(The promise and personal origin of boundless love)
1 Boundless vision ‘You have been invited to meet “The Friend”. No one can resist a Divine Invitation That narrows all our choices to just two: We can come to God dressed for dancing, Or be carried on a stretcher to God’s ward.’ Hafiz – 14th-century Sufi poet WHEREVER YOU ARE on life’s road, no matter what’s happened to you, how young or old you are, whether you regard yourself as on a spiritual path or not, Boundless Love has something huge to offer you. Boundless Love is the experience of God and your true Self. It brings you home to your inherent wholeness. It is never too late to re-gain it, and your past is irrelevant. It offers you a practical spiritual map to profound joy and peace, beyond the boundaries of your fears, pains and limitations. To the soul, life is all about waking up into the reality of Boundless Love.
I hovered between bliss and deep loneliness. Playing on the beach and enjoying the great outdoors, I looked outwardly like any other kid my age, but inwardly I was always pondering the deeper meaning of things.
I felt a wave of luminous love blow through me. Somehow, I knew it as the presence of God. It was so beautiful, natural and completely familiar, but the service that followed left me very confused. It felt dead, fearful and heavy – the complete opposite of the heaven I had just tasted.
All I wanted to do was to die. At my darkest moment, I remember praying to God – whom I didn’t even know whether I believed in – ‘Please let me die, please God let me die, get me out of here.’
(Love as the ultimate reality and spiritual purpose)
Love is real Much more than simply an emotion, love is the ultimate universal truth. Underneath all pain, problems and suffering, love shines unchanged at the core of all things. Though we may remove ourselves from love, love never departs.
Our ultimate purpose in life is to be the presence of Boundless Love At the highest level, life is a process of spiritual evolution. We are not here solely to further our careers, accrue possessions, pay off the mortgage or even propagate the species. We are here to dissolve our barriers to love.
Allow everything to open you Awakening to the love that we are and the love we have come to offer brings us true happiness. Opening to the spiritual vision of Boundless Love, healing whatever gets in the way of love, stretching our hearts to receive more love, anchoring our minds in the ways of love, and evolving our capacity to give only love is the directive that makes life truly work.
tasted heaven behind our earthly struggles and saw the light that never ceases. I do not exaggerate when I say that what I experienced was perfect order, perfect bliss. Whether I stayed in this state for seconds, minutes or hours I do not know. Time ceased to have relevance. Like a light plug being put into the socket and the switch turned on, I had been spiritually reconnected.
(Spiritual breakthrough through crisis and surrender)
I invite you to consider that the greatest difficulty you have had to face is actually a perfect set-up for you to discover your true purpose in life. Often a spiritual breakthrough comes through some kind of shock or trauma when we are most broken, most on our knees. That is the moment to find the willingness to give up fighting and trying to control. When you have exhausted all other resources and have no energy – surrender. God’s grace will catch you. The more we let go, the easier it is to retrieve the gifts that always lie in direct proportion to any suffering. Luminous pearls grow out of a piece of grit in an oyster shell. Crises can be powerful opportunities for positive change, but extreme openings are not mandatory for a spiritual breakthrough. Everyone’s awakening is unique.
Your consciousness determines everything
If it was available, I tried it: the weird and the genuinely wise. Although I fell into many common traps it was a time of rapid assimilation, growth and learning.
Seeking a deeper transformation I realised that a spiritual perspective had the potential to become either a subtle means of escaping from our difficulties or a means to transform them. A friend I respected asked, ‘Do you really seek the truth or are you wanting a spiritual anaesthetic?’
They were the ones who really inspired me. They radiated something different: something pure and true. They had loving relationships and families, their lives worked and they were creative, authentic, giving, abundant and happy. I met both kinds of people in every spiritual tradition I studied.
(Choosing transformation over spiritual anaesthetic)
My choice was clear. The light of my spirit had been switched on, only to reveal that the rooms of my life needed cleaning up. I got to work. Once I committed to spiritual practice as a means for deep transformation, my life circumstances began to change for the better. The following quote from the psycho/spiritual text A Course in Miracles was my guiding light: ‘Seek not for love; rather, seek to remove the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence.’ My daily meditations and prayers were now tuned towards the unravelling of my wounds and false beliefs. I became less interested in the showier aspects of spirituality and more interested in how to apply the universal spiritual principles of unconditional acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, love and kindness to myself and others. This was a real stretch, especially when facing deep hurt, anger, betrayal, rejection or attack, but the results began to speak for themselves through increased personal power, serenity and, above all, a greater capacity to love.
I realised that for me, living my spirituality was my central priority. I made a promise to myself that nothing would deter me from my calling and trusted it would lead me to a truer way of being in relationships. Within that week, I met Robert. Falling deeply in love is inherently glorious, but in addition I was joining forces with someone who was as passionately committed to the truth of love as I.
