareness,

Right?

And so what the practice is teaching us to do is maybe widen the straw,

But take it away altogether.

And you know,

We're still seeing things,

But it's very limited like that rope on the pond.

And you know,

Awareness is truly an amazingly powerful thing,

Whether it's personal,

Whether it's universal,

It helps us hold the pain.

It's like a salve for suffering.

Now,

Why is it a salve?

Because awareness is never in pain.

Awareness,

You probably noticed this,

Awareness is never blended with thoughts and emotions.

Awareness doesn't change before pain.

Awareness doesn't change during pain.

And awareness does not change after pain.

It's always okay.

Awareness is always okay.

And the more you can learn to make this the object of your attention,

The more freedom you'll have.

But often we overlook this awareness.

What is that most obvious thing?

And we overlook this infinite awareness because the mind is so much chaos and so much drama.

It's like really noisy.

It's like one person in an empty stadium with a microphone.

It's just one person.

And there's nothing there,

But the microphone makes it sound really loud.

So in this chaos and distraction in the loudness of the mind with the microphone,

We forget the thing that holds it all.

We forget the empty stadium.

So awareness holds the contents of life,

But it is not the contents.

So right now,

That which is thinking and me,

That which is talking is the mind.

And what it's happening in is infinite awareness.

Like I did the other night,

You've got the mind might be talking.

You're here.

The mind might be silent.

You're still here.

And loving awareness is a really beautiful thing.

It really can hold anything.

You know,

All the pain and suffering in the world right now,

And I don't have to remind you how much there is.

Which is bigger,

The pain in the world or your awareness?

Is awareness the same size,

Bigger,

Smaller?

Just feel it.

When I check and see,

I feel that awareness,

It might just be an inch bigger than all the pain in the world,

But that inch is an important inch.

And,

You know,

Just check it out when there's a lot of suffering that you're trying to hold.

Especially loving,

Infinite loving awareness,

Is it bigger than all the human suffering?

Awareness is a truly saving grace.

Without it,

We blend with everything.

We cling to the pleasant,

Like a marsupial.

We'd be lost in the unpleasant.

But again,

We make a subtle mistake with awareness.

What is this mistake?

We create an aware-er,

An aware-er,

A person doing the awareness,

A person experiencing the awareness.

This is an important distinction that it might be for some of you,

You might be,

You know,

An early idea,

But I hope it'll be a seed that's planted.

So really start to look at,

You know,

This my awareness,

This aware-er.

Where does it start and where does it stop?

You know,

Like John was saying the other day,

When you hear a sound,

Where do you,

You know,

Are you hearing it or is all of existence hearing it?

When you think a thought,

Is it just you thinking it?

Or is all of existence thinking it together?

I had a friend who had really chronic pain and he developed a very high,

He could reach all the jhana states and he also developed like a psychic ability.

And he would sit in meditation and he could hear everybody's thoughts.

They were like in a big cloud.

And I said,

Oh,

That's like Carl Jung's,

The collective consciousness or unconsciousness.

And he didn't know whose belonged to what,

Thank goodness.

He could see they were like all one thing.

And that was really eye-opening to me.

Bernardo Katzrup,

Who I mentioned before,

Former nuclear scientist,

He claims that the separate aware-er is a dissociative illusion.

And he goes on to say,

It's almost like people that have multiple personality disorder,

They call it dissociative identity disorder now.

They have these different parts and they're called alters.

And often some of these parts don't know about the other ones.

And they've actually done a research where one lady had a part that was blind,

Even though she was not,

And her other parts were not blind.

But when this part took over,

She couldn't see.

So these dissociative parts get so convincing.

And he believes,

Bernardo believes,

That we're having a separate experience,

Like one of these alters.

We're thinking,

Oh,

This is me,

I'm blind,

Or I'm not part of the whole.

And really,

It's just opening up to this bigger experiencer.

So what are some ways we can move out of that personality,

That dissociative idea of self?

I mentioned today,

Start thinking of it like a car,

A self-driving car.

So normally,

The aware,

The me,

Mine.

