You Are The Love You Seek

I want to start tonight with a short poem by Rumi,

The Persian poet.

Your task is not to seek for love,

But merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

So our topic for tonight is this love that Rumi is pointing to.

And what he is saying is don't seek it implying that it is something outside of you,

That it is something other than you,

That it is different from you,

But instead look for the barriers that we are erecting through our own thought habits and patterns that are preventing us from knowing the essence of our true nature,

Which is love.

So the barrier that Rumi is pointing to is our ego.

And it's the same barrier that the Buddha points to and Eckhart Tolle points to.

And what Rumi is also saying,

Along with all the other sages,

Is that this love you are seeking is already inside of us,

That we don't need to transform,

We don't need to change,

We don't need to become something different other than what we already are,

That the essence of our true nature is love,

And that the only reason that we don't experience this is because we are so strongly identified with our ego.

So when we are lost in our egoic thoughts,

Which is a lot of the time,

And when we're having these thoughts about what they're doing over there,

And I don't like what they're doing,

I don't like it,

They shouldn't be doing that,

And I don't like that that person was unkind to me,

And I don't like that that person didn't give me the recognition I deserved or isn't giving me the attention that I deserve.

And I want this over here,

I want the good conditions,

I want everyone to praise me,

I don't ever want to feel blamed or be criticized.

And that through these thoughts there's this belief that if this person just gave me the attention I deserved,

You know,

Recognized me,

That I received the praise that I so desperately want,

That I would feel this infinite,

Abundant,

Unconditional love that I am seeking.

But the reality is that through our egoic thoughts,

What arises as our thoughts,

As we're having these thoughts about me,

What is arising is a sense of a separate me.

This is the ego image,

The little me.

And the qualities,

The essence of this ego is that we feel incomplete,

We feel separate,

We feel disconnected,

We feel this sense of lack,

We feel frightened.

And so every time our ego is arising,

Which again is a lot of the time,

Our ego arises,

As it arises,

It creates the sense of separation and disconnected,

Disconnection.

And out of that feeling of being separate and disconnected,

It then imputes our happiness or this love that we're seeking on some outer object and says,

Well,

If you can get that,

So if you can push away,

You know,

What you think is stopping you from getting there,

Or if you can get it,

Something that you think is going to give you this,

Then that's the love you're seeking.

And then it keeps us,

Keeps propelling us on this cycle because of course we never get there,

Right?

It's all it's doing is sustaining the ego,

The sense of separation,

The sense of disconnection,

Preventing us from knowing the essence of our true nature,

Which is love.

So we're spinning our wheels,

Trying to feel the sense of love that we aren't experiencing simply through the arising of the ego,

Which has created the sense of disconnection in the first place.

So the challenge for us when we're being asked to look for the barriers that prevent us from knowing the essence of our true nature,

Love,

We don't see the barriers because we think we are the ego.

We have so strongly identified with it.

And we have just been so utterly fooled again and again.

Even though we talk about the ego here endlessly,

And everyone's in agreement,

Right?

We're all on board with this.

We understand that it's causing us suffering.

But then we walk out the door and it just hooks us right back in again.

No,

They're the problem.

I could be spiritual.

I could be peaceful.

If only that person wasn't doing what they were doing over there,

Right?

If only this person would act exactly the way I want them to act.

If only everyone on the planet would only be nice to me and praise me and always give me the best parking spot,

Right?

And so,

You know,

We have this intellectual understanding about the ego.

And yet we still get pulled up into it so easily.

So if we think about this a little in the context of the last couple of classes that we had,

So two weeks ago we talked about the most important question in the world.

What is it that we want more than anything else in the world for ourselves?

And while everyone's answer is a little bit different,

We're all at different stages of our path and different language means different things to us.

So,

You know,

Language can be really good pointers for us and what works for me may not work for you and vice versa.

So while we have these differences in our pointers,

In our language,

We are all seeking the same thing ultimately of knowing the essence of our true nature,

Of knowing our true nature and knowing that essence which is pure,

Unconditional,

Infinite love and peace and joy.

But it is this love,

This expanse of love that we feel whole,

We feel complete because we're not separated out with the ego.

This is what we want is to experience this,

To know this all of the time or at least more of the time.

And so the second question that we asked last week that we looked at,

You know,

What are you going to do to make this happen?

How are you going to make this happen?

What changes in your life,

What habits are you willing to change to make this happen?

And last week we looked at it through the lens of the distractions on the outside,

Right,

Just all the things that we endlessly get distracted with that then we don't have enough time for our practice,

There's not enough time left over.

