How To Find Love In Everything: There Is Nothing Outside Of You

So what happens when you let go of this concept of things...and if you have one thing and multiple things, then now we can talk about everything. So finding love in everything, again, is an illusion, because you will find love in everything by no longer perceiving anything. The moment you believe in what you see, you're in Samsara. And what does it mean to believe in what you see? So, illusion is neutral. It's harmless, essentially. But when it's believed in, it becomes harmful. It causes suffering, right? So Maya turns into Samsara, or illusion becomes delusion, when the illusion is believed in. Now, what does it mean to believe in an illusion? Something appears, it could be anything. So you can look around your room right now, or it can even be the glasses on your nose, or the hair dangling in front of your eyes, or the pen in your finger, or your computer screen. Doesn't matter, pick something. The moment you're defining this, the moment you're labeling whatever this object is, you're already in samsara, because you no longer see it as play. You've given it meaning, you've given it a label, and you're believing in the independent existence of that object. Let's say it's a pen, but it could be anything. Could be a feeling too. Could be a thought, could be a person, a desire. But let's take something simple and tangible, like a pen. The moment you think there's actually a pen there, which you have no evidence for, you're in samsara. You're assuming something. You're assuming some thing into being. Not really, but it appears now that you have conjured something up into existence. You've conjured up a pen into being. It's like that famous Zen saying: The moment you teach a child that a bird is a bird, it will never see the bird again. So the moment we label something, we stop seeing love. And babies are typically still more familiar or connected, you could say, to this natural recognition of love. That's why they're just (unless they're uncomfortable), but they're just this joyful bundle of smiles and giggles and love, because they're just naturally not placing anything on top of it. They're not labeling a bird as a bird yet. So they don't actually...they literally don't see a bird. See if you can understand that. A baby does not see a bird, or a pen, in this case. Literally, I mean that literally, the baby does not perceive a bird. The baby does not see a pen, not in a manner of speaking. It doesn't see it. It hasn't conjured it up yet. And evidence of this is hiding in plain sight of your direct experience right now, meaning there are so many things that you could now, in hindsight, point out that are in your room, like a piece of art, or a wall, or a painting, or a couch, but you did not perceive those things when we are talking about the pen, or the baby. In the same way, the baby doesn't even perceive the pen when it's in front of its face. It doesn't see a bird when it's flying, or when it's resting on the table, or whatever. In just the same way that right now, you do not perceive the wall behind your computer, although now you do. But a second ago, you did not, because you did not conjure it up. You see? I'm doing this exercise to give you a little taste, a little hint, of what the natural state feels like, if you can refrain (meaning stop doing something).. If you can refrain from conjuring things into being, into apparent being. And again, you're doing this already right now, with everything you're not conjuring up right now. But unconsciously, you assume that these things are all constantly there, and that they're real, that they're independently real. But even when you're looking at it, it's not really what you think that it is. So what you're aware of when you start labeling something, or you reference something, is a fictitious idea. It's not reality. A bird is not actually a bird. Not just the word, but the conceptualization of a bird. The bird is not actually a bird. Sounds a little silly to say, but it's true. Just like a pen is not actually a pen. Like, where do you define...Where does the pen begin exactly? And if it can't write anymore, is it still a pen? If it's empty of ink, is it still a pen? If the plastic melts, is it still a pen? How far into the plastic, exactly, does creation become "pen"? Is it one Planck distance from what you observe as the very outer shell of the pen? Where does the pen begin, truly? Does it begin with the plastic molecules? What about the space in between? Is that the pen as well? And what if you remove all the plastic molecules and you're left with just the space? Is that still a pen? If you take away one of these elements, or one of those plastic molecules, is it still the same pen? Is it still a pen to begin with? So you get the idea. We conjure things up with our very powerful minds, and then we believe in these things. So Maya is the illusion of a pen that you can pick up, and write with, and play with, and write a book with, if you will. But Samsara, or delusion, is believing that the pen is real; that it has an actual existence as a pen that exists whether or not you conjure it up within your mind. The best analogy we have for this is probably the