One Soul, One Love, One Heart: The Sacred Path to Healing All Relationships

2009

INTRODUCTION

The best form in which

to worship God is every form.

NEEM KAROLI BABA

THERE IS A STORY IN INDIA of a very accomplished yogi who spent thirty-five years secluded in a remote area of the Himalayas. During those years he practiced intensive spiritual disciplines and rarely saw other people. He became highly accomplished in yoga and meditation and attained remarkably advanced levels of consciousness. He exuded an aura of calmness and equanimity and was considered to be a saint.

As the story goes, one day — after thirty-five years — the yogi decided to venture down into the nearest town. As he entered the streets of a very crowded bazaar, he was inadvertently bumped and jostled by a pedestrian who was passing by. The yogi angrily wheeled around and began screaming insults and obscenities at the poor unsuspecting pedestrian, who had intended no harm. He had merely bumped into the yogi by accident.

The question the story raises is, What did the yogi’s years of practice really accomplish?

WHAT MOST OF US WANT — more than anything — is Love. More than money, more than possessions, more than fame, more than fortune… we want Love. We want Love because, in the depths of our being, we know that Love is the only thing that can make us happy. Every path we take to find happiness is really a search for Love.

This book is the culmination of forty years of reflection on what we often call the spiritual path. Those years have included study of most of the world’s major spiritual traditions and holy books. I have sat with and learned from a variety of amazing teachers. I have visited churches, temples, mosques, zendos, ashrams, monasteries, and spiritual centers around the globe. I have practiced various forms of meditation, contemplative prayer, yoga, and methods for inner awakening.

Throughout the course of this exploration, I have seen that — while forms and methods may differ — many of the goals of spiritual practice are the same. I have also seen that there is one essential ingredient in spiritual life without which all other forms of practice fall short. That ingredient 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 righteously 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 to learn how to love everyone, even those we find most difficult to love, and even as we take action to prevent those who would cause harm from having opportunities to do so.

Understanding the truth of our Oneness is a core principle in the heart of most great spiritual traditions. But though it exists in the roots and the esoteric branches of those traditions, it has, disturbingly often, been overlooked by teachers and clergy. It is sadly ironic that many religious traditions seem more concerned with magnifying the sense of separateness than with overcoming it.

Love and joy are our natural state. The only reason we don’t feel them all the time is that our mind gets in the way. We choose fear rather than Love. We choose anger rather than equanimity. We choose to disconnect in order to protect our fragile human heart, in order to feel safe. But the perplexing truth is, we never feel safe as long as we feel disconnected.

One of my teachers once asked a group of students if anyone knew why we human beings shout at each other when we are angry. No one could come up with an answer. Finally, the teacher said, It is because when we are angry, our hearts are closed. When our hearts are closed, we can’t hear one another. Lovers who are deeply in love often speak in soft, gentle tones, sometimes barely above a whisper. Or they are silent — so fulfilled by love and connection that words have become superfluous. When our hearts are open, when we are in love, we hear each other clearly.

Living in the awareness of Oneness is an integral part of the path to a truly fulfilling life. It may offer the only hope that our species will survive. This book is about how to live a life that vibrates with the joy of love and connectedness in every moment. The process we will explore calls on us to become aware that the love we seek in relationships exists inside us. It is not something another person — or group of persons — feeds into us. It exists at the very core of our own being.

IN RECENT YEARS, millions of us have sought love and happiness in the wisdom traditions of ancient cultures. We have explored yoga, meditation, affirmative prayer, contemplative prayer, tai chi, ecstatic dance, devotional singing, and a vast array of spiritual teachings and teachers. We have explored body-centered therapies and mind-centered counseling strategies. Many of these practices have brought us profound insights. They have given us valuable tools for cultivating a deeper sense of Love, inner peace, joy, and equanimity.

But our unfamiliarity with the larger spiritual, philosophical, and cultural contexts within which these practices arose has often caused us to take only a portion of the tradition — a part of the whole. While many have practiced affirmative prayer, yoga, meditation, and tai chi with great vigor, we sometimes fail to understand that — in order to work fully — these traditions require us to be grounded in a totally reformulated perspective on life. Yoga without compassion is just exercise. Meditation without a means for translating inner peace into outer action is just self-hypnosis. Prayer without corresponding changes in our thought patterns and habits is just wishful thinking. Therapy without the ability to make real change in the circumstances of our life is just talk.

This book is dedicated to helping you find your True Self, your infinite heart, the extraordinary Light of Love within you. It will help you to touch the place inside you where you are connected to everyone and everything — the place where we are all One. It will help you to recognize the pure, ecstatic joy of living in that state every moment of every day.

MOST OF US CAN AGREE that we are living in a critical — if not dire — period of human history. Our immediate problems, and those that appear on the horizon, often seem overwhelming. We face extraordinary economic challenges, extraordinary geopolitical dangers, and extraordinary environmental crises. It may be that the only hope for the survival of our species is to learn how to honor our connection — in every thought and in every action.

