Ego disconnects – Love connects
The way to be in bliss is to dissolve into the ocean, not to be a drop but to merge with the ocean.
I f the cosmos is a grand ocean, we are all part of it. We are one with the ocean, not individual drops in the ocean. When we think of ourselves as individual drops, we feel separate in our boundary and in our feelings. This is what is called ego. We become driven by feelings of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. As long as this separation remains, we never experience the energy of the ocean that is love, we can never experience that causeless and surging love.
As long as we remain a drop in the ocean, we say ‘no’ to life. We neither love nor trust. We don’t feel blissful either because bliss is possible only for those who know how to love and trust. It happens only to those who know how to feel part of the ocean. Bliss is possible only when our heart says ‘yes’, when the ‘no’ completely disappears from our being. ‘No’ is darkness, ‘yes’ is light. ‘No’ is ego, ‘yes’ is egolessness.
‘No’ is the way of the unconscious person. ‘Yes’ is the way of the awakened one. All the conflict, all the suffering in our life is because of our saying ‘no’. ‘No’ is a fight, a war with Existence. ‘Yes’ is love, peace with Existence. ‘Yes’ is deep accord with the totality of who we are – the ocean. Bliss is another name for that accord, that harmony.
The way to be in bliss is to dissolve into the ocean, not to be a drop but to merge with the ocean. To be a drop is to be with ego. The ego is the root of all misery. When the ego is absent, bliss reaches us from every nook and corner of the ocean of existence, as if it were just waiting for the ego to disappear.
Ego is a closed state of consciousness. All the windows and doors are closed. Life itself becomes insulated and encapsulated. Our ego surrounds us like a capsule. Our ego is like a sealed capsule; there is not even a small gap to allow anything to enter. It closes itself due to fear and shrinks into itself. That is how we create misery for ourselves.
Love is being in the flow with Existence, to be totally with it. Ego is like frozen ice. Love is like liquid water. Only when we are liquid do we become part of the ocean. Then we don’t have any private goal or destination. Each moment is blissful, i n c r e d i b l y ecstatic, just going with the plan of the cosmos.
The mind is part of the ego. It knows how to close, but it does not know how to open. To love means to open up, to surrender. It means opening up to Existence, to the flowers, to the bees and to the stars. How do we open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of Existence? How do we open up to this celebration that goes on and on – flowers dancing in the wind, trees enjoying the wind and the stars, always in a state of bliss? Except for man, everything else seems to be in harmony.
Man falls out of harmony because he has what is called ‘consciousness’ which is not present in other living creatures.
Consciousness can do two things. It can create ego or it can create egolessness. If it creates ego, we live in hell. If it creates egolessness, we live in paradise. The whole world is in paradise without knowing it. When man enters paradise, he enters knowing it fully. That is the grandeur and beauty of man. That is the danger as well, because it is easier to fall into the trap of the ego and not enter into paradise than to enter paradise knowingly.
The problem is that we have forgotten who we are and for what we were created. We are emperors of love, but we dream that we are beggars. We have the whole kingdom of Existence within our being and yet we continue to beg for mundane things. We keep collecting mundane things not knowing that we have infinite, inexhaustible treasures within our being. We are oceans, yet we are thirsty because we have become disconnected from our own selves. But no matter how disconnected we are, no matter how much we have forgotten and how long we have forgotten, it can be remembered in a single moment and we can become connected immediately.
Love is the connector.
Bliss arises from love. Love is the poetry that connects you back to Existence. Love is the sword that slays the ego and merges you with the ocean. When the heart is full of love, your whole life is transformed from prose to poetry, from noise to music and from discord to harmony.
It is such sheer joy to simply exist. Just ‘to be’ is enough. But we need to be sensitive to feel the joy of being. We need to grow feelers. The feelers are what we call love. Love feels the joy of just being. When you grow the feelers of love, life is no longer made of independent thoughts but becomes a continuous feeling. Then the ego starts to dissolve. Once we have moved from thinking to feeling, there is only one more step and that is from feeling to being. That is very simple.
The first step is difficult, to move from thinking to feeling. The ego has trained the mind to think so much, that’s why. The second step comes almost automatically. There’s nothing we need to do for it to happen. From feeling to being, the distance is nothing at all. It can happen at any moment. The poet can become the mystic at any moment. He is almost there. The real problem is how to get out of our thinking and get more and more into feeling.
Just follow the heart. Just love more, that’s all! Feel more. Enjoy more so that you can feed your heart. Watch the sunrise, sunset, clouds, rainbows, birds, flowers, animals, rocks, and people, and watch them with awareness. Look into their eyes. Existence is so multidimensional. Look into every dimension like a poet. Praise it. Feel it. Be ecstatic! Expand your consciousness and experience every single detail of Existence with love. Slowly, the ego will lose its hold and disappear.
The only barrier to love is fear. When things start happening, we become fearful because with love we enter into a merger. This threatens the very basis of our ego. Ego is separateness while love is a merger. The fear we feel is nothing but the fear of the dissolving ego. Let the fear be there. It will hang around for a while. If we simply ignore it, the ego will leave us. It is a great day when fear of losing the ego leaves us. From then on growth becomes simple, easy and spontaneous. Then we are not, only love is.