A Minha Vida

What is Love?

What is a lover? Lovers are trouble! Lovers are the friends we permit ourselves to go to bed with and then regret it the next morning. A lover is an individual who embodies completely the sum total of love that you feel for another individual. A lover represents the love you feel for your parents, your children, your brothers, your sisters, your friends, your enemies. That’s why they are so attractive. They sum up in one person all of the beings in your life. And maybe only for one night, but that one night they sum it all up. Are you catching my wind here?

Now lovers are the friends you permit yourself to sleep with and share your body with. Unfortunately no body understands that. They see lovers in a need relationship, needing. People need the relationship because they need to be sexually fulfilled. And that fulfilment represents the parental fulfilment they lack. It represents the friend fulfilment they lack. It’s all tied up in one. These are important people in your life.

Now lovers allow complete unity, complete magnetism, from an exchange of semen and ovum, to exchange of saliva, to an exchange of bedding; complete union all the way up. It embodies the full form or the full mind of God. In a lover we have our parents, we have our mother, our father, our brother, our sister, our friend, our enemy, and our confidante. We have it all. How many of you understand that?

Lovers then are true prizes. They ultimately embody all of the things that we want in our self. When we start out as a lover we are loving them by giving. In loving a lover, you cannot approach your lover as you approach your children but thinking that you own them. Nor can you, as soon as the fantasy has worn off, make your lover your parent. The magic dies when need begins. And why has that happened? Because when need starts in, the relationship becomes fractured. We are not experiencing then a complete unilateral giving. We are experiencing a fractured relationship in which one person is giving and the other becomes the taker. Do you understand?

Then we have an overcompensation. We have a person who is giving, giving more and a person who is doing the taking, taking more. Does that sound familiar? Because suddenly the lover has been transformed into the parent. The lover has been transformed into the child. Got it? And the magic stops.

If you are in love with having a lover, you must understand that the magic that you experience on a mind, body, and spiritual level is absolutely total, because God is being expressed on every one of those levels. That’s s why it is so intoxicating. That’s how it should feel all of the time but have only associated that feeling with a lover. You fractionalise that feeling and put it as a responsibility on other people. And then you work very hard to try to maintain a relationship. You work hard to maintain the magic that shouldn’t be worked at at all. It should flow.

And when it flows, it comes like a river. And it is intoxicating and it is sweet and is fulfilling on all levels. When you start chasing it you lose it. Because then you are in need and in lack and you are casting the burden of that fulfilment on another human being instead of being the one who should be fulfilling yourself. How many of you understand?

Consequently that’s why lovers can become foes. Some of your greatest enemies have been people that you have been lovers with! Because they know you! They have been inside of you and outside of you. You have been vulnerable to them. That’s why you made them an enemy instead of continued to love them. -Ramtha

How do you perceive yourself?

"Now mastery of oneself is a noble and worthwile pursuit, but it is a pursuit that takes you into the inner corridors of yourself, as it were, and really makes you look at parts of yourself that so far have been your persona, the way people percieve you.  And, you know, there is an element of fear there that if you get rid of that persona, then people won't take you seriously or you won't be big and bad enough to make any difference."  -Ramtha

Born Twice

"We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth."

-Mary Antin, 1912

The birth analogy is used often in describing spiritual awakening. I read recently a zen saying that explained that we are actually born twice. Once as an egg out of our mothers. And then again as we break out of our shells we birth ourselves into awakening. Think of what it takes for a bird to break out of its shell. It's hard work, but the bird has to do it all by itself in order to be strong enough to survive in the world. Sometimes our spiritual growth is hard work, and painful. But when we break through we can spread our wings and fly.

-Lissa Coffey 

The Whole in Everything

When Ketu turned twelve years old he was sent to a master, with whom he studied until he was twenty-four. Upon finishing his training, he came back home filled with pride.

His father asked him:

“How can we know what we can’t see? How can we know that God the Almighty is everywhere?”

The young man began to recite the sacred scriptures, but his father interrupted him:

“That’s all too complicated. Isn’t there an easier way for us to learn about the existence of God?”     “Not that I know of, my father. Today I am a learned man and I need this knowledge to explain the mysteries of divine wisdom.”

“I have wasted my time and money sending my son to the monastery,” complained the father. And taking Ketu by the hand, he led him to the kitchen. There he filled a basin with water and poured in a little salt. Then they went for a stroll in the city. When they came back home, the father told Ketu:

“Bring the salt that I put in the basin.”

Ketu looked for the salt but did not find it because it had already dissolved in the water.

“So you can’t see the salt any more?” asked the father.

“No, the salt’s invisible.”

“Then taste a little of the water that’s on the surface of the basin. How does it taste?”

“Salty.”

“Try a little of the water in the middle: how does it taste?”

“As salty as on the surface.”

“Now taste the water at the bottom of the basin and tell me what it tastes    like.”

Ketu tried it and it had the same taste as he had felt before.

“You have studied for many years and can’t explain simply how Invisible God is in all parts,” said the father. “Using a basin of water, and calling God “salt”, I could make any peasant understand that. Please, dear son, forget the wisdom that moves us away from men and look again for the Inspiration that draws us closer.”

by: Paulo Coelho