Love...the One Thing
A few weeks ago I watched the movie "City Slickers" again and was very moved by the scene in which the old trail boss, "Curly" (played by Jack Palance) advises city slicker Mitch (played by Billy Crystal) that he has to find that "One Thing" in life that helps it all make sense. Mitch asks Curly what that "One Thing" is, but Curly advises that Mitch has to find that out for himself, he infers by this that each of us does as well.
In my journey through life, I have often experienced periods where life has not seemed to make much sense. I have experienced dark times of inner anguish and seeming meaninglessness. But my continuing good fortune has been, I believe, that through genuine openness and earnest desire, I have found Curly's "One Thing" for myself. In order to come to this discovery, I had to be willing to surrender my old beliefs, attitudes, and habitual ways of thinking in order to receive new vision and understanding. This surrender never comes easy for anyone, as it is quite human and common to tenaciously hold to our usual ways of thinking about things.
Through my own self-inflicted suffering I learned that much of my thinking, belief, and focus were the cause of that suffering, and that there was such a thing as enlightenment, or a clearer way of seeing or understanding reality that could reduce much of this suffering. I have come to see that enlightenment itself is part of a continuum of awareness and that it is not static or unchanging. For instance, as soon as I think I have enlightenment and start making a big deal out of that - I am then becoming less enlightened (because whatever I come to know is,and always will be, a bare pittance of what there is to know in this vast reality.) Also, if I wake up in a bad mood and start making negative judgements about everything, then I have also lost clarity of awareness. That is because enlightenment is a straight up, no BS, vision of reality. It does not find reward in ego or arrogance and is best seen through the counter to those sorry states, genuine humility. It provides a balanced perspective on things, avoiding all extreme and dramatic views. It is open to anyone who can decide to see reality as it is (as much as we can understand reality, being limited human beings,) and not necessarily as they would like it to be. This was the message of the Buddha 2500 years ago (from Steve Hagen : "Buddhism Plain and Simple,") and there have been many enlightened people through history before and since.
Enlightenment is very important in being able to realize what the "One Thing" is. And it is true that we each will understand the "One Thing" in our own unique way because, our way of understanding things is our own. But if we can achieve some clarity of mind, by reducing our mental disturbances and relaxing our tight-fisted grip on how we view everything, we can grow in enlightenment, we can slowly gain clarity of perceptual vision. Now, I was a child of the sixties (and a good part of the seventies, I might add) and I remember all the songs that came out during those years about Love. "Love is all you need," "Love is the answer," Love will keep us together,"Put a little Love in your heart, " and on etc. These messages all sounded good of course, but it didn't seem like they were getting any real attention in the world or resulting in any real change, such as the ballyhooed "Age of Aquarius" coming to fruition perhaps. No, I think that the problem then as now was the idealism-drug abuse mixture. That combination of forces usually does not produce much constructive or sustained productive action. In fact, drugs of abuse kill true idealism, they make it meaningless.
Why might this be so? Because we need to truly care about things to create real meaning in this life. And in order to truly care about things, we need to have our mental equipment working properly. We need to be able to think clearly, have our thinking truly reflect the human perception of reality that we can be aware of, and we need to be able to feel how we truly feel about things. We can have great ideas, but fail to act on them effectively because we would rather stay in an artificially-induced haze of bliss, or maintain a self-righteous, stubborn, inflexible way of thinking about things. Anything that suppresses, distorts, or narrows awareness weakens our ability to be fully aware or awake, and this leads to my next point, that truly caring about things is what true Love in human terms really is.
Now it is very innocent, common, and human that we develop and maintain an understanding of Love as follows: "I want, and I want to keep, what makes me feel good." We say: "I love this," or "I love that," based upon the pleasure we receive from whatever that particular thing, being, or person, is. This is a childlike understanding of Love based upon the awareness of what makes us feel good.It is not however, what true Love is. True Love is a state of awareness that is not focused upon what makes us feel good. It is instead, an awareness and resultant action, that arises from a profound spiritual or fundamental view that the heart or core of every being and every creation in reality, is a priceless, precious spirit or essence. This view helps us to realize that we are far more miraculous and amazing than anything we ever have or ever will create. We just don't usually see this, we usually see the superficial realities of life. But those who have a truly deep and abiding reverence or respect for life and creation, have, I believe, an enlightened view of it. They have a larger or deeper vision of things. If we look at those people in history that we have the deepest love and respect for, isn't it usually because of how they treated others and themselves? Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and the list of many others goes on. Why are these people so important or meaningful to us? It was their "inner vision," and their Love.
