Toward Love...
~ Gurumayi Chidvilasananda

As I read this fourth teaching, I felt a warm, sweet feeling in the region of my heart, as if something had opened, creating space for sweetness. The experience of love was present. I felt love for myself, love for existence. The experience became bliss. Bliss and love merged. They were one and the same. 
 
Love was present in the faces of people interacting in the cafeteria where I was. I understood they are looking for love, and love is what they are. 
 

The table is exquisitely set; there is a seat with your name on it. The invitation will arrive in due time. Love initiates the call. Each breath in and out is so divinely intimate. Ajapa japa carries the love that purifies, clears the blurriness, the forgetfulness, the crookedness, erasing those deep, endless samskaras of ancient lifetimes. How deep do they go? Gurumayi knows. How many repetitions will it take to get invited to the table, to even arrive at the door, the haven where your knock will be heard? Gurumayi knows the depth and her timing is impeccable. 
 

I am enjoying contemplating this fourth teaching very much. I discover that I must make the effort to recognize love as it is in order to experience it. Trying to overlay my preconceived notions of it will prevent my entry into its mystical presence and flow. There seems to be a unique letting go, a releasing into it rather than a sense of maintaining a particular “stance.” It’s as if an unloosening is taking place and my part is to be open and allow a subtle receptivity.
 
I often experience a similar release into the element of water as I swim in a lake. It is as if I am allowed to enter a magical kingdom all its own if I give into it. When I feel the Guru’s presence, this same merging rather than standing apart takes place. 
 

At today’s satsang in the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Bern, I thought about Gurumayi’s teachings on love during the chant. I sang from the depth of my heart and suddenly I felt great anticipation rising within me. This feeling of anticipation contained the certainty that something great was going to happen. 

I continued to sing with great enthusiasm and then it was there—the feeling of divine love. This love was born of itself, so free and indescribably powerful. My soul was ecstatic and I knew that all my efforts in sadhana were worthwhile for such a divine experience.
 

Reading this fourth teaching of “Toward Love…,” I remembered the story of Lord Krishna and the gopis. In the moment that any individual gopi thought, “I am so privileged to have Lord Krishna’s love,” he suddenly was gone. I am so glad that the story tells me that Lord Krishna still loved them all, and how the gopis didn’t feel unworthy of his love. They didn’t know such patterns. They were immersed in devotion, and their love became mature and constant.
 

Photos of Shri Guru have long been alive for me—sometimes comforting, sometimes warning, most often beaming reassurance and love. Just weeks ago, the Guru’s glance from the photo that resides above my computer pierced me with a knowing that has become my go-to, my guiding light.
 
As I was focused on material online that was clouding my state, my gaze lifted up to meet Gurumayi’s. In that moment my being was filled with a most buoyant love and with it a lucid understanding that the Guru’s love—that supreme benediction—is as available to me, to any of us, as we are open to receiving it. This knowing entered me with an atomic force, reminding me of the two wings of sadhana that Baba taught us about: grace and self-effort. What more direct path to remembering my divine nature than opening my heart to the Guru’s love by discovering and letting go of the obstacles that can blind me to that experience.
 

Knowing whether experiencing love is in my destiny means everything to me and yet the sensory world keeps my seeking for love fragmented. Knowing what that love feels like comes to me only when I focus on, and experience, my love for my Guru. My love for the Guru helps keep me anchored—until I let myself be drawn away yet again by the next sensory object. For me, this is a constant battle.
 
Yet when I contemplate how I can defeat this pull, I get a simple answer: “Stay humble, stay simple, stay pure. Love loves a pristine space.”
 

Being able to receive priceless teachings as mahaprasad from Shri Gurumayi is such a blessing! I experienced a feeling of deep love for my Guru as I reflected on today’s teaching on love—which is independent of “anyone’s whims and conditions.” This love is purely heart to heart and has no worldly strings attached.
 
When Gurumayi mentioned ‘’effort,’’ I realized that for me, seva is the master secret to experiencing this divine love. My approach to seva requires the mindset of selfless service, with no expectation of praise or rewards, and with focused attention to detail. Gurumayi has taught me that seva is one manifestation of steadfast love.
 

After reading Gurumayi’s words in the fourth teaching, I thought, “Of course, the purpose of life is to experience love continuously.” I also understand that having “the experience of love” is the fruit of effort and grace.
 
Taking the gardener’s attitude, I see that I am able to make the effort to cultivate the soil in which love can blossom, by cultivating divine virtues like patience and perseverance. And when I do so, I am doing my best to receive God’s love. Nevertheless, I know that the fruits I receive come to me from God’s hands.
 

The fourth teaching in “Toward Love…” helps me to ponder how I can recognize love. I envisioned flooding myself with the experience of love, and sensed that it is fluid, sweet, free, natural, warm, open, light, powerful, flexible, clear, luminous, connecting, nourishing, soothing, comforting, and enveloping. This list of qualities of love that I experienced today will help me to nurture my awareness of love even when it’s “camouflaged.”  
 

I am so delighted by this new way of receiving the ambrosial prasad of Gurumayi’s teachings about love. Last night I went to sleep contemplating the paradoxes Gurumayi talks about in the third teaching. I was hardly able to articulate the subject of my contemplation because I was still so mystified by what Gurumayi is pointing toward. But I knew the compassionate Guru always hears what my heart says even if I do not grasp it.
 
When I woke up, I found the fourth teaching. And then I read the Hindi translations of all of the first four teachings. I have no words for expressing the gratitude I am experiencing for Gurumayi being this love herself, and for pointing me ever so lovingly toward this love, bringing my heart to rest in this space where I find solace and warmth.