Come On! Open Your Arms to Love!

I’ve recently come to realize how many people curse at spirituality. It can be people who have already been following spiritual paths for decades, or it can people who have just started to take an interest in it. They curse, both at each other and the teachings. Some are angry at other people. Others are angry because all the information is the same and nothing changes. Some are angry with themselves, with God, or with the system. Anger exists against the course of events, but is this really only against the course of events?

Hope is sought during various notable dates, planetary cycles, or various cosmic events. There is hope that everything will change this time, but this turns into despair later on. The expectations fail to materialize, and nothing changes as expected. It seems like all the practices, meditation, and affirmations all went down the drain. It feels as if the world became even more topsy-turvy. The spiritual knowledge, on the other hand, continues to be passed from one to another. There’s anger for you, and it’s filled with disappointment and resentment…

At this point, dear friends, I’d like to reinforce that everything, yes everything, is spiritual. Everything is composed of spirit. Everything that exists is essentially nothing but spirit itself. Whatever you call it, our essence comes from The One. That is the very reason why work life, spirituality, and social life cannot be separated from each other! If one assumes these things can be compartmentalized, such a person does not yet comprehend what spirituality is.

In fact, spirituality is the journey of bringing together the secular self with the spiritual self. It means to unify the earth and the heavens. It unites what can be seen with the eye with the invisible. Rather than separating, it is uniting. It means to infuse with each other and join together. If you’re still cursing at others, know that the reason for it is the pain you feel inside because you have not achieved this inner union yet. It is the pain of being unable to completely surrender yourself to your spirit…

What’s more, the entire planet can swear at a spirit, bashing pots and pans and yelling and screaming, but the spirit will not budge an inch. Expressing your anger at clichés like “What you seek is inside you” and “Everything is love” does not change the fact that what you seek really is inside you. Everything is love, and we exist in a magnificent universe. Instead, you only grow furious and perhaps even burst into tears with laughter at the same time, making sure that all those on earth and in the heavens above accompany you in your entertainment…

All being said, however, spirituality also requires a strong heart. It means having the courage to take the responsibility for everything you live and accept that it is nothing but your own creation. This is the hardest thing to accept in life. Blaming a force outside yourself and becoming angry at it is all too easy. However, accepting that everything you live is the result of the choices you made before coming to this world and those you made while living this life is not just the bravest thing to do—it is also a most magnificent step toward embracing your spirit.

Alas, this has been the hardest thing I have had to accept personally. Everything was much easier when I could hold a force outside myself responsible for everything. No matter how old I was physically, this was the effect of being a spiritual teenager. My mom did this, and my dad did that. My teacher was mean to me. So, this is the destiny I was given by God?

So, where was I when all of this happened? What was I doing? It’s easy to play the victim, because it released me from being responsible in the straightforward logic of a teenage mind. One day, though, someone said to me, “Hasan, you’re 40 years old. That’s a great age, yet you’re still preoccupied with complaining about what happened when you were six or nine years old. Stop holding onto these things and become your real age.”

With this perception, I looked at my life and saw how I actually chose this process. I created it and was taking part in it as well! I was neither the victim nor the perpetrator. The Creator brought an eternal and limitless universe into existence, and while I could have received any other storyline and any other gift, I actually wanted this one. I had even begged for it! What a fuss I had made! I had been throwing and tossing myself around, hurting myself, and even getting myself killed many times… And for what? To obtain whatever I desired, just like a spoiled kid…

For example, I’ve run after love and groveled in the name of love, but I never really understood how I could find love. Well, that’s not how love finds you anyway, just like how the energy of life doesn’t find you that way…

A few days ago, I had an experience where I received an answer. It was not merely an answer, though, but also an experience that showed me how I could find everything I’m looking for. I’d like to share this with you.

There was a meditation session on the last day of Meryem Suna’s Level 2 Camp, with the subject being love. In this meditation, we walked around the room with our eyes covered. I liked this very much, because I could stroll around in my mind. Everyone sheds their identities and becomes their meaning in me. And since our eyes are closed, the experience carries you beyond mere identities.

Among the 50 people in the room, one of my friends represented love to me. Before covering my eyes, I noted where she was in the room and planned to walk directly to her. Yes, my mind planned this, so it did not surrender to the flow, much like I don’t in my life. “Love” was there, and I had to reach it straight away. The music began. I closed my eyes, put the eyepatches over them, and went to her. I touched her, trying to identify her by feeling her clothes. I made sure it was her to the best of my ability. She was moving by herself, but I thought to myself, “Hasan, just let her be and focus on the meditation.” (I later discovered that I was touching the wrong person by the way.)

