Roadmap To Unconditional Love

Join us to discover the complete roadmap to your fullest potential- unconditional love. In this talk, Yaron describes the complete journey, start to finish. You will gain a bird's view of the total journey we all take towards an awakened consciousness.

Having the map in front of you makes the journey much more direct and effective. Share it with your friends. Help us spread the word.

Transcript

So,

Hello everyone.

Welcome to this new opportunity we give ourselves.

Every week,

Stop the rush,

Take a deep breath,

Hold hands,

And walk the path together.

Supporting each other's growth and reminding ourselves who we are,

What is the most important thing for us.

And we do it by harnessing the tension that hides between the question and the answer.

This is your opportunity.

This is how you contribute to this event.

Sharing your questions,

Your wonders,

Your doubts,

Your fears,

Your inhibitions,

Whatever you feel that still stays between you and awakened consciousness.

Today,

The excuse for our meeting is finding how to live as unconditional love.

So,

We're going to start a bit different than what we usually do.

I'm not going to refer to your questions first,

But I'm going to portray a roadmap that is going to give you an overview of the whole journey.

So,

This is a user manual for the Spiritual Seeker.

Once you have it,

You will never be able to tell yourself or anybody else that you didn't know.

Because now you know.

The whole journey from a contracted,

Fearful identity to an expression of complete,

Unconditional love.

So,

We're going to just portray it.

This is an overview.

And then we can go into the details of how to implement it.

But it goes through four stages of consciousness.

Again,

Don't be alarmed if you don't feel that you've completed one.

And it's not necessarily in this order.

Your path is unique.

How much time you spend in each station,

In each phase.

It depends on the level of your own maturity and how much trauma you carry with you,

And identifications with your story,

Etc.

But what I would like to first draw for you is the complete roadmap.

So,

The first station is on the path to unconditional love.

It is to stop the suffering.

Phase number one is to stop the suffering.

Step number two,

Grow beyond your fears.

Step number three,

Embrace and love life.

Step number four,

Merge with life.

This is the complete roadmap.

These are the stages that our consciousness goes through on the way to liberation.

Again,

Each of us in its own unique way,

In its own unique phase.

But in the majority of cases,

These are the stations we go through.

Let's try to understand what we are looking at.

Stop the suffering.

What is suffering?

It's all the emotions,

All the experiences that are born due to you choosing an idea you have over the present moment.

When there is a gap between what is happening and the idea that you have about what should have happened.

In that gap,

There is suffering,

Frustration,

Anger,

Violence,

Irritation,

All that negative emotions that we experience from time to time.

That are the cause of that gap.

The gap is the cause of these emotions.

So what to do to stop the suffering?

First,

You realize that it's you who generated the gap.

So it's only you who can close it.

You gain back the responsibility.

You gain back the power to change.

Change yourself,

Not the world.

Change the way you allow yourself to meet life.

Choosing again and again the present moment over your ideas about it.

How to close the gap?

Barbara,

The first step is to add humility.

Remember,

Remind yourself again and again.

I don't really know.

I have a good idea about it,

An opinion about it,

But I don't really know what should have happened.

So be humble.

It's just your intellect playing tricks,

Trying to convince you that you are right and the world is wrong.

The second phase is to choose a paradigm that is 100 degrees opposite to the one that generated your suffering to begin with.

100 degrees opposite.

How?

Instead of believing you should never speak to me like that,

Now I believe that's exactly how you should have spoken to me.

The right words,

The right tone,

The right message.

And now my idea describes reality instead of contradicting it.

So there is no gap.

There is no gap,

I don't suffer.

And the third stage is dropping all paradigms.

And allow yourself to be free of ideas and opinions about reality.

Not good or bad or justified or unjustified or any opinion or stand,

Any stand that you have.

You drop the stand.

Stance.

How do you say?

Stance?

You drop the stance.

So there is no suffering.

That's the first step.

The second step is grow beyond your fears.

Again,

This could be a life journey.

No,

It's not that I expect you to grow in 10 minutes beyond your fears.

Even though it's possible.

Don't convince yourself that it's not possible.

