Finding the Supreme

Chapter 4 — Take a Sip

Magic happens when you begin to love self.

We could say it is the ultimate magic because loving yourself gives the Supreme your permission to approach you. As explained previously for pretty clear reasons, he does not do so until you say so.

This is perfectly reversed from legacy religious teachings. Teachings that we need to beg god to come to us. To minimize and abase our self. To do good works. To put god first, everyone else next, and me last. And some saints and sinners report that these old ways work. They never worked for me, and I have been seeking god since early teens. I do not know anyone  for whom these methods have produced the intensely desired result.

We are talking about a spontaneous experience of the mind blowing love and partnership of and with god, not an intellectual conclusion or an orientation towards a heaven of hope. We are talking about something real, now, terrific, and, as said earlier, casual. It is being found by the ultimate best friend.

I don’t mean to tell you what it is like. Your experience may be different. But I would bet a lot it will be whatever is your heart’s desire; it will be what you have always longed for. I think it will no doubt be the peak experience of your life. It may be what you have given up ever finding – being infinitely loved.

A Process

Let’s look at how we learned to love in the beginning.

I suggest that after we have been taught to deny ourselves, we are then instructed in the importance of loving everybody else.

But if we inquire seriously how we do that, we might someday wonder where the love is that we are supposed to give everyone else. I believe we are told to give “our” love to others. So if it’s our love, it must be inside of us.

So then, when we give it away, doesn’t it happen sort of like this?

Here is a diagram of the normal situation when we love someone.

Notice how the love I give to you skips over me. And the love you give to me skips over you. That is, we don’t let this love we are giving touch us as it directly and purposely flows out of us to another, We don’t let it bless our selves. How can I let it touch me? That is not what it’s for. Once we make the decision to give love to someone, that love is theirs, is it not? And wouldn’t it be stealing?

We love someone else all the time without loving ourselves. In fact this is mostly what we do.

Looking for Love

Let’s take perhaps the best case; we are looking for Love to give it away. Let’s consider parent and child, and if you are not a parent, let’s consider you and the one who knocks your socks off, the one you can’t live without, the one you know is The One.

We want to give our love away. It doesn’t matter why, and there may be a lot of reasons, but we are focusing in this discussion on the giving. One characteristic of love about which we have little doubt when we are truly, madly, deeply in love, is that we have enough to give. Enough to shower on our loved one. Parental love is simply and obviously infinite to the parent. Parents may get tired, irritated, distracted, and we don’t always give love the way we wish to, but do we ever fear that we don’t have enough to give?

Do we even think about it? Do we even in the midst of our intoxication for child, husband, romantic partner, ever ask ourselves if we have enough love to give to them? This is while we are still crazy in love, now, during this glorious feeling that we are so in love, we have so much love for them, that we may fear we are going to explode with love.

Here is the way one five year old put it, and could it be said more beautifully?

Well, don’t we? Don’t we romantically or parentally or in whatever way we love, do we not just overflow with love for them? Does it feel like actually exploding? Do we not sometimes feel we are ‘coming apart’, just losing ourselves in the flow of love pouring out of us that sometimes we pour out too, we may not know who we are, but one thing we know for sure – is we are different when we are loving someone. And we are different in a way we have always wanted to be different.

When we are in the throes of loving, we change identity, and it isn’t scary at all, is it? What if in contrast to losing ourselves in love, one ordinary day when we are not crazy in love with anyone, and maybe we just have a backache or something, we suddenly didn’t know who we were when we were going to the grocery store? We might end up in the emergency room in the most severe panic attack. In the normal course of life, what is more cherished and essential than our identity?

However, when we are in the throes of love, we may not know who we are. But isn’t it a relief? Do we care who we are? If we had to choose then between absorption in our own identity as we usually are, or absorption in our loved one, would there be one second of ponder? It’s inconceivable, isn’t it, that we would say something like: hmmmm, Joe or me? Sally or me? My daughter or me, my son or me? It’s ridiculous isn’t it, it even sounds inhuman to think of thinking so. No. It’s the loved one, that’s it. If not that, we don’t think we’re in love.

We should have established that being in love in the normal way is crazy. Crazy in love.

So we are totally focused on giving the most important thing we can imagine, our love, away as fast and as completely as possible.

