Index
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is the cultivation of our ability to love — not just to love God, or the Divine, or our True Nature but also our fellow human beings. Cultivating that love is, in many ways, the most potent spiritual practice available to us.
It may also be the most challenging. The ability to love others is — in a very real sense — both the foundation and the goal of all spiritual striving. This book is rooted in one very simple proposition: the secret to finding real happiness in life lies not in material achievements or rewards, but in expanding our experience of love, growing our capacity to love, and consciously recognizing that we are “all One.”
But how do we do that? It is a daunting and challenging process. For a variety of reasons we don’t often experience “Oneness” with other human beings. More often we feel separate and disconnected. We say, “Sure, I understand intellectually that we are all One...but that person is incredibly rude, unkind, or unconscious.” Or, “that person has treated me horribly and is unworthy of forgiveness.” We sometimes conclude that the people we don’t like must have somehow fallen outside the One, that they could
not possibly be part of the One Light that created everything.
How do we experience Oneness — with everyone — and still deal with the plethora of injustices and slights we encounter on a daily basis? How do we deal with a difficult partner, a petulant child, a rude neighbor, an overbearing boss, or an unforgiving in-law? How do we deal with a violent criminal, a murderer, or a government leader who isn’t representing what we feel to be the essence of truth and justice? How do we feel connected with people who hurt us? And why should we?
The primary reason we strive to feel this connection is that we are all One. We are all connected. The illusion of separateness is actually the root cause of all human problems. It is the source of our most painful and frustrating experiences. It is the source of our sadness and our fear. It is the source of most of our arguments, resentments, and misunderstandings. It is the source of conditional love, the belief that life won’t be complete without a particular person being with us and acting the way we want them to act. Our illusion of separateness is what has enabled
us to abuse the planet we live on and to feel righ-teously indignant when someone points out that we may be participating in our planet’s demise.
Our illusion of separateness is also the source of war. It is the feeling that if someone else has something, they have taken it away from us. It is the conviction that we have to take something from someone else in order to be safe, in order to survive. It is the belief that we must — however subtly — fight others, and put them out of our hearts in order to protect what we feel we “own” or what we feel we need. It is the inability to understand that there is enough for all of us — enough food, enough clothing, enough resources, and enough love. If we learn to share it, we will all prosper, physically, socially, and spiritually.
Nothing in this book is intended to suggest that we should subject ourselves to abusive people or allow violent people to be free to do harm. But being angry and hating others only brings misery to ourselves. When we deny our love to others, we are actually denying it to ourselves. We are denying ourselves the ability to live in the natural joy of our highest nature. If we want real happiness, we have