It's definitely yes.

These are just ideas.

But anyways,

It's a phase that we need to go through.

You cannot go around it.

You have to face your fear.

So don't be afraid of the fear.

Look in the eyes of the fear.

The eye of the dragon.

Brace the fear.

Okay,

I am afraid.

What am I afraid of?

Let me check this.

Against that.

Go deep into the essence of the fear.

And go beyond it.

So how to go beyond the fear?

Again,

You can use different methods.

First method is through the body and breath.

When you are afraid,

Your body is contracted.

It could be very substantial or it could be minor,

Insignificant.

But still the contraction is there.

So if you are aware of that contraction,

You can let go of that contraction.

Like we did in the beginning of this session.

You observe your body.

Find those contractions and breathe them out.

Physically.

Without trying to digest or understand anything about fear.

Just physically breathe it out.

So your body is truly free of contractions.

And the more you do that,

The easier it becomes.

And it's more complicated to be contracted again.

That's why it's important to practice daily.

Breathing techniques,

Yoga,

Whatever you practice.

Physically practice with your body to let go of those contractions inside.

Ideally,

All the chakras,

The energy centers along your body is open.

So shumla can flow.

Energy can flow through you.

With no obstacles.

No contractions.

This is one way.

Another way is realizing,

Training yourself.

Again and again to meet the fear for what it is.

What is a fear?

It's an idea.

About a potential future.

Right?

The only other type of fear is when there is clear and immediate danger that you need to take care of.

And you don't need to go beyond that fear.

You actually need to listen to that fear so you can stay alive and healthy.

But in the vast majority of cases,

That's not the case.

So,

In the level of their mind,

We meet fear as a thought,

An idea.

About a potential future.

And then we just keep reminding ourselves.

Thoughts have no power.

Thoughts have no power.

Only if I believe.

If I believe the thought to be true,

Then it has a lot of power.

So you observe thoughts as you observe sensations or emotions.

Realizing it's just an event that currently happens.

It's not a problem.

Another way is to investigate fear.

Use your intellect.

Dive deep.

Dive to the very essence of it.

Realize what are you actually afraid of.

Usually you will find that either this is just a load of crap piled one on top of each other and there is nothing there actually that threatens you truly.

Or you find that you are afraid of losing control.

Deep down,

As you investigate,

You realize what I'm actually afraid of is losing control.

And that's an important realization.

An invitation also to remind yourself that you are never in control.

It's just an illusion.

So any way you choose to grow beyond your fears is good.

Embrace that journey.

Focus yourself to do that.

Grow beyond it.

And again,

You can go back to my Insight Timer page.

There are various talks about fears in detail.

How to deal with it,

How to grow beyond it.

There's no point of talking about that again unless you have a specific question about it.

So the third stage on the way to an open heart is embrace life.

Love it.

As you stop suffering,

Rejecting life.

As you stop feeling life and protect yourself against life because it's so scary.

As you stop that kind of movement,

You're much more available to embrace it,

To experience it fully.

You're much more available to love it,

To love the opportunity to experience the present moment.

To appreciate the fact that you have a body that can rub with life.

And you know,

Sometimes it's very pleasant and pleasurable and sometimes it's painful.

But the opportunity to rub with life is there when you have a body which you currently have.

So embracing that,

Rejoicing on that,

Loving the opportunity is the third phase.

And it's almost a natural outcome of you stop the suffering and go beyond your fears.

And then the fourth and final stage.

Merge with life.

And this is again an organic outcome of the first three phases that your consciousness goes through.

Once you truly embrace the opportunity and love whatever is experienced,

What love does is unite.

What is the definition of love?

That universal force that turns separateness into oneness.

So you also are melting into that experience.

That separate I decides to do this or that.

I want to go beyond my fears.

That I dissolves into a bigger vessel and disappears as an individual identity into something bigger.

That phase is not something that you do because you are not there anymore.

That phase is up to grace,

Not up to you.

But again,

It's something that happens as you grow on the path.

So your responsibility is to make sure you are aligned to that process preparing your body,

Mind,

Energetic body to be ready for the grace when it comes.

