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Meditation: A Love Affair with the Whole - Thousand and One Flowers of Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Freedom, Beauty and the Divine

Book by Swami Dhyan Giten · 14 quotes · Love, Joy, Life

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Meditation: A Love Affair with the Whole - Thousand and One Flowers of Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Freedom, Beauty and the Divine Quotes

“It is unfortunate that very few people have ever tried to know meditation, because meditation is the way to joy and happiness. Meditation means to participate in the celebration of existence. Without it life remains a misery, a sadness and a frustration. Meditation is the only way to be the blessed one and to participate in the mystery of ife. Meditation is the door to God.”

“Joy is possible when you dissolve into silence. It is like a drop which dissolves into the ocean. When you are ready to dissolve into the whole, joy happens.If you resist to dissolve, if you try to remain a separate entity, we protect ourselves.That is what everybody is doing. They try to be an ego, they try to protect themselves. They defend themselves against the whole. Everybody is afraid against the whole, because the whole is vast. Many years ago, a spiritual teacher, who has counseled thousands of people, told me: “You will dissolve into the silence. All the earlier enlightened Masters and all the small Deva’s  are just here to help you to get enlightened.” The whole surrounds you from all sides. The whole surrounds you from the inside  and from the outside. The whole is like the wind, which invisible and exists  everywhere. We are not separate. We are part of the whole. Dissolve into the  whole, drop the  ego. Fel yourself as part of the whole. Slowly the experience of  being part of the whole deepens. One day it becomes your truth, your being, your reality. Then you have arrived home. When you live the whole and forget yourself as a separate entity, each moment becomes a joy.”

“Meditation is an inner journey. It is a journey from your periphery to your inner being, your center. Normally we have lived on the periphery for many lives, so we have become totally oblivious of the fact that we have a center. A man living on the periphery is without a soul. It is a man living without roots. He knows not where he his coming from, he knows not where he is and he knows not where he is going. Meditation means an effort to become conscious. It means to create the fire of awareness in you. It is to find the inner being, the center, in us, because it is there. Once we have found the inner center, we find our roots. Then we have a soul. We know who we are. And that is the greatest moment in a man's life. It opens up the mystery of life. Suddenly God becomes available in all its joy, beauty and mystery. Then life becomes eternal. Then there is no death. Then our life becomes a joy.”

“We are all searching for happiness consciously or unconsciously. Happiness is the goal of life. Not only human being are searching for happiness, but trees, flowers, animals, birds and rocks. The whole existence is searching for happiness. Only man is conscious enough to penetrate into the ultimate mystery of life. But not all man, because few people are really conscious. The majority of people live in unconsciousness. Meditation is the process of transforming unconsciousness into consciousness. Meditation is the only way to give you a glimpse and an experience into your consciousness. Meditation is the only way to give you a glimpse that you are something much more .And the moment that the first glimpse happens your first window to life opens. And your life becomes a joy.”

“Society is against the heart, because the heart lives through love. And love cannot be controlled and conditioned. The heart is basically rebellious. The heart always lives in the moment. It never repeats the old. The heart always responds to the present moment. This is why society is against the heart. Society disciplines the head, because the head functionslike a machine. Machines are never rebellious. They simply follow orders. They are obedient. Hence the state, the church and the establishment, the status quo, are interested in the head. Our heart is the door to allow existence to guide us – instead of being directed by our own ideas, attitudes and preconceived expectations of how life should be. The heart creates inconvenience for society and for the established order. The heart is spontaneous and never repeats the old. The head lives in the past, which is why the head is traditional and conventional. The heart relates to unconditional love and acceptance both for ourselves and for other people.  The heart relates to qualities such as empathy, joy, acceptance, trust, intuition, understanding, compassion, playfulness, healing, friendship, sincerity and a sense of oneness in love. Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being, with our authentic self, withthe meditative quality within, with the inner silence and emptiness. This inner emptiness is experienced by others and is expressed on the outside as love. This love is not addressed to a specific person; it is a presence that surrounds a person like a fragrance. Love is perfect as it is. Love is enough unto itself. Love has to be understood. Love is the flight of your consciousness to higher realms beyond the body. Love is the fragrance of a rising consciousness. Love is like the fragrance of a flower. The moment you are overflowing with joy, a longing arises to share it. This sharing is love. Love is not something that you can get from somebody else, who has not attained to a state of joy. Everybody is asking to be loved, and pretending to love. You cannot love, because you don't know what consciousness is. You don't know the truth; you don't know the experience of the divine.  You don't know what love is, because you have not yet gone deeper in your consciousness. In this ignorance and blindness love does not grow. If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. Love is the defeat of all imposed rules and conditions. hence there is  a struggle between the individual who follows his heart and the collective who follows the imposed order. The individual who follows his heart has to be aware of this struggle, because he is moving towards the freedom of being himself. Being himself means that he is not going to be ruled by the collective, by the crowd. It means that now he will live according to his own heart, according to his own light. When he becomes independent, he will start feeling that he is  becoming one with the whole, one with the universal. It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that we are not separated from life. We begin to understand that we are not small separate islands in a great ocean, but that life is one and that we all are small parts of the Whole. We begin to understand what is really important and meaningful in life. It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that life is about sharing, rather than hoarding. We begin to understand that life is about giving, rather than taking.”