I noticed the other day,

We drive our bodies like a car,

Like go over there and do that,

And now eat this and get this done.

We're in this car and we're driving it.

And we think of,

Like,

We're the driver,

And I'm going to make my body go to the gym and lift weights,

Or not.

But really,

Start to switch it out,

If you want to switch it out.

Switch it out to a self-driving car.

You're still going to go places,

But what happens if it really is a self-driving car?

And this is an illusion that you're in the driver's seat,

Moving your body around and making it do all this and that.

Things will still happen.

You'll just enjoy the ride more.

When my dad was teaching me to drive,

He'd never sat in the passenger seat of his own car.

You know how dads always drove,

You know,

In the 70s or 80s.

Well,

Some of you are too young,

But.

.

.

And he was just like,

Oh my God,

I've never been in the passenger seat.

And that really made me realize,

You know what,

That just being incessantly in the driver's seat.

.

.

Another way to move out of the dissociative illusion of personal awareness is to remember this.

This is all going to go.

It's all going to go.

Everyone you can see in this room,

This room,

The farmhouse,

The state of Indiana,

All the things you like about people here,

All the things you don't like about people here,

It's all going to go.

It's all going to go back to nothingness,

As it should.

Even the Earth,

The galaxy,

The entire universe is going to go back to nothingness.

This is important.

This is the truth of impermanence.

So how worried and stressed out do you need to be when it's all going to go?

It's all going to go.

And just keep coming back to that.

And,

You know,

It actually creates a lot of lightness to do that.

You might think it's a bit morbid,

But it creates more connection.

And I'll give you one example.

I teach meditation to a CEO of a large medical organization in Hawaii.

And about six months ago,

He drew a big graph for his hundreds of employees.

And he showed them the organization,

And he goes,

Look,

This is all going to go.

It's all on its way out.

Do your best.

Enjoy your work.

But this is all going to be gone.

And I was like,

Oh,

No.

But coincidentally or not,

Just a few weeks ago,

His organization did better on their medical audit than any medical organization in the history of Hawaii,

Ever.

They got 100%.

It's unheard of to get 100%.

On a medical audit,

No one's ever done that.

So whether this was because he said this,

You know,

It's something about this works.

I practiced with a Burmese monk named Ukundala.

And he actually had a practice for that.

It was called an endings practice.

And interestingly enough,

Because of this endings practice he did,

He became the most metta-filled,

Loving-kindness-filled monk of all of these Burmese monks.

And what he would do is,

He just started focusing on the ending,

Like the ending of this word,

The ending of the day,

The ending of the sit,

The ending of washing dishes,

Ending,

Ending,

Ending,

Ending,

Ending.

And this ending into nothing,

This all going to go,

Just led him to incomplete love and really opened up to his not-self.

Another way to move out of this personal dissociative identity disorder of self is to pair your limited beliefs with a bigger view.

Recently,

A colleague taught me this practice and I just so love it.

So when you get caught in some limited belief about yourself,

You know,

Maybe it's evaluating yourself,

Right?

Then ask yourself this,

What would somebody I really love say and admire say?

Or what would the Buddha say?

So for instance,

If I'm thinking,

I don't do enough in the world,

What would somebody I really love say?

What would the Buddha say?

He wouldn't say,

You're not doing enough.

And then ask yourself,

Then ask yourself,

After you ask what would the Buddha say or someone I love say,

Who are you going to believe?

Are you going to believe your thoughts over someone you love?

Are you going to believe your thoughts over the Buddha?

And realize the insanity of giving your own perspective more truth than the love of a friend or the Buddha.

It's a beautiful practice.

And she also said when she taught me this practice,

She said,

The person or thing you should believe is the one with the most capacity to love.

And that seems like a good thing,

For just our whole life.

The person or thing you should believe is the one with the most capacity to love.

Because right view is the one that has the most capacity to love.

It's not limited.

So seeing all these things,

Your self-driving car,

It's all going to go,

Pairing with this most loving view,

Always to move out of that limited space-time triangle of personal self I talked about,

The snow globe of you.

And you can also see that there's only one awareness.