For the grace when it decides to come.

Yeah?

That's the whole journey in 15 minutes.

Now you have the roadmap and you can choose whatever you want to do with it.

And the L stage is now for your questions.

Are there any questions?

No.

Any questions?

Ah,

Of course.

Once you are united in the fourth stage,

What's left there is only unconditional love.

And that's not your nature.

That's the nature of consciousness itself.

Nothing personal about it.

Universal.

Do you think that only that most people only reach that stage through the dying process or or conversely,

Is it possible to reach that stage in the earthly living process?

Earthly living process?

What does it mean?

The process we're in right now.

Yeah,

I mean,

Don't think it's different than what I'm describing.

Yeah,

We go through difficulty,

We go through struggle,

We go through our own drama,

Our own stories.

Yeah,

This is not a bypass.

What I described now is not a bypass to your problems.

A shortcut,

You know,

To avoid life's challenges.

No,

No,

No,

You have to go through it,

Through suffering,

Through fear,

Through the identification you have with your own story.

You know,

Some people to shed off these external,

Artificial layers,

It's very easy,

You know,

Some people it happens naturally,

Spontaneously,

Or some people have to just listen to it once and oh,

Right,

That's it.

I don't know where I was,

But I remember that.

That's it.

And it's irreversible.

Most of us,

Unfortunately,

Has to go through that work,

That process,

You know,

The practice,

The forgetting,

The reminding,

The forgetting.

It's okay,

It's a part of life's mystery.

Yeah.

But,

You know,

Don't convince yourself to believe that this is unreachable,

Or it would take lifetimes.

Because if you believe that to be true,

It will manifest as your reality.

If you believe it's going to take lifetimes for you,

I guarantee it will take lifetimes.

It's not that anybody's in a hurry,

Right?

God has infinite patience.

He doesn't live in that realm of time.

But for you,

You know,

Don't create an artificial gap between you and your goal.

It doesn't really exist.

You are already there.

You are already that.

You know how you persuade a donkey to walk?

You tie a carabiner around you persuade a donkey to walk?

You tie a carrot to his head and put the carrot in front of his nose,

You know?

So he always tries to reach to the carrot,

But the carrot keeps on being unreachable.

That's what you're doing.

If you believe that that journey that I just described is far-fetched and beyond your reach,

It's guaranteed to be beyond your reach.

So if you don't know that you are that,

At least drop the idea that you are not that already.

You see what I'm saying?

It's funny in that example,

The donkey has to stop the rush,

Shake everything off,

And then they can get to the carrot.

What else?

So what does each stage actually look like in real life?

Can you give examples?

Like,

For example,

In the first stage.

.

.

Stop the suffering.

I think Barbara wrote it down,

So I can go back.

So in the first stage,

If we're if we're in that stage of suffering and we're becoming aware of stopping the suffering,

Then theoretically,

While we're in that process,

We're mostly sort of suffering,

Struggling through our lives.

And so there's moments throughout,

Like,

Let's say we pull it down to the day-to-day.

So we're mostly getting up and getting ready for work and going about our day and driving and making food for kids and parents and la-la-la-la-la.

But maybe throughout that day,

We're becoming aware of something.

You know,

We're sort of having these wake-up moments.

Oh,

You catch yourself.

Oh yeah,

I believe that it should be this way.

Okay,

What did he say I have to do?

Close the gap.

And then through that process,

You have more and more of those awakening periods,

You know,

And maybe there's some maybe there's some cognizance of fear,

And maybe you have a moment of embracing life,

And maybe you even have a moment of merging life in that stage,

Merging with life in that stage.

Right?

Just describing the day-to-day,

Like what does that actually look like when you're in that phase of it?

Yeah,

As I said,

It doesn't have to be chronological,

One after the other,

You know?

Yeah,

Definitely.

In most cases,

Most of us are juggling between those phases,

You know?

We have those moments of inspiration where there is no I,

There is just that creation that happens through me,

Right?

And something is born out of through me,

But not because of me.

I wasn't there.

It wasn't me who was doing it.