But I would also suggest we look inwards to look at the biggest distraction,

Our ego.

So when we ask the second question that we really spend a few more minutes contemplating it,

Really thinking about the answer to this question,

You know,

If what I want,

And again your answer while I was saying we're all ultimately going to the same place,

Still use whatever answer you're using,

Whatever speaks to you,

But if your answer is peace,

You know,

To know that and say,

Well why am I not experiencing peace?

What is it that I keep doing?

Where are the barriers that I am erecting that are preventing me from knowing this peace?

And let me just look back in my own experience to see how this has been true,

To keep seeing how this plays out over and over again.

And to think about this very short poem or quote from Rumi,

Maybe print it out,

Maybe memorize it and ask it again in the self-inquiry question or say it in the self-inquiry question.

Because often when we hear things in a different way,

And I find with poetry,

It really kind of pierces through that veil of illusion in a really dramatic way.

I mean poetry just has that power.

And for me,

This particular poem has had a lot of power in that in helping to really see more clearly how my ego,

That it is the barrier and how it can prevent me from knowing the essence of my true nature,

That love.

And has really helped to help free me from the hooks of my ego.

I mean it's not,

I'm not entirely free,

I will be clear about that,

But it gets me less and less.

And this poem has been a really big influence in helping me to abandon the ego more quickly,

To get out of its trance,

To come back into the present moment,

To breathe and then feel,

You know,

Kind of just looking around and using sight,

Sound,

Touch,

Taste,

Smell to ground myself back in the present moment.

And then in the absence of that ego,

Of really feeling that expansiveness again,

Of feeling that sense of wholeness again,

Of feeling that sense of love that I'm complete,

I'm whole already.

And so hopefully for you,

This will help you to pierce again that veil of illusion,

Of delusion,

So that your ego doesn't have as much of a hold over you.

And so I would suggest,

Yeah,

Print the poem out,

You know,

Say it to yourself every day.

And in the second part of the self-inquiry question,

In our meditation today,

We'll spend a little bit more time there to give a little bit of space for you to contemplate it,

To explore this a little bit for yourself,

To familiarize your mind with it so that you are better prepared for the next time that barrier starts getting erected and your mind is looking outwards.

They're the problem,

Not me.

I could be spiritual and peaceful if everyone would just do what I need them to do.

And in that knowing,

Going,

Oh,

It's not actually,

It is me,

Right,

To always turn our attention backwards.

Actually,

It's me.

I'm the problem.

They're not the problem.

I am.

Because the reality is there are always going to be people that are unhappy,

That are going to blame us,

That are going to criticize us,

That are going to be rude to us,

That are going to be unkind,

That won't give us the recognition we think we deserve or the attention that we want.

I mean,

That is the reality of the world that we live in.

And we don't want to,

You know,

Just be so reactive every time that happens to us,

Creating this barriers,

This barrier preventing us from knowing the essence of our true nature of love.

And the more that we spend,

The more time that we spend being present,

Really in awareness of really knowing our true nature of feeling that sense of love,

The more easily we will let these things slide off of our back as well.

We won't get so triggered because we'll understand that person's having a really tough day.

I really hope that whatever's happening to them,

I hope that their problems get fixed.

I hope they find some peace.

I hope they find some resolution.

I feel for them,

Right?

Not to take it on like,

Oh,

I can't believe they're such a jerk,

But instead to have compassion so that we keep our hearts open,

So that we keep that sense of love,

Which is what we want.

And in doing that,

Right,

We don't let the barriers come up.

So it really helps us the more time that we spend there,

The less easily triggered we are,

The more that we're aware of how these barriers come up.

You know,

It all just keeps,

It all just kind of keeps helping us get closer to spending more and more time in our true nature,

Really feeling that essence of love because we do all spend time there,

Right?

I know several of you have been practicing with me for years now.

We all spend time as our true nature and we keep expanding upon that time,

Expanding upon that time.

And yes,

Still getting lost,

But much less,

Much,

Much less than we did in the past.

And even when we do get pulled in for not as long.

So,

You know,

It all just keeps helping us to continue to help us to be able to rest comfortably in our awareness,

To not get pulled in so easily to the egoic mind,

And to feel that sense of infinite love,

Of that unconditional love,

Which is the love we all want to experience,

That we all want to feel.

The love that we already are is the love that we want to know.

So the more that we can be aware of that,

And maybe think of it through this poem,

You know,

Our task is not to seek love,

But merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built around it.

To maybe say that to ourselves every day,

To keep reminding us,

To keep reminding us that it's already here.

We are already complete and whole.

We just have to stop erecting those barriers.