"Love is a flame that burns everything other than itself.
It is the destruction of all that is false
and the fulfillment of all that is true."

IN THE EXPERIENCE OF AWAKENING what's discovered is personal freedom. Personal freedom is freedom from everything that ever happened. It is freedom from identity being confined to the body, mind, memory, and all the ideas that we hold about ourselves. In personal freedom, one has the sense of "I am free." The "I am" has a perfume of the personal. Here, freedom refers to the "I am;" later one will go beyond the "I am."

Once you're finished being enamored with your freedom from all that is personal, there arises a love greater than anything that could be called personal. The dawning of this love within the human heart seeks something far greater than anything previously experienced. It's a love that seeks liberation of the whole. In that light, personal liberation starts to seem almost petty.

The Love of which I'm speaking, arises directly out of profound depth of realization. It has nothing to do with doing the right thing or being a good person. Such notions come from an egoic mind masquerading in spiritual clothing. I am speaking about a force of Love that originates from beyond the mind - from consciousness itself.

Q: Is awakening to this greater love the difference between somebody who is fascinated with spirituality and someone who is actually demonstrating spirituality in the way they live?

A: Someone who acts out of fascination is still concerned with some sort of spiritual image or intellectual curiosity. By its very nature a love that is much, much bigger than oneself comes from an entirely different place. It comes from a place of seeing that the Truth seeks to be manifested and expressed through a human personality for the sake of the evolution of the whole. The love I am speaking of comes out of the revelation that you are the whole.

What I'm speaking about is the awakening of a love that makes whatever is happening in oneself unimportant. For such a person self-concern has dropped out of the center of awareness. Enlightenment is not only the experience of transcending the me; it's also a condition where the me, as a separate somebody, doesn't hold importance anymore. It doesn't always start out this absolute, but this is the direction non-personal love pushes you toward. Very often at this juncture, whatever's left of a me who is clinging to itself will start to scream and come up with 101 reasons why it can't yet let go into a love that big.

Q: Some may think you're speaking of a me that learns to be centered on the whole rather than centered on itself. But doesn't the love come from the falling away of the me, the realization you are not other than the whole?

A: Yes. The love that I'm speaking about is not something that can be created. A love greater than oneself, by its very nature, is something that we can't manufacture. The me cannot manufacture it, even if it wants to. This Love arises from the Self - from realization of the Self.

Q: This love can't even be known when the me is there.

A: Right. At its best it can intuited. And I think that the intution of this degree of love magnetically draws the individual toward it and, at the same time, causes fear to arise. This love is seeking the dissolution of all separateness, all me-ness, all self concern.

Q: Would developing a more subtle ear for that intuition be helpful?

A: By all means, listen and feel into the intuition of oneness within. The feeling of oneness is love; the experience of oneness is realization of your true nature. Love only seems other than you or bigger than you when you are trapped in the perspective of a personal me. This non-personal love actually is you because you, as you truly are, have never been that which is personal. In one sense, it's simply a matter of how deep enlightenment has gone, how thorough it is.

Q: The love, the loving, and the loved, all become one thing.

A: Yes. We can't really love the whole until we have a deep realization that we are the whole. Otherwise, the vastness of that love is always going to be experienced as a threat to the me.

Love cares not for the me, it cares only for that which is true, undivided, and whole. When the me dissolves, when it surrenders itself to a unity far greater than anything the mind can comprehend, that is Love.

Q: When I think about the implications of awakening, I think of the Buddhist phrase "saving all beings," but I do not know the exact form that would take in my life.

A: "Saving all beings" is not something you do, it is the definition of what you are. Saving all beings is a verb that you become. You become the saving of all beings. That is what you are. In that there is, quite naturally, the very spontaneous and effortless manifestation of love, compassion, wisdom, and a dedication to the Truth above all else.

In the face of true Love, any holding onto a liberation or freedom that is personal becomes absurd. Love sweeps you up into a mysterious passion and utter commitment to the whole where to live only for oneself is seen as utter madness. The mind does not want to see that this obsession with the personal is madness; it wants to find meaning in it. From the standpoint of Love, all that is false is to be consumed in a passion for the Truth alone.

Q: It feels as if there is profound responsibility in being Love.

A: Yes, more than the mind could imagine or hold up under. If most human beings truly realized the impact that they have on the whole, they'd be crushed by the realization of it. But what I'm talking about is being thrilled by it. All you have to do is say "yes." Don't make some big project out of it. Don't make some big deal out of it. Just say "yes." You don't even know what it means to say "yes," but you say it anyway. You'll never know what it means to say "yes," but you do it anyway. Freedom and Love arise when you die into the unknown mystery of being.

© Adyashanti, 2004

The material in this three-part series comes from Adyashanti's book The Impact of Awakening: Excerpts from the Teachings of Adyashanti (Open Gate Sangha).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native of Northern California, Adyashanti (which means "primordial peace") is a teacher of growing recognition and popularity in the United States. After a series of transformative spiritual awakenings, he began teaching in 1996, at the request of his Zen teacher with whom he had been studying for 14 years. Adya's teachings have been compared to some of the early Chan (Zen) masters of China as well as teachers of Advaita Vedanta in India. He teaches extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area, offering weekly satsangs, frequent intensives, and silent retreats. He also travels to teach in other areas of the United States and Canada. His retreats are very popular and have become known as profoundly liberating events which open the heart of realization and true understanding. To learn more about Adyashanti's work, and to purchase his books and tapes, pleasse visit his website at: www.zen-satsang.org.

If you'd like to stay up-to-date with information about events with Adyashanti and Open Gate Sangha, please send a note with your personal information to: opengate@pobox.com.