"The Buddha said, 'If you truly loved yourself, you would never harm another.'"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CqZZECisR0&feature=related
The Power of Love
Love is a pure and radiant flame. When we follow the path of love, we find our spiritual life, our inner life, most fulfilling. Nothing can be greater than love. Love is life, and love itself is spontaneous nectar and delight. If love means possessing someone or something, then that is not real love; that is not pure love. If love means giving and becoming one with everything, with humanity and Divinity, then that is real love.
Real love is our total oneness with the object loved and with the possessor of love. Who is the possessor of love? God.
Whom are we loving? We are loving the Supreme in each individual. When we love the body, we bind ourselves; when we love the soul, we free ourselves. It is the soul in the individual, the Supreme in each human being, that we have to love.
You can consciously give pure love to others if you feel that you are giving a portion of your life-breath when you talk to them or think of them. This life-breath you are offering just because you feel that you and the rest of the world are totally and inseparably one. When there is oneness, it is all pure love.
The Path of the Heart...
Divine love is the quickest way to realize the Highest. The mind has played its role. Now, the world is crying for the wealth of the heart, which is love. If we follow the path of the heart, we will see that deep within the heart, the soul abides. True, the light of the soul permeates the whole body, but there is a specific place where the soul resides most of the time... and that is in the heart. The spiritual heart is located in the center of the chest. If we want to establish free access to our soul, we have to focus our attention, our concentration, on the heart. This is the center of pure love and oneness.
You can reach the spiritual heart through concentration and meditation. If you want to do this, every day for a few minutes, you should concentrate on the heart and nowhere else. You have to feel that you do not have a head, you do not have legs, you do not have arms; you have only the heart. When you stay in the mind, life can seem like a dry piece of wood. But when you stay in the heart, life can be turned into a sea of pure love and bliss. If you can keep your consciousness in the heart, you will gradually begin to experience a spontaneous feeling of oneness. When you cultivate the spiritual soil of the heart, you will find growing there, spontaneous love for God and spontaneous oneness with God's creation.
The Story of Ramesh and Gopal...
Once there was a young boy named Ramesh, who was a very good student. His parents were not only rich, but also extremely kind.
At school, the students used to bring food from home to eat during lunch hour. One day, Ramesh realized that his friend Gopal had not eaten anything for lunch for a few days. Ramesh went to his friend and asked why he had not brought anything to eat with him. Gopal said, "My mother could not give me anything. She said we had nothing at home."
Ramesh said, "Do not worry. I will share with you." "No, I cannot take your food," replied Gopal.
"Of course you can," insisted Ramesh. "My parents give me much more food than I need." Finally, Gopal agreed, and for a few weeks, the two boys shared Ramesh's lunch.
One day, Gopal stopped coming to school. Ramesh was concerned. When he asked the teacher why his friend was not coming anymore, the teacher told him, "He comes from a poor family. His parents cannot afford to pay the school fees. Therefore, he can no longer come to school."
Ramesh felt sad for his friend. When school was over, he took down Gopal's address from his teacher and went to Gopal's house. Ramesh begged his friend to come back to school, saying that he would ask his parents to pay the fee. Gopal's parents were deeply moved by his kindness, and Gopal again started going to school.
Gopal's father was an old man. In a few years' time, he died. The family became totally poverty-stricken, and Ramesh supported them with his own money. When Gopal's sister was stricken with a serious disease, the family could not afford the hospital bills. Again, Ramesh helped them out. In every way, he was the friend and guardian of Gopal's family.
Both Ramesh and Gopal completed high school and went to college. One day Gopal said to Ramesh, "To say that my heart is all gratitude to you is an understatement. I love you more than I love my own life." Ramesh answered him, "My friend, if you love me, that is more than enough for me. You do not have to love me more than your own life."
Gopal said, "But I do, and I want to prove it." Then he opened his penknife and cut his own arm. Naturally, he began bleeding. Gopal placed a few drops of blood on the feet of Ramesh. Ramesh cried, "What are you doing, what are you doing?" He touched the cut on Gopal's arm and placed a few drops of blood on his own heart, saying: "This is the right place for your life-blood. I give you my earthly treasure in the form of material wealth. You give me your heart's love, which is Heavenly wealth beyond all measure."
The Soul's Legacy
The first step in nourishing your soul is to realize that it exists. We're more than a body and a brain. We're souls having a human experience.
