Beauty

To look around at the natural world is to encounter a plenitude of gorgeousness. The clouds, trees, flowers, glittering waters, birds, chipmunks and other furry things are stunningly beautiful at no charge. This is a truly smashing time of year too. Late spring brings a wealth of delightful vibrancy and a promise of more to come. Beauty has a power of affirmation about it, it opens the heart and softens the breath and quiets the mind with awe. All these causes are deeply needed tonics for our fast moving, high pressure lifestyle. “Stop and smell the roses” is a great and wise dictum. Stop and watch the sunset too.

How can a place of such extraordinary gorgeousness not be Heaven? Left unchecked by the interventions of mankind the natural order produces stunning landscapes, breathtaking mountains, fascinating minute plants and creatures, stars that stop the mind’s chatter and on and on. We hurry about trying to improve it all, making things and arts to make it better and yet all we need do is stop and take it in as the gift of glory that this realm is. Even the harsh salt flats, bare deserts, deep inhospitable (to us) ocean exhibit stunning beauty.

As a spiritual practice, recognizing beauty may lead to devotion and become a profound and transformative step toward fully embracing unconditional love. It is at once a gentle and a viselike path for once the eyes open and the world bursts into full color of exquisiteness there is no going back. Beauty will forever grab your attention entice you into rapturous blankness, staring at a sunset, peering at a tiny insect or into the center of a flower. Beauty leads one to a state of wonder and reminds us daily and even many times a day that the magic of creation is far beyond our understanding.

Beauty is always surprising. I am forever awed by the exquisiteness of a rose; it’s fragrance, it’s color, it’ vigor. I have seen fully blooming roses on the streets of New York City in December.

My personal exploration of beauty this spring has been gardening in my own garden and watching the Battery Park gardens here at the tip of Manhattan grow into the first season. I think after 25 years of gardening I finally get my own garden from watching the Battery Conservancy for the last couple of years. Check them out they are truly gorgeous.

http://www.thebattery.org/gardens/

Unconditional Love

Love is the fabric of the universe, it is the frequency of the universe and it is the flow of communication between beings. So much of love is discussed in popular culture, in songs and in entertainment but is that really love? We are not talking about romantic love here although that is a very small part of the love equation. Any part of the love pie can lead us to the true nature of love; romantic love, familial love, love of pets, love of tribe and especially love of self, as long as the ego is held in check. Unfortunately the ego can derail any of these paths of love with tragic consequences and it takes discipline to walk the knife’s edge toward enlightened understanding of the nature of love.

The closest that we can get to the concept of primordial love or of the kind of love that the Mother Creator has for her beings is unconditional love. Yet even that does not begin to express it fully. In the Vedic tradition we hear that our true nature is that of the unknowable divine, of Shiva, the one unmanifest God and we learn that that nature is Sat Chit Ananda – Being, Consciousness and Bliss. This is the kind of love we are talking about. It is a natural state of awareness, isness and acceptance. This is the state of Heaven, it is a state that is your natural birthright. It is a state that we all know, that we often chase after without really knowing how to get it.

Tiny hits of this bliss of heaven, our natural state can be tasted. We may feel it in a perfect piece of chocolate, the warmth of our loving interactions,  in profound gratitude or in meditation and yet the feeling is fleeting. We chase it in even more dangerous ways, through drugs, sex and dangerous forms of stimulation that can never provide that lasting connection. One of the most delicious paths to cultivating this understanding and ultimate immersion is through the ancient Indian Bhakti tradition which simply prescribes love; love through service, love through chanting, love through dancing and love through worship. It is an easy and a most delicious path.

I feel singularly blessed to have experienced the primordial nature of love as there was a time in my life when I would lie awake at night and feel blissful waves of the energy of the universe roll over and past me. I have felt breathed by the universe and like a rushing river flowed through me. These are experiences of the natural and perpetual movement of love that is a conscious force of creativity, that permeates all things and nourishes all that is created. Once the impetus of creation moves from the stillness of the emptiness, which is really the universal field of potentiality then it becomes that love; a kind of nourishment, glue, substrate and consciousness all at once out of which we become.

So there it is, perhaps, the easiest way to know heaven is to commit to love. Commit to love unconditionally, commit to “love the one you’re with”. Commit to love anyone you can – family, friends,  pets, enemies, co-workers and your self. If you don’t or can’t then focus really diligently on where you can love because where you focus is where seeds will grow. Commit to love in all circumstances. Seek out circumstances that foster love and while you are a fledgling unconditional lover avoid circumstances that circumvent your natural love. Be selfish with your cultivation of love. By this I mean selfishly cultivate love rather than fear or hate or jealousy or competition or any other state that chases your love away.  Your love is more important than any other state, be grateful for it. Be grateful to those that provide you the opportunity to explore and expand it. Love will save you, it will save the world, Love is the world.

I want to share something with you that I was working on for a while starting in 2006. One day I picked up a Bible and it occurred to me that the creation story could be retold from a different point of view. Imagine that instead of a vengeful, judgmental God the Creator is a Mother – a loving, generous Mother whose only hope is that her creation will succeed and flourish and know its own greatness within her. Here is the result of my first few verses. I hope that you enjoy them.

BIRTH

Chapter 1

  1. First and always there was The Immaculate Womb,And this principle includes both male and female; for That Immaculate Divine Creator truly includes all and all is made from That. The Immaculate is all that ever was, is or will be as well as all that might and may never be as well as the potential for all that is and is not.And Its nature was, is and will always be perfect Love.
  2. The Immaculate Divine Creator is eternal absolute bliss where no thing and all things rest together in vast potential.
  3. All is merged in bliss and at once knew and did not know its fullest nature.
  4. Then in one eternal moment She inhaled and an extraordinary light burst from no being into being.
  5. When She saw this light she was overwhelmed with perfect Love and She knew that this was good.
  6. In this way the Immaculate Mother and her beloved, now separated may see and know each other. And the Divine Mother marked the birth of the first dawn.
  7. With sudden knowing and seeing by this extraordinary light came her divine desire to create, so out of her Immaculate Womb came the first thought.
  8. And She determined to reflect the unknown bliss of her non-being within this new thought that her fullest love might be known.