Graceful Relationships - Part 10

Join us for this unique opportunity to learn how to transform any relationship into a graceful manifestation of unconditional love. Bring your related questions, and let us grow together. Presented with our beloved Carly. We will also follow the next chapter in The Song of the Mahamudra: Chapter 10: The Supreme Understanding.

The song ends: The supreme understanding transcends all this and that. The supreme action embraces great resourcefulness without attachment. The supreme accomplishment is to realize immanence without hope. At first, a yogi feels his mind is tumbling like a waterfall; in mid-course, like the Ganges, it flows on slowly and gently; in the end, it is a great vast ocean where the lights of son and mother merge in one.

Transcript

So,

Hello dear people,

Welcome to this unique opportunity we give ourselves every week to stop the rush,

Hold hands and walk the path together.

Not just as individuals but also as a united consciousness that is asking and answering itself and growing during this dance driven by that tension that hides between the question and the answer.

And today we celebrate the 10th and final chapter in our journey towards graceful relationships.

So this is your opportunity to get rid of anything that is still burdening you or feel that is not needed anymore.

Any entanglement that you have with relations to relations.

And then the second half of this meeting will be dedicated to the song of Mahamudra where we will be reminded once again that relationships are just an illusion and all this drama is futile to begin with.

So,

Is there anybody here for the first time and doesn't really know how this works?

Good,

So you already know.

Your questions are driving this discussion and determining the pace and the depth will go.

So the more personal,

The more vulnerable you are,

The more beneficial this will be for you and for the rest of us.

This is your opportunity to shine.

Who wants to be the first one to jump into the war?

I think after nine meetings we've resolved all related issues,

Relationship issues.

What would you say would be like the difference between authentic expression and love?

What is the difference between authentic expression and love?

I would say if you go deep enough,

They are synonymous because authentic expression of who we are is an expression of unconditional love.

It's the same thing.

But then,

You know,

People say love and they mean different things.

So we need to know what we are talking about when we relate to this idea of love.

What does love mean?

It's a beautiful question.

For nine weeks,

Nobody asked what love is.

What is love?

It's a question that's been asked before,

But I'm not sure if it's in this series.

I don't think in this series.

So,

You know,

Because when we say love,

Many times we actually mean our personal connection with someone,

Right?

I love you personally.

And I can explain the reason behind it,

Right?

I love you because you provide me comfort,

You provide me a sense of belongingness,

You provide me comfort.

Did I say comfort?

You provide me stability,

Security,

You provide me financial assistance.

I love making love to you.

There is a whole list of reasons that justify my personal feeling to you.

But love is much greater than just a personal feeling.

The personal aspect of love is just a narrow perspective of a much greater force that binds this universe together.

The same force that pulls the earth towards the sun and the moon towards the earth and the butterfly to the flower and the nucleus,

No,

The electron to the nucleus.

It's the same force.

In one sentence,

You can say it's the universal force that turns separateness into oneness.

And the fact that I'm loving you is just an expression of that.

I.

.

.

Love binds us together.

So when you say an authentic expression of that,

It's the same thing,

No?

It's just an expression of love,

Which is transpersonal.

We tend to relate to love as something very personal.

This is mine.

You are mine.

This identifies me.

What identifies me?

My relationships.

The fact that I am married to you or I'm a partner to you creates a sort of identity.

This is who I am.

And there's a whole story of our relationship that brought us to this point in time.

All that is a sort of an identity.

But we need to wake up to realize the personal aspect of that is just a limited perspective of something much greater that is playing there.

And we are expressing it and experiencing it on a personal level.

So just that force that binds all separateness into oneness.

True love doesn't know need and want.

That's why it's called unconditional love.

It's not that I love you because you give me A,

B,

Or C.

Or because you promised to give me in the future.

Just like the flower doesn't put any conditions on who can come and drink its nectar.

Or just like the fountain doesn't give any condition about who can come and quench their thirst.

Just like the sun doesn't give any condition about who is enjoying its warmth and who is not supposed to.

That's what they say when they say your true nature is unconditional love.

It means that that universal force is being expressed authentically in you,

As you.

That universal force has got no conditions.

It's transpersonal.

Imagine your relationships devoid of conditions.

I don't need you to promise me anything and I don't need you to provide me anything.

I don't need anything from you.

And that's not the reason that I love you.

Or that I choose to be with you.

Imagine your relationship completely cleared of any condition.

How would they manifest?

Is it even possible?

Is it failed to even suggest something like that?

I suppose in theory,

If that's the case,

You could have any kind of relationship with anyone.

So what would be the distinction between relationships with your partner that you live with or your husband or wife or your children or your parents or your workmates or your friends?

When you have no story about yourself that you relate to and identify with,

Then there is no difference.

When you are being carried by a story that you tell yourself about yourself,

Then there is the personal aspect of love.