1. Number one, don’t we fear that we will ever run out?

2. Number two, do we even think about where is the love coming from that we are giving away so beautifully and wonderfully?

3. No, and No.

Our interest now is in looking at question two, “where is the love” as the once popular song crooned. “Where is the love?” If we do wonder about it for one second, is it not totally obvious to us that it is inside us, it comes from inside us, and that this quite obvious fact is one of the reasons we usually know and don’t ponder that it just makes us feel so incredibly good about giving love away.

We know two things without question.

1. The source of the love we give to another is inside us.

2. It is plenty.

There is more than plenty. There are gobs. Gobs and gobs. We never look in the love larder to see if our supply is running out. Out would be rageous. Out would be impossible. Running out of love is one thing that when we are in love, we never fear. On the planet of fear, this is not one of them.

Pretty interesting. On the planet of lack, in the very domain of uncertainty, we do not fear running out of what we are certain is the most important commodity in the world. The abundance of internal, reliable, glorious love is not a subject of normal, rational, worldly, doubt. At least not while we are deeply in love.

A similar interesting and also relatively ignored reality is that the two physical things most needed by us, air and water, are so intimate with us that we don’t realize it. We are surrounded by air, and there is enough. And on this planet, things are arranged so that water FALLS OUT OF THE SKY. It falls out of the sky! Rain and wind being main component of weather, they are the most popular topic.

What would happen if we walked up to a stranger and said, “Looks like it’s going to Love today, doesn’t it.”

An extra thing to do with love

Rain and air are outside of us. But we have agreed now that there is an infinite reservoir of love inside us. Rather adroitly set up, wouldn’t we think? Infinite love inside?

Somehow we have been programmed in life that when you give love to someone it is “theirs”, it actually belongs to them and is fully for them even as it inhabits us. Our love is not allowed to really be love when it is on the way to another. So it’s not really allowed to be itself as it goes to another where it will be allowed to be itself. Love just loves. It loves everything it touches. But not when we have packaged it up to give away.

That is why we don’t ever let our love touch us.

Love is not allowed to love as it transits through our awareness to another. It may never occurs to us to enjoy and benefit from the beauty and solace of this love coursing through our selves. And we certainly don’t easily believe it is for ourselves as well as for somebody else. And as we lovingly give it to someone else we find some way to ignore it within us on its way away.

We might consider the classic state of this in the Mom. Don’t moms, and are they not expected to, deny themselves as they give love to everybody else? Isn’t that how we know a “good mom?” She just gives and gives and never takes anything for herself. Her reward might be to know we think she is good, not allowing herself to think she is good. Would that not detract from her being a good mom? To get distracted by herself makes her less vigilant about our needs? My answer is Yup, that’s what we do and what she buys into.

It’s quite amazing to realize we are convinced love is inside us, and we know it is the most precious thing we can experience in this life. But we don’t experience our own love. The only love we intend to experience is the love we get from somebody else.

Moms and all of us undoubtedly love loving. It feels wonderful to love, to give love, no matter what. But I suggest we do not let the love we love love us.

So we think about our love, but from an inner distance. We don’t dare touch it because maybe we know deeply that you cannot touch love without it transforming you. That it is by nature sticky. That we’ll never get it off us, and we will walk around pasted in our own love and people will say, “That one, they are obsessed with themselves, can’t they love anybody else except themselves?” In fact, don’t we usually think somebody who seems to love themselves a lot is a narcissist, is “full of themselves”? Is something wrong with my being full of me? Am I supposed to be full of not-me? To be so is basically to be schizoid. Even Pink Floyd, “There’s somebody in my head, but it’s not me.” But nevertheless, there is a strong cultural bias against self love. Parenthetically, we should distinguish between narcissistic self love and genuine self love, which is not of ego. Genuine self love allows and includes self knowledge, and when we know who we really are, we know we are not an ego.

Loving someone to get love back from them is what the Course In Miracles calls a “special relationship” The special relationship is in distinct contrast to the only other style of relationship which it calls the “Holy Relationship”. The special relationshiop could also be called the usual relationship, the ordinary relationship, or perhaps even the boring relationship. Boring because don’t we sit and twiddle our thumbs, or more accurately twiddle our hearts, waiting for the payoff of seeing our love hit its target, the loved one as a target, and we are interested in seeing the transformation and gratitude of the loved one for our love. So much gratitude that they can’t help but love us back. And can’t this take a long time? If so, what are we supposed to do in the love domain until we know if they love us back?

