We tend to imagine that love is something we will find outside of ourselves.
Yet there is only place we will ever find love: within our own hearts.
While we may find things or people outside us to whom we respond with love, the love they inspire is not created magically out of the ether – it comes forth from our own hearts.
Meditation is the study of our own hearts. The predominant quality we discover there – is love.
The love in our hearts is not dependent on any outer circumstance or any other being. It is inherent in our hearts the way fragrance is to a flower.
To feel, experience and flourish in this love, does not require us meeting any person or being any where or proving any thing.
It requires only a quiet mind, our opening within, our acceptance and surrender to love the way a baby sleeps in its mother’s arms.
The enjoyment of pure, objectless love is one of the most exquisite, profoundly fulfilling and illumining of all the fruits of meditation.
Exercise:
Sit in a quiet, peaceful place with eyes closed and the breath calm and controlled. Imagine a flower within your heart – first in bud form, and then slowly blooming into the most beautiful, delicate, perfect flower imaginable. The flower and your heart are inseparable.
Now place yourself inside your flower-heart. You have become the flower. Immerse yourself in simply BEING the flower. You are four qualities: simplicity, beauty, delicacy and fragrance. Nothing else. Consciously breathe in your own fragrance and appreciate it to the full. This fragrance is pure love. The more you can seep yourself in the fragrance of your flower-heart, the more love will envelop you.
Desire nothing else. Think of nothing else. Love will be your reward.