Make Love To The Moment

In the last episode I spoke about “Enlightenment”, as the experience of complete openness. Other people often use the term “clarity” to describe that state of mind. This is no contradiction to what I am saying. Just two different ways of looking at the same thing. Now, “clarity” is a word I try not to use. Because it is too easily misunderstood and misused. Throughout history some people had a sharp, focused mind and a very clear sense of purpose, while burning human beings alive or sending them to the gas chamber. Atrocities like that occur when we refuse to open heart and soul and define ourselves as seperate from other living beings. Once we break down these walls, we can start to heal, as individuals and as a species. Clarity itself is a consequence, not the cause. Openness, or lack thereof, is what makes all the difference. It will define what kind of person you are going to be. You can have good intentions. But if you refuse to open your heart and soul, then most of the time you will fall short of those intentions. That is our nature. We need to feel everything, otherwise we are easily deceived and become a danger to ourselves and others. That’s why the lack of openness is the cause of almost all man-made human suffering. Therefore the path to openness is the path towards healing. Of course treating a wound can be painful. But not treating it can be fatal, in every sense of the word. Openness is the only way to avoid the path of destruction and to achieve true clarity. Today’s exercise is still exploratory. This is necessary. If you want to plot a course, you first must know where you actually are. This one is very simple. You can do it as often as you want. Each time just honestly answer yourself the following two questions: Right now, am I willing to open my heart and soul, as much as I can even imagine? At this moment, am I ready to feel everything?

In eastern philosophies there are many unfamiliar words. To someone like me – who had no knowledge of the cultures and languages from which they originated – they seemed deep, meaningful and mysterious. By now I know that some of those words are deep and meaningful. But none of them are mysterious. They might seem vague. If you look at them from a distance. But once you get close enough, they become very clear. All of them can easily be explained, if you know what you’re doing. There is no need to verbally meander for hours, without barely making any meaningful point. While, at the same time, using a lot of big, fancy words, in order to sound more profound than you actually are. As quite a few people do, sometimes even very famous ones. So let’s talk about one of those big, fancy words in a concise and straightforward manner. What Buddhists, amongst others, sometimes call “Enlightenment” is the experience of complete openness. A state of mind, in which you do not hold back or on to anything whatsoever. Since we do not need big, fancy words, I will simply refer to “Enlightenment” as “complete openness”. But please keep in mind, in this context we’re not just talking about complete openness as a state of mind, but the actual experience of said state. And there’s the catch. Of course there had to be one… While the concept of complete openness is fairly easy to understand and thus to explain, any experience is by definition subjective. Two people can go through the exact same situation and still experience it completely different. That’s why it is almost impossible to tell you what the experience of complete openness would feel like to you personally or what kind of impact it would have. Even if it is possible, I don’t think one should even try. Because that experience should be yours and not a copy of somebody else’s. Feel what you feel, whatever that may be, unbiased and untainted. What I can hint at though, is the amount of impact said experience might have. To that end I am going to use a metaphor which could seem silly. But that’s fine. It is not meant to be serious or realistic. Don’t forget, I’m not trying to tell you what it would actually be like. That being said, imagine you were an ant. Yes, the insect. So, you’re an ant. You run around and attend your ant duties, all day long, every day, your whole life. Until now you never stopped to look up and notice the sky, not even once. However, all of a sudden, you are able to travel across the universe. – Don’t ask how. Because it doesn’t matter. – Suddenly you can visit distant stars, planets and alien civilizations. Now here’s a simple question: Wouldn’t all that dramatically alter your perspective on basically everything? You might experience something like that, or something entirely different. It is your journey. This new world is for you to discover, if you haven’t already. There’s only one point left to make. One thing which, I believe, needs clarifying. Of course we are not ants becoming space travellers, not even metaphorically. Because we always have been, we always will be, we already are space travellers, pretending to be ants.