We began to meditate and pray together daily, sharing our discoveries and mirroring one another’s blind spots, loving the wounds out of one another and giving one another courage to keep committing to the Boundless, even when we were resistant. It was intensely healing and utterly fabulous.
My own need for healing the obstacles to Boundless Love unintentionally became my full time work. Serving others seemed the most natural way to integrate and deepen what I was learning. From my early twenties I worked in private practice as a healer, spiritual counsellor and inspirational speaker, supporting others in diving within their own heart for wisdom.
My passion is to guide people back into the Boundless Love within them. I believe that the human heart is God’s birthing chamber. A friend once said to me that to see another truly is to be, ‘On your knees in awe at the immense beauty before you.’ Through directing The Interfaith Seminary, and facilitating countless retreats, public seminars and private sessions internationally, I have been privileged to midwife extraordinary levels of transformation in individuals, and subsequently their families and communities through spiritual practices and principles.
It sustained me in difficult times and, as I learned to work with it, transformed and informed every area of my life. It constantly reminds me to remember the truth of Boundless Love. I have come to see there is nothing else.
(You are the light of the world)
In my heart of hearts I am a feminine mystic. I have not tried to edit that from this book. However, I am also a practically minded ‘Aussie Sheila’ who is ultimately interested in what really works to transform people’s lives for the better. The Native American elder Sun Bear used to say, ‘Do not bother me with your visions unless they grow corn.’ My aim is to de-mystify the mystical and give you real tools.
The biggest joke of all is the Western world-view that spirituality is a luxury, not a necessity. A true spiritual life is immeasurably practical.
Grace – the experience of God’s Boundless Love – can heal what the human mind cannot.
Spiritual practices are your miracle-kit to gain access to grace.
(One problem, one solution: returning to love from separation)
You are asked only to surrender. Surrender is an act of great courage, not weakness. It is not something you do only when you have no choice. Surrender daily, beginning from now. Surrender your fears, your expectations, your past, your sense of Self, your future, and make way for a beautiful vision, an eternal vision. Be willing to let God’s Boundless Love find you. Have no doubt that somehow, it will.
2 What do you yearn for? ‘No genuine longing can remain unfulfilled.’ Kahil Gibran
RECENT SCIENTIFIC STUDIES have shown that people with a strong spiritual vision live longer, happier, healthier lives. Mystics through the ages have demonstrated that beyond ordinary sense awareness lie limitless Divine resources for wisdom, strength, compassion, joy and peace.
(Witnessing the ego and returning to centre)
them. Some of these questions included: What has the birth of your children opened up in you? What are your greatest hopes and fears of parenthood? What, from your own upbringings, do you want to emulate for your children? What, from your own upbringings, do you want to forgive and do differently? What spiritual values would you like your children lo grow up with? Jane found these questions about the specific subtleties she wanted to pass onto her children difficult, a little threatening even. It demanded she explore the yearnings of her soul.
Distinct from the beliefs and creeds of religion, spirituality is about direct personal contact with the Boundless. Sometimes this can occur within a religious structure, but often it doesn’t. Each person will experience it uniquely. There is no right or wrong way to experience God.
Unless we know what for us, personally, is most sacred, life will lack focus, and we will stay within the lower reaches of our mind where fear, guilt and lack rule. Life will lack luminosity and subtle texture, blocking us from fulfilling our true potential. A lack of spiritual clarity can cause us to feel that nothing we do, nothing we are given and no one we are with is quite ‘enough’. Our capacity to receive is inhibited, which takes us out of the natural flow and makes life feel harder than it needs to be. This can leave us with the vague feeling that we are living life in third gear.
(Dialling direct to God through prayer)
The longing for connection Everyone yearns to belong to something beyond their individual Self. We look to belong, be bonded to and be understood as young children within our family, as a teenager with our peer group, then in adulthood with a lover or life-partner, and professionally with friends, colleagues and our work community. This mirrors the soul’s yearning to feel connected with the source of all that is. Driving this is a deep longing to return to a state of awareness beyond separation. The ancient echo of oneness reverberates from deep within, although we seem to wander the world in the illusion that we are separate.
Christian mystics spoke of it as the sacred marriage between Self and Creator, Sufis as the communion between Lover and Beloved.
