Unity

True surrender happens when,

within our own essence we say,

“I love you.

I want to be with you.

Show me the way.”

We make a step forward

and That that we can’t speak of

makes an even bigger step towards us.

And sometimes we forget. We all forget many things. We get busy. We do all kinds of things. But once we’ve tasted the beauty of this surrender, it’s something that we can’t totally forget. We don’t really forget. It may seem like we forget, but underneath we have not forgotten.

It’s just like having a battery that gets rundown because it’s been too long since we’ve used it. Sometimes we have to recharge the battery a little by strengthening our ability to remember.

I have used many tricks for myself. I don’t need to use them as much now, but for many years I used many, many tricks so that I could consciously remember more and more every day to be in love with my Beloved.

It would take effort in the beginning because I would forget. But I would make myself rememberlike remembering appointments. In the beginning I would say to myself, “I’m going to remember three times a day to say thank you.” As easy as that sounds, there were days that I didn’t remember three times to say thank you. There were times when I remembered once. There were times I didn’t remember for days and then it would dawn on meand I would think, “Gosh, I couldn’t even do that!”

But then I realized that it was much more important for me to remember my Beloved than for me to remember to do a lot of other things. I started to realize that all the other things I’m remembering are really beside the point. If I do forget those other things, it’s no big deal. But not remembering to remember That which has given me the ability to remember is not how I want to be.

So after awhile we start to remember 3-4-5 times a daynaturally. Then without much effort at all we begin to remember many, many times a day.

Then everything about us

and everything we see

is a continuous remembrance

of That that we love.

It’s like being in love with another person, somebody that you really love a lot. But this is much more. You’re in love and you want to be with that person. You don’t care what you do. Whether you go to the movies or to a top notch restaurant or to Mc Donald’sit doesn’t matter because you just want to be with that person. And the same thing happens when we decide we are going to be in love with our Beloved. Then remembering is no longer a job.

It’s no longer an effort because we realize that everything around us and everything that there is about us is That which we love. We talk about these concepts of duality and unity and all kinds of things, but unity and duality are just words.

In final essence unity means that

we fall so much in love with something,

that after awhile we start to imitate what we love.

We all do this naturally! We see people that are in love and they start dressing the same. They start smelling the same. They start talking the same. They begin to think alike and act alike.

It’s the kind of a situation where we start

to imitate our ideas about our Beloved.

Then soon enough something happens

so that we can hardly tell

who is the Beloved and who is us.

Then we go through a stage where it is difficult to say any prayers because we don’t know what we are praying to, or whom we are praying to, or why we are praying in the first place. But soon we realize that it’s our brain that is praying because that is its way of acknowledging That which we can’t speak of. And it makes us happy to do itso there is no problem with that either. We go through all these different stages, but we are always aware that we are in love.

We have decided to be in love

with That which is always loving us.

That is the important thing!

When we fall in love with another being, many circumstances arise and maybe that person won’t love us anymore. Or maybe we won’t love that person. But that situation doesn’t happen with the Beloved.

The only thing of importance in this life is love.

Everything else is beside the point.

If we don’t have love for our own self,

if we don’t have love for That that we are,

if we don’t have love for our Beloved in our heart,

then nothing else matters very much.

If we don’t have love for other beings,

if we don’t have forgiveness and kindness,

nothing matters about anything else.

It’s a lot of fun to talk about all the other things; but at the bottom of all this, what is essential…is to be in Love…and to be Love. Otherwise it’s just a lot of talk.

It’s not easy to be in love. It’s much easier to be angry. It’s much easier to close up and protect ourselves so we don’t get hurt. But when we do that we end up being cold and lonely and miserable. We end up wondering what this life is all about. So it’s much better to be in love even though it may hurt at times.

Sometimes to be in love with the Beloved that we cannot see but we know is there, yearning to get closer to the Beloved and maybe not seeing the Beloved or not feeling the Beloved, is the greatest of all pains.

But at the same time it is also the greatest of all pleasures. It’s such a paradox.

Many poets, mystics, and sages have written about this. Many of them agree that the actual longing for the Beloved is even more beautiful than union with the Beloved. Perhaps longing for our Beloved may be even more important than being with the Beloved. That is something else to contemplate!