Yeah,

It's there.

I'm not neglecting it.

You know,

When you plant a rose in the garden and you take care of that rose,

You water that rose,

You put fertilizer for that rose,

And you kill the weed that grows around that rose,

You have a personal relationship.

You want to see that rose succeed and flourish.

You have a personal relationship with that.

It's not because you hate the weed,

But you love that rose.

So you nourish it.

It's okay.

I mean,

Definitely,

It's there.

So you have a personal relationship.

You feel closer to one thing as opposed to another.

But when there is no personal aspect to your identity,

The persona is dissolved,

As we will discuss at the end of this meeting.

Then it's like,

You know,

They say it's like the center of a wheel of a bicycle.

You know,

The center is the same distance from all angles.

So all the wheel receives the same amount of love.

When you're in your center,

That's how you experience life.

Everything around you receives the same amount of love.

It's not something that you direct because you have a personal agenda,

Personal reason.

You just emit,

Like the sun emits 330 degrees.

Why does it do that?

Because it has no alternative.

The sun has to burn and emit heat and light.

That's it.

That's what it's been doing for the past million and billions of years.

And it doesn't take personally if you choose to run and hide in the air condition.

It comes with no agenda,

Right?

Same as you.

Imagine your relationship,

Seriously,

Either with your partner,

You know,

Your parents,

Your kids,

Completely devoid of any condition.

I don't love you because A,

B,

And C.

I don't have any list.

I love you because you are there.

How would that reflect on the relationship?

Wow,

Everybody's sleeping tonight.

Yeah,

What's going on?

Mary Lou says,

Seems like an impossible task.

An impossible task.

Thank you for this comment,

Mary Lou.

What I urge you to do is to be aware that your reality is a result,

Is an outcome of the story that you tell yourself about yourself.

If you tell yourself a story that this seems like an impossible task,

It's way beyond your means.

I guarantee it will be beyond your means and it will be impossible for you.

And how do I know that?

Not because I know you,

Because I realize that this is the story you tell yourself.

You need to be very careful about what stories you choose to believe.

And are they helping you to come closer to your ultimate goal?

Or are they hindering?

Your path towards your goal.

What is your goal?

It's another important question.

As we lay it here in the White Path,

Our communal goal is to live a life that is an expression of a whole heart and a willing soul.

To the best of our capacity,

A whole heart and a willing soul.

So when I tell myself the story,

This is an impossible task,

Is it helping me?

Or is it hindering?

Your reality is an outcome of that story.

Make sure you are very aware of the stories you choose to believe.

Okay,

So let's go with Mary Lou.

Why are we putting conditions on our love?

Think about it for a minute.

Why do we have that tendency?

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

I cannot not give you my love for free.

I need to put a price on it,

A price tag.

You want to win my love?

Fantastic.

It will cost you.

This is what I need.

A,

B,

C and D.

Why do we do that?

Why can't we just be generous about it and give it free?

No conditions,

No questions asked.

Think about it.

Why is that?

Any idea?

Many ideas.

Give me one.

I feel judged.

I feel like maybe it wouldn't be the right thing for that person.

What is my unconditional love?

Yeah.

Oh,

Come on.

What is the one thing people want from us?

Consciously or unconsciously?

What do people want?

Why are they manipulating and they're trying to play the good guy,

The bad guy,

Whatever they feel is necessary.

They only want one thing from us.

What is that?

Not just to be accepted.

Deeper than that.

What they want to be?

Loved.

How?

Unconditionally.

Unconditionally.

Right?

I want to feel that I'm worthy for unconditional love.

Please assure me that I am.

Doesn't matter if they can word it out for you or they manipulate you to get it.

Usually they don't know how to express that in an intelligent,

Mature way.

So it transforms into some kind of manipulation.

Yeah,

But down deep,

This is what people are looking for.

What?

Unconditional love.

And instead of providing that,

We put conditions.

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

Why is that?

It's because we are not connected with our essence.

We are,

We forgot how vast we are.

We feel,

Like the best way to express that is the difference between a wave and an ocean.

You know,

When a wave is only aware of itself,

Have self-awareness,

And is only aware of itself,

It's only connected to the limited resources of the wave.

And yeah,

These are limited and temporary.

The wave is not going to be there forever.

It's going to crash in 20 or 30 seconds or 70 or 80 years,

Which is the same.

Correct?

So if I'm not connected to the abundance,

I have to be protective of the limited resource I have.

Like love.

I cannot just give it.

I will run out of it.

Right?

But if we are connected to the true essence of who we are,

We realize we are not the wave.

There is no wave.

There is no such thing.

Wave is just a way for us to express what is temporary on the surface.

But we are talking about oceanic expressions.

The ocean keeps generating those temporary,

Unique expressions of itself.

Correct?

