A questioner asks Rupert Spira whether the recognition of love as one's nature must dissolve all liking and disliking. Spira distinguishes the love that knows no exception from the surface-level mind's natural preferences — and reads both through the King Lear analogy he uses elsewhere.
Transcript
It came up in the meditation yesterday um and then again today in the Q&A. Uh what I heard you say is love is our nature, true nature and love is indiscriminate in its expression. Um, and then you made a distinction about we our true nature can't help but love all even beyond everyone all. But we don't have to like we could like or dislike something. And it really it sat with me and then it came back again today. And um my sense from when you're saying that is if and as we are living from love like and dislike cannot exist. So it went it went to a place of me uh recalling my experience with growing up and my mother in anger and rage and the purity of love with which I wished for her to be happy was all that existed. there wasn't a liking or a disliking of her. And I think when it came back today, I've actually been sitting here saying, should I say this or not? But I'd love to hear a a little bit of um more from you about that because it when it hit me today with the question, what arose in me is that It's difficult I guess on some level as a human being in the King Lear play of life perhaps to live from that. But I I don't think that's true. And so as I've come to know and being here even this week, it's more and more evident that to live from that when I feel a like or a dislike, I've dropped the I I've turned from the experience of love. So am I setting myself up in saying this for some level of perfection on a spiritual path? It doesn't feel like that's true either. It feels that truly like and dislike go away. There may be a preference that energetically moves me toward or away from something, but like and dislike feel so personal and so wrongly applied to how I would live from. >> Yes. >> Your teaching. >> Yes. T You're absolutely right. Like and dislike are personal and love is impersonal. Like like and dislike is what the mind does. Love is what awareness is. So I I'm willing to tolerate the likes and dislikes that are inevitable for the mind. I don't feel that they need to disappear. I think it's natural for the mind due to its conditioning to like some things and dislike others. You can um let's take a a neutral example. You you can like tea and dislike coffee and know that both are essentially water. Well, you understand they're both water, but you like one of them and you dislike the other. So, you can you can like one person and dislike another person and know and feel that you share your being equally with both of them. And I think it's natural for the mind to like one person and dislike another due to its conditioning. And I think that's maybe what I'm maybe this is something that I'm holding myself more um wholeheartedly to. Um the tea and coffee feels more neutral. I think we are so because of uh maybe it's even a misappropriation of teachings that in the world it is so easy to say I really love you but you know or such and such and so I think it's that little back door >> that I'm I'm speaking to. So I don't actually give myself that out. As a matter of fact, when I feel the like, even the like versus the dislike, the liking of someone versus So, it's not just the dislike that >> if and as I feel that, I realize that there's something still in me at play. >> Yes. Um, it it's not really the person that we like or dislike. It's the way they think and behave that we either like or dislike. So we we like or dislike their behavior and the way they think, but we love their being. And I have to So you're right to say I like you, the person, that that's a mistake. But that's not really what we mean when we say we like someone. We say we like the way they they think and act and behave. And I I have to confess maybe I'm less spiritually mature than you are T but I have to confess when I watch the news sometimes there are people whose thoughts and behaviors I do not like. I cannot wash a veneer of adv over that. I do not like the way they think. I do not like the way they behave. But I often and this is my sader. I do it quite often. I I sit with the image of that person whose thoughts and actions. It's not that I just don't like them to be honest. I I detest them. I deplore them. But I sit with the image of that person until I can feel love for who they really are. And I f first learned to do this sad many many years ago. And it was completely spontaneous. It was uh when was the Iraq war? It was 20 20 years a 2003 20 odd years ago. I was living in Shropshire at the time. We had a fireplace every evening from I come in from my studio the pottery and um I'd get some newspaper and I tear up the newspaper, put it in the fire and the kindling and the logs and light it and everything. And as one does, you're tearing up the newspaper and you're it's probably 3 months old but nevertheless you read it. And so I'd be doing this and and I got to this page in the double page spread in the newspaper and it was an image. I I I can hardly describe it now. It was Saddam Hussein moments before he was hung. Someone had sneaked a camera into the into the cellar and it was this dark image. I remember Saddam Hussein was in an overcoat and he had this noose around his neck. It was it was a horrific image. It just it just halted me. I couldn't believe it. I was just lighting the fire and then there was this this image in in in the newspaper and and it and I just looked at it and I felt so much compassion for him that that wasn't a practice that I was doing it. That was just totally spontaneous. I just felt his utter vulnerability. I just thought if I was your mother now, how would I felt that I was his mother then? And I just felt this immense love for him in spite of everything that I thought about what he had previously done that didn't come into it. So that was a kind of it was a very powerful spontaneous practice that that I have um that that I I've developed over I I use it now. I I use it if I if I'm not particularly I don't very often meet you know I spent my life with people like you. I very rarely meet anyone whose thoughts and behaviors I I dislike. But if I am watching the news or reading something and the news is plenty of ideas and behaviors that it's like and I and I quite often pause and I look at the image of of the guy and and I wait and and I have to say I feel all my revulsion. I feel that this this this I I I I deplore what what I'm reading underneath things that are said it it but I I just stay with the image until I go through that feeling until I feel the the being of of of the person and I I just sit there looking at him until I feel that because I feel If we can't do that, how can we expect them to do that? That the reason they're doing what they're doing is because they don't feel that they confine their love to their nearest and dearest and they hate the people on the other side of the border and they're willing to do atrocious things to them just because they don't feel they share their being with them because they think they are other. And what's the remedy for that? That to feel they share their being with everyone. So, so but so if we can't feel them that towards them, how can we possibly hope that one day they will feel that about the people they are persecuting. So it's a very powerful spiritual practice and and and I do it and it it's not you know it's not something I I sometimes have to work at it sometimes with some images and I I'm there's such a revulsion in me. It I don't just smile sweetly at at these guys. I feel my my reaction and it takes me some time and I don't want to fake it. I want to really feel it. I want to feel it with the same intensity that I felt on that day when I saw the image of Saddam Hussein. I want to feel it with that kind of heartmelting compassion towards this person. Sometimes I place myself in the position of their mother. I'm so appreciative to hear you really articulate it in a full way like this because um almost in the short um you know the pathy >> yes >> it it it doesn't reveal what it takes to get to that and so so I think that it can falsely give permission to something that actually just has us still in more of a >> Thank you for saying that. I I I wasn't aware that in my briefer formulation of it, it might uh it might be misleading what I'm saying. So thank you for giving me the opport opportunity to >> thanks for receiving because I I again I have worked more um with looking like more into myself when I feel the preference for that particularly if it's a personal um yes the image on the horrific level of of violence and hatred and um in the world I can see that but I for me if it's been an interpersonal it's that I have to So, I know that it's my my separate self that and so I'm I'm more letting or wanting uh my own hurts to burn off um as opposed to because I know that this person for the most part I mean not the levels that you're talking about but for the most most parts in my life. I already know. I don't there's not a horrific image of that person except what I may have created from the the hurt in my own life. And so I've tried to work more with the burning away of or dissolving of that. But I I really appreciate you just sharing your practice. Thank you.