That can help too.

And it seems like we each have a separate awareness,

But do we really?

What if there's only one awareness?

You know,

Check it out for yourself.

Look carefully.

And this separate you is only a thought.

It's only a thought,

An infinite awareness.

And awareness,

It's truly an amazing thing.

When you start to look at it,

It really,

Awareness has its own power,

Its own life.

It's so much bigger than our cognitive mind trying to figure things out.

I don't know if you've noticed.

Awareness is so powerful.

You know,

It caused the Buddha to wake up.

You know,

He was fighting his mind,

You know,

Six years he was doing all these practices and hunkering down and,

You know,

Resolve.

And then suddenly,

Like,

This light bulb went off and he,

When he was fighting the armies of mind,

And he just went,

This is crazy.

Mind's an illusion.

Like,

What did that?

That was just the power of awareness,

Right?

The light bulb.

That wasn't him.

It was awareness waking up through him.

And like I said,

You know,

40 years of depression started when I was quite young.

And just something,

It wasn't me,

It was this power of awareness that turned that around.

I mean,

I tried for decades to turn that around.

And that's not to discount all the cognitive strategies that can lead to that next level jump.

I want to give you one more example of this power of awareness.

I had a client I'd been working with and my practice in Hawaii for many,

Many years,

Young man when we first started.

And he ended up going to jail and it was very unjust and unfair what happened and he should not have gone to jail.

But he went to jail for four years on pretty much an unjust charge and tried to fight it and could not.

So he was in jail for four years and actually somebody,

A group of people tried to murder him while he was in jail.

So it was very horrific stuff.

And we met when he came out and we were talking and he wasn't bitter.

And he was relaxed and I said,

Wow,

You know,

What's going on here?

How did you do this?

And he just looked at me and he said,

Amita,

I realized I did this all to myself.

He goes,

It was perfect.

I did it all for me.

And he had had this,

Just a transformative awakening in jail seeing that he was responsible for it all even though it was unjust.

And I just like started crying,

You know,

Just hearing this because this is a really rough character who grew up in a horrific family,

Tattoos everywhere,

And he's an intense guy.

And he could see this.

So I started thinking more and more like,

What about me?

How am I doing this to myself?

What if I turned that around and looked at,

You know,

My whole life and whatever tragedies or things I think are wrong?

I did this to myself.

I mean,

If he can do it,

Why not me?

And it just has been so freeing because then you ask the question,

Well,

Why did I do this to myself?

And it just opens it up out of that personal awareness of trying to,

You know,

Move the chess pieces around to just like,

Oh,

It's perfect.

It's perfect.

Whatever happened.

What if infinite awareness orchestrated all of this right now,

Even us coming together?

As Bernardo Katschrup said,

The human mind is merely an aspect of universal consciousness.

We're just one piece,

This huge matrix.

And,

You know,

I've had two parents with severe mental illness,

And in each case,

And it took me a long time with my dad,

But in each case,

I was able to see the perfection of the lessons I learned there.

And I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for both of them.

And in the end now,

It took years,

I would choose it all to happen exactly that way again.

To be right here.

Because it's perfect.

And that's forgiveness.

That's redemption.

Just like my client who went to jail.

One way also to think about this non-personal awareness is,

You know,

You've been on a mission probably to find some kind of peace or freedom,

Right?

We wouldn't be here,

We wouldn't have paid money and spent time to come to this retreat if we didn't have some kind of impetus to wake up,

Right?

It's like we're like Tom Cruise on a mission,

Right?

But who gave you your mission?

Where did Tom Cruise get his mission?

Have you ever thought about that?

Did you just come up with it one day?

You know,

Like,

I think I'm going to be Buddhist in two months from now.

No,

It just arrives.

It just arrives.

That's the power of awareness.

You know,

However we got our marching orders to end up as card-carrying Buddhists or retreatants,

You know,

Who gave us these marching orders?

You know,

We have,

Sometimes I think of it,

Like we have this GPS in us,

A spiritual GPS to return home,

But who put it there?

So what if Infinite Awareness did this and it's been calling you back home all along,

Not you?