Despite all our efforts to bring more peace into the world, the very same conditioned hostility that brought us to the brink of destroying our planet back in the 1950s and 1960s still exists today even at the most rudimentary levels of human interaction. Now it takes different forms. Intolerance and aggression that were once primarily directed outward toward our perceived geopolitical enemies are now endemic within our own society. Liberals dislike conservatives. People in certain faith traditions dislike nonbelievers. Each polarity tends to characterize the other as evil. Cynicism, sarcasm, abusiveness, and caustic cruelty are now considered entertainment. Wanton violence, war, and brutality abound.

One reliable barometer by which we can measure the degree of Oneness we have cultivated as a society is the psychological and emotional health of our children. Children are like sponges. They readily absorb the vibrations in the field of consciousness that surrounds them. They act as mirrors that show us our own shortcomings, fears, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies. Growing healthy, whole, spiritually alive children is, in some ways, like growing healthy, whole, vibrant foods. We have to see to it that the soil they are planted in is healthy and nutritious. We have to give them abundant water. We have to make sure they are properly nourished — not just physically but psychologically and spiritually. In future generations, our children will feed the earth. Our generation must feed them a healthy, fertile, nutritious environment that guides them to connect with their own higher nature, wisdom, spiritual awareness, and compassion.

Sadly, news reports regularly show us that many of our children are suffering, with dramatic increases in psycho-emotional maladies like ADD and ADHD, and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. We see a rise in childhood asthma and allergies, which in Oriental medicine are understood to be physical manifestations of grief. We also see disturbingly high levels of depression, teen suicide, and teen pregnancy, and an inordinate amount of unrestrained violence.

The despair and agitation many children experience may be the result of broken families and unhealthy home lives. But it is also bred by the cultural values Western society bombards them with. Our culture teaches them that happiness is found in wealth, material possessions, fame, and accomplishments — in a new car, a new house, a new job, a new relationship. From the time our children are infants we teach them to look for happiness — not within themselves — but outside themselves.

Our culture teaches us to focus on acquiring more material possessions, more accomplishments, more romance — and if these don’t satisfy us, we are trained to believe that we simply haven’t accumulated enough to be happy. Our lifestyle and value system have generated astounding levels of alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling addiction, and violence, and an ever-increasing, almost desperate dependence on prescribed medications to treat an epidemic of depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorders, physical pain, and insomnia. More than eight million of our children are currently taking medications prescribed for a variety of psychological and emotional maladies.

These issues — as disturbing as they seem — are just the tip of the iceberg. They are symptoms of a much larger and deeper unease in our society. They are interrelated elements of spiritual discord. A world where parents can’t solve their marital problems, a world that surrounds its children with images of violence as entertainment, a world where many political leaders, religious leaders, sports stars, and other hero figures are blatantly dishonest, untrustworthy, and self-absorbed, is a world where depression, anxiety, addiction, violence, anger, and hatred are going to flourish in our lives and, consequently, in our children’s lives.

The problem is this: We are not living in harmony with our deepest awareness — our True Nature. Our culture, our way of life, and our habits of thought often prohibit us from feeling connected to our soul, our inner Light, and the abundant joy that is our birthright. The truth of the matter is, to find happiness we don’t have to become something other than we are; we just have to stop pretending to be something we are not.

Again and again we will be reminded of this fundamental principle: The key to healing our relationships with others lies in recognizing that every aspect of our life is related to all other aspects. Every relationship is related to all other relationships — including our relationship with our self. How we see ourselves determines how we react to the way other people see us. How we treat ourselves will determine how we react to the way others treat us. How we treat our planet will determine how our planet treats us. When we live in Oneness we begin to recognize that there is no way to be happy when we close our hearts to other human beings, because there is no way to negate our connection to them. No matter how difficult or unworthy other human beings may seem, we are still connected to them. Finding happiness in life requires that we find a way to be at peace with that reality.

Changing our perception about relationships allows us to embark on a revolutionary transformation. If we live with the understanding that when one human being suffers we all suffer, we unveil the unlimited healing power available in each of us. It isn’t easy. As the yogi in the story discovered, just understanding the Truth of our Oneness isn’t enough. We have to act differently. We have to radically transform our lives, change our beliefs, and rethink our actions. We have to let go of the habits of thought and behavior that undercut our awareness of Oneness and actually live in that awareness. As we learn to act from the place in our heart where Oneness is alive and flourishing, we will embody the spirit of love, forgiveness, concern for our earthly home, and concern for the well-being of others. That spirit will fill our life with inexpressible joy.

If you doubt the truth of what I have just said, pay attention to a few simple experiences most human beings have. When you are in the presence of someone who is crying — even if you don’t know them — do you sometimes notice tears flooding your own eyes? Do you feel spontaneous compassion when you see other human beings suffer? If someone trips and falls within your field of vision, do you find yourself spontaneously running to offer assistance? Do you feel an uncomfortable sensation in your chest when you see an animal that is sick or injured, or dead?