The nature of the Soul do not change very much from one lifetime to the next. What changes is one's awareness. At the level of the soul, we know everything we need to know. For some reason, we have to experience physical lifetimes to learn in a different way. This is the only place where we have physical bodies and emotions.
Our task here is to become more Godlike, to recognize the divine and spiritual nature of our soul. To do that, we need to unlearn rather than learn. When we unlearn, fear, violence, greed, ego and power... then kindness, joy, love and spiritual wisdom are all there. We are constantly progressing through many spiritual dimensions. When we have finally progressed to the level of complete integration with our soul, we find God.
We all have a tendency to slip back into the 3-dimensional world. There are several things we can do to stay in touch with our soul. The most important thing is to go within. This doesn't have to be formal Eastern meditation. You can meditate with your eyes open. You can meditate while walking or being close to nature. The purpose is to remind yourself of your true nature, which is that of a spiritual being. You are not your body.
The body is like a car and you're the driver. As you find your true nature, you find that you are really a being of love. And when you think about it, you see that everyone else is, too. So besides meditating, practice acts of love. Reach out to others. Don't worry so much about the end results. As you do this, you recognize the unity and universality of our nature. Souls don't have races or sexes or religions. They are beyond artificial divisions.
The more you go within, the more you understand your true nature, and the more joy and happiness you feel in your life. That is very motivating. It's so pleasant that it inspires us to increase the time spent meditating or helping others or giving and receiving love. For that reason, the process of rediscovering the soul gets easier as you go along. On the other hand, we work on different traits at different times. In one series of lifetimes, you may be working on greed; in another, lust; and in another, violence. As you conquer one negative trait, you may go back to the beginning with another. There are starts and stops.
As you come to a new lifetime, you may have forgotten some of the joy of finding the soul. But there will be reminders to lead you along the way. We are all heading in the same direction, but perhaps at different speeds. Often when a traumatic or catastrophic event occurs, we don't understand the significance. But with time and understanding, we see how that event caused our soul to grow. When we view the event with a different perspective, we see that it was necessary for our spiritual growth... even though it was painful at the time.
It may be understood that the most traumatic lifetimes are where the most growth has occurred. Sometimes, an easy lifetime, where everything is smooth, means we're resting and not really learning as much as quickly. Sometimes, a person might choose to do two or three lifetimes in one because the progress is so rapid. We're allowed to do that...
A good metaphor for our progress is to think of ourselves as multifaceted diamonds. Some of us have facets that are covered with dirt and tar, which stands for ignorance. All of us are the same under the dirt and tar, but some have many clean facets; others, just a few. When all the facets are clean and the diamond is gleaming beautifully, the solid form is transformed into light. That is our soul.
It is amazing that our souls - our eternal essences, with all their hopes and dreams and visions of an eternal world - are contained within these temporal bodies. My soul is the eternal part of me that lives in my body, day in and day out. In a way, my soul is the bridge between spirits and body, and as such, is a uniter of opposites. The unity that is created by soul is crucial to my well-being. Without soul at center, I would either transcend into spirit or become mired in matter.
We are all part of a universal soul. At some level, we are all the same. We are all connected. Everyone in our drama is a facet of ourselves, ans we are a facet of them. We are all facets of the same energy - an energy possessing incredible wisdom and love. We all have God within us. It is only through the Grace we receive from God, that we are able to keep walking, that our souls are able not only to survive, but flourish and be filled with life and love.
When the soul leaves, the body experiences death.
We've got it backward. We believe we need the body to live. The truth is... the body needs us. The soul is the spark from the great fire. There is nothing in Jesus or Buddha that isn't in us. People ask what must they become to be loving. The answer is "nothing." It is a process of letting go of what you thought you had become and allowing your true nature to float to the surface naturally. Then there is no difference between you and God. There is nothing to do, but be. To nourish the soul, is to rest in being.
To nourish the soul means to become kinder, more compassionate, wiser and more loving... often through the making of difficult choices that foster growth rather than safety. The nourishment and growth of the soul is the very reason for human life. When we nourish the soul, we nourish God... increasing the abundance of the life that we can see - our children, our society - and the levels of the life that we don't see at all. In a larger sense, soul is the substance of the universe, knowing itself and growing itself.
Chi Energy I Am Pure Energy Prying Open The Third Eye Journey Into the Altered State of Awareness
Garden of Self-Realization The River of Love... Journey Into Light The Breath of Life
