As long as you believe you are a separate person with boundaries, with the attitude of getting things and protecting your self, you will block love. Love destroys boundaries. Love has nothing to do with you or me. Love is just the activity of that creativity in that openness. Love is the outcome of nonrestriction, of freedom. When the body and the mind are not restricted by that point of view, the harmony of the body and the mind will be expressed in a lovingness, an abundance. The natural movement of our being is to be in love. The expression of that freedom is love, goodness, sweetness, contentment. When there is no point of view, there is complete and real love. When love is present, there is no movement toward getting or protecting. Your body exists as a channel for that flow of love. Love will flow by itself. The openness and the love flowing through it will allow everything to happen the best way it can happen.

As we will see at the end of this book, this perception is needed, ultimately, for a true human life. The absolute reality of which we have been speaking is the source of the human being, and the spring of all life. But human life is lived in the manifest world, with all its differentiations, colors and richness. To truly understand human life is to know the non-conceptual reality and still live a personal life of love, work and knowledge. It is to know directly that we are the unfathomable reality, that all differentiations are conceptual, and still live in this differentiated world, appreciating its richness, variety and beauty. For human life to be complete and balanced, it must consist of the harmony of all dimensions of reality, from the ultimate non-conceptual source to the various dimensions of manifest existence. It must integrate in a harmonious whole the universe of the man of spirit and the universe of the man of the world. Otherwise there is either no life or a fake life.

As I said, the Guest is pre-anything. So whatever you conceptualize it to be or think it is, give it away, sacrifice it. This path is actually very simple. Whatever you’ve got, give it away. It doesn’t matter what it is, what you realize, simply give it away. Give it away in the sense of not being attached to it, not in the sense of rejecting it. If you are in a continual process of giving away, the good and the bad, then you are harmonizing with the Guest. The Guest is the source of everything, the infinite potential of all reality. It is inexhaustible, and it is always manifesting everything by giving away its treasures. Whatever you’ve got, give it away. You don’t need to think of it in terms of which level it is, what’s going to happen, where you are going. Just understand it, sacrifice it, give it away, forget about it, and leave room for the next one to come. And whenever the next one comes, whatever comes, understand it, realize it, and sacrifice it, and do the same with each one that follows, forever. No holding on to anything, good or bad. You don’t hold on to evil, you don’t hold on to enlightenment. The path of the heart is very direct, very simple. If you find yourself attached to anything, give it away—whatever it is you’re attached to, even if you think, “Oh, that’s my true self, oh, that’s God realization, now I have the Absolute.” Forget it, give it away. It’s only your mind starting to hold on here and there.

We perceive the various objects and phenomena flowing together in a manner where there is no contradiction, no opposition, no collision, no competition, no jostling, no confusion, no interference, and no enmity. All the forms and phenomena of manifest reality—in all of its physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions—flow together with total and perfect harmony. At the same time, it is clear to us that the whole flow is not only harmonious but completely intelligent in an organic and synergistic fashion, where the harmony owes not only to the absence of discord, but also to the exquisite intelligence implicit in the details and specifics of the unfoldment. Everything interweaves with everything else in total intelligence and harmony, as if it is the work of a master designer. It is like the perfect symphony, the most complete cooperation, and the most total coexistence. The inner sense is of an intimacy and peace, a settled and contented heart, a relaxed and settled presence. The fullness possesses beauty and harmony, and a texture of blissful sweetness. The blissful sweetness may be that of a rich and richly textured love, that of the nectar of fulfillment, or that of the flowing delicate honey of surrendered contentment. This is the effect of the dimension of love as it fills the field of the logos, giving us the impression that the universe is unfolding as the action of the love of Being. The logos is felt then as the heart of God, and we are all its inhabitants.

Thus, in this condition of nondual realization, one perceives a transparency and a luminosity of oneness and at the same time a seamless harmony in the manifestations of that oneness. Whatever the situation, what we would normally distinguish as bad or good is experienced as a seamless and graceful harmony that is simple but beautiful, aesthetically inspiring and uplifting. What’s more, the harmony between everything is also meaningful; it is part of the meaning. So, the meaning is the presence itself; it is the totality of reality in its harmony.

When you have this mystical experience of seeing the loving nature of the universe, you see that what will bring about peace on earth is not politics. You see that there is no way to bring harmony to the world except through seeing the harmony that is already there. You see that external harmony has to be an expression of inner harmony; otherwise, it will never manifest because one's view of the world would remain a projection of the inner delusions of separateness and conflict. Basically, everyone has this projection and is at odds with it, trying to change it or improve it, fighting with it inside one's mind, making little changes here and there, but not fundamentally resolving it. If you really recognize the inner nature of reality -- that it is loving, that it is joyous, that it is abundant – you will live from that recognition and you will act so as to bring about in others the same recognition.

