DOES LOVE ONLY HAPPEN WHEN IT WANTS OR IS THERE SOMETHING WE DO, LET DOWN, OPEN UP, TO ALLOW IT?
Positively, nothing can be done; negatively, much can be done. You will have to learn what negative action is. Lao Tzu calls it WU-WEI: doing without doing, action without action, effort without effort. It is one of the most significant things to learn. We know how to do things; that is a positive, aggressive, masculine way.
There is another approach, more subtle, more graceful, more feminine: to be in a state of let-go, to be in a state of surrender, and to allow existence to flow through you. That is doing through nondoing. In a sense it is negative, because you are not doing anything.
Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
This is the secret of real meditation: sit silently, do nothing. Wait…. Wait patiently. Wait in deep trust that the existence cares about you, that whenever you are ready and ripe you will be filled with love, that love will overflow you. The spring comes… that means there is a season to everything. You cannot have it before its time, you have to attain to a certain maturity.
And the greatest maturity is attained by learning the action which is basically inaction, the doing which is not doing at all but a state of nondoing. You remain available; if God calls you, you are ready. You are listening — that is real prayer. When you say something to God, that is not real prayer; you have moved into action, you have become aggressive.
The real prayer is when you listen to God, you become all ears. You simply listen from every pore of your being; your every cell is just waiting: "If he calls, I will be ready. If he needs me, he will find me available." You remain unoccupied so that you can be available. You remain without thoughts so that you can hear him without distortion.
God calls you, the spring comes, but finds you so much occupied that the grass cannot grow by itself; he finds you so much burdened, so full of yourself, that he cannot enter into you — he finds you without any space. And he needs great space. You have to be utterly spacious, you have to be absolutely empty — only then can God descend in you.
And love is nothing but God approaching closer and closer to you. The rays of God — that's what love is.
You ask me, "Does love only happen when it wants?"
There is no question of God wanting — he is always ready to happen to you — just YOU are not ready. And what is needed on your part is not aggressive action; what is needed on your part is to become feminine, receptive, passive. Allow him in: he is knocking on your doors.
I say to you: He is knocking on your doors — please leave them open. He is seeking you and you are hiding. He is asking, but you are not responding.
It is not only that man seeks God — in fact, God is seeking man continuously. But he never finds you, because you are never now, you are never here. You are always gone somewhere else.
You are never at home. God goes on calling you, you are always somewhere else: the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi, the Blue Diamond… somewhere else. You are never found at home. Whenever he comes you are not there — because God knows only the present time; he has no idea of the past and no idea of the future. Now is the only reality for him, and you are absolutely unaware of the now.
You enjoy, you reminisce with great joy… your old days, your childhood, your youth. You are always going backwards, into your memories, or you are always moving into "not yet," the future, and imagining, projecting. But you are never now.
The small gap between the past and the future is the only real time. It does not belong to your time, it belongs to eternity. It is only through that moment that God can penetrate you. It is only through that moment that love happens, the spring comes. The spring is always now, here; it is never then or there.
Love is the closeness of God felt in the heart.
Be available. Allow. Be open and vulnerable. Don't live with armor around yourself. It is your armor, your safety and security arrangements, it is your strategies that are destroying you. Be innocent, be authentic, be true, whosoever you are. Then you will be able to see that which is, to know that which is. And seeing that which is creates love, releases your love energy.
In the ancient Hebrew the word for God simply means "that which is." It is a code word; it stands for reality itself.
But man goes on distorting scriptures, words, language, everything. Because of your preoccupation, your prejudices, your concepts, your knowledge, you remain ignorant.
The preoccupied mind can't see what is, can't hear what is, can't feel what is. The preoccupied mind lives in its own world. Buddha calls that world the real problem: the world that is created by your mind. Renounce that world, renounce the mind!
And you will be overflowing with love and overflowing with God, overflooded. And it is an inexhaustible source; you can go on sharing it, but you cannot exhaust it. AES DHAMMO SANANTANO — so is the ultimate, inexhaustible law, the law of the universe.
OSHO