That's why we call it inspiration,

Right?

There is some we are connected to some divine consciousness that flows through me.

And the I wasn't there at all.

So this happens,

Right?

And then we are taken out of that experience to think,

Wow,

This is amazing.

I am so talented.

I wonder what other people will tell about me,

Right?

And then the ego comes back again.

And then we wait eagerly for the next time we are inspired.

Don't worry about it.

That's all a part of the joke.

But as you grow on the path,

And especially if you apply the four S's,

Remember Seva,

Satsang,

Sadhana and Sadguru as these pillars are stable in your life.

Maybe tell us.

Quickly.

Seva is the attitude of service that you embrace.

Attitude of service.

I am here for you.

Satsang is that community of people around you that supports your growth like what we do now.

And Sadhana is the practice we continue reminding ourselves again and again and again and again.

And Sadguru is the teacher that inspires me and brings light to my path.

If I have those four pillars stable in my life,

What I will find eventually is that it's more and more easy to remind myself and less and less easy to forget.

Until the day comes where I wake up and I don't forget anymore.

And it's there,

Achievable,

Waiting for you.

I know I'm not getting into details,

But again,

We've described in different forms,

Different angles,

In details,

Each and every one of those stations.

So you can go back to my recordings and dive deep into that knowledge.

What I wanted to do today is to give you the whole picture.

How it looks like.

Thomas is asking,

What do you remind yourself of?

Who I am and what is most important to me.

And that is revealed when I drop all of my ideas about myself.

Who I am is what is left after I've dropped all the ideas and opinions about me.

So you asked in the beginning of your previous question,

That's the only way that the energy of the path that we take is the energy of letting go,

Dropping.

Remember?

I don't remember the words that you were using,

But that's the energy.

The energy is shedding off false identifications and impressions.

Shedding off what you are attached to.

It's not gaining anything.

You don't gain anything on the path.

And the story tells that when they asked Buddha,

What did he gain by enlightenment?

He laughed and said,

I lost everything.

It's not a game of gaining.

Yeah?

Lost everything.

Possessions,

Identifications.

Everything that I believed I can build an identity around.

It's taken away.

I knew then I was available.

Enlightenment.

You know?

Don't get too entangled around this word.

Enlightenment.

Most people use that word as a code word to describe what they are currently not.

I'm not enlightened because A,

B,

And C.

I see other enlightened beings and I,

Wow,

These are where,

I mean,

They are far away from where I am.

I'm still struggling with my own problems.

They already ascended beyond the material world.

I tell you,

This is not enlightenment.

Looking at a guru sitting on a pedestal somewhere surrounded with flowers.

It's beautiful,

And I'm not saying it's not beautiful.

It's beautiful.

But it's not a picture of enlightenment.

Enlightenment has no picture.

Enlightenment has no picture.

It cannot be described in finite terms.

This is how it should look like.

Now,

Drop those conditions.

And then you realize enlightenment is not different than the present moment.

As it happens.

Beautiful or ugly.

Ugly.

You can see,

You can find grace in any situation.

God is not absent.

Ever,

Never from any situation,

Any person as ugly or disgusting as he may be.

It's just the eyes of the observer.

Are they attuned to allocate,

To meet that grace?

You see what I'm saying?

So don't get too entangled about enlightenment.

Oh,

I wish I was enlightened.

I guarantee you will never be enlightened.

If you believe that enlightenment will come someday,

When you're ready guaranteed it will never come.

Why?

Because you believe it's not here.

Okay,

So you wait.

Hamad,

I was asking,

How long was Buddha enlightened for?

Before physical death of body?

It's a good question.

Nobody really knows.

But a few decades.

He was traveling around what now is India and Nepal,

Teaching towns and villages for a few decades.

There's also a questionable story.

Did he die before that happened?

Because he sat in meditation.

Four days.

Longer than what a regular human being would be able to withstand.

Ah,

You think that he died and then was written later?

I mean,

That story was happening 600 years later.

Better all the same,

Isn't it?

Doesn't matter.

You know,

These stories are there not for you to be jealous about.

Oh,

Buddha is so lucky.

