In honor of Valentines Day, the Year of the Ox and Ash Wed today, I wanted to share a recent post from Zen teacher Rev angel Kyodo williams. Here it is:
the universe loves us
this is from an interview i did for The Sun Magazine some years ago with Leslee Goodman. it was never published because, as it turns out, i was too controversial for them. surprise! the following isn't so controversial, but i felt something from it such that i thought i'd share.
Goodman: In another interview you said, “If more people in the world meditated for five minutes a day, we’d have a much better planet to work with.” What is it about meditation that is so powerful? What does it accomplish?
Rev. angel: The state of contemporary society is such that we’re in perpetual motion. We don’t take or create the space to just be, to experience being alive for the sake of being alive—not for the sake of accomplishing something. We’re completely missing the trust that comes from the felt acceptance of the universe.
The universe loves us. It radiates love, but we don’t trust it because we don’t feel its acceptance. It’s like being an infant in your mother’s arms, knowing that your mother loves you because you exist. It’s not about what you do.
I know some of us haven’t had that experience—or the love might not have come from our mother, but from a father, grandmother, a grandfather, an aunt—someone who just adored us, who gave us the sense that we were okay, which enabled us to trust and accept who we are.
Meditation can give us that experience, too, if we let it. I’m not talking about transactional meditation—which is meditation to get somewhere, to become enlightened—but meditation that lets us be and lets us have the powerful experience of being loved and accepted just the way we are.
Goodman: You’ve gotten that from meditation? You’ve had the felt experience that the universe loves you?
Rev. angel:Yes, I have experienced universal cosmic love, total acceptance from the universe, yes. It’s not because there’s a universe out there that loves me because I’m so special or unique or whatever. It’s because through meditation I connect to the I AM that is the universe. So of course the universe loves me; I’m part of it. I have a total right to be here and to live my life and figure it out. I feel it in meditation, in simply being; not in reflecting, or unpacking; just being.
happy new year of the Ox and thank you for being you.
the universe loves every single one of us, indeed.
with love and in justice,
Rev angel
Thank you Rev angel for pointing out the fundamental I AM, which connects us also to name of the Divine in the Abrahamic faith traditions - YHWH - I AM WHO AM. This unconditional love that Rev angels describes is the core teaching of all wisdom traditions. This love transcends and includes our particular orientations, cultures and religions. It is the Universal and Perennial tradition. Does anyone really think love would be confined to a particular group? Simple Being…the universe loves and I am an expression of that universe. We call that love by different names in different traditions. It is this love that brought Thomas Merton and the 14th Dalai Lama together. It is this love that binds each of us and all of creation, through its 14 billion years of evolution.
Practice: - follow Rev angel - sit in silence for 5 min - the simple art of being - surrender to the love that is all around, what we call God’s loving presence in the Christian tradition. Can you sense what she is pointing to…
Love this. Finley puts it: to truly know is to know that we are known.