Ask yourself: What helps me feel connected? Less alone? What helps me feel at one with my Self? With The Infinite? With others?…
At what age are human beings supposed to grow out of this need? Whatever age or stage you are in life, you need love like you need oxygen. Love is an awareness that sustains your soul, and is not dependent on external circumstances. Love is your heritage and the heart of who you are. Love knows no judgement, condemnation or conditions. Unconditional love is one and the same as…
(Grounding vision in ethics and daily practice)
Ask yourself: What is my source of unconditional love? What helps me to feel unconditional love? What helps me to give unconditional love? The longing for deep peace The saying, ‘Stop the world, I want to get off’, speaks directly to the craving for a deep inner rest:…
No matter how stressful your life is at present, peace is within you now. It shines like a tiny star in the heavens of your mind. You need not seek for peace, simply stop resisting and…
Ask yourself: What truly gives me peace? What am I insisting I need to get done before I can be at peace? What helps me to be still? The longing for pure joy Something deep within us suspects we were built for Boundless Bliss. Our desire for fun, laughter, outrageousness, pleasure, even sex is a mirror of our soul’s longing for spiritual ecstasy and rapture. Our soul craves to abandon the sense of reserve, throw caution to the wind and play big. The Hindu saints Sri Anandamayi Ma and Ramakrishna, and the Sufi mystics Hafiz and Rumi embodied the rapturous aspect of spirituality, existing in states…
Ask yourself: What makes my heart sing with joy? What makes me come alive? What am I truly grateful for?…
The Yogis called this Mukti – the soul yearning to be free from fears, inner limitations, blocks, doubts, old wounds, rules and inner…
Ask yourself: What exactly do I yearn to be free from? What makes me feel limitless? What helps me remember that I am…
(Gossip, envy, and living your spiritual commitments)
Ask yourself: What gives me a sense of being at home? What is home to me? The longing for timelessness
Our soul is ageless and timeless. Even when our bodies die our essence will live forever. Reality is changeless.
Ask yourself: What supports me in being completely present? What doesn’t change? What has the breath of the eternal upon it? Embrace your soul longings
Your longings highlight your truest needs. Do not despair that they are beyond your reach. Just do not look to the world to fulfil them for you.
Do not fear looking within
(Gratitude and devotion as doorways)
Do you have a hidden fear that yielding to the Boundless would mean some kind of destruction, loss of self and all that you have created your life to be? If so, you would not be unusual. It is human nature to try to stay with what we know, even when it is painful or dissatisfying.
of trying to prove ourselves and accumulate more to fill what is essentially a hunger for spiritual love. Looking to the outside world for substitutes to keep our fears of what we may find within hidden, we can find ourselves being led further away from our soul’s true axis.
Our substitutes for the experience of Boundless Love can take many forms, at best echoing our yearning for union with the source, at worst numbing the yearning out of our mind.
Be still and know Have you ever tried to come off caffeine, sugar, alcohol, junk food or cigarettes? For the first week, when your body is eliminating the toxins, you can feel awful, but before long you begin to feel calmer, clearer and more vibrant. Similarly, sages from every tradition have guided seekers into deeper spiritual waters by first encouraging them to slow down. This means literally doing less and reflecting more. Boundless Love is always present, but you are not always attuned to receive it. Whatever level you find yourself spiritually, by creating more space in your life, sitting quietly more often, even reminding yourself to take deep breaths throughout your activities, you will find yourself coming into greater harmony with the subtleties of life, becoming less reactive to events around you.
(Compassion, metta, and opening the vast heart)
‘Look within, thou art the Buddha’. Zen proverb
3 Spiritual de-toxing Any thought of God that is not loving is a lie.
Fearful spiritual skeletons left unhealed in your closet, like fearful indoctrination, cruelty from a spiritual authority figure or even just conditioned negative beliefs about God, can create a subtle psychological platform of a force in the universe that does not entirely accept and support you. Consciously or unconsciously, if your deepest perception of God is fearful, judgemental, conditional or punishing, you will tend to be judgemental, conditional, punishing and fearful with yourself. However you see and treat yourself at core will be how others see and treat you.
Your fundamental sense of self is wrapped up in this relationship. Essentially, your God = yourself = your life. Your core dynamic with God ripples outwards to influence every aspect of your life.
(Breath as a path back to the boundless self)
Your relationship dynamics reveal all
Years of counselling people through their greatest difficulties have led me to the conclusion that the primary issues we have with the core people in our life mirror the same issues we have with God. Reflect upon the primary complaints you have about your parents or partners. This will mirror your unconscious perceptions of God.
Has the primary difficulty in your human relationships been of: Abandonment? ‘They were never really available/ there for me’, or ‘They left me.’ Rejection? ‘They didn’t want me’, or ‘I wasn’t what they wanted’, or ‘They don’t care.’ Condemnation? ‘No matter how hard I try, I cannot be good enough for them.’ Difficulty in receiving? ‘I don’t deserve this much love’, or ‘I feel guilty about how much they gave.’
Whatever your recurring bottom line, assume that the difficulties you have about the significant people in your life are really a projection of the complaints you have towards God. At the deepest level, everything going on in your life reflects your dance with God.
