by Ayya Khema<\/a><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n
\n<\/font><\/p>\nMOST PEOPLE are under the impression that they can think out their lives. But that\u2019s a misconception. We are subject to our emotions and think in ways based on our emotions. So it\u2019s extremely important to do something about our emotions. In the same way as the Buddha gave us the Four Supreme Efforts for the mind, he also outlined the Four Emotions for the heart. The Four Emotions\u2013lovingkindness (metta), compassion (karuna), joy with others (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha)\u2013are called the \u201cdivine abodes.\u201d When we have perfected these four, we have heaven on earth, paradise in our own heart.<\/font><\/p>\nI think everybody knows that above us is the sky and not heaven. We have heaven and hell within us and can experience this quite easily. So even without having complete concentration in meditation and profound insights, the Four Divine Abodes enable us to live on a level of truth and lovingness, security, and certainty, which gives life a totally different quality. When we are able to arouse love in our hearts without any cause, just because love is the heart\u2019s quality, we feel secure. It is impossible to buy security, even though many people would like to do so. Insurance companies have the largest buildings because people try to buy security. But when we create certainty within, through a loving heart, we feel assured that our reactions and feelings are not going to be detrimental to our own or other people\u2019s happiness. Many fears will vanish.<\/font><\/p>\nMetta\u2013the first of the Supreme Emotions\u2013is usually translated as \u201cloving kindness.\u201d But loving-kindness doesn\u2019t have the same impact in English that the word love has, which carries a lot of meaning for us. We have many ideas about love. The most profound thought we have about love, which is propagated in novels, movies, and billboards, is the idea that love exists between two people who are utterly compatible, usually young and pretty, and who for some odd reason have a chemical attraction toward each other-none of which can last. Most people find out during the course of their lifetime that this is a myth, that it doesn\u2019t work that way. Most people then think it\u2019s their own fault or the other person\u2019s fault or the fault of both, and they try a new relationship. After the third, fourth, or fifth try, they might know better; but a lot of people are still trying. That\u2019s usually what\u2019s called love in our society.<\/font><\/p>\nIn reality, love is a quality of our heart. The heart has no other function. If we were aware that we all contain love within us, and that we can foster and develop it, we would certainly give that far more attention than we do. In all developed societies there are institutions to foster the expansion of the mind, from the age of three until death. But we don\u2019t have any institutions to develop the heart, so we have to do it ourselves. Most people are either waiting for or relating to the one person who makes it possible for them to feel love at last. But that kind of love is beset with fear, and fear is part of hate. What we hate is the idea that this special person may die, walk away, have other feelings and thoughts-in other words, the fear that love may end, because we believe that love is situated strictly in that one person. Since there are six billion people on this planet, this is rather absurd. Yet most people think that our love-ability is dependent upon one person and having that one person near us. That creates the fear of loss, and love beset by fear cannot be pure. We create a dependency upon that person, and on his or her ideas and emotions. There is no freedom in that, no freedom to love.<\/font><\/p>\nIf we see quite clearly that love is a quality that we all have, then we can start developing that ability. Any skill that we have, we have developed through practice. If we\u2019ve learned to type, we\u2019ve had to practice. We can practice love and eventually we\u2019ll have that skill. Love has nothing to do with finding somebody who is worth loving, or checking out people to see whether they are truly lovable. If we investigate ourselves honestly enough, we find that we\u2019re not all that lovable either, so why do we expect somebody else to be totally lovable? It has nothing to do with the qualities of the other person, or whether he or she wants to be loved, is going to love us back, or needs love. Everyone needs love. Because we know our own faults, when somebody loves us we think, Oh, that\u2019s great, this person loves me and doesn\u2019t even know I have all these problems. We\u2019re looking for somebody to love us to support a certain image of ourselves. If we can\u2019t find anybody, we feel bereft. People even get depressed or search for escape routes. These are wrong ways of going at it.<\/font><\/p>\nIN THE spiritual path, there\u2019s nothing to get, and everything to get rid of. The first thing to let go of is trying to \u201cget\u201d love, and instead to give it. That\u2019s the secret of the spiritual path. One has to give oneself wholeheartedly. Whatever we do half heartedly, brings halfhearted results. How can we give ourselves? By not holding back. By not wanting for ourselves. If we want to be loved, we are looking for a support system. If we want to love, we are looking for spiritual growth. Disliking others is far too easy. Anybody can do it and justify it because, of course, people are often not very bright and don\u2019t act the way we\u2019d like them to act. Disliking makes grooves in the heart, and it becomes easier and easier to fall into these grooves. We not only dislike others, but also ourselves. If one likes or loves oneself, it\u2019s easier to love others, which is why we always start loving-kindness meditations with the focus on ourselves. That\u2019s not egocentricity. If we don\u2019t like ourselves because we have faults, or have made mistakes, we will transfer that dislike to others and judge them accordingly. We are not here to be judge and jury. First of all, we don\u2019t even have the qualifications. It\u2019s also a very unsatisfactory job, doesn\u2019t pay, and just makes people unhappy.<\/font><\/p>\nPEOPLE OFTEN feel that it\u2019s necessary to be that way to protect themselves. But what do we need to protect ourselves from? We have to protect our bodies from injury. Do we have to protect ourselves from love? We are all in this together, living on this planet at the same time, breathing the same air. We all have the same limbs, thoughts, and emotions. The idea that we are separate beings is an illusion. If we practice meditation diligently with perseverance, then one day we\u2019ll get over this illusion of separation. Meditation makes it possible to see the totality of all manifestation. There is one creation and we are all part of it. What can we be afraid of? We are afraid to love ourselves, afraid to love creation, afraid to love others because we know negative things about ourselves. Knowing that we do things wrong, that we have unhappy or unwholesome thoughts, is no reason not to love. A mother who loves her children doesn\u2019t stop loving them when they act silly or unpleasant. Small children have hundreds of unwholesome thoughts a day and give voice to them quite loudly. We have them too, but we do not express them all.<\/font><\/p>\nSo, if a mother can love a child who is making difficulties for her, why can\u2019t we love ourselves? Loving oneself and knowing oneself are not the same thing. Love is the warmth of the heart, the connectedness, the protection, the caring, the concern, the embrace that comes from acceptance and understanding for oneself. Having practiced that, we are in a much better position to practice love toward others. They are just as unlovable as we are, and they have just as many unwholesome thoughts. But that doesn\u2019t matter. We are not judge and jury. When we realize that we can actually love ourselves, there is a feeling of being at ease. We don\u2019t constantly have to become or pretend, or strive to be somebody. We can just be. It\u2019s nice to just be, and not be \u201csomebody.\u201d Love makes that possible. By the same token, when we relate to other people, we can let them just be and love them. We all have daily opportunities to practice this. It\u2019s a skill, like any other.<\/font><\/p>\n
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\n<\/font><\/p>\nLove & Light,
\nAngel Love<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n
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MOST PEOPLE are under the impression that they can think out their lives. But that\u2019s a misconception. We are subject to our emotions and think in ways based on our emotions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2676,900,69,2110,32,5265],"class_list":["post-89854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-angel-love","tag-emotions","tag-life-2","tag-light","tag-love","tag-metta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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