God

From Bluetruth

What does it mean to open to God, or to love God?

Imagine somebody you love the most in your life, perhaps your child, your mother, your lover, or best friend. Feel what it is to love that person.

Now, pick an object near you, like this book, or the floor beneath you, or a pillow nearby. Love whatever object you choose with the same intensity with which you love your most-loved person.

You may feel strange loving a book, floor, or pillow so fully, but you can do it. Practice loving until you feel your chosen object with the same love you offer your most-loved friend.

When you can love an object as fully as your most-loved person, then practice loving the space around you. Love the space extending in front of you, behind you, left and right of you, above and below you. Love outwardly in all directions, with the same feeling with which you open to your most-loved person.

Then practice loving everything within you—even your darkest secret places of shame and perversity—with the same love you offer to your most-loved person. This may take some time, or you may be able to do it right away.

If you love one person, you can love God. God is everything and what is beyond everything—all of which you can love. Love everything and everyone that you know and don’t know, and you are loving God. Open to everything inside and outside of you, even the unknowable mystery beyond everything. Open to feel and love all, the visible and the unknown, and that is opening to God, or loving God.

Every day, set aside a few moments to do this: Start by feeling the person you love the most. Then, offer your same fullness of love to objects, to other people, and to the space around you, eventually loving inwardly and outwardly with no end.

Every instant you love so fully is enlightenment. But because you are used to contracting your feeling due to habit, in the next instant you may suddenly find yourself absorbed in picking your nose or scratching your chin as you work for world peace by writing your congressman.

Your loving may be truncated for days as you become lost in duties and chores, or mired in emotional turmoil, or gloating in brief success.

Instant enlightenment is to love, right now, as if you were loving your most-loved person. No matter what you are feeling or experiencing, you can love without holding anything back. This is what it means to love God.

You may find your attention absorbed in passing events—raising a family, succeeding at a career, talking, sexing, or eating. You may not be opening to God for the sake of your temporary experience. Your ever-changing life never quite fulfills you for good, and you know it.

So start by feeling the person you love the most, and open to include every aspect of each moment in the openness of your love.

Offering yourself open in this way is instant enlightenment.

Forgetting it is the usual life of subtle torment.