As we explore the barriers to self-realization, we need to inquire into our basic distrust. This will take us into exploring our early holding environment and its effects on the development of our sense of self. Investigating the inadequacies of our early holding environment reveals the effects of these inadequacies on our particular self-identity structure. Working through this history, and illuminating the psychic structures it has created, leads finally to the awareness of the absence of basic holding. This absence is associated with a certain emptiness, the hole of a specific manifestation of Being. Learning to allow this emptiness finally ushers us into this manifestation of Being, which turns out to be a quality of love. It is a quality of boundless and gentle love, a delicate light experienced as the presence of softness, sweetness and generosity. It is not exactly a personal kind of love. It is love for everything and everyone -- universal love. Its direct effect on the self is for her to feel lovingly held, as if cuddled by the infinitely loving arms of the universe.

Most people will respond more to universal love than to other kinds of love. People are comfortable with it, because there is no you and no me in it, and thus the various issues around other aspects of love tend not to arise. There is more trust then, and less fear. One of the main issues regarding this aspect is fear. It is fear that makes you feel that there is a you which needs to be protected, a you which needs to be enhanced. In the experience of universal love, there is nothing to be protected and nothing to be accumulated. There are no boundaries that separate the inside from the outside. The love is an ocean, and you are part of it, a drop of it or a channel for it. When I say that the personality or the identity must move out of the way in order to experience universal love, I am not saying you have to reject your personality. If you reject your personality, the rejection causes separation and there is an absence of love. Universal love accepts everything, including the personality. It doesn’t see the personality as a barrier, it sees the personality as a part of what is there. From the perspective of universal love, the personality is one fish swimming in the ocean. Suppose this fish happens to be grandiose and thinks it is more important than the other fishes. Universal love says, “If it wants to feel special and important, that’s fine. What difference does it make?”

Universal love is conscious and loving at the same time. It is also known as universal consciousness or cosmic consciousness. Universal love is a unification of all aspects of essence. When you experience universal love, you understand the action of love. An action is loving when it has all aspects of essence. A loving action is a gentle action when gentleness is needed, a firm action when firmness is needed, a compassionate action when compassion is needed, yielding when yielding is needed. Whatever is needed is present—and in the correct balance—depending upon the situation. 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.

All aspects of love can coexist with the personality, and the identity can be maintained, except in the presence of one particular aspect of love. This is called universal love, Christ love, or divine love. When our beingness manifests as universal love there is no personality. It is this love that spiritual teachers refer to when they say that as long as there is ego, there is no love. They are talking about universal love. Universal means it is not restricted to you; it is not individual. When you feel universal love, there is no “I” that loves. Universal love is needed to melt the identity and self-centeredness. When you experience universal love or Christ love, you understand what love really is. Until then, all other qualities of love can be perceived as accomplishments, because the personality will claim them.