My teacher Ajah Shanti,

He used to say,

One day you will realize that which you have been seeking has been seeking you.

And he goes,

Sometimes it's a horrifying moment to be like,

Oh no,

I thought I was the seeker and something's seeking me and I can't let go of it.

So here's something I've noticed in all my years of practice.

I've noticed one thing,

That awareness and love are really the same thing.

And that's big.

Awareness takes us back to the source,

Which is love.

And even the teacher Deepa Ma,

She said meditation is love.

And then she said,

Enlightenment is great love.

So these are awareness practices that are love.

And,

You know,

It's been beautiful to watch.

So when I first started meditating,

I hated loving kindness.

When they would do loving kindness meditations for the first 10 years,

I would ignore them.

Secret.

Like,

Oh my God,

They're doing another guided loving kindness meditation.

I would just do Vipassana,

Right?

But then it started to just naturally take root,

This loving kindness thing,

Like a tree.

And it got bigger and bigger.

I couldn't help myself.

I started doing loving kindness.

And it just,

It blossoms in you.

You probably can note yourself.

And then the other day before I came here,

I mean,

It's gotten to the point where I'm cleaning my toilet and I'm thinking,

Oh my God,

I'm infinite love cleaning the toilet and the toilet's infinite love and the brush is infinite love.

And it was just like,

It's infinite love on infinite love.

And I'm like,

Really,

Amita?

Like,

Is this what it's gotten to?

But you can see this yourself.

When you go outside on one of these beautiful days,

You're looking up at the sky.

You can feel yourself as this infinite loving awareness,

Looking at the panoramic view of the sky,

Which is also infinite loving awareness.

And you can feel that infinite love on infinite love or infinite awareness quality.

It doesn't take a lot.

So I've also seen this in many,

Many others,

You know,

Being on the spiritual path for 40 years,

You get to do a lot of observation of your colleagues,

Your students,

Other teachers.

And,

You know,

What's really cool is I can hands down say that everyone I've seen that keeps practicing awareness,

They get more loving.

Joseph Goldstein,

When he started out in mid-84,

When I first saw him,

And he'd been practicing before that,

He was so geeky and so cognitive and in his head.

And now he's just so sweet and loving.

And it's just been beautiful to watch my friends and teachers all doing different ways of this expression of love more and more and more,

Not a little bit,

But more and more and more.

Love just keeps making itself exponential.

So if you stick with awareness,

It's going to,

Caveat,

It's going to upgrade to higher and higher forms of love,

But you won't have to do it and you don't have to resist it.

You know,

We're each doing the highest form of love we know right now.

My teacher jokes,

We're all rolling at different phases in love.

So,

You know,

Maybe this is how you're rolling,

Right?

And,

You know,

You can just trust that awareness,

That love will just keep upgrading itself.

It's,

It's amazing because loving awareness is going to bring us all back home.

Whatever created that GPS mission,

It's bringing us all back home.

Guaranteed,

Guaranteed.

The GPS is a self-driving car.

It knows what it's doing.

That's what love does.

And the other day when I was talking with my teacher,

He just said something.

He said,

Amita,

I'll walk you all the way back home or we'll walk all the way back home.

And I just felt so moved by that that I said,

Oh,

That's really kind of you.

That's so touching.

And he just looked at me and he said,

No,

That's where love is at.

That's just what love does.

It's not me.

That's where love is at.

It's going to walk each of you back home.

So ultimately this illusion of this dissociative illusion of a personal self is not sustainable.

Why?

Because separation limits the capacity of love.

Separation limits the capacity of love.

Love's not going to be roped in or ice-cubed in or snow-globed in for long.

It's going to break out.

So one last reflection on our beliefs that limit love,

Ways that we limit this love.

Again,

My teacher,

He just so likes to laugh and he goes,

Meeta,

You're already awake.

You just didn't check your emails yet.

And then a couple months ago he fiercely challenged me.

He goes,

Meeta,

Buddha here now.

Buddha here now.

And I'm like,

Uh.

And he's like,

No,

Buddha here now.