It is called ‘unrequited love’, and if you look up requited you find it means “to repay”. So we can see the special relationship is really like a business transaction. It’s a bundle of expectations. We want quality control and a guarantee. If I have squandered all my love on you, I might stop loving you until I see that you are requiting my love, filling up my deficit that I spent on you. Credits and debits. Double entry lovekeeping.

And of course if one of us starts keeping track of the balances in the love account …..

So we have packaged up or put in a pipeline the most indescribably awesome stuff in the universe and made sure we don’t touch it ourselves. To be a good person, I make sure that it doesn’t touch me, in transit to you.

• Is it because we do think we don’t have enough inside? So we might use it up if we touch it during its holy mission to the ‘outside’, or diminish its effective arrival, which we want to be overwhelming.

• Do we want it to be overwhelming to the recipient so the object of our love is obligated to do the same, and send us overwhelming love too.

• Is that is the only way we can have love? If it comes from somebody else?

• And isn’t it overwhelming love that we do want to experience? Does anybody want just a little bit?

• Yet we deny ourselves even a little bit of the overwhelming love we are sending to the other?

• Really, truly, what is up with this? How come I do this?

Rather than spending time in analyzing the why of all this oddness, let me suggest what to do. This love coming out of us is an endless tumbling and alive river of infinite and perfect beauty.

Take a sip.

We better whisper this at first.

Take just a little sip. Nobody will notice. And a little sip won’t take much away from your beloved. See what it’s like. Think of it like quality control if you are using the transaction model of love. You want to make sure this love you are sending is the real thing, and how can you tell if you don’t taste it yourself?

We do this with soup. Why not with love? A teaspoon now and then doesn’t deny our loved ones their lunch, does it?

I can doubly enjoy this love of mine. I can recognize it is infinite, can’t be diminished by me or anyone. I can take a sip of this immense elixir as it goes through me. If it’s “in” me, is it not really mine? If it’s mine, can’t I have some?

And of course I can also enjoy seeing the love being received and accepted, which is the usual case.

I am laughing in rueful recognition as I write this. The normal situation of special relationships rightly seen is completely unexplainable. Let’s review it quickly in summary form as soundbites, and see how we feel about this after we do see it in compressed form.

1. Love is infinite.

2. Even a little bit of the infinite is infinite.

3. I am full of it. 🙂

4. It is extreme delight to give it away.

5. It cannot be lessened by anything or anyone.

6. It is gold plated invincible, perfect, going everywhere it is allowed.

7. But I am afraid to sample my own.

The point is not to ridicule ourselves, but it seems OK to ridicule the situation. No matter how it became established. Is it not completely hilarious, in a squirmy sort of way?

I’ve already convinced myself my love is inside me because I see it go by on my love train to Sally or Bob.

Love is everything. Even the Beatles said “Love is all there is.” I have love inside of me. Therefore I have everything. But I won’t let me have the everything that I have.

Talk about somebody who deserves love and healing. Somebody in this situation is denying themselves everything in the midst of everything. The love they deserve to heal from this mess better not be contingent, it better not be from outside of them. Instead it better be a guarantee that cannot come and go, because its mission is so important. So what is one to do then, once one knows they own the solution to life? It’s theirs. The love inside us is not really belonging to anyone else, how could it? They have their own infinite supply, and like us, do or don’t know it.

When we take a sip of our own love, it shows us that by definition we are lovable. We are both loveable and love-able. We are able to love and we are ale to be loved because we oh my gosh, loved ourselves a little and there was no reprisal from other belief systems. It proves it because we do it. Wow, if I can love me, anyone can love me. Actually, I was the last hold out. Mom loved me, Dad loved me, but I never did.

The love inside of us is able to liberate us from fear of experiencing itself. But how do we get it started? It’s a catch 22, is it not? If we won’t let ourselves experience the love inside of us that can let us experience the love inside of us, what is it possible to do? How do we get started?

How can we allow our love to allow our love?

Well,

why not take a little sip

and see what happens

It’s ok

It gives us a trailer of a complete reorganization of the universe…

Is the following what we can all look forward to?

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