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| On Love and Service |
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[Excerpts from The Incarnation
of Love, Avatar Adi Da’s “Radical” Spiritual Wisdom
and Practical Instruction on self-Transcending
Love and Service in
All Relationships] |
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| The true test and proof of a human being
is not whether or not he or she can attain mystical experiences,
or “out-of-body” experiences or even sophisticated
scientific knowledge and power over the world. The true test
is whether or not any individual human being will exist as love
and persist as love, transcending himself or herself in the
midst of all experience and knowledge, even when all experience
and knowledge press upon the individual to be less than love.
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For those who Are Committed To Love…
Even Rejection By others Is Received
and Accepted As A Wound, Not An Insult. Even The Heart-Necessity
To Love and To Be Loved Is A Wound. Even The Fullest Realization
Of Love Is A Wound That Never Heals. |
| You are mortal, and entirely subject to
the Mercy of the Divine. You own nothing, and you know nothing.
No technique of meditation leads to the Divine Being, and there
is nothing to be believed that is the Truth. Rather, you must
be touched in your feeling by the unspeakable suffering of this
world and return everything to the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant
Divine Person. |
| No individual should live as the superior,
or the inferior, or even the equal, of all others. Rather, each
should live as the intimate servant of others through love. |
| You must love one another, have compassion
for your limitations and the limitations of others, and forget
about the fact that you are not perfect, and neither is anyone
else. |
| Renunciation in the Way of the Heart is
a commitment to ecstasy. Renunciates are about ecstasy, not
dried-up, conventional lawfulness. |
| You may fantasize that Spiritual life
is about living in caves, wearing your robes, and renouncing
everything. Such a notion is just a dream. It is nonsense. True
renunciation is here, in the body, suffering it, becoming
Illumined by submitting to be a human being. The practice of
such true renunciation is the agony of self-knowledge and knowledge
of another. |
| If you enter into this process of self-knowledge
and knowledge of another, it will break your heart. It did Mine!
Yet as dreadful as it is, it is the best thing I ever did. The
best thing that could possibly happen to you is that you become
a raw nerve-end, a broken heart, unconsolable, with sorrow on
your face—and ecstasy as well, no longer a conventional
man or woman, no longer able to put on the social false face—incapable
of it, with no argument, no anger, no feeling rejected, you
responsible and you dying, and no absolutes coming to you through
the bodies of others. |
| Everything you console yourself with is
a lie. When you get down to the bottom of it, broken-hearted
in your distress, maybe you will discover what “in love”
is. It is not about what you must do. It is about transcending
yourself, about not fulfilling yourself. And it is not amusing.
It is passionate and it is terrible. |
| In the world, the beloved dies—or
appears to die. Whatever is desired or loved that is merely
conditional will inevitably die, or pass away and change. One
who observes this with true seriousness realizes that this Lesson
of life requires that you find What is Deathless in others.
True Love is devoted and submitted and attached and conformed
to the Undying Beloved. This principle, in brief, characterizes
the Way of the Heart. |
Once an other Is Found, the ego-“I”
Clings To the other, At First pleasurably, and Then Aggressively.
The ego-“I” Depends On the other For Happiness,
and Over time, the ego-“I” Makes Greater and Greater
Demands On the other For Fulfillment Of itself (In all of
its desires). Often, in time, the other Becomes Depressed
and Exhausted By This Demand (and Thus Leaves, or Dies). Just
as Likely, the ego-“I” Discovers, Over time, That
the other Cannot or Will Not Satisfy The Absolute Demand For
attention and Consolation. In That Case, the ego-“I”
Feels Betrayed, and the ego-“I” Begins the Strategy
Of Punishing, Rejecting, and Abandoning the other.
Every conditionally Manifested being Has (In time) Often
Been The Proposed Victim Of This Strategy Of Separate and
Separative selves. Even More, Until The Heart Gives Way To
Divine Love-Bliss, every conditionally living being Is The
Original Genius and Grand Performer Of This Strategy Of Separate
and Separate selves. It Is The Strategy Of Narcissus, and
It Is The Dreadful Work Of all conditionally living beings
who Are Not Awake To The Truth Beyond the ego-“I”.
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Hold on to no thing and no one, not
even your apparently individual self. Be certain of no knowledge.
Be the sacrifice of all conditions in every moment, and thus
abide in Communion with the eternal Truth, wherein the root
of your independence is eternally hidden and your common Identity
is always already Revealed.
In this way you will affirm and participate in the necessarily
eternal Existence in which you all appear: Surrender into
Infinity with all your friends and hold on to no thing or
condition that ever appears. Forget all things in present
Happiness, and so forgive the universe for all its playful
changes. Always love one another, and so forgive one another
for appearing, for changing, and for passing out of present
sight. So be it.
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In the Way of the Heart each one is
responsible to bless all others. Therefore, as My devotee,
bless everyone and everything with every action, every thought,
and every breath. It is not possible to bless another by presuming
a position of superiority for yourself or inferiority on the
part of another. To bless another one must worship and acknowledge
that one in his or her True Form, inhering in the Divine Reality,
present as an expressive manifestation of the Divine Being.
Therefore, whatever your stage of life in the Way of the
Heart, bless all others in feeling-Contemplation of Me, serve
every being as the modification of the Divine Reality that
I Reveal to you, acknowledge every being and condition in
the “Brightness” of My Divine Company, and address
everyone and everything in the same spirit in which you acknowledge
Me. Only in this manner are you free in Satsang with Me, invoking
and finding Me in, as, and through every being and condition.
Be My devotee, in Communion with Me. See all in Communion
with Me. Through feeling-Contemplation of Me, worship the
Divine Being, Truth, and Reality in, as, and through everyone
and everything. Never be too proud to do this worship. Only
this expresses true Realization. |
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