Meditative Living - God, Love & the Mind

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Meditative Living

Tom Nissimoff

DEUTSCH

ENGLISH

God, Love & the Mind

Compared to the millions of years of existence, the terms God and Love are fairly new. Instead of “being in awe of existence itself” – plants, animals, the world of minerals, the universe and our selves – of God being anywhere anytime, the term has been misinterpreted into a personal identity justifying conflict, even wars.

Even younger is the term Love. This “being in awe of existence as such” was and still is True Love. Have a look into very young eyes sometimes. How innocent! Un-conditioned love gazes back at you. The term love and romance has only been misinterpreted within the last 300 years through romantic ideas, most often leading to unrealistic expectations, often causing disappointment and frustration.

What is often called love is but subtle hope, an expectation that soon turns into an arrangement. What truly was innocent becomes a deal. Partners are supposed to end ones own loneliness and unhappiness. Miserable ourselves, we can’t allow our partners to be happy and may even try to control them. We can’t “create” happiness, we can’t “do” love. It comes naturally to us the moment we trust. Then a higher intelligence takes over. The world doesn’t and can’t give us any guarantee. Yet inside we know we’re safe. Control is just another sad story of how personalising fundamental terms lead to conflict and suffering.

The mind

Our minds at work make this happen. All fundamental truths, like truth itself, love, God, peace, pure heart and freedom are essentially not personal and can only be understood by direct experiences. The mind is you. To the logical mind these experiences are paradox and can never be satisfactorily explained. To the one who is fulfilled by love, by the joy of freedom, God, peace, by joy itself, he or she is in heaven – though this may only be momentary!

A comparing mind has another texture. It is never quiet. By nature it’s loud and active, pointing to the world outside. Even in the midst of serenity and simple beauty, questions and subtle suspicion linger. It’s never innocent. It can’t help it. The comparing mind is of tremendous value to the world of cause and effect, concepts and numbers, but it fails utterly with fundamental truths. Its world is the world of deals, profits, understanding and solutions – making sense!

The world of fundamental truths is the platform on which dual concepts – time and timelessness, cause and effect, questions and answers, problems and solutions – are acted out. We experience this in ourselves. There is a timeless, changeless quality within us and an unending stream of changing ideas, emotions and appearance we call character, identity or personality. That timeless, unchanging quality within us doesn’t know of any questions or problems, deals or profits. Here life is simply self-contained, self-fulfilling. Paradox? Yes, but real.

There’s a cartoon of an older couple sitting in their living-room. She’s working a crossword-puzzle: “World power with two letters?” He screams in triumph, “Me-ee!” The Zen master would answer, “No me, no problem.” When there’s no “me”, there’s just love, without conditions. You may want to find out for yourself. The amount of freedom you allow others indicates the depth of your love – and how much of that “me” is still in control. Sweet tender flowers can’t help but make any passer-by happy

GOD, LOVE & THE MIND