(Mantras, stillness, and the tranquil mind)
Write an unedited ‘Dear God’ letter
‘You are the light of the world’ (New Testament)
The Hindu Upanishads say, ‘There is a light that shines beyond all things, beyond the heavens, the very highest heavens. It is the light that shines within your heart.’ They cannot all be wrong. You are the light of the world because you are the presence of Boundless Love on earth. Considering yourself thus does not make you arrogant, conceited or superior to others because everyone else is the light of the world along with you. Accepting this draws from you a profound humility and reverence for the sacredness of being alive. You are here on this earth to shine the light of eternity. You do this every time you remember the truth of your Self and offer your love. The form that takes ultimately is irrelevant. Remembering who you are supports you in fulfilling your unique soul purpose: giving your gifts to bless others. Imagine registering that you really are the light of the world. How would that impact the way you think, feel and live?
Most days I am privileged to sit with people sharing the parts of themselves they rarely show anyone. Although my clients may believe these aspects of self are unacceptable, weak or flawed, all I see in their moments of vulnerability is indescribable beauty. Whenever anyone lets go of their outer mask all that remains is God. I feel like reaching into their heart and showing them their own divinity. The moments I manage to do this are the times of the greatest grace for me.
(Forgiveness as the way through the deepest wounds)
holy. Connected with infinity, your true self has power to reverse the laws of the world, being beyond the restriction of time, space, distance and limit of any kind.
Look beneath your mask I will let you in on a cosmic secret: underneath the masks we all wear, everyone feels lacking or flawed to some degree.
You fail to realise that your defences, masks and coping strategies keep the illusory vision of yourself alive. This keeps you away from Boundless Love. Every veil of defence you let drop takes you closer to who you really are, and to greater freedom and happiness.
One of the most famous is the question, ‘What was your original face before you were born?’ Using this koan to explore the theme of identity at an Interfaith Seminary class, Jenny, an intelligent, articulate and brilliant professional in her late thirties went into deep fear.
(Grace transmutes the past)
Excavate your inherent perfection Your spirituality will serve either to help free you from your mistaken self-concepts or it will subtly reinforce them by deepening the notion that you must ‘become’ perfect through endless prayers, meditations and practices. The intention you give your spirituality will determine where it takes you. Direct your spirituality not to becoming something different, but to unwinding what you have assimilated that is false.
Look to your defences. If you were to let go of the strategies you think you need to keep safe, what do you fear would be exposed? In letting your fears of who you are come up for air, you will realise that in truth they are nothing.
5 One problem: one solution Let us make all spiritual talk simple: All problems arise from wandering into separation and fear. All solutions begin by returning to the Boundless Love within.
The Ego Self searches for a ‘bad guy’ to pin the blame onto – anything to divert us from taking responsibility for being creator of our experience.
Underneath all this, we blame God. Blaming always backfires. Additionally, it renders us a victim. Like scratching a persistent itch, blaming someone else for our pain gives temporary relief, but invariably deepens our sense of hopelessness. Have you ever ‘shot off’ at someone you love in anger, building a ‘justified’ case against them and letting them bear the brunt of your rage? Have you ever noticed that although this gave you momentary release, it didn’t resolve anything, only left you feeling like a nasty person?
The Buddha said, ‘Everything you give you give to yourself.’ Every time you project and dump, you wind up embedding your ego’s negative verdict about yourself further. Blaming hides your wound underground and takes you further from the solution.
Defences fail to protect you
After judging yourself as not good enough, bad, wrong, nothing or worthless, and then projecting the blame onto someone or something outside yourself, your Ego Self builds up defence systems to protect itself against future hurt. This misguided attempt to keep safe only deepens your pain, and gives further ‘weight’ to your script. Defences cause you to enter into difficult dynamics with others. Other people become like actors on a stage called ‘your life’ acting out your beliefs for you. The extent to which you are unconscious of your ego’s script, other people and the world will play it out.
Externally confident, Jonathan felt deeply alone. I suggested we face this. When he made contact with his sense of ‘nothingness’ Jonathan began to see things very differently. He recognised that his wife’s popularity was not to blame for his feelings, neither was the behaviour of his friends and family. He even saw painful childhood events that resulted in feeling left out and unimportant as his ego script’s set-up. Jonathan saw painful life events as other people acting out his negative script about himself on the stage of life. He acknowledged that the real cause of his heartache was his own false belief, and that this belief was just a mistake that he had the power to let go of.
Witness and return to centre No matter how deeply embedded your mind is in ego awareness and how messy your life, within you exists a psychic bridge to eternity. This bridge becomes apparent through your willingness. Whenever you do not feel at peace, know you have slipped into identifying with your Ego Self and its illusions of separation, fear, guilt and lack, which leads you down the slippery slope of blame, projection, attack and defensiveness. You will know when you are there because life will feel a struggle.
