Deep Loving — Day 201

This week we’ve been observing ourselves deeply, in order to know ourselves ‘as nature’.

We started out by framing the practice as ‘deep listening’, which involves adopting a still and quiet perspective, observing the world as it is (vs. how we have come to know and think about it), and building insight into nature.

Then we looked at the same practice from the subtly different angle of ‘deep feeling’. This also involves adopting a still and quiet perspective, but now we’re observing ourselves, as we are (vs. how we have come to think and feel about ourselves). When we look closely at ourselves, we find that our primary and present experience is a felt one, made up of physical sensations (and their even subtler/deeper constituent parts). Soon enough, we find ourselves practicing ‘deep feeling’.

Today, we’re looking at the same practice again, from yet another slightly different perspective – ‘deep loving’. When you listen and feel deeply, you are also loving deeply. Remember that our definition of ‘loving' is practicing awareness & acceptance. To ‘listen' and ‘feel' is to be aware. Getting ‘deeper’ involves increasing awareness. Increasing depth also requires acceptance. Without a ‘yes’ and a moving-towards what you feel, you will express an unconscious ‘no’ and a moving-away-from/distraction.

Listening, feeling and loving – practicing one of these is practicing all of them. Listening is feeling is loving. All three are how you know yourself more deeply, eventually recognising the truth of yourself 'as nature'.

PRACTICE

What does listening deeply to the world around you look like?

What does feeling deeply into the world inside you look like?

What does loving yourself deeply look like?