Learning to love . . . .

Apparently love can only be experienced it cannot be taught. Is this true?

And anyway what is love?

From the point of view of living in this world that we live in we have to come to terms at some point with the dynamic of stress and tension. Has there ever been a time when we as humans haven't been under stress? I doubt it very much. Imagine living through the last war with children to bring up, or living during the black death or any other time in history.

The only thing that is different now is that we have perspective, we now know what it is like to be relaxed. In times gone by this was probably just a privilege of the wealthy. Maybe?

So here we are all suffering from stress and overwork. why? Why do we do that, what is this about?

Don't we have a choice now? Are we still slaves to the wealthy? I don't think so, but then again what is going on? I suppose we could just conclude that this is the natural state for us humans, and as we evolve into an unknown future there is bound to be anxiety, which of course leads to feelings of stress. But we have always been evolving into an unknown future, haven't we, therefore we have always been stressed?

Some of the wise guys from the past saw through the illusion and sat down and said hang on a minute what am I doing? In fact more to the point who am I to be doing what I am doing? As they went deeper into questioning the nature of their conditioned reality they came to some devastating conclusions. These people were labelled madmen, mystics, poets, artists and yogi's amongst other things.

Very few of them were born into this condition and most of them suffered for many years until one day like the Buddha they said ok that's it I want to see the truth. Some of them did and some of them went mad, others gave up and became charlatans and low level con artists making money form the little they had learned. But all of them had seen something that made them stop for a while and ask some important questions.

The stress you feel is a dynamic force, it is an energy that is useful for your personal evolution. Use this tension in your practise to help you see through the layers of illusion that surround you day by day. This illusion of course is all in your own head and buying into it will make you crazy.

You have a practise now. Use it!

Om