It's there to inspire you.

Buddha is no different than you.

No,

But the stories are all the same.

The important part is that it's a story and then the thread of it is that some major changing event happens,

Whether you pursue that purposefully or whether it hits you like a ton of bricks.

You know,

Sometimes it can be a death or an illness or something.

Wake up.

That's often what inspires change.

Yeah,

So you can choose.

Do you want to wait for the slap?

The wake up slap from life?

Or do you want to wake up now?

Gently.

You can do whatever.

Doesn't matter.

You don't necessarily need to wait for the slap.

You can wake up gently.

I like the explanation of a cosmic 2x4 to the head.

And another thing that is important.

Don't get too attached about the experience of waking up.

We all had those experiences,

Especially if you've been on the path for quite some time.

You know,

You sit for meditation or whatever.

You go to a festival or something.

There is a grand opening of consciousness.

Or you took the right drugs and the right prescription.

Whatever it is.

And you feel that there is only love and beauty and grace.

And there is no I.

Wow,

Fantastic.

And then 24 hours later you wake up with a hangover.

And then you chase that.

Yeah,

And then you try to regenerate that experience for yourself.

Believing that only when that is experienced you are enlightened and happy and content.

No.

The secret is not in the experience.

As graceful and beautiful as it may be.

God is waiting for you in the present moment as the present moment.

You see,

Those four stages that I described are not there so you can wait for a different reality to manifest.

It's there to make you available to experience reality as it is.

So then don't get too attached about those peak experiences.

I had those,

Everybody on the path had those.

Doesn't matter.

Or even if you never had those which nobody actually,

I think everybody has those sometimes.

You know it.

Doesn't matter,

It could be a moment of inspiration or whatever you want to call it.

When there was just bliss and no I to take ownership over it.

Even if for a brief moment.

What else?

So this talk today was inspired by I think it was Angie last time that was asking what does unconditional love what does living a life of unconditional love actually look like?

Think about something that you love dearly.

Could be a child.

Something that you love no matter what,

Day and night,

Unconditionally.

It could be an idea that you have,

A plan or a project that is your baby.

You truly love being engaged with.

You have something like that in your head?

Just rejoice when you are in the present of that.

Now expand that.

Doesn't matter if it's your boy,

Expand that love you have and include more than just the boy.

Or girl or whatever.

Project,

Whatever you have in your mind.

Expand that,

Fill it with more and more energy.

Include everything around it and expand it more and more and more and more and more and more and more until your imagination can't hold anymore and then more.

That's how it feels.

That's unconditional love.

It's not bound to a specific situation or person.

It's there to fill the void.

To unite and to turn separateness into oneness.

That's it,

Unconditionally.

And the way it manifests is less important.

Not exactly the choices that you make out of unconditional love.

Don't be worried about that.

Just remain open and soft.

Boundary free.

The rest will take care of it.

Anything else?

AJ is asking,

Please speak about coexisting in a society with few sharing,

Even understanding unconditional love.

What is the dynamic with others in that situation?

Again,

This is not something you need to worry about because love knows how to behave in different scenarios,

Different conditions,

Different situations,

Different people.

Love knows how to conduct itself.

You just remain open and soft.

And you will see.

Sometimes it manifests as hugging.

Sometimes it manifests as shaking a hand.

Sometimes it manifests as putting a border,

A line.

That's it.

That's enough.

It can be very,

Very soft.

It can be really stable like a mountain.

You know?

It could be completely feminine or extremely masculine.

It doesn't matter.

It feels graceful and natural in any situation with any person all the time.

So don't try to train yourself about what to do and what to avoid doing.

It's not the case.

It's not about the doing.

It's about the being.

Be unconditional.

And it will express itself naturally.

Don't worry about it.

Okay?

And stop conditioning yourself to believe that this is only possible when everybody else around you has an expression of unconditional love.

Because you are not free.

How can you be free when you are dependent on what other people do and think and how they behave?

Drop that idea.

They should understand.

They should be different.

No,

They shouldn't.

How do I know that?

Because they are not.

Going back to the first phase of stop arguing with reality.

