“Holistic, unconditional love, agape, is the unity in which duality disappears. It is as if a certain internal boundary has vanished. With agape what we love is ourselves, the way a mother loves her child as herself. This is the meaning of loving another as yourself – transcending our phenomenal borders and experiencing ourselves in another and the other in, not apart from, us. Eventually, if love is comprehensive, it unites us with everything and allows us to know that we are everything. Therefore, how can we support the illusion of this isolated, separate self that is threatened by and defends itself from everything outside? Love returns us to the unity that is actually Reality. Reality is not the isolation, suspicion, envy, selfishness, and fear of loss that we have come to accept as normal; it is that we are all part of one Life. The same Spirit moves in us all. You come to know this better when you realize that we all have the same kinds of feelings, the same wish to be known and respected, to share ourselves and let down our defenses. We are continually faced with a choice between personal achievement, personal security, and comfort on the one hand, and working for the whole and helping everyone and everything toward perfection on the other. We are faced with a choice between looking out for ourselves and contributing wholeheartedly to a common good. We are faced with focusing on self-love or increasing our love of all Life. (p. 191)” LoveMindfulnessOnenessNondualitySufi WayAgape Book:Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self Source: Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self
“When you are drawn into love, your own sense of an isolated, separate self melts. When you are in love and you sit face-to-face with the one you love, you forget yourself in the beauty of your beloved. Because the beloved is a point of contact with beauty, you are filled with this beauty. Any lover becomes more beautiful through this love. This Beloved, which most people know only in the first moments of romantic love, is in fact present in many faces and guises as our capacity for love grows. This capacity transforms us and makes us more alive. We are never so alive as when we are in love, so why should we restrict this love to the almost impossible conditions of romantic love? Can't we be lovers all the time? (p. 192)” LoveSufi Way Book:Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self Source: Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self