“Joy is our ultimate truth. Joy comes from the roots of our being. It comes from our deepest core. Everything else is on the periphery, on the circumference. Joy is really the search for our own being. it is the search for knowing oneself. It is the search to discover one's true nature.The moment we know who we are,  joy happens. And the moment we are joyful, we know who we are. Joy is the taste of  our being. If we do not find our joy, only we are responsible. We are not searching, we are not interested. We do not have the commitment to go into the depth of ourselves. When one is ready to go into  the depth of ourselves, a new joy happens.”

“A man without meditation is not part of existence. He exists, but he is not part of existence. He is separate from existence. There is no bridge between him and the whole. Life begins with meditation, because meditation creates the bridge between you and the whole. Without meditation you're like a separate island. With meditation you become part of the whole continent. The ego tries to live like a separate island. The ego is afraid of being part of something which is larger than itself. The ego tries to live a confined life. The ego is afraid of love, because love is larger than the ego. The ego is afraid of meditation, because meditation is far larger than the ego. The ego is afraid of joy, because joy happens when you are connected with something larger than yourself. The whole is interconnected. It is only the stupidity of man that tries to live separate from the whole. This is why man lives in misery, because man lives in separation from the whole. Meditation gives you a taste of joy, because meditation give you a taste of something that is larger than yourself. It gives you a taste of the infinite, of the oceanic. Then you understand that existence loves you and cares for you.”

“You can love out of joy or misery. When you love out of misery it is a need. You are not coming out of the joy of your being, you are coming from misery. You need the other to make you happy. You are dependent on the other to make you happy. And because you are dependent on the other for your happiness, love becomes a bondage. Love is not freedom. You cannot be separate and you cannot be together with the other person. When love comes out of the joy of your being it is authentic love. Now you arenot dependent on the other for your happiness. Now you are simply sharing yourjoy. Your life is a gift. You give out of your abundance. Meditation makes you joyful in your aloneness. Meditation is the first step,and love is the second step. When you have the joy, then share it, because by sharing it, it grows. The more you give, the more you have. And the less you give, the less you will have. If you do not give, it will disappear from you. If you want infinite love and joy, then go on giving unconditionally. The ultimate experience in giving infinitely is called God. That is pouring oneself into existence with love and joy. It is like the river pouring itself into the ocean. And then the river becomes the ocean.”

“Love starts with loving and accepting yourself as you are. Loving yourself and selfishness are two different things. To love and accept yourself does not mean to be narcissistic and obsessive with yourself. A basic love and acceptance for yourself are a basic phenomenon to learn to love other people. It is only then that you can really love somebody else. Accept yourself, love yourself, because you are God's creation. There has never been anybody like you, and there will never be anybody like you. You are a unique creation of God, and without you God's symphony would be less. Acceptance creates the climate and atmosphere out of which love grows. Love is only possible when there is a deep acceptance of yourself, a deep acceptance of others and a deep acceptance of existence. Then for the first time, life is happening in your lifeand God is happening in your life. That is what life is all about. The moment you love and accept yourself as you are, you begin to trust yourself, you begin to trust others and you begin to rust existence. When you accept yourself, you begin to accept life. When you reject and condemn yourself, you also rejectlife. If you reject yourself, you are also rejecting God. If you accept, yourself, you also accept God. Then whatsoever happens is God. Then life is good and death is good, then love is good and alonenessis good. But you have been conditioned to not love and accept yourself. Your mind has been poisoned not to love and accept yourself, which creates a tension in you between who you are and how you should be. This creates a tension and anguish in people. Humanity has lived in this tension, anxiety and worry for centuries. All societies and cultures have socialized and taught you an ideal of how to be, which has to be fulfilled. Nobody has ever told you that you are valuable, loveable and a beautiful being as you are. To love and accept yourself as you are is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your socialization, your education and your culture. You have been told how to be by your parents, teachers, politicians and priests. You have been programmed to never love and accept yourself as you are and always strive to get better and improve yourself. When you stop trying to improve yourself to fulfill the ideal of how you should be, in that acceptance life starts flowing through you. When you don't judge and condemn yourself, you flower and life starts caressing you. The whole existence starts pouring its energy into you when you are open. Accepting yourself is prayer. Accepting yourself is gratitude to life. Accepting yourself is to relax into your being, which is how God wants you to be. Accepting yourself is to be who you are. Then life showers its gifts on you abundantly, which we could not receive before because we felt that we were not worthy to receive them. Acceptance is the door to God, to live God in your life.”

