Recently we’re hearing a lot about the ‘path of love’. What does it mean to live the path of love? How can one practice this path?
Love goes hand in hand with trust and surrender. Women often naturally find themselves on the path of love, as it fits with the female body energy, which is receptive in the crown and the root chakras and actively giving in the heart. Men mostly feel more drawn to the ‘path of consciousness’ (consciousness equals light) and more easily move with its required discipline and meditative practice, striving for the absolute.
Each of these major paths –the path of love and the path of consciousness – can only lead us up to a certain point. Love without consciousness is blind and illusionary. Consciousness without love is dry and cold. One without the other is incomplete. Thus, for many of us, a time comes when we need to shift and align afresh, in order to keep evolving.
Ultimately, yin and yang have to merge, love and light need to become one. The two faces of God, the Father’s stillness – the absolute, that which never changes, and the Mother’s creation – the relative, that which ever changes, need to melt into ‘love-consciousness’ within us humans, as heaven on earth.
This shifting is beautifully illustrated by the story of Atisha (1). The Indian mystic Osho comments on Atisha in “The Book of Wisdom” (2).
“Atisha is one of the rare Masters, rare in the sense that he was taught by three enlightened masters. It has never happened before, and never since. He was born in India… In the Himalayas he attained… Then he never came back to India. He moved towards Tibet. He transformed the whole quality of Tibetan consciousness.” (2, 3)
Osho condenses Atisha’s (many) masters to three: one taught no-mind and emptiness (the path of consciousness). The second taught love and compassion (the path of love). And the third taught being love-in-action. I’d like to talk now about the third way, the marriage of consciousness and love, and being love-in-action.
Atisha left many flowers of wisdiom and greatly reformed Tibetan Buddhism. It’s my pleasure to pick what is for me the most beautiful of his flowers and now pass it on to you, my friends. This can be a mighty tool: Atisha’s Heart Meditation (3).
This technique has become my way of life, it has turned into a habit, a wonderful automatism, and it might enrich your life, too.
At first the concept here blows the esoteric western mind. We’re used to drawing in love and light when breathing in, and letting go of suffering and negativity on the out-breath. Actually, from another perspective, by this we add to the negativity of the world when we release this negative energy from our personal energy field and pour it out into the collective.
Atisha teaches it just the other way around: his lesson is to breathe-in pain and suffering, and breathe-out love and joy.
Strange, no? When I first heard of it, I instantly got scared, LOL. It went against the natural human mechanism of avoiding uncomfortable feelings and contradicted many other Lightworker techniques.
But, the Divine Humans’ heart is a huge transformer, it can transmute all energy into love (when we allow it, that is). We don’t need to protect the heart from pain; we need to utilize it in order to heal the pain.
My guidance tells me that there is no greater healing force in this galaxy than the heart of a human who has gone through the deepest darkness of suffering fear-consciousness and arisen to the playful, joyful, lighted heights of love-consciousness.
Atisha’s Heart Meditation is as easy as a technique can be. Instead of fighting against pain, ignoring it, avoiding it, and rejecting it, this way asks that we embrace it, calling all of our soul’s neglected aspects home into our hearts, and allowing the heart to do its job.
The hearts job is ever so simple, its work is transforming all energy into love. It’s as if we all have an built-in violet flame in our hearts; we only need to switch it on for the magic to take place, all by itself. The keyword to this is ‘allowing’.
It works amazingly! I use the heart transformation breath with my everyday pains and fears, my vasanas, with other people’s energies, while watching the news, with practically everything uncomfortable that comes up in me, or arrives for me from the outside world. It’s the perfect way to surrender to whatever life brings, instead of losing my energy in resistance.
I’ve even found it to be successful in a practical way in dramatic situations. It helped fifteen years ago when a man tried to rape me. A strong and heavy fellow, I quickly realized that resistance was futile. I relaxed and became still, and shifted to receiving his energy on the in-breath, allowing them to enter me from down there in the sex and power centers and then I drew them up into my heart.
With this energy, resting within my heart, I emanated love towards his heart. Guess what happened? He lost his desire within thirty seconds. His energy shifted, and in the end, surprisingly, we became friends.
On an even more dramatic occasion, twenty years ago, I was attacked in a park at night. Someone jumped at me from behind, threw me down on my knees and closed my mouth and nose with his hands. He stole my breath, the vehicle spirit uses to travel in and out of the body. Fighting against him cost me most of my remaining oxygen and led nowhere.
I perceived this guy as being empty, as if there was no one at home. There was no energetic presence I could respond to; as if something had switched off his consciousness and used him as a tool while he was somewhere else. I was confronted with a dark hole; there was no perceivable energy, no power, no greed, no intent to do whatsoever with me; except for a determination to keep me cut-off from breathing.
My breath was gone and I gave up on fighting against this no-thing-ness, while I realized that I was about to die. I remember thinking, ‘Ok, if this is what life has to offer now, I accept’, and I relaxed with it from the heart, while relaxing underneath the fellow’s hands. This being was utilizing my next great journey, thus, I thanked him and loved him for this opportunity to move on.
Today I ‘m certain that embracing the situation and loving this man brought him back to consciousness. As if something had suddenly switched on his light again, he became present in the situation, realized that he was about to kill me and shook me back into the body.
I learned the heart-transformer even works without the breath… I’m still alive and more joyfully breathing than ever…
When we don’t take things TO our hearts and carry them as a burden, but embrace them INTO our hearts and allow them to transform, we can get involved without getting attached. A conscious humans’ heart is a blast furnace of transformation; in transformational love-service, even watching the news becomes a prayer.
Starting the heart training with baby steps makes sense. This can be done by breathing in and embracing our personal pains, receiving them right into the heart, and showering love onto and into ourselves on the out-breath. Then we can expand this love, to our family, friends, and our neighbors.
Soon our hearts have become so strong, they can take in all the suffering of the world, and breathe out love, joy and bliss – like a fountain of love pouring out into the world.
We can make a difference, every single moment, and with practice it becomes easy. It’s made my life into a joy-ride. Are you coming along to join this light-play? It’ll change the world!
Footnotes:
(1) Atisha Dipamkara Srijnana is said to have studied with 157 masters, from almost all spiritual schools, religions, philosophies, music, logic and arts, known at his time (980-1054). More on Atisha’s life at https://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/approaching_buddhism/teachers/lineage_masters/life_atisha.html
(2) The Book of Wisdom: The Heart of Tibetan Buddhism: Commentaries on Atisha’s Seven Points of Mind Training – Osho
(free pdf-download: https://www.oshoba.org/books/The_Book_of_Wisdom.zip)
(3) https://www.osholeela.com/meditation/atisha.html
Deva is a long-time moderator at the Golden Age of Gaia forum. She was born and is living now in Germany, but also spent over a decade living in India.