Stop trying to fix the outer situation for a moment. Just witness what is happening within you. Name what you are feeling inwardly without judging it as good or bad: ‘anger’, ‘disappointment’, ‘hurt’, ‘nervous’, ‘insecure’, ‘uncertain’, ‘sad’, ‘distracted’, etc. Breathe. Be present and kind to yourself in these feelings. Do not try to exterminate them, but do not try to act them out. Just feel what’s there. Recognise that the core problem is not in the situation, but in your forgetting of your true self. This has disconnected you from your natural wisdom and the true way forward. Be willing to return to your centre within Boundless Love.
Ask for Divine help in letting go of your ego verdicts, stories and blame games. Pray, ‘Anchor me back to my Boundless Self.’ Allow peace to come to you.
Divine help comes through your willingness not through effort. You have been programmed for a wonderful life, but this will only come if you are willing to become more appropriately dependent upon the Boundless. How can you expect to move beyond ego awareness if your Ego Self is directing the process? Personally, I regularly dance back and forth across the bridge from my Ego Self to my Boundless Self. However, the experience of unity, joy, flow and peace are much more predominant than they have ever been. My ego scripts drive me significantly less. In many areas of my life, I have ceased to play them out altogether. I notice much more quickly when I have slipped into separation and fear, and therefore am able to return to centre more quickly. This has dramatically reduced the amount of time I spend being unhappy.
‘The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself.’ A Course in Miracles
6 Dialling direct to God ‘God is nearer to you Than your own jugular vein’ Sri Ramakrishna
It has come apparent to me in my years of exploring the depths of the human psyche that our Ego Self fundamentally wants to BE God: that is where our cherished notion of independence comes from.
The unconscious insistence on doing everything yourself blocks you from asking for and receiving Divine help. This keeps you in control but is extremely limited.
Prayer is asking for that which has already been given to come to the forefront of your awareness.
Within this you will find that God IS, Truth IS, You ARE. In such a level of alignment, words become meaningless.
1 What would You have me receive? The response I receive to this is always a feeling of immense, indescribable love, a reservoir of infinite peace, unity and expansion, which is sometimes accompanied by the word of a particular quality. Put all your expectations aside and be open.
Sense yourself as light sitting within a beam of light, letting whatever it is you truly need wash over you. Allow yourself to be re-infused. 2 What would You have me know? The answers I receive to this are always simple, direct and relate to how I see myself, other people and the world. Do not overlook the simple answers you receive to this question – they are usually the most profound. 3 What would You have me let go of? All obstacles are attachments to something illusory that you have invested in as real and necessary. The responses I receive to this question are usually incisive and shown to me with great compassion. (If there is any sense of condemnation accompanying this response you can be sure that is coming from your own ego.) 4 What would You have me do? Asking this question supports me in letting my actions be guided by the higher will, not my own egocentric desires. God’s plan for your day will always be more joyous and successful than yours. If you have a specific issue you need guidance on, ask: ‘In relation to [a particular concern, relationship or issue] … what would You have me receive/know/look at and let go of/do?’ Use this as the basis for further dialogue until you are clear. Sometimes words come, sometimes images – but, above all, there is always a feeling of deep peace and love.
7 Opening up to inspiration ‘Where do you think you will be When God reveals Himself Inside you?’ Hafiz TWO YOUNG WOMEN, Leah and Emka, both university students, attended a weekend workshop I facilitated called Walking your true spiritual path.
What blocks guidance? Ease and flow are the natural order of things. A Biblical psalm says, ‘It is your Father’s good pleasure to give your the Kingdom.’ There is absolutely no need for you to struggle because life really is abundant.
YOUR YEARNINGS AND visions of the Boundless must become grounded in the practical minutiae of daily life or your spirituality is simply entertainment.
In my initial years on the path I was pathologically impatient. In a rush to cut my teeth into what I considered more important mystical practices I initially skipped past exploring ethics. Focusing too much on the vertical, I came unstuck because my foundations were not solid enough.
Ethics are not guilt-inducing rules you must obey to ‘become a better person’, but guidelines to embrace because they make your life simpler and happier. Ethics are meant to be a kind and practical help to you for living on purpose. Whenever you fall out of alignment with your own integrity, this is what it can cost you.
You lose yourself Untruthful, unkind and unloving thoughts and actions produce painful emotions such as fear, guilt and anger. This rocks you off your centre and causes unhappiness. To hurt another is to hurt yourself.
Destructive mental and behavioural patterns can arise, such as the desire for revenge, obsessions, addictions, paranoia and other fearful states. For example, lying causes you to be frightened of being found out, which can produce defensiveness, guilt and aggression.
You preach but don’t really practise It is a common trap to tell others about your spiritual beliefs while forgetting to love, accept, respect and see the perfection in the person before you. This causes you to feel separate.
Underneath every area you are not living on purpose or acting unethically lie hidden feelings of guilt. When I created this spiritual inventory and went through the questions myself, I identified my spiritual path as, ‘Healing the blocks to Boundless Love.’ This asks me to practise honesty, forgiveness, loving kindness and surrender.
