“Love is the secret password to every soul.” ~ Anthony Douglas Williams

These eight words—particularly the word love—are all we need to know, the rest is all commentary.

If only we could connect to and embrace such simplicity, such mindfulness.

Our soul’s calling is to live a life a purpose, love, fulfillment and service. Yet, it’s the challenge of living in our modern society, that leads to disconnection from our soul. Most of us grow up in an environment that pulls us away from our inherent nature, which is love.

Our all-knowing source we know as love, yet for most people, we only visit a church, temple or holy places on Sundays or special holidays to remind us there is something greater. Then we go back to “reality.” Just look around and see what humanity has created—a distortion, a separation from love.

Why do we disconnect from ourselves and is there something we can do about it?

Our conditioning is set to control, or the attempt to control our environment, our life. Many even have air conditioning to control the temperature.

Western society creates control freaks. It actively promotes fear-based thinking. Only fear can lead to the desire to control.

Fear separates us from reality.

Fear distorts our experience tangibly. Fear separates us from experiencing our true nature and being grateful for simply being.

The antidote is simple.

A single deep breath opens the path to oneness, invites contemplation along the path of stillness and inner knowing.

From a larger perspective, we are experiencing love.

Inherently, at our core, we are loving beings. If I look around at what we have created, it is from a thinking and belief system of separation and disconnection from source energy, separation from compassion. Our conditioning and belief systems are not who we are.

The Dalai Lama, after many years of spiritual communion, stated that, “Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.”

Hence we are chasing things and escaping things that seem real, yet are transitory in nature. However much we chase physical desires will never satisfy our spiritual hunger in the material world.

The things we think are real are temporary illusions. Nothing physical in this world lasts. This concept is really a license to let go more and enjoy life’s journey. If we could know that everything is ephemeral, doesn’t it just make fun and laughter spontaneous. Why take anything personally or seriously? Is anything so serious that we forget to laugh and have fun?

There are physical drives and desires that need fulfilling. It is not necessary to suppress our natural needs. The desperation, sadness, feeling of being “lost” and addictions many people have experienced and are experiencing are what needs addressing—mostly asking for compassion.

It’s not to say that physical pursuits are pointless in themselves, just to say that all will pass away except our soul. The sudden shock of a lost loved one, the ending of a relationship, lost job, financial loss or serious health concern doesn’t need to be an impediment to our soul growth.

Loss and change can become the bedrock of our soul’s growth and spiritual development.

The knowledge of the state of changeability, or anicca—of nothing being permanent—is an essential gateway to wisdom. It’s so important that we are constantly aware of this impermanence.

Why is anicca a key to understanding?

When we are suffering, we know it will come to an end. When we are enjoying pleasure, we know it will come to an end.

Once we can accept deeply the concept of impermanence, it allows our mind calm, it allows us to rest at night. We know that all things will pass away. It removes a lot of the obstacles to mindfulness we experience and the reasons we feel stressed.

Perhaps with all our air conditioning, heating, warming and cooling devices—the products of our technology—we are failing to feel the seasons, and attempting to maintain a neutral space that is most comfortable to us, but prevents us from feeling the seasons of life, the impenetrable changing nature of the world around us.

Always changing.

Or in the words of Kelsang Gyatso, the 7th Dalai Lama:

“If you look closely at and contemplate deeply the people and things that appear around you, you can see that all are in constant flux. Everything becomes a teacher of impermanence.”

The concept behind spiritual development practices, like prayer and meditation, is that they deepen and refine our idea of pleasure. If achievement defines our self-identity and meaning defines our goals, through a spiritual practice, we can shift our identity into something more pure, refined and long-lasting.

“Love is a flower of silence. It flowers only in silence, because it flowers in communion. If you cannot be without thoughts, you cannot be in love.” ~ Osho, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Volume 2

The secret password to our souls is not highfalutin complexity controlled and owned by the gatekeepers of wisdom. It is all around us. We are all invited to share it, embrace it, feel it, give it freely. Love cannot be owned, clung to or controlled.

Love is our birthright.

Welcome back home to silence.

Welcome in stillness.

 ~

Author: David Arneson

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: flickr