I then began to dance around the room. I was actually looking into my mind, and after a while, pain showed itself inside. All these years and all those practices, so much knowledge and so many teachings, masters, and meditation, yet I have always desired love but could never find it. I couldn’t find it—I really couldn’t. I suddenly felt such pain that I began to yell. I then abruptly heard a shaman playing a drum right next to my ear. It was as if the drum said to me, “Let it go! Let that thing go!”

I threw myself to the floor and started yelling, “I can’t! I can’t surrender to you!” The drum just beat stronger and stronger, and then, as I crawled on the floor, I touched a pair of feet, a woman’s feet. I took cover with them, and this woman began to yell. I was crying, she was crying, but the drum continued to play.

I shouted, “I can’t! I can’t surrender!” I kept shouting how I wanted to die, begging something to take my life. I yelled, and I yelled, and I yelled, but then I finally surrendered. I was dead. I collapsed on the floor, right where I had been, and became completely motionless. People were dancing around me with joy, yet I had picked death and collapsed on the floor. I waited for someone to come and take care of me, but no one did…

In my mind, I saw people carrying my body to a cemetery for the homeless and burying me. It was over! That was it! I had died before I could find love. I thought I could find it by destroying myself, but I was now in a grave for the homeless. Some 50 people had danced around me, but no one had touched me…

I was growing annoyed with the situation. Nobody cared about me, and seriously, I was just lying there on the floor as the meditation music was about to finish. I could feel the vivid life around me, but I couldn’t join in, because I had killed myself. I had just made a huge, noisy fuss. I had been trying to attract the attention I craved. This is how I thought I was going to find love and affection, but I was doing nothing more than making a noisy fuss. Life was flowing, but I had missed all the fun as I buried myself in my own despair.

This was when I understood and decided that I couldn’t catch life by making a fuss, shouting, yelling, cursing, swearing, or destroying myself. On the contrary, it was bliss itself in the limited time I could live, and I had only a few minutes left to enjoy it. Once the music finished, it would be too late. I rose to my feet with a sudden renewed determination and shouted, “Life! I come to you!” I opened my arms, and right at that moment, someone fell into them. Yes, she didn’t come to me, but she fell in my arms nevertheless. I hugged her without even knowing or minding who it was, and she was love…

It was the person who had represented love for me in the room, the beauty I had chased after with my mind but couldn’t find. Yet as soon as I chose life and opened my arms, she fell into them. There is no way to explain it logically. We had found each other as we danced around a 1300 square foot room with 50 other people for several minutes with our eyes closed. There was no explanation for why the one person I wanted in that room fell into my arms at that moment. All my systems collapsed, and there was one thing left to live: to be love embracing her. I was finally love.

Yes, my dearest…

I am a witness with all my being, and without a doubt, we are beautiful beings created by love in an amazing system that transcends logic, mind, and dreams. Yet we are not aware of this, so we try to bend, manipulate, control, and manage this system. In reality, we are doing nothing more than delaying and blocking ourselves. I now clearly see how I had blocked myself just because I didn’t know. Nobody other than me had done anything to me. I was responsible for everything in my life! And the Creator, my dearest Universe, loved me so much that it waited on me hand and foot. It had even allowed me to kick up a fuss, yelling and blocking and even destroying myself. It did it so I could comprehend that I am accepted in every way, knowing I would understand this one day. Yes! With all my darkness, deprivation, clumsiness, struggles, and weaknesses, as well as my several strengths, the Creator and his beautiful system loved me in all of my states. How magnificent is it to realize we exist in such love? I want to stop writing and take comfort on the floor right now, but I will do it shortly with tears of gratitude…

But before I finish, My Dear, My Love, My Lover, the Beautiful Part of My Soul reading these lines, my beautifully crafted, universally loved, infinite fellow…

Life does not flow when you throw yourself on the floor as you curse and destroy yourself. Life flows when you stand up and open your arms, and so does love…

You can remain there on the floor, at the bottom of everything, for as long as you desire. You are loved, and you will surely be loved, but maybe it’s time you embraced life as well?

So, what are you waiting for? Stand up and open your arms right now!

Come on!

Now!

With love…