Love, Period (Part 3): Loving Awareness | Jake Haber

Check out the third episode of our "Love, Period" series as we look at love through the concept of expanded awareness. How does pain increase our capacity for love? What are "spiritual altitudes"? What exactly is "loving awareness"? 

 

Quotes: 

 

Kahlil Gibran:

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain"

 

Rumi:

“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.”

 

Veronica Tugaleva:

"To love unconditionally does not mean to give your unconditional time. Sometimes, to love completely, we must never see someone again. This, too, is love - giving someone the freedom to exist and be happy, even if it must be without you.”

 

Matthew 5:43-48:

"You have been taught to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you this: love your enemies. Pray for those who torment you and persecute you— in so doing, you become children of your Father in heaven. He, after all, loves each of us—good and evil, kind and cruel. He causes the sun to rise and shine on evil and good alike. He causes the rain to water the fields of the righteous and the fields of the sinner."

 

Ram Dass:

“I have a holy table with pictures on it of Buddha and Christ and Maharajji, my guru.... And I used to have Caspar Weinberger”— the secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan—“on the table, but I now have replaced him with Bob Dole. So in the morning, I say, ‘Good morning, Christ! Hello, Buddha! Good morning, Maharajji! Hello, Bob.’ And I see how far I have to go yet. Because after all, [Bob Dole] is merely God in drag, saying, I bet you won't recognize me this way, will you? They're all faces of the beloved.”

 

“(I’ve) read the words of great masters and others about death. Now, when I piece it together with my heart, not with my intellect, I find nothing to fear if I identify with loving awareness. Death becomes simply the final stage of my sadhana”.

 

Rob Bell:

“If we want hell, if we want heaven, they are ours. That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide. God says yes, we can have what we want, because love wins.”

 

James Baldwin: 

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”