However, I was shocked to see that in my relationship to my body I was often judgemental, controlling and unkind; quite the opposite of my spiritual intentions. Exploring more deeply, I saw that this was the area where I had been judging myself and playing out hidden feelings of guilt.
Discovering what trips you up is cause for celebration not despair. Your honesty places you at the threshold of a new level of freedom. You cannot change that which you cannot see. While you are unaware of mistakes, they run you. However, once identified, the process of release can begin.
True love is universal, not simply personal. To love wholly is to attain Divinity.
illusions. An idol is a substitute for the real thing. Perhaps your soul sabotage takes the form of unhelpful addictions to food, alcohol or harmful substances. Perhaps you have become addicted to negative self-perceptions and ways of relating. Perhaps money, power and status have become more important to you than love. Break free from unhelpful habits by releasing the fears and false beliefs that drive them.
4 ‘Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.’ The invitation: To carve out regular space to unhook from daily pressures and connect with what’s truly meaningful.
My friend Romy is one of the most impressive people I know for one simple reason: she never says an unkind word about anyone. In the company of others who may be gossiping, she never joins in, only says a few quiet words about their virtues.
Clearly her commitment to support others and not tear them down feeds her personal vibrancy. Gossip is never harmless, and diminishes everyone associated with it. My husband Robert calls gossip ‘social farting’: smelly hot air that makes life unnecessarily unpleasant. Aim to bear true witness. Seek out the highest truth in others. To see anyone truly is to see God.
The invitation: To transform envy through taking joy in the good fortune of others, learning to appreciate what you have. When you see people who appear to ‘have it all’ – success, love, beauty, brains, talent, money – do you think, ‘How wonderful! Good for them’, or do you snipe, ‘Lucky bitch!’ As long as you are jealous of others for having what you want, you will block yourself from receiving the fulfilment of your own dreams.
Learning to live in a state of peace, love and truth takes more than thinking pink fluffy thoughts: it takes discipline, patience and courage. Spiritual practice is a radical commitment to a different way of being, an inner response to life that begins to reverse your conditioning and loosen your identification with separation and fear. It helps you live your highest intentions and crafts you into the person you want to be.
I can instantly spot a person who has an active spiritual practice. They glow with inner peace. Their capacity for joy and compassion is broad.
Rumi gives a superb analogy: ‘What nine months does for an embryo, 40 early mornings with God will do for your growing awareness.’
Commit to spiritual practice not to reach some spiritual summit, but to awaken consciously to the reality that Boundless Love is always with you. Commit to regular time with God because it feeds and sustains your highest vision, but do not make it an obligation. The last thing you need is to project guilt onto spiritual practice, adding it to your ‘must do’ list, and beating up on yourself if you fail.
Do you need a teacher? In essence, everyone is your teacher. Indeed, life is your teacher. If you pay attention and regard everyone as either sending you Divine feedback or mirroring your own ego, you will recognise that you are being led by an inner teacher who is guiding you at all times.
Pray for help: ‘Dear God, help inspire me to want to go within’, or, ‘Help me value myself enough to nourish my soul’, or, ‘Lend me courage to retrieve the wonderful gifts you have placed within me.’
In each of us there is a lover, an intellectual, a mystic and a servant. Each of these dimensions feeds one another. A rounded spiritual life should nurture and stretch every part.
Part IV THE VAST HEART
11 Begin with gratitude ‘You can tell how evolved someone is from how grateful they are for all the gifts of God.’ Sri Ramakrishna
They came from desperately poor villages where most of them slept with their families underneath roofs made of nothing more than a few poles and old pieces of plastic. Directed by their teacher, the children stood and sang to us the only song they knew in English.
‘Dear God, thank you for my mother, father, sister, brother, the sky, the sun, the rain the fields, this school … I love you God, I love you God. Thank you Thank you.’
My Jewish friends who practise this level of thanksgiving emit vibrant joy and reverence for life, even though they have all known sufferings harsher than most.
12 Devotion: being the Beloved ‘Door of my heart Open wide I keep for Thee.’ Paramahansa Yogananda
offering your gratitude and love with simple child-like passion, a new awareness is born. An inner mystic doorway opens where you become available to receive the grace of Boundless Love.
The prophet Mohammed said, ‘Take one step towards God, and God will take a thousand steps towards you.’ However, the deeper you go into devotion, a vision of unity unfolds whereby distinctions of ‘God’ and ‘self’ become unreal. Do not try to think it through too much. Remember that devotion bypasses logic.
The Ego Self, being a thought of separation, can never truly join, but it does attempt forms of pseudo joining. For example, the ego is often willing to ‘join in’ with another person’s fearful perspective, their desire to attack and defend, their negative patterns and poor sense of self.