Is suffering imagined or real?

The cause of suffering is imagined.

Suffering is very real.

It expresses itself as an emotion,

As a sensation.

Very real.

But the cause of suffering is imagined.

It's an idea.

It's an opinion.

If you ask me,

Can I stop it?

The answer is absolutely yes.

Always.

Regardless of the amount of pain life can inflict on you.

So Thomas is saying love replaces fears when you grow beyond.

Definitely.

Love is fear standing on its head.

The opposite of fear.

The less you are afraid,

The more you are available to love.

That's the balance.

So if I understand this road map correctly,

We are going to stop our suffering by becoming aware of when those moments come up that we think something should be different than what it is.

And we're being humble and accepting things as they come in the present moment.

And then we're using our quest for becoming unconditional love to replace those fears.

Again,

Becoming aware of the fears when they come up.

Dealing with them.

Deep diving.

Breathing.

And then that is allowing us to embrace life and to love life more and more and more until we have these moments of merging with life.

And we experience that merge like that.

Think you got it?

Now drop it.

Now drop it.

Don't keep it as a concept.

Don't keep it as a concept.

Just drop it.

Go back to the question.

Who am I?

Laura is asking when you don't accept what is.

Maybe that's a response to your suffering imagined or real?

When you don't accept what is,

You suffer.

Yeah,

That's the definition of suffering.

Yeah,

I was saying that.

What else?

Any other questions on the path?

AJ,

Is this what you to talk about at dinner?

Definitely.

Yeah,

We do actually all the time.

Many times we stop and ask,

How come we don't record our conversations?

It's so intriguing.

We need somebody to follow us around with a camera.

That's of course when we don't argue and fight with each other.

Beach and moan.

No,

I'm just joking.

What else?

Just to sum this up,

I'm saying today's meeting was about seeing the bigger picture.

Looking at the whole path from a bird's view.

It's in no way meant to discourage you.

If you feel that there is still a lot of work for you to do on your path,

That's OK.

At least now you know the whole map and you can orient yourself more clearly towards what you really want.

Make it very clear to you what do you really want in life?

What is most important for you?

If the answer to that question is I want to be an expression of unconditional love,

Then you know the path now.

Start heading in that direction.

It doesn't matter if it will take you a year,

A decade or a thousand lifetimes.

It doesn't matter.

As long as you are headed where you want to reach.

You hit a little snake here.

Satya is asking,

Is setting boundaries with people unconditional love?

We discussed that.

I think it was the last session about boundaries,

So listen to that.

A whole talk just about boundaries.

The short answer to this question is yes,

It could be.

Sometimes unconditional love suggests boundaries.

OK,

That's enough.

I can feel your pillow is longing for your head.

But the difference is that that boundary now is given not because I need it.

And only when you respect my boundaries I can be happy and content.

No,

No.

I am happiness.

Regardless.

I am happiness.

I am love.

This is what I am.

It's got nothing to do with you and how you behave.

But my love says that you need boundaries.

So here is a boundary for you.

My dear.

Anything else?

Thomas says with honesty and integrity setting boundaries.

Barbara says great summary.

Thank you for the good reminder of the bigger picture.

I found it very encouraging.

Open heart,

Willing spirit with my roadmap open too.

Shout out to Barbara.

Does a fantastic job of writing down what the words,

Using the important words that Yaron says.

You did a great job.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And another thing to learn from Barbara is dedication.

I think Barbara knows what is most important to her in life.

She demonstrates that clearly.

Show up.

Next week.

I'm going to start with reading your names to make sure that you're in attendance.

A roll call.

AJ is setting the question for the next session.

What's the difference between boundaries set by ego and unconditional love?

Beautiful question.

Ponder about that for a week and we can definitely refer to that next week when we meet.

Follow my Insight Timer page for updates about the next meeting and all the recordings of the previous meetings that goes in details through all the stations that were described here today.

It is there laid out for you.

I knew we were dealing with boundaries.

We'll continue.

Don't worry.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your presence,

Your beautiful questions and your donations.

We look forward to meeting you again next week.

Goodbye.