Love, true Love, is to me, my "One Thing." This idea of Love which transcends our common human awareness, which relates deeply to essential cosmic reality, is a vast, mysterious, and infinite idea. But we can visualize this vast idea of Love, as we must, in "Down-to-Earth" very human terms. We can visualize it as the Art of Caring, and in human expression and this has many forms. Examples of these forms are: compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, patience, generosity with no strings attached, and empathy or understanding among others. True Love is a very tough customer to keep aligned with and focused upon, because of the interference of our human nature. We are essentially programmed to want and to want to keep what makes us feel good. Anything that repeatedly stimulates the reward or pleasure center of our brain is something that we easily get quite focused upon. We get rightly upset about disrespectful, terrible behaviors and actions and from these we are liable to form strong, judgmental opinions which tend to work against an attitude of compassion and understanding. We are prone to distortion and distraction. We have a mind full of a million things competing for our attention and focus. We have all kinds of ideas about what is most important in life. But, at the end of the day, at the end of our life, what does really matter? Was it the money we accumulated, or fame, or accomplishments? Was it that we got everything we could possibly want? Was it that we were a success, and what kind of a success really? Or, was it perhaps, that everyone we came across in this life, that we had the most direct and intimate connection with, knew without a doubt that we loved and cared about them? How in this life, did we really honor the value, the preciousness, of ourselves and others? How did we encourage, nurture, support, assist, validate, affirm? How did we provide and set loving boundaries, limits, from which those we cared about could learn for themselves what was really important in this life?
In my journey through life, I have often experienced periods where life has not seemed to make much sense. I have experienced dark times of inner anguish and seeming meaninglessness. But my continuing good fortune has been, I believe, that through genuine openness and earnest desire, I have found Curly's "One Thing" for myself. In order to come to this discovery, I had to be willing to surrender my old beliefs, attitudes, and habitual ways of thinking in order to receive new vision and understanding. This surrender never comes easy for anyone, as it is quite human and common to tenaciously hold to our usual ways of thinking about things.
Through my own self-inflicted suffering I learned that much of my thinking, belief, and focus were the cause of that suffering, and that there was such a thing as enlightenment, or a clearer way of seeing or understanding reality that could reduce much of this suffering. I have come to see that enlightenment itself is part of a continuum of awareness and that it is not static or unchanging. For instance, as soon as I think I have enlightenment and start making a big deal out of that - I am then becoming less enlightened (because whatever I come to know is,and always will be, a bare pittance of what there is to know in this vast reality.) Also, if I wake up in a bad mood and start making negative judgements about everything, then I have also lost clarity of awareness. That is because enlightenment is a straight up, no BS, vision of reality. It does not find reward in ego or arrogance and is best seen through the counter to those sorry states, genuine humility. It provides a balanced perspective on things, avoiding all extreme and dramatic views. It is open to anyone who can decide to see reality as it is (as much as we can understand reality, being limited human beings,) and not necessarily as they would like it to be. This was the message of the Buddha 2500 years ago (from Steve Hagen : "Buddhism Plain and Simple,") and there have been many enlightened people through history before and since.