The fourth stage of metta practice aims to go beyond the personality and reduce the issue to its most basic level – all human beings want, need and deserve to be loved and accepted.
There need be no judgement or shame about the fact that you have an ego and hence some difficulties. However, it will help enormously if you can utilise suffering – yours or another’s – to grow in acceptance, surrender and love. Approached in this way, the greatest trials can midwife the priceless gift of a vast heart.
Every time you extend yourself compassionately to anyone, you let go of another layer of attachment to your Ego Self, and cleave a little more to your Boundless Self.
When you connect to the source of all healing, there is no need to resist suffering.
Compassion isn’t just a method, it is being present and giving your whole heart the way that God would.
That is when I came back to working with the practice of tonglen, which I had been taught many years before at a Buddhist retreat. The basic premise of tonglen is that you first centre yourself and then, as you breathe in, visualise ‘opening to receive’ the fear, sadness, distress or loneliness you confront in yourself or others. On the out breath, ‘give out’ all love, peace, healing, light, faith and hope. Being in complete non-resistance to the suffering and giving pure love in return is mighty alchemy.
Your ego will counsel that tonglen is essentially dangerous, yet your spirit knows it has power to free you from your own suffering as well as transmute the suffering of others. It is completely safe because although everyone experiences their suffering as very real, it is founded in the illusion of separation. Nothing born of an illusion can contaminate your true essence.
I first discovered the transformative power of breath in my early twenties when I trained in Re-birthing. The simple method of conscious connected breathing, taken from an ancient yogic method, impressed me with its capacity to shift old pain, fear and trauma. I would not have believed the states of spiritual clarity and bliss a simple breathing method could evoke unless I had experienced it myself.
Your breath really can breathe you past illusions back into your Boundless Self. This is not a new revelation.
Learning to let go. Learning to be with what is. Letting the truth shine.
In simply learning to let the breath of life breathe you, these three universal lessons of ceasing to cling to the old, non-resistance to the present and opening to welcome the truth can become practical living realities.
A student asked the great Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi, ‘What stands in the way of my knowing my Self and God?’ He shot back, ‘Your wandering mind.’ To still the mind is a difficult but important task. In our culture of over stimulation we are developing ever-poorer attention spans. Concentration is the precursor to pure being. If you could learn to relinquish fears and outer stimuli and not resist whatever you discover in the present, your mind would become still. All of the natural gifts of God would shine upon you. You would realise that every true need is fulfilled. There would be nothing to fear and every question would be answered by inner wisdom. What stands in the way of this experience is the internal chatter of your mind. Working with your breath can help calm it. Everyday ego chatter keeps you from being present to the love that is here now, and keeps hidden the true thoughts that extend naturally from your Divine mind. When your mind is still and present, it is free to flow with love, wisdom, kindness, compassion and other emanations of your eternal wholeness. A tranquil mind is an enormous gift.
These are thoughts you think in alignment with God. You will know them by their absence of fear, harshness, judgement, complaints and criticism.
As the mystic author Andrew Harvey describes, ‘Imagine that you and all your worries, fantasies and fears are like a large lump of butter left outside in the sun.’ Butter left in the sun will slowly, effortlessly melt. Do not fear that you will dissolve. What dissolves as you sit, breathe and be is the chatter, the fears, false identifications and clinging. Your essence remains, and is then freer to shine.
As Native American elders beautifully taught, you learn to ‘be with’ your emotions, not become them.
Just keep breathing, melting into what is. Eventually the breath will breathe you into pure being. There is no need for any striving whatsoever.
Nearly 20 years on, I still turn to mantras and sacred singing when I need help in concentrating and quieting my mind, when I feel my inner power plug to Boundless Love has become too loose. The Hindu Gayantri Mantra and the simple word AUM, which I was given as a teenager, together with the Hebrew mantra ‘Adonai li, v’lo ira’, which I was taught in seminary by Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, still nourish me today.
Adonai li, v’lo ira (pronounced adonay lee velo ira): In Hebrew this translates as ‘God is with me. I will not fear.’ It is exceptionally comforting, strengthening and calming.
‘I bow to the truth – please destroy my ignorance.’
David’s psychology had failed him. I suggested the most practical step he could take right now would be to pray. He looked scared. I suggested that if he could find a bridge to his higher mind, he would be freer from his own reactions that so got in the way. ‘Centre yourself first and the clarity you need to respond appropriately will emerge’, I promised.
To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders.’ Chuang Tzu
Whenever I enter deep stillness, an un-nameable joy stirs within me. Amidst that vast spaciousness, stripped of everything except my essence, I feel truly my Self, truly at home. Stillness is often mistaken for lazy idleness. Where idleness is sedentary and passively asleep to the wonder of now, stillness is dynamic.