This means that for us to operate from the perspective of universal love, all the essential aspects must be free, and available without blockage. We see that the action of love is balanced and the manifestation of love is balanced. Whatever is needed is brought forth. Universal love has power, harmony and balance. The loving action is a balancing and harmonizing action. Universal love is mysterious: the mystery is that the abundance, the cosmic universal goodness is actually the expression and the radiance of the harmony of Being. The mystery is also that essence in all its aspects, can be present in a harmonious totality. Universal love is an expression of the harmony of the totality. Everything is in harmony with everything else. Nothing is excluded. Your will is in harmony with your compassion. Your compassion is in harmony with your joy. Your joy is in harmony with your anger. Your anger is in harmony with your body. Your body is in harmony with your ego. Your ego is in harmony with other people. There is no conflict anywhere. Everything fits and functions as a togetherness, as a oneness. That oneness is you. That oneness is the true feeling of who you are. You are not the personality, or any particular aspect of essence. You are the whole thing, including emptiness and space, and you experience everything in complete harmony. When this happens, there is a sense of intimacy, an exquisite, personal intimacy, the feeling that you are you, with nothing excluded, nothing rejected. You also feel that you are both a person and a universal existence, that what is personal and what is universal are completely harmonious and can coexist. When your whole organism is in harmony on all its levels, there is no conflict. The expression and radiance of that harmony is love. You become a channel of love, a manifestation of love. You feel completely yourself and not separate from anything.

For the Personal Essence, on the other hand, intention has a different meaning. It is related to the integration of essential will. When this happens one realizes that one’s actions must be in harmony with all natural forces, even on the level of Being; otherwise there is a splitting from Being, and an incorrect action will result. So instead of intention one experiences a spontaneous flow of intelligent and purposeful action, realizing that Being flows through one, as one, and it is the flow that determines one’s life, action, interests, creativity and so on. Students who have only partially integrated the Personal Essence become aware of this reality. So there is nothing in Being that is similar to the function of intention of ego. One is so integrated into reality that it is reality that is the source of one’s actions. As the Personal Essence, one becomes the spearhead of reality. Reality acts through one by one being the individual manifestation of it. In religious language this is called surrender to God’s will, or flowing with the Tao.

From the point of view of the end of the journey, the state of egolessness, the perception of Holy Harmony is that the creative flow is always a harmony, in harmony, and revealing harmony. The harmony is self-existent and is always present. Its existence is not the result of someone advancing on a path; only the perception of it results from spiritual work. From the point of view of one traveling the path, the perception is that the creative flow manifests as an optimizing thrust, pushing one toward harmony. That is, if we let reality unfold without interfering with it, we see that our experience of it evolves spontaneously toward harmony and the awareness of harmony. The optimizing thrust of reality will move our experience of ourselves and the world toward the enlightened state, which is the perception of, and the abiding in, objective reality, as revealed in the nine Holy Ideas. We can see this Idea of Holy Harmony either from the perspective of the enlightened state or from that of moving toward it. From the enlightened state, we realize that the unfoldment of reality is always a harmony; one harmony is being continuously replaced by another harmony. From the perspective of the path, we realize that there is an unfoldment occurring. If we really attune ourselves to the dynamism of Being, instead of trying to take things into our own hands, we realize that the dynamism of Being has its own inherent optimizing thrust that will guide us and lead us toward the implicit harmony.

The soul’s retained impressions can also be disharmonious or even antithetical to her true nature, limiting or distorting her openness, creativity, flow, flexibility, and freedom. The retained impressions can become rigid and fixed structures, limiting her capacity for morphogenic transformation by constraining her malleability and her receptivity to the rest of her potential. Rigidity and fixation are elements of a larger category of disharmonious impressions: retained impressions that are disharmonious to her because they are false, inaccurate, and/or distorted reflections of her nature and properties.

The more the Personal Essence is realized and developed, the more one experiences one’s life as integrated with who one is. One’s life becomes the natural expression and extension of one’s personal realization. One literally fills one’s life with one’s integrated qualities and capacities. Defensive, superficial and unnecessary activities, interests and engagements drop away. One’s interests and activities become a direct reflection of one’s essential attainment. Life becomes rich, profound, significant and fulfilling. This does not happen through planning or premeditation. The mind does not and cannot know what needs to happen. The Personal Essence exerts the influence of all its qualities and dimensions on the consciousness of the individual. One becomes naturally and spontaneously interested and involved in the activities, interests and situations that are in harmony with one’s realization. This realization determines one’s life, and one’s life leads to a greater development of the realization. One begins to feel that everything that happens in one’s life is meaningful and necessary. It’s as if nothing wrong can happen, or that whatever is perceived to be wrong turns out to be ultimately in the service of one’s development.