Enlightenment is very important in being able to realize what the "One Thing" is. And it is true that we each will understand the "One Thing" in our own unique way because, our way of understanding things is our own. But if we can achieve some clarity of mind, by reducing our mental disturbances and relaxing our tight-fisted grip on how we view everything, we can grow in enlightenment, we can slowly gain clarity of perceptual vision. Now, I was a child of the sixties (and a good part of the seventies, I might add) and I remember all the songs that came out during those years about Love. "Love is all you need," "Love is the answer," Love will keep us together,"Put a little Love in your heart, " and on etc. These messages all sounded good of course, but it didn't seem like they were getting any real attention in the world or resulting in any real change, such as the ballyhooed "Age of Aquarius" coming to fruition perhaps. No, I think that the problem then as now was the idealism-drug abuse mixture. That combination of forces usually does not produce much constructive or sustained productive action. In fact, drugs of abuse kill true idealism, they make it meaningless.
Why might this be so? Because we need to truly care about things to create real meaning in this life. And in order to truly care about things, we need to have our mental equipment working properly. We need to be able to think clearly, have our thinking truly reflect the human perception of reality that we can be aware of, and we need to be able to feel how we truly feel about things. We can have great ideas, but fail to act on them effectively because we would rather stay in an artificially-induced haze of bliss, or maintain a self-righteous, stubborn, inflexible way of thinking about things. Anything that suppresses, distorts, or narrows awareness weakens our ability to be fully aware or awake, and this leads to my next point, that truly caring about things is what true Love in human terms really is.
Now it is very innocent, common, and human that we develop and maintain an understanding of Love as follows: "I want, and I want to keep, what makes me feel good." We say: "I love this," or "I love that," based upon the pleasure we receive from whatever that particular thing, being, or person, is. This is a childlike understanding of Love based upon the awareness of what makes us feel good.It is not however, what true Love is. True Love is a state of awareness that is not focused upon what makes us feel good. It is instead, an awareness and resultant action, that arises from a profound spiritual or fundamental view that the heart or core of every being and every creation in reality, is a priceless, precious spirit or essence. This view helps us to realize that we are far more miraculous and amazing than anything we ever have or ever will create. We just don't usually see this, we usually see the superficial realities of life. But those who have a truly deep and abiding reverence or respect for life and creation, have, I believe, an enlightened view of it. They have a larger or deeper vision of things. If we look at those people in history that we have the deepest love and respect for, isn't it usually because of how they treated others and themselves? Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and the list of many others goes on. Why are these people so important or meaningful to us? It was their "inner vision," and their Love.
Love, true Love, is to me, my "One Thing." This idea of Love which transcends our common human awareness, which relates deeply to essential cosmic reality, is a vast, mysterious, and infinite idea. But we can visualize this vast idea of Love, as we must, in "Down-to-Earth" very human terms. We can visualize it as the Art of Caring, and in human expression and this has many forms. Examples of these forms are: compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, patience, generosity with no strings attached, and empathy or understanding among others. True Love is a very tough customer to keep aligned with and focused upon, because of the interference of our human nature. We are essentially programmed to want and to want to keep what makes us feel good. Anything that repeatedly stimulates the reward or pleasure center of our brain is something that we easily get quite focused upon. We get rightly upset about disrespectful, terrible behaviors and actions and from these we are liable to form strong, judgmental opinions which tend to work against an attitude of compassion and understanding. We are prone to distortion and distraction. We have a mind full of a million things competing for our attention and focus. We have all kinds of ideas about what is most important in life. But, at the end of the day, at the end of our life, what does really matter? Was it the money we accumulated, or fame, or accomplishments? Was it that we got everything we could possibly want? Was it that we were a success, and what kind of a success really? Or, was it perhaps, that everyone we came across in this life, that we had the most direct and intimate connection with, knew without a doubt that we loved and cared about them? How in this life, did we really honor the value, the preciousness, of ourselves and others? How did we encourage, nurture, support, assist, validate, affirm? How did we provide and set loving boundaries, limits, from which those we cared about could learn for themselves what was really important in this life?
To me it is a horrifying thought to imagine myself on my own death bed, fraught with regret and despair about how self-centered, uninvolved, and detached from the most important things I was in this life. No, while I live and breathe and can choose what I think and what I'll do, and in spite of my many imperfections, shortcomings, and difficulties and those of others, I will devote myself to the one thing I believe matters most in this life, Love. Then, when it is time for me to go, and that time is coming for me and for you, I can leave this life in peace.
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