“Love is the path, and love is the goal. Love is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Love is the first step and the last step. Love contains the whole of religion. But love has to be understood. Love is not lust, it is not a desire to get something from anybody. Love is an overflowing joy. Love is sharing. Love is freedom. Love is creativity. When you love you want to enrich the world. You want to make the world a little bit better and beautiful. When you do not know love, you become destructive. Then you become poisonous. Love means that you are grateful to existence. And out of that gratefulness, you want to contribute to existence. Love is prayer. Love is thankfulness. Slowly you move higher into the world of love. New dimensions of love start opening up to you. Love is no more a relationship, but you are simply loving. Love makes the whole existence one. Love opens the realization that existence is one ultimate unity, and only with unity can webe blissful, eternal and deathless. That is our true reality, that is your very being. To discover it is the whole purpose of life.”

“Existence loves us. Otherwise we would not be here. Life is a gift of God. It is not our choice to be here, we have been chosen to be here by existence. It is a decision by the whole. Existence goes on giving us gifts on all levels: physical, psychological and spiritual. A meditator has to remember that existence goes on pouring so many gifts, and that he has not thanked it by contributed anything in return. Real gratitude to existence is expressed by creativity. When we create something in return to enhance existence, we start being creative by showing gratitude. In our own way we are participating with God. It can be a song, a painting or to make people happy and creating more happy and smiling faces. It is to make a little change in the world, and create a better and more beautiful world. If we can create something out of gratitude to existence it brings joy. Creativity is the way of prayer.”

“Man can live in misery, but man can also live in joy. It all depends on how you live, on how you approach life. If one never learns the art of living, life will be a misery. Unless you learn the art of living, you can't have love, silence, joy, awareness, truth and freedom. Everybody comes with an inner potential, but very few people develop that potential. The potential remains unused. One should be more like a flowing river, than a stagnant pond. We have to become flowing, moving into the unknown and always reaching for the ocean. This has been called God, truth, nirvana and enlightenment, but it is really nothing but life blossoming.”

“The basic cause of misery is man's incapacity to give love. Man asks for love, but he is not willing to give love. He demands love, but he has forgotten that unless you give, you cannot get. Giving comes first, and then getting happens on its own accord. And when love comes without asking or demanding,it brings joy and happiness. This is something fundamental to understand: give and forget about getting back. Then it comes back a thousandfold. It starts showering on you, because that is the nature of existence. Whatever we give comes back. Love has to be given without any desire for getting - and then joy and happiness is yours.”

“One can choose two orientations in life. The first orientation inlife is the worldly and mundane orientation. The second orientation in life is the spiritual way. The worldly and mundane way means that one can succeed in having much money, power, status, prestige and possessions, but inside one will remain empty, alone and miserable. Life becomes a vegetation between birth and death, but there will be no real joy in life. The worldly way means to be part of the collective unconscious masses of people. The spiritual way means that you are trying to be an individual. It means to live your own life. It means to trust yourself and to live your life according to your heart, joy, truth, freedom and creativity. To live the spiritual way is insecure and dangerous. The unconscious masses will condemn you, because the spiritual way will not bring you power, money and status in society, but it will bring you joy. It will be a life of love, silence, truth, beauty and creativity. Things that arenot values by society. The world values money, power, prime ministers, presidents, politicians, priests, Adolf Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander theGreat and war. The world condemns poets, musicians, intellectuals, authors and meditators, because they seem to be vagabonds, lazy and useless in the eyes of the worldly people. To live a spiritual life, one has to accept these condemnations from people who only value money, power and possessions. A meditator has to live a life of love, silence, truth, freedom, non-political and egoless. The meditator has to live his life with love, joy and truth. The meditator has to live and die with joy and acceptance. Then he has achieved something that even death cannot take away from him. Only then he will enjoy life to the fullest.”