Love, Compassion And Spiritual Awakening - Cultivating Divine Qualities
We have to cultivate these divine qualities, these divine emotions but ‘Love’ is usually, between skin and skin, body and body, mind and mind but after Spiritual Awakening, love happens between two Souls, between two Spirits. ‘Compassion’ is kindness in service. Compassion is good Karma on the journey of Spiritual Awakening. But after spiritual awakening or Enlightenment, compassion does not remain mere kindness and service, rather, serving humanity becomes a prayer, a form of devotion to the Divine.
How does Spiritual Awakening change what compassion and love are all about? For this, we have to first know, what love is. Love is an intense yearning for someone. Do we, human beings, realize that love comes from God? Love is God. It is for God. God manifests as a Spark Of Unique Life or SOUL in you and me. In an awakened love, the Soul in me would yearn for the Soul in you. This is the love that is being caused by the SOUL. That is why, a dead person cannot love. It is a very deep and divine emotion but we, somehow, have got caught in physical or worldly love. Worldly love gives momentary pleasure. It is ephemeral. Many civilizations and sects have spoken about worldly love and Spiritual Love and given the difference between the two. The Sufis called worldly love ‘Ishq Majazi’ and Spiritual Love ‘Ishq Haqiqi’. The ancient Greeks called the selfish worldly love as ‘Eros’, which became ‘Agape’ or Divine Love after awakening.
When there is a Spiritual Awakening or Enlightenment, we realize that we are not the body, mind and ego. We are the Divine Soul. The moment we become aware that we are the Soul, ‘you and me’ cease to be different, they become one. Our bodies are just like garments that we are wearing. One day, these bodies will die but we are, in reality, the Divine Soul. We need to realize this as it is the ultimate goal of life. Then, compassion is no longer for the body but it becomes love for the Soul. We serve human beings but not as a service. We serve them as a prayer.
When you love somebody before Enlightenment, it is a worldly love but when you love somebody after the Spiritual Awakening, it becomes Prema Yoga, the Yoga of Divine Love. Is there any way to love God? No, there is not. You can have Bhakti or devotion but only when there is Spiritual Awakening, you experience God in one and all. You love one and all. This is how Spiritual Awakening transforms love into Prema Yoga. It opens the door to loving God and serving God.
Therefore, love and compassion before Spiritual Awakening and after Spiritual Awakening are very different qualities. These emotions evolve greatly. When we love someone and have compassion, they are worldly emotions but when love and compassion arise in Consciousness, they become Divine. So, if we want to take love and compassion to a level of divinity, we need Enlightenment, Spiritual Awakening and Realization of the truth. We need to overcome the ignorance that we are separate and realize that we are the Divine Soul, the Spark Of Unique Life that comes from the SIP and goes back into SIP, the Supreme Immortal Power that we all call, God. We are Souls and Soul is SIP. So, we are all SIP. In a material world, love and compassion are only skin deep but in the Spiritual world, love and compassion are from soul to soul, from the Divine in me to the Divine in you.
Therefore, let us learn to awaken to the truth. Let us take the help of a Spiritual Master, a Guru who will help us overcome the myth that we have grown up with. Let us not believe in the fairy tales. Let us try to get to the root, to the truth, to realize what true love is. True love is bliss, not just a kiss. And serving humanity is prayer. The one who realizes that every Soul in every living creature, man or beast, is none other than the divine, then service, no longer remains service. It becomes a prayer to God. Love and compassion become Divine qualities.
