I recently spent time with Amma at one of her retreats in San Jose. It was an incredible experience on so many levels. The best way that I can describe the retreat is comparing it to a very intense emotional healing, personal development or self-help program. Ya know the kinds that require SO much work. The writing, the talking, the lectures, the sharing, the homework, and the list goes on. And ya know even though it is SO much effort and “processing” during that period, at the end, you always experience the result of awakened consciousness. Yes? You always feel, in a way, rebirthed, cleared, wiped clean, and the benefits of your effort are all revealed.
Yeah, well after spending a few days receiving and witnessing Amma give Darshan, I experienced that same sense of renewal, epiphany, and paradigm shift at the end. Except, the actual experience is the EXACT opposite of effort.
Time with Amma is about absolute surrender. Zero effort. It’s about letting go and simply receiving her infinite Love, her embrace and allowing the Darshan to take care of itself. There is no talking, processing, sharing – haha, and instead there are trays full of vegan chocolate cake! (Sooo basically HEAVEN!) You sit in a chair for 3 days – one night we sat for 17 hours straight or some nonsense – completely mesmerized by her capacity of Love and pumped full of so much Shakti you couldn’t sleep even if you tried. This beingness – her Love – heals people by waking them up without all the effortful attempts to shift, change and transform.
Just being “in Love” with Amma has healed millions of people.
One of my greatest takeaways was peeling back another layer as it relates to the difference between human love and Divine Love.
Humanly love is really just attachment. We have labeled what that “attachment” feels like mentally, emotionally and vibrationally as love. In this sense, we have decided to put love between you and me, like in the phrase “I love you.” In this humanly sense, it is love that “attaches” me to you. This is not True Love. Humanly love/attachment is sourced from the ego.
Divine Love is totally free of this attachment of me and you. There is no “love” or “attachment” between us or anything used to tether us together (marriage license, terminology, etc.). Rather, it is about being “Love” – waking up to the essence of who we really are inside by transcending the ego – and holding that in the totality of our individual beings, together.
Divine Love is about becoming Love. Instead of “I love you,” it is “I am Love.”
This reminded me of the journey and practice of Yoga – I am Love, you are Love and we step forward into Love together, yes?
Namaste = When I am in this place of Love, and you are in this place of Love, we are One.
In this sense, you see that Love is no longer an attachment but rather a state of being. This is the beauty of the yogic path and its teachings regarding non-attachment & non-clinging – aparigraha. The absolute truth is, the greater you cling to something, the greater the suffering when it is lost.
This right here is the Achilles’ heel of the human condition. So many people are in incredible depths of suffering due to their attachments they refer to as “love.” They choose to cling to the idea of “love” as something that will bring forth the feeling of Oneness but as long as there is attachment, there is ego, and while there is ego there is no Oneness. To me it’s pretty damn clear – now sure what all y’all are missin’?
The Great Work of awakening the consciousness helps us to dissolve the ego, transcend this wheel of suffering and to instead become Love. Then from that place, making the conscious choice to step forward with our fullness of Love already awakened within us.
If only we could wake up to the profound value and fulfillment relating in this way of “being Love” actually brings to our hearts and souls. Being Love and stepping into Love together, without the attachment and clinging that causes suffering, is an eternal & infinite experience. In this way – Love can never be lost. People suffer inside when they have lost something they “loved” and/or fear that they will lose this something in the future.
Being Love in relationships frees us from this illusion of loss.
When I am in this place of Love, and you are in this place of Love, we are One.
Namaste.