The Way Home to Love

Over the course of thirty years, I have learned many techniques, practices, and methods for transformation and awakening, and I have applied myself to these diligently. They have all brought me to the same place, which is the place of Love. I have shared these practices with countless people who have come seeking health and freedom from conflicts and problems. At the bottom of every unresolved feeling, when everything else has been stripped away, I have witnessed a deep need in all souls to love and to be loved. Even though the discourses and talks in this book are on various topics, each one is a reflection on how to release oneself from inner conflict. As Bapuji said, The major characteristic of love is the absence of conflict. Therefore, each of these discourses offers a possibility for each soul to embody love and realize inner freedom. Each message speaks to the human soul trying to find its way home to Love. One of the primary challenges of this work is seeing through the illusion that circumstances outside of oneself are the reason for unhappiness. If I change my job, if I change my relationship, if I have a child, and if I have more money, I will be happy. This kind of thinking creates obstacles to inner peace because it keeps us in perpetual conflict as we try to manage and control the way our lives look. When we begin to understand the futility of this conflict, we can then start to do the inner work of examining and making conscious the unconscious patterns of reaction in our lives—our fears, our angers, our hostility, our greed, and on and on. On the Path of Love, we learn to look within and to discipline the unconscious parts of our nature. We must do the work inside ourselves to free ourselves from the bondage which we created in the first place. As we do this, we are taking the first steps toward Love. Of utmost importance, is to begin to realize that the very circumstances in life that challenge us and cause pain, are not to be solved or eliminated. They are the personal doorway to liberation. Paradoxically, by paying attention to the difficulty and pain, the pain becomes the vehicle by which transformation occurs. The cure for the pain lies within the pain. This inner work requires perseverance, kindness, respect, humility, patience, and service. When this transformational process is underway, all attachments, even the attachment to suffering, must be surrendered if the forces of love are to disassemble the ego and finally to reassemble and forge the soul into light. As one practices, a feeling of light heartedness emerges from releasing the unacknowledged energy that has been trapped by fear. When the unconscious forces are flushed out and disassembled, a transformation of the heart opens to a vast, timeless, and sacred existence. I am the obstacle . . . Opening up to our inner obstacles is just the first half of the equation . . . and I am the way. The second half of the equation is holding the power within us to meet and transform these unconscious forces of attachment, craving, and clinging, into an awakened awareness where openness, acceptance and love can stream in. Awakening and conscious awareness can purify the body, mind and heart. It can harness the conflicting voices that come from the body-mind split while also unifying the fragmented forces of thinking, feeling, doing, and being, and thereby leading you to integration. It can help you to recognize and release all unconscious thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions that block the source of being that you are. It empowers you to tune into the true Self and to live in the perpetual presence of love without standing for or against what is present. Awakening helps you to recognize that life is a perpetual, therapeutic aggravation and to use this awareness as an opening for transformation. And finally, awakening helps you to use your practice as a vehicle to intentionally activate unconscious reactions so you can then interact consciously with your fears and self-limitations and let them go. At the heart of my teaching about awakening and conscious awareness, is the simple and profound practice of sitting meditation with breath awareness. Other methods such as breath work, sacred movement, prayer and chanting are also practiced and enhance the inner quest. The talks and spiritual teachings in this book were given at gatherings and retreats for spiritual students and seekers at Snow Dragon Sanctuary. Each one is a message reminding us how to live a conscious life. Each one helps us to remember the true nature of love and the guiding principles of spiritual living: how to be peaceful, beautiful, more deeply connected to God, and how to sustain and nurture our faith. I am so happy to bring forth the message. I do not care how many times, or in how many ways I repeat the message. It is always a message of Light. Love lives within each of our hearts. Each one of us can act as an instrument of this love, perfection, and divine will.