Movement creates oceans of spaciousness
Confusing effort for genuine willingness, I moved on to writing affirmations. I would write, ‘I now open to a healed and healthy relationship with my father’ a hundred times a day. This might have worked had I not the automatic unconscious extension of that affirmation in my mind saying, ‘Only if he changes the way he treats me.’ For a while it seemed that our relationship had improved and all my inner work had paid off, but it wasn’t long before all the old patterns and destructive behaviours between us resurfaced again. I was yet to understand that real forgiveness makes no demands.
Blame never works When the hurt and rage re-emerged, this time more intensely than ever, I was convinced that a showdown was the only viable option. I confronted my father with an ultimatum to either admit that his behaviour towards me was hurtful and damaging and be willing to seek help with me in resolving it, or to sever his relationship with me. He chose the latter.
It took great honesty for me to realise that my intention had not really been to heal through forgiveness but to point the finger of blame.
began to realise that I had been trying to push for reconciliation before I’d walked through the gate of forgiveness: that it worked the other way around.
I struggled with being asked to see the person who seemed to have caused me the greatest pain as my saviour, although I could accept that there was a higher purpose to this relationship. I had the greatest difficulty with the idea of joining with my father in light. My ego insisted that I was the spiritual one who held the moral high ground; that I stood in the light and he in the dark, which made joining impossible. Thankfully I had enough sense not to indulge my arrogance. I opened to join with whatever higher truth lay behind the father I knew, even though this was difficult and beyond the realm of my experience at that time.
Now it was easy to join with my father’s true essence behind the defences. I was not asked to condone any painful past behaviour, but rather to join with his highest essence and eradicate the need for any judgement at all. Visualising myself walking towards him with a completely open heart I was able to make soul contact and accept him fully. It was an exceptionally beautiful moment – tears streamed down my face in gratitude and release. In seeing my father through different eyes, free of judgement and guilt, it became clear that he was, in fact, my gift from God. Through our difficulties I was forced to dig deep within myself for answers. Those answers walked me back into Boundless Love, into my true vocation at an early age, and gave me a depth of compassion that otherwise I could not have known. What I have had to learn in order to overcome these difficulties has gifted my life and the life of thousands of people more than anything else.
Seeing how much emotional barbed wire I had placed around my heart, defending myself against imminent attack, I realised how my defensiveness perpetuated the negative dynamic between us. Risky though this seemed, I stated my intention to lay down my armour completely and begin again. I discovered much later that as I took this stand for defencelessness, my father, on the other side of the world, independently decided for the first time in his life to obtain therapeutic support.
Having coffee with my Dad one morning I became aware that I no longer had to ‘work’ to keep my heart open to him. The old pain, fear and anger towards him had evaporated, leaving just profound gratitude, feelings of love, acceptance and sincere wishes for his happiness.
Grace can transmute the past Forgiveness can work for you too. In my spiritual counselling practice I have worked with countless people facing all kinds of betrayal, abandonment, injustice, abuse, hurt and fear, and each has found the courage to open to profound forgiveness and reap rewards beyond their dreams. It makes no difference how difficult the issue, or how great the mistake or who made it, forgiveness is one of the primary gateways through which breakthroughs occur.
Forgiveness asks you to turn within and take complete responsibility for your experience, without blaming or condemning yourself for landing there. Forgiveness asks you to realise that what you judge in others is the projection of what you find intolerable within yourself.
Claim your power to choose peace over being right, superior, in control, or holding the moral high ground.
as taught in Science of Mind metaphysics. It showed me how to identify problems and their hidden payoffs in my mind, and hand them over to the Divine for healing. I was stunned at how directly and powerfully such prayers released me back into a more truthful awareness. Neuroses, limiting beliefs and fears evaporated more effortlessly.
Children are not afraid to ask for insight when they do not understand. Do not content yourself with just a little less fear, God wants you to have complete peace of mind, a deeply sweet life and to know, give and receive Boundless Love.
Embrace your dark stories What is the dark story about yourself that you keep hidden? The story that says, ‘If they knew this about me they would run a mile.’ This is what keeps fear unnecessarily running your life. It is like believing there is a monster under your bed who will bite you on the backside the moment you let your guard down. Do not try to carve out or defend against this image. Instead try embracing it in the spirit of non-resistance and it will transmute.
As you commit more fully to your spirituality, you can often feel that you are growing apart from family and loved ones who may not understand your yearnings. Often they can feel threatened, feeling that they are losing you. Do not try to make others come with you. Accept your yearnings to ‘speak the same language’ spiritually with those you love, but give them the freedom to be who they are. Focus instead on practising increased acceptance and the heart of your spirituality with them. Celebrate differences rather than just tolerating them. Increase your appreciation of each person for the unique gifts they bring to your life. Cease trying to be understood and, instead, apply your practice more deeply. In doing so you become more energetically attractive. When your presence radiates deep acceptance and appreciation, others will naturally feel less threatened.