On the other hand, do you notice the positive, nurturing, joyous, life-affirming moments of inspiration and connection? Have you experienced being in the presence of someone who is laughing and joyful, and finding that suddenly your own mood lifts? Do you notice a spontaneous high when you are in the presence of ecstatic children who are playing joyfully? Do you feel an inexpressible awe when you look up at the stars at night and contemplate the vast, incomprehensible reality of living in an infinite universe? Have you ever been so astounded by the beauty of nature that it literally — for a moment — takes your breath away?

And have you experienced, in the bliss of romantic love, a moment in which you feel totally fulfilled . . . totally happy. . . and totally content?

During these moments of awe and connection, the incessant chatter of our thinking mind has spontaneously, temporarily become silent. We are not judging. We are not planning. We are not desiring. We are not regretting. In these very precious moments of clarity and contentment, we just are. Right here. Right now. Not lost in thought or desire for some other time and place, just alive, open, and free — with full awareness — in this moment. In these precious moments of clarity and bliss, the whole universe looks different.

For instance, have you ever noticed that in those precious moments when you are really in love, when you are vibrating with the joyous ecstasy of being alive, awake, and aware, even the people you don’t like don’t look so bad? That offers vivid evidence that our experience of life is determined much more by our inner state of consciousness than by external people and conditions. It is clear evidence of love’s power to spontaneously, and instantaneously, heal and connect.

We experience interconnectedness in other ways, too. Someone you haven’t thought of in a long, long time suddenly pops into your mind, and a short time later the phone rings and that person is calling you. Or you just know that someone you love is in pain, or in trouble, or needs help — even if they are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Sometimes you feel a queasy uncertainty just before something tragic happens. Occasionally, you may have the experience of being so emotionally close to another human being that they often say exactly what is in your mind, or vice versa.

Most of us have had these kinds of experiences. But we tend to discount their importance because we have no meaningful cultural model to help us understand them. They demonstrate that we are all connected — not just in abstract philosophical terms, but literally — in a vast ocean of consciousness and awareness.

In this book, we will explore the truth of our interconnectedness and what it can teach us about our relationships with other human beings, the natural world, our universe, and our Creator. We will learn to recognize the psychological and emotional obstacles that hamper our ability to find true happiness, enduring love, and real peace of mind. We will learn how to use simple but profound tools to help heal much of what troubles us — the difficulties in our intimate relationships and the inner turmoil we experience dealing with society and the world.

Every day we deal with enormously troublesome news. In our homes and families, many of us have partners and relatives whose personal anxieties and stresses often override their ability to be loving. Many of our children are overstimulated and anxious. We, ourselves, suffer from the abundant stresses of life in the modern age. Out in the world we encounter people who are agitated, aggressive, and disconnected.

The solutions to these problems are not going to come from the outside — from government leaders, religious leaders, or the enormous multinational corporations that have increasingly taken control of our world and our governments.

The solutions to the problems of the human race are going to have to come from us — from each and every one of us — as individuals who form the collective, as singular members of the family of humanity. The problems of the human race have largely been created by the human mind. The solutions can be found only in the human heart — in the eternal, undying connection to the One behind the many, the One Light, One Heart, One Soul we all share, the Love that is at the core of each and every one of us.

May this book help us to learn how to use all of our relationships as grist for the mill — as teaching — as integral aspects of the curriculum in this extraordinary school we have enrolled in, the school of life. May it help you see each human being you encounter and every relationship you have as yet one more course, offering the opportunity to learn, again and again, how to connect more fully with the Love inside you no matter what is happening in the often chaotic world outside you.

PART ONE

Seeing the Light

Your task is not to seek for love,

but merely to seek and find

all the barriers within yourself

that you have built against it.

RUMI

CHAPTER ONE

Spiritual Opportunities in Relationship

God is everybody… .

The same blood flows through us all.

The arms, the legs, the heart, are all the same.

See no difference. See all the same.

NEEM KAROLI BABA

DO YOU SOMETIMES FEEL that what stands between you and happiness is the behavior of other people? Do you get frustrated and annoyed when people don’t act or communicate the way you want them to? Are you frightened and dismayed by their beliefs and actions? Do you feel that you could be happy — or, at least "happy-er — if only those people" acted differently or thought differently?

If so, you are certainly not alone. We all have difficult people in our lives. We may be dealing with an uncommunicative spouse, an emotionally disconnected lover, an unappreciative child, an irascible aging parent, a jealous sibling, an abusive employer, or a fickle friend. Perhaps our entire family troubles us. Often, the relationships that cause us the most difficulty are with people who have great significance in our life, and when their behavior appears to be undermining our happiness, we can feel traumatized and powerless.

Perhaps a parent or a spouse is unwilling to interact with us in a loving manner, or someone we love is caught in a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior — addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, or an unhealthy relationship. Perhaps we are frustrated with ourselves — with our own inability to forgive, and to let go of judgment, because we feel our anger is justified.

We may be frustrated that we can’t seem to