Our true nature, Essence, is love. To be in Essence is to be in love. If love is what you want (do you?), then being in Essence and staying there is how to have it. The problem is that we have other agendas—other desires—when we are in relationship. Sometimes we want to be right more than we want to experience love. Sometimes we want to be separate and avoid being vulnerable more than we want to experience love. And sometimes we want what we want more than we want love.
It’s important to realize that there are reasons why we don’t choose love as often as we could. There’s a payoff for the ego in not choosing love, and it’s good to be aware of what you are trading love for. When we are identified with the ego, other things seem more important than love, because they are more important to the ego than love. That’s the catch. The ego doesn’t choose love.
So what are you to do if you are identified with the ego, but you know Essence enough to want that? That’s the situation so many of us find ourselves in. Very few of us live from Essence most of the time. There’s an answer, though. When you do choose love, that’s Essence choosing love. Essence is able to reach into the egoic state of consciousness and draw us to itself, but we have to be willing to pay attention to Essence instead of the egoic mind (the voice in our head). Essence won’t shout at you like the egoic mind does. It won’t try to convince you, scare you, or bully you to come to it, like the egoic mind does. Essence whispers softly in each moment. It entices you with feelings of love, joy, peace, contentment, and happiness that seep into the egoic state of consciousness. When you pay attention to these feelings, you are paying attention to Essence, and doing that drops you into Essence.
The way out of the egoic state of consciousness and into Essence is not a hard road after all. All it takes is paying attention to the love, joy, peace, contentment, compassion, wisdom, and happiness that are already here in this moment. Can you feel them—any of them—even just a little? That is your doorway into Essence. Even a sliver of love or peace or joy can take you there. Pay attention to that sliver—notice it—and then that will become your experience of the moment instead of your thoughts. Instead of noticing your thoughts, notice these subtle feelings and qualities that belong to Essence, and you are there! Making this choice isn’t difficult or unpleasant, but it is a choice.
This is also the answer to finding love in relationship: Notice the love that’s there and not the other person’s persona, words, or actions. This person in front of you is playing a part. Let that part be played, recognize it as a part, and enjoy it. It’s all play—lila, as the Hindu mystics say: God playing with God in many forms. What fun! Essence enjoys the characters that we are. It accepts them and revels in their quirkiness and uniqueness. It has compassion for their pain and the suffering they bring to themselves and to others. It accepts this pain as part of life too.
Essence accepts whatever your partner is doing or saying because Essence knows that it’s not the whole truth of him or her. Essence sees the truth about the other, and it loves the other because the other is itself. To Essence, it’s clear that the other is no different from itself. It feels and sees the sameness. It knows only Oneness. It can’t be fooled by words, behavior, and looks. Appearances can’t totally hide the truth. Look into your beloved’s eyes and see.
This is the experience you have to look forward to when you choose Essence over the ego, love over being right or superior, acceptance over judgment, kindness over criticism, and unity over being separate and safe. These are your choices, which can only be made by you. Happiness and love depend on them, but happiness and love can wait. Essence is patient, and it will wait as long as it has to for you to choose it over the ego.
It’s time to choose Essence, to choose love. You choose Essence not just for your own happiness or for a happy relationship, but also for peace, love, and happiness for all—for the rest of you in your many guises. You are here to find love, not just for yourself, but also for the divine Self, which has been hiding love from you in this world of form just so that you could have the pleasure and amazement of discovering it in the simple quiet of this moment— and in your beloved’s eyes.
From Loving in the Moment