So none of us is a wave.

We are all the ocean.

Now I realize,

Oh,

This illusion of separateness created that sense of need and lack that drove my instinct to protect the little I have.

But if that is not threatened anymore,

I'm connected to the abundance,

Then what are we talking about?

Why would I put condition?

Who is putting condition?

And for what reason?

Yes?

So know thyself.

If you feel that this is something that you want to come close to,

And you want to manifest in this incarnation,

You want to be an expression of unconditional love.

How to do that?

Know thyself.

Know you are the ocean.

And that separateness is just an illusion.

Once that is realized,

Conditions on your love will drop naturally.

They would lose their meaning.

You don't even need to bother about that anymore.

What else?

Mary Lou is asking if being love,

If longing for unconditional love is the same as wanting to be accepted.

I would say it's a station on the way.

Wanting to be accepted is a station on the way to coming closer to unconditional love.

So many of us,

You know,

It's a plague.

We don't feel that we are worthy.

We walk around with the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.

And the bottom line of that story is that we are not worthy.

We are not worthy of your acceptance.

I'm not worthy of your love.

I'm damaged goods.

The best I can hope for is short intermissions between one type of suffering to another.

Again,

This is an illusion created by false identifications that generates a sense of persona that is identified with the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Whatever the story that you tell yourself,

Make sure that every time that story is trying to persuade you that you are not worthy,

It's counterproductive to your greatest goal,

To your ultimate goal,

Which is to live as an expression of a whole heart and a willing soul.

Let go of that story.

It's not helping you.

It's just a story.

It's not the reality.

It's not truth.

And if you keep holding on to that story,

See if you can find why.

Why are you holding on to that story?

What are you afraid of?

What is hiding behind that story?

I can give you a hint.

That story creates an identity.

And it's more scary to be without a story than to be with a story,

A terrible story that I tell myself about myself.

It's more scary to be without a story.

That's why it's inevitable as we mature on the path that we come to this point in time where we are being invited to drop that story and face the horror of confronting that question,

Who am I?

And not having an answer.

Face that horror,

The dark night of the soul.

You have to be courageous and honest.

What?

Yes?

All questions?

Margaret is saying maybe we do that.

I think it was in reference to.

.

.

Why do we put conditions on our love?

Yeah,

To protect ourselves from others misunderstanding.

To protect ourselves,

Yeah.

From whatever pain life may inflict on us.

Why am I hiding?

I'm protecting myself,

That's why.

Life is painful.

Life can be horrific,

Yeah.

How do I know I've experienced it?

I've been hurt once,

Times,

Three times.

I don't want that pain anymore.

So I'm putting myself in a bunker where life cannot really touch me.

Fantastic.

So Margaret's saying,

I am worthy.

Am I allowed to protect that worthiness from others' sources that drop,

Dump dust on my treasured self?

It's not a question of allowed or not allowed.

What we teach here is not a new kind of religion where you collect do's and don'ts.

The only criteria that I invite you to judge your decision-making process is does it bring you closer to a whole heart and a willing soul?

That's it.

If you protect yourself against life,

Do you feel expanded or contracted?

An awakened consciousness is an expression of the ultimate yes.

It doesn't know what no means.

I sat with somebody for breakfast today and he asked me,

I have two questions for you.

And I said,

Yes.

Yes and yes.

Yes and yes.

True story.

It doesn't know what no means.

No against what?

How can I say no to something?

Why would I say no?

It's only because I'm afraid of life.

So what to do?

Just remind yourself,

You know,

Pleasure and pain are one and the same.

You cannot pray for rain and then,

You know,

Run between the drops so you won't get wet.

If you want rain to come,

Then when it comes,

Get wet.

That's what you have a body for.

To be physically scratched by life.

And sometimes it's very pleasurable,

That scratch,

You know,

That,

How do you call it?

Friction.

Friction.

We love to be caressed by life.

Sometimes it's painful.

Yeah.

So pleasure and pain are one and the same.

Keep reminding yourself that again and again.

Don't try to filter the experiences.

This I like,

This I don't like.

Time for Tilopa.

Ready?

So we're going to dedicate the rest of this meeting to the song of the Mahamudra,

Where a teacher called Tilopa was singing to his beloved disciple,

Miropa,

About the state of consciousness that he is experiencing.

Realizing that this is an impossible task,

He is just singing whatever comes.

Maybe the music would inspire.

So when you listen to those words,

Don't just be stuck on the meaning.

Allow the vibration to come.

These are very charged words and sentences.

So Karl is going to put the text on the chat box and read it to us.

Oh,

I didn't introduce you.

Karlin?

Our beloved Karlin is celebrating her birthday today.

Where are you guys?

The last chapter of the book.

Oh,

Thank you.

Ready?

Okay.

So chapter 10,

The supreme understanding.

The song ends.