And I'm still like,

Uh.

And he's like,

Okay,

What are your stories that are stopping you?

And I'm like,

Uh,

It can't be that easy.

You know,

My Protestant work ethic.

That's cheating,

You know.

And then he's like,

What are your other stories?

I go,

Um,

I still have anger.

I can't be Buddha here now if I have anger.

And he's like,

Okay,

Yeah,

What else?

And then I'm like,

I need more time.

Other people deserve it.

Other people should have it before me.

And he just like laughs and laughs.

He goes,

These are the stories.

He goes,

You're collecting all these stories.

You're Buddha here now.

So look right now as I say this.

What are your stories?

If I said to you,

Buddha here now.

Just look.

What gets in the way?

Like I talked about that dirty window that blocks you from seeing infinity.

This is it.

I need more time.

I'm not ready.

I still have blank.

Take each story.

Can you absolutely know that's true?

You need more time.

Or you can't be Buddha here now if you have anger.

Who would you be without that thought right now that stands in the way?

Buddha here now,

Put it down.

Why not?

It's not cheating.

Which begs a bigger observation.

Buddha here now or infinite loving awareness.

It's here now.

It doesn't have to be earned.

It doesn't require more time.

It's not personal.

It's not personal,

Friends.

And it's already here because it's infinite.

You didn't check your emails yet.

That's all.

You know,

Maybe it might take us a while to get through those two thousand emails to this one.

But the good news is it's always been true about you and it always will be true about you.

It just might be,

You know,

One day you're clicking on an email and there it is.

It's already in your inbox.

Again,

A bit of science.

Roger Penrose,

A British mathematician and Nobel laureate in physics,

Has discovered and written in his book The Cycles of Time.

He says,

The universe is made up of an infinite series of cycles.

There are infinite universes.

Infinite universes.

So this means there's no finite you no finite you having a spiritual journey.

What powers everything in the game in this game is infinite awareness.

Infinite awareness is powering your character.

It's powering everybody else's characters.

It's powering your thoughts.

Infinite awareness is powering all the forms.

It's the producer of the whole game.

Nothing is outside of infinite awareness.

Nothing.

What could be outside of infinite awareness?

And so more and more you start to walk beyond the mind like walking beyond that movie screen and you see that infinite awareness or loving,

Infinite loving awareness is the only thing that's ever been happening.

And it becomes infinity on infinity like the toilet thing.

And it'll catch you in the funniest places.

One time my teacher Ajah Shanti was saying he was taking a shit and he saw infinite awareness was there and he said,

I'll be damned,

It's even here.

It'll show up in the darndest places because it's everywhere.

So I'd like to close with an analogy for you to feel and think about.

Ultimately through our practice what happens if you want this is you become the exit door for others.

You become the exit door for the world.

So as people walk around dazed in the casino of their own minds,

Right?

If you've been in a casino you can't find the exit door there.

If people are like dazed and confused like where the heck,

What?

In their own minds,

That chaos you're going to be like that lighted sign.

It's here,

Right?

The exit door doesn't go grab people and lead them.

It doesn't go on the casino floor and find people necessarily.

It's just here,

This lighted sign.

This example of where people can come.

It's like a lighted sign that just shows people this is the way to your magnificent essence,

Right here.

This is the way to loving awareness and I'm here.

We are this.

We are this.

When my teacher had his awakening he saw everything was this infinite essence and he walked up to people and he said,

We are God.

And nobody could understand that so he stopped talking about it.

But it's still true.

We are this.

We are this magnificent essence and whether people believe it or not you can be that little lighted sign if they choose to find your door.

I'd like to end with a quotation.

It's from meditation teacher Nisargadatta.

He was like Mr.

Cut through emptiness but notice this is about love.

The moment you know your real being you are afraid of nothing.

Then the universe is your own.

It becomes your body,

An expression and a tool.

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience,

I am the world.

The world is myself.

You are free from desire and fear on the one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.

Then the senseless sorrow of mankind becomes your sole concern.

Once you've emptied out the love comes in and you're that exit sign for everyone's magnificent essence.