Embrace your lover open-heartedly! Or don’t do it all. Sex without a heart-to-heart connection is just masturbating with another person’s body. It’s nothing more than scratching an itch. It’s about my needs, my desires. Even many so-called “love songs” go on about “the way you make me feel”. This is not love, at least not for the other person. Love is never about what you get. Love is all about what you give, without any expectation or regret. Let’s say you hold your newborn child for the first time. – A human being that, for now, is completely unable to intentionally do anything for you. – So, when you hold your newborn child and do not care about what you get; when everything you hope for at this moment, when your only wish is for this child to have a long life filled with joy and laughter, that is love. Love is not something you need to learn. For you feel some degree of love for something or someone all the time, if you are just open enough. And since openness is your nature, so is love. This should be as easy as it gets. But we make it difficult. For if you are open, if you love, you can get hurt. And that is the last thing most of us want. We rather just scratch the itch and try to get from one superficial high to another. We desperately try to feel something, just because we refuse to feel everything. This is not living. This is just running away from life. Think about this: Do you want healthy relationships in your life? Do you want any sense of self-worth or purpose? Well, you will never find that if you keep running. Because everything that is truly worth living is born out of openness and love. So choose wisely, for a life which is not based on love, is a life thrown away.

How often do you give your open heart, without holding back? To be honest, I rarely do this. Most of the time I do hold back, or rather: hold on to something. Actually, I always do this. I have never opened up completely. Not yet. Just like almost everybody else. But those few moments when I do open up, much more than the rest of the time, they mean the world to me. Even though I know the love I feel in those moments is just a glimpse of what can be, that glimpse changes everything! It is the most beautiful gift. One that I try to pass on. But, there is a fundamental problem: How could you explain, let’s say, sex to somebody who has never had it? Not just the abstract concept, but the actual experience. How could you even explain what it feels like to become one with another person, sexually and spiritually? How can one fully comprehend that a few hours like that can change your whole world? I believe it is almost impossible. One has to feel it in order to truly understand. There is just no substitute for that. By the way, I am well aware of the irony: Explaining that explanations do not work. But I also know, I have to give you something. I can’t just tell you to do this or do that, without any context. I am not the boss of you and I do not want to be. Although at first glance these texts might seem deep, they barely scratch the surface of reality. I am well aware of that too. But that is fine. I do not want to explain the universe. I just want to make you curious enough to give the exercises a shot. Try it and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. Do not even try to understand. Feel it. Live it. Then you will understand, without even trying.

Openness is not a “path”. It`s a choice. You can choose to open completely at any time. You might say: “I want to open and feel everything, but I can’t.” Well, you can’t because you do not want to feel everything. A part of you still refuses to go all the way. Otherwise, you simply would already be there. Very often we do this subconsciously. Thus, in order to make conscious choices, we have to become aware of what we are doing. Which brings us to our first exercise. Giving Hands [https://wolfion.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/david_wolf_giving_hands-300x204.jpg]Giving Hands For that we will use two simple hand gestures. Let me explain them first. Imagine giving someone a gift. Since it is a gift, you do not want anything in return. Your only hope – not expectation, but hope – is to bring that person joy. So, with both your open hands, you offer your whole loving heart. You give yourself completely to the other person and the world. Therefore these are “giving hands”. This is clearly a gesture of openness. One of the gestures of non- openness are the “clenched fists”. Imagine you really, really don’t want to be in a certain, maybe very painful, situtation. Not just your fists are clenched, your teeth are too. In fact, your whole body is tense. Just to be clear, you should do your best to get out of unhealthy situations. But sometimes life just doesn’t feel good and the only thing we can do, is to accept it. And most of the time we do not want to accept this reality. We rather tense up and refuse to let go. Therefore this state is best represented by thoughts like “I do not want to”, or “I cannot”. Clenched Fists [https://wolfion.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/david_wolf_clenched_fists-300x231.jpg]Clenched Fists Now, these two gestures and the respective underlying mindsets cannot mix. You cannot thruthfully say “I love you” with clenched fists. Just like you cannot honestly say “I hate you” with giving hands. They are clearly distinguishable. It might seem like only a few situations match the descriptions and most are somewhere in between. But actually they are not. If you do not approach the world with “giving hands”, then you do it with “clenched fists”, to some degree or another. Even if you do not know it. But that is the point, to become aware of our decisions. To that end, whenever you can, do or at least imagine the “giving hands”. Ask yourself, do you encounter the person in front of you or the situation with an open heart, giving yourself completely? Do not really think about it. Instead let your hands, real or imagined, do the talking. And if you can not just say “yes”, you are saying “no”. Repeat this exercise, until your decisions become obvious.