The supreme understanding transcends all this and that.

The supreme action embraces great resourcefulness without attachment.

The supreme accomplishment is to realize imminence without hope.

At first,

A yogi feels his mind is tumbling like a waterfall.

In midcourse,

Like the Ganges,

It flows on and slow and gentle.

In the end,

It is a great vast ocean where the light of son and mother merge in one.

Allow that vibration.

So the song ends,

Unfortunately,

Like all good things.

The song ends by saying that the supreme understanding transcends all this and that.

That fragmented way our mind allows us to perceive reality.

It breaks it into forms and shapes and brand it.

This is a chair.

This is a table.

This is a person.

This is this person versus that person.

The supreme understanding transcends that fragmentation.

Artificial fragmentation.

The world never is fragmented in reality in that sense.

Science teaches that.

Not just spirituality.

If you look deep into the atomic structure of matter,

You will find two things.

A.

There is no difference between matter and energy.

It's the same thing.

B.

Objects never end anywhere.

If you go to the atomic level of any object,

You will see that there is no border where you can define,

OK,

Here this object doesn't exist anymore.

It dims out into infinity.

And on the other side,

A new object is materialized.

So there is a soup of atoms and molecules that we are all a part of on a physical level,

Not just spiritually.

Oneness is not just a theological or philosophical idea.

Oneness is our physical reality.

And the supreme understanding recognizes that.

And it transcends that fragmentation.

The supreme action embraces great resourcefulness without attachment.

This is so beautiful.

It's not me who is doing.

You are not the doer.

That doer dissolves.

And you are in access to great resourcefulness.

The whole energy of the world is there to support your doing.

The abundance is manifested through you in action.

But there is no separate identity that takes ownership on that.

It's not because of me.

And it's not thanks to me.

The supreme accomplishment is to realize imminence without hope.

Imminence without hope.

It is already here.

It is manifested as the reality that we meet in the present moment.

Drop the hope.

Hope,

What is hope?

Is the idea that a better reality will manifest at the end of the rainbow sometime.

Isn't it?

Reality as it is,

Is not perfect.

Me,

The version of me is not perfect as it is.

A better version,

More mature version,

More enlightened version of me is waiting to be born.

And I won't be complete before that.

Tilopa is saying,

Drop the hope.

This is as good as it gets.

It will never be better than perfect.

And perfection is reality as it is.

And then the most beautiful part of all this song.

He portrays three phases of evolution of consciousness.

So beautifully.

First stage,

The yogi feels his mind is tumbling like a waterfall.

Imagine that.

Picture,

No?

Everything is just come crashing down.

All the structures that we've built.

And used to create some false sense of stability.

And control.

It's just crashing down.

All the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Turns out to be nonsense and cannot hold water anymore.

So the water comes crashing down.

Everything that we build an identity around is just collapsing.

And yes,

This comes with a sense of great loss,

Almost like death.

Everything I was holding on to turned out to be an illusion.

Who am I?

There is nothing echoing back.

Nothing.

Only silence.

And this is truly a moment of silence.

And it's like fear of death.

That's the first phase.

Second phase is you flow gently like the Ganga.

I don't know if you ever been to India.

But for hundreds of kilometers,

The Ganga is a vast river.

And it's even difficult to see that the water is flowing.

It's very,

Very quiet.

And you just very calmly float through life with no drama.

There is no.

.

.

You know,

I used to be thrown away by life's circumstances.

To the highs and to the lows.

And there is no drama anymore.

There is just a very restful,

Effortless flow.

But yet it's not the final stage.

The final stage is where that river that still is flowing merge with the ocean.

And you realize the mother and the son merge into one.

It's so beautiful.

The creator and the creation merge into one.

And there's no difference between the two anymore.

There's only oneness.

You are that.

You don't need to reach.

You've arrived.

Actually,

You never left.

You are that.

So next time you're engulfed in the drama of relationships,

Just remind yourself,

I am the ocean.

I am an expression of oneness.

I am whatever I was longing for.

I am that.

And smile about it.

Remind yourself it's a joke.

As dramatic as the circumstance may be.

Or seems to be.

It's a joke.

What do you say?

Good,

Good,

Good.

So we've reached the end of this journey.

We're going to meet again this Saturday at 12.

No.

No.

9.

Ah,

Right.

9.

30.

9.

30?

I don't know.

You said it.

I said it.

Okay.

So follow.

Maybe we'll have to rearrange.

But we'll meet again this weekend sometime.

And then next Thursday we'll have to think about a new idea.

If you have one,

If you have an idea about a series of talks that you think that we need to focus on,

Then do share it with us.

I would like to thank you all for coming and sharing your time,

Your attention,

Your beautiful questions.

Love you very much.

Thank you for the birthday wishes.

Good night,

Good morning,

Wherever you are.