The Greatest Love

The Most Important Relationship You Could Ever Have

Everyone of us has a place, in our hearts there's a space, that is home to the greatest love of all.

This love transcends everything we think we know about the world of form, the realm of thought, ideas, beliefs and dogma. 

It transcends all sense of "myself", "my life", "my story", everything that we conventionally think of as "me", in fact it transcends everything that seems to us so real.

This love is the energy of all life, this love is consciousness, the ground of all being, it is not out there, it is in you, it is part of you, it is you.

But, and here's the kicker, you probably don't know it, and you can't feel it.

Please re-read the first 5 paragraphs above and then take a moment, and observe your inner response to these first few sentences of this article.

When I say "inner response" I mean what did you feel? [With respect, what you think is unimportant.]

If your felt inner response is one of indifference, and you felt nothing, then this article is most likely not for you, and I sincerely recommend you don't waste your time reading further.

If you felt hostility, or attraction, or if you felt a twinge of something you can't articulate, then please read on.

Everything I have written in this article is based on my own direct experience.

I am not asking you to believe me. I am not asking you to have faith in what I say. I am not asking you to believe in nor have faith in anything.

I am writing this for the one in a thousand readers for whom this resonates, and to encourage you to act on your inner response to this article.

What Is The Greatest Love?

We live in an energetic universe.

The highest and most powerful energy in our universe is love.

You can experience it and connect with it in your heart.

'The greatest love' is:

• The true nature of consciousness.
• The ground of all being.
• Inside of you.
• The felt sense of sunyata / emptiness.
• The awakened heart, the felt sense of the buddha nature.
• The felt sense of the Tao.
• The felt sense of God.
• The divine within.
• The true nature of your spirit.
• Immortal.
  
• A love that transcends the duality of your day to day lived experience.
• Experienced relationally within duality [i.e. you can have a relationship with it].
• The most all encompassing and fulfilling experience of love that you can ever have.
• The love that will never let you go.
• Not a concept or a belief, nor is it a dogma or religion. This is a lived experience.
• Deeper than a parent's love, closer and more intimate than a lover's love and more supportive than the very best friend.
• Your greatest guide and mentor.
  
• The greatest love that you can ever know.
• The greatest love that most people will never know.

How And Where Do You Find The Greatest Love?

The short answer to "how" you find the greatest love is that you don't find it, it finds you.

The "where" is in your heart.

If you are motivated to create the conditions where this can happen, here are 2 simple guidelines:

[1] Still your mind

The practise of mindfulness will facilitate this. You will start to notice the space between your thoughts. It is from this space that you will become aware of consciousness.

[2] Just ask

The fast track to aligning with consciousness is to shift your focus away from your self and your present circumstances and onto your higher self or your spiritual self.

If that is difficult just place a hand on your heart and ask the simple but powerful question: "I can't do this on my own, please help me find the greatest love?"

To paraphrase stanza 70 in the Tao Te Ching:

How Do You Have A Relationship With The Greatest Love?

The context of relationship

The majority of my experience with the major world religions has been with Buddhism and Christianity.

Based on this, it is my view that Buddhism in general and Zen practise specifically offers the most direct route to learning how to stop thinking, quieten your mind, transcend duality and allow space for the world of consciousness to emerge.

As we noted above, this transcends words and form and the everyday realm of duality and is experienced in meditation and contemplation, but - and this is a very big "but"  - it can also be experienced, within the everyday realm of duality, in relationship.

I have found that Christianity - which functions almost exclusively within the world of duality - offers us relationship with consciousness and the experience of it within your heart.

Buddhism focuses on the enlightened mind and Christianity reveals the awakened heart.

Buddhist insight is focused primarily on the realm of non-duality, whereas the Christian insight is focused almost exclusively within the realm of duality.

These insights are complementary and we need both.

The case for contemplation, meditation and transcendence is well established and our purpose here is to explore an additional approach that works well within the everyday realm of duality where most of us spend nearly all of our time.

The Christian insight on relationship is framed in the language and context of a relationship with God and, through the revelation of Jesus, this is presented as relationship with God as father.

This is of course distinctly patriarchical and masculine and reflects the long standing bias of traditional Christian teaching. However, and without getting sidetracked into a theological cul-de-sac, the Holy Spirit does represent the feminine aspect of God.

We really do not need to get hung up on the baggage surrounding Christian theology and teachings, the key point here is that the Christian insight is relational.

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The characteristics of relationship

If you are fortunate enough to enjoy a close loving relationship with someone, you want to spend time with them. You want to understand them and share things with them.

The conditions for a relationship with consciousness are similar to ordinary human relationships, but this is rather more than making friends with the girl or guy who lives next door or your relationship with your partner.

We are talking here about a relationship with Consciousness, God, Emptiness, The Ground of All Being - The Greatest Love.

This is the most important relationship you can ever have.

Heads and not hearts

One of the biggest reasons why so many people miss this is because most people live in their heads and not their hearts.

In my experience, so very many Christians' and Buddhists' understanding and experience of their spirituality is cerebral, it is all about the realm of ideas, concepts, doctrines and dogmas. I am not close enough to the other major world religions but I sense that human nature being what it is they will be no different.

And yet in ordinary human relationships we relate mainly at the heart level.

The key charactistic of your relationship with consciousness, manifesting as the greatest love, is a heart based relationship.

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Relationship guidelines

[1] Making space and giving time

As in any ordinary human relationship you have to make time every day to spend with consciousness.

Christians call this their prayer time and Buddhists meditate.

[2] Communication

One hallmark of a healthy relationship is the ability of those involved to communicate openly with each other about how they’re feeling.

