Love, Joy and Peace

Love, joy and peace cannot flourish until you free yourself from Mind Dominance. When there is a gap in the stream of thought they can occur. Within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, love and peace. Usually these moments are short lived as the mind starts making noise again, that which we call thinking. Emotion literally means "disturbance" in Latin. Love, joy and peace are deep states of Being, as such they have no opposite. This is because they arise from beyond the mind. Emotions, on the other hand are subject to the law of opposites. You cannot have good without bad. In the unenlightened mind, what is sometimes called joy is usually the short-lived pleasure side of the pain/pleasure cycle. Pleasure is always derived from something outside you. Joy arises from within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain. What we call Love may be pleasurable and exciting for awhile, but it is an addictive clinging, an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a switch. Many "Love" relationships, after the initiasl euphoria has passed, actually oscillate between "Love" and "Hate", "Attraction" and "Attack."

Real love doesn't make you suffer. It doesn't suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain. You may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep inner peace. These are aspects of your true nature which is usually obscured by the mind. Even within a "normal" addictive relationship, there can be moments when the presence of something genuine can be felt. They will only be glimpses soon to be covered up by mind interference. It may seem that you had something very precious and lost it, or it was an illusion. The truth is it wasn't an illusion and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state which can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is cloudy the sun is still there.

Excerpted from The Power Of Now