NEW & SELECTED TEACHINGS

Healing love comes from an undivided presence. It requires a departure from ego that is based in division and lack. For a love that heals is born of wholeness and of a complete alignment with the truth of circumstances.

Within each one of us is a home for wholeness. It becomes known when we cease looking for a time or a self that is “different,” “improved,” “better.” Coming into wholeness is both a falling into the moment and into essential being. Not an improved being, but a forgotten being that always was and ever shall be a pure expression of the interconnected whole.

In a divided world, based in fears of the future and of “other,” it may be more important than ever to become intimate with the moment and to remember the eternal that is the source of all.

For when one’s consciousness resides in the present, not only in mind but also in body, the light of consciousness fills the spaces of lack. The emptiness becomes warm, shining presence.

With care, and with a courageous curiosity that genuinely wants to see beyond initial conclusions, consciousness meets and embraces the thoughts and feelings that have been held apart, that have waited for its light.

With the gift of our undivided attention, we join. We turn toward, align with, and come to know the hidden essence in what has been suppressed and denied.

We open to the moment, just as it’s unfolding, and discover anew the power of true listening and bearing witness to ourselves and to each other.

Each one of us knows that thoughts can be scary, and feelings can be strong. Do you also know that each of us has been innately empowered with a consciousness, of thought and feeling, that can never be harmed? When we recognize and remember that we are not defined by what we are conscious of, but by consciousness itself, we have powerful choice. We have choice in what thoughts we pull toward us and give our energy to, and those we release and free. We have choice to allow ourselves to feel, knowing that the human heart can yield, giving way to the universal heart that can never be broken—for by its very nature, it has no boundaries.

A choice is continually before us to return again and again to the expression of being that is unbounded and undivided. It takes up what is “broken,” “flawed,” and “wrong” and allows them to be bathed in the healing light of awareness and a consciousness of wholeness.

When wholeness perceives form truly, it sees itself. It does so without resistance, for it inherently knows that nothing can be set apart from the whole. And there is great power in this knowledge, for it transmutes resistance and energizes transformation.

Life seeks transformation in the whole, by the whole. It’s not waiting for death. It is waiting for you. The immeasurable you who is no less for its limitations and no greater for its infinitude.

What will you give the full measure of your attention to this moment? What is here that calls for the light of your awareness? Or is the light of awareness calling you?

Free your mind and open your heart by allowing fixed positions to dissolve. Fall into this moment again and again, and become the healing presence of wholeness that expresses as love.

© Mukti Gray 2024

Excerpted from Mukti’s self-guided course Got Juice (Q&A)

Q: I would like to ask about the nature of love. I think one reason I have felt a disconnection from my heart is that I started dismissing the feeling of love as just a passing phenomenon. In particular, I find myself mistrusting the love that arises in response to directed attention, as if I have manipulated or even manufactured my experience. How does love relate to that which doesn’t come and go?

A: Your question “What is Love?” is one that can be more meaningful without a fixed conclusion, as it invites the questioner more fully into the living mystery (of oneself, another, life, and love). There is a beauty in leaving the question open-ended, so that its response continues to reveal itself over the course of a lifetime. As I speak more to your question and risk “pinning it down” to give context, please remember the importance of letting the response to your question live on.

Your sharing and question, as to how love relates to That which does not come and go, brings forward some tricky juxtapositions along the spiritual path. When one becomes more conscious of the workings of thought, one can see how it can shape experience. There can be a discounting or shying away from any experience that seems created or referenced in thought. There can even be a subtle conclusion (conscious or unconscious thought) that what does not come and go is more important to embrace than impermanence is. Upon hearing or following pointers to That which does not come and go (or the Eternal), impermanence can be rejected. (Like some hear pointers to go beyond ego and then reject ego.)

When dualistic thought is still, the choosing of one position over its opposite quiets. In the absence of position, the knowing (in one’s being) of what is permanent and impermanent are revealed to be inseparable. This can set the stage for awareness to wake up to itself as all that it is aware of, to the perspective that nothing is apart from awareness. Such a realization can be called awakening to oneness. From this universal consciousness, That which does not come and go knows itself as the comings and goings and can love itself as them. Love feels to be awareness in relation to itself, through intimately recognizing and knowing itself. This is a knowingness of being, of the manifest made conscious (aware).

Your sharing leads me to believe that you may be interested in my sharing the following: You may have heard Adya speak of head awakening being associated with “freedom from,” heart awakening with “freedom to,” and gut or hara awakening with “freedom from freedom.” You could think of head awakening as freedom from boundaries of thought (especially identification with the “I” thought) and expressing as clarity, and heart awakening as freedom from distance (especially identification with “inside” vs. outside) and expressing as intimacy, and gut awakening as freedom from referencing or identifying with freedom, expressing as fluidity within stillness.

These awakenings may occur suddenly and/or gradually. From my past and current experience, the expression of these awakenings factor in one’s finite, imperfect human expression. Thus, it is helpful to come to love and be at peace with imperfection as another expression of awareness loving itself.

© Mukti Gray 2018