dream state at night. So you go to sleep, then within your mind, within your consciousness, you dream up a body. So within your dream, you have a body. The body has ears, the body has eyes, the body has a nose, it has all the senses. And then with this fake body, you...with the fake senses...you hear sounds, you hear fake sounds, and then you see fake sights, and you interact with fake people, and you interact through your fake body. But in the dream, it seems all impeccably real. It seems irrefutably there. It seems independently real. In your dream, you don't go, "Hey, this is a dream," unless you're lucid dreaming, which would be the equivalent of sort of a basic level of awakening in the waking dream. So when you're lucid dreaming, you're actually aware while you're dreaming that it is just a dream. But typically you don't have this realization until you wake up and then you go, "Ah, that entire world, that entire landscape, that entire dream scenario, all my feelings, all my emotions, even my own body... I could hear sounds with ears I didn't have. I could see sights with eyes I didn't have. It was all a dream." So then you realize, well, the pen in my dream wasn't actually a pen. It was the canvas of the dreaming mind. It was the fabric of the tablecloth. It was the very substance of this intrinsic consciousness that hears my voice as we speak. So you see, when we refrain from labeling things and we refrain from assuming that there's an actual pen that actually independently exists, that is somehow responsible for causing my perception of the pen. That is, that whole world of believing in things to have an independent reality, meaning they exist independent of the dreamer, independent of the perceiver, independent of the knower. That is delusion, or Samsara. And that is what enlightenment removes. And then what is revealed in that removal of the human layer of meaning and separation and labeling and judgment and so on—what is naturally there—is similar, but more activated, more conscious, as what you would perceive in a three-month-old baby that's completely comfortable and smiling back at the smile of his or her mom or dad. That is the natural state...close to. It's not exactly the natural state, or at least it's not activated. It's not realized. It's sort of an unconscious version of it; a semi conscious version of it. But it is closer to the state of love than we will be in when we believe in objects as being real things. So what happens when you let go of this concept of things? And if you have one thing and multiple things, then now we can talk about, oh, everything. So finding love in everything, again, is an illusion, because you will find love in everything by no longer perceiving anything, in a sense. But the moment you put something there, some thing, there in your own mind, you conjure it up, because, again, the wall doesn't exist until you conjure it up; now you're aware of a wall. If you don't conjure up anything, while you're writing your book with that pen, or while you're staring at that wall during the meditation. But if you don't conjure up any idea about "wall," when you don't create project separation and reality onto "what is," then "what is" will take on a very different experience. And that's what I meant when I said the child actually does not experience a bird. Literally, the bird can be right on its nose. The child, the young child, that is, does not experience a bird. It experiences Isness. In some way, shape or form, you could say, "Okay, there's some color there and there's some shape there," but even color and shape needs your mind to agree with before you will experience them. Just like in your dream, you will not experience a room that you're not in, in your dream, until you conjure it up. You agree to have that projection take place. Now, for some reason, we don't recognize that this is exactly what we're doing in the waking state, as well. There's really no difference. If there is, it's very little. It's a very marginal difference between the dream state and the waking state. The mechanism is essentially the same. You are an intrinsic, sentient consciousness that doesn't know boundaries. It doesn't know separation. And your mind has the power to give shape, to give play, to give expression, to give form to things. And that is innately a gift. It is innately neutral, meaning free of suffering, innately. However, the way that we've utilized that, the way we've believed in what we project, causes Samsara, or delusion, and so on, and so forth. So what if we could simply stop doing that for a moment? It would be a much faster way to access love than to actually try to define what love is, and then find it in everything that doesn't exist in the first place. Because, you see, it's quite a burden to try to find love in everything that doesn't exist. I mean, that sounds like, sounds like a bit of a puzzle that you could spend your whole life trying to figure out. But what if it's just not there to begin with, and all there is is love? Then wouldn't that be easier? If you just are able to recognize the reality of love in the absence of projecting the unreality of everything, then Love finds itself throughout what you would call everything.