There is quite a lot of baggage surrounding the idea and practice of prayer and in my experience this is all about how it is framed.

I prefer to see prayer as communion, which means 'together in oneness'

I see prayer as a communing with consciousness.

It also includes communing with the natural world in all of its multitude of various and wonderful manifestations.

One of the most powerful ways of communing with consciousness is just to be present. As with any close human relationship sometimes a companionable silence is sufficient.

Other times when you feel the need to say something, share something or ask something - just say it and simply direct your communication to your heart or if you prefer to your higher self. There is no set formula, there are no magic words.

As with all good ordinary human communication between friends, the best communication is spontaneous, authentic and spoken from the heart.

[3] Listening

Back in the days when I was a regular church goer, I would quite often hear people saying: 'How can I know when God is speaking to me....how can I hear the voice of God...?'

Some years later when I started practicing mindfulness I found a significant key to answering that question, and it is called mindful listening.

In my experience the best way to hear the voice of consciousness is with a quiet mind.

Over time, and with consistent practice, I have found that you become attuned to listening to [and sometimes seeing] what consciousness is saying to you.

I have also found that the regular reading of spiritually inspirational books, articles, texts and sutras is another powerful way of hearing the voice of consciousness. I regularly read material from Christian, Buddhist and Tao sources, I also find material from people like Eckhart Tolle who are non aligned to any major belief system can have the same effect.

On occasions I have heard the voice of consciousness through the words of spiritual teachers.

There are other infrequent occasions when I have heard words in my head that speak a profound and sometimes urgent truth into a situation.

There have also been other even more infrequent occasions when I have felt profoundly spoken to by what I can only describe as transcendent experiences. I rarely talk about this but I did recount one experience I had in the events surrounding the death of my father.

The voice of consciousness may speak through your intuition. When this is the case, it is important not to confuse the voice of intuition with the voice of your anxiety.

The voice of consciousness may also speak through circumstances and you may detect a clear indication or intimation of a direction to take. However, you need to be especially vigilant that you are not falling prey to one or more cognitive biases or many other causes of unintentional human stupidity

[4] Intimacy & Total Honesty

As in normal every day human relationships, intimacy and total honesty is extremely important in your relationship with consciousness.

There should be no barriers and no holding back when you reveal your deepest inner feelings to consciousness.

This is especially true when it comes to negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, despair, anger and aggression.

If you were fortunate enough to have enjoyed a happy childhood remember how as a child you shared your feelings, fears and joys with a parent [or other primary care giver]. Then try to imagine a relationship that is a hundred times deeper and more all embracing than that childhood relationship you enjoyed.

Consciousness is referred to as the greatest love because that is exactly what it is. There is no love in the universe that surpasses this love.

[5] Trust

Consciousness loves you and invites a relationship with you.

The greatest love is always seeking relationship with every human being on this planet and who has ever been on this planet.

Most of the time this will be an unconsummated relationship in the sense that there is no reciprocation.

For many of us trust is hard. We carry wounds from our past. I certainly have, and yet I have found that it is our wounds, our vulnerabilities, that are the key to our relationship with consciousness, the greatest love.

"I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." [Sayings of Jesus. Matt 18.2-5]

Without disappearing down a psychobabble rabbit hole, I would say that based on my personal experience, the best way to develop your relationship with the greatest love is from your inner child - open, vulnerable and trusting.

If you do this you will find, as I have done, a love that will not let you go.

What Are The Benefits Of A Relationship With The Greatest Love?

1. The Greatest Love invites a relationship with you.

If you pause for a moment and reflect on that statement it is fairly mind-blowing but also unsettling because, as we noted above, many of us carry trust wounds from our past. So, enter and build your relationship in steps and stages, and allow trust to develop and grow.

2. The Greatest Love has your best interests at heart.

If you trust it, it will never let you down. It will always watch your back and give you what you need. It may not always be what you want, but it is always what you need.

3. The Greatest Love is personal.

The expression of this love is deeply and intensely personal to you and in ways that you may not yet be able to imagine, and this includes: guidance, fulfilment, deep joy, lasting peace and eternal life.

What Is The Cost Of A Relationship With The Greatest Love?

All love requires sacrifice.

The greatest love requires your greatest sacrifice - your ego!

The more you engage with consciousness you will find that your relationship with your ego changes.

You increasingly become aware of how it gets things horribly wrong because of:

• Your ego's desire to be in control
• Your ego usurping the role of your higher self
• Your ego disconnecting you from your true source of power

This leads to the inescapable realisation that you need to drop your ego.

Over time it becomes painfully apparent that dropping the ego is not a one-time experience but a frequent activity that should be undertaken at least daily and often many times throughout the day.

Then you discover that as you take your higher self seriously it engages and starts to take you seriously, and everything changes.

This is about a 180 degree shift from living MY life to a life that is lived by consciousness and at last, the realisation that you have come home.

Next Article:

Everything Is Connected And Why You Don't Feel It

Further Reading:

Living The Awakened Heart [Buddhism]

Discovering the Inner Mystery [Christianity]

Resources and Further Reading On This Site:

Coram Deo - Living In Consciousness

Amazing Grace - The Majesty And The Mercy of Freedom From Your Pain

Like A Prayer - Life Is A Mystery

Intuition Or Anxiety - Are There Angels Or Devils Crawling Here?

Dance Into The Light - How To Stop Chasing Your Tail

Your Ebenezer Stone Of Help - Remembering Your True Source Of Power

What It Means To Live In A Participatory Universe

Return from: "The Greatest Love" to: Walking The Talk

Or Return to: What Is Spirituality?

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