Love overcomes all obstacles. – Leonardo da Vinci

Love can attain what the intellect cannot imagine. – Meher Baba

Love is necessary for created and uncreated light. A Fourth Way teacher has said that presence cannot exist without love and love cannot exist without presence.  Taking this simple approach to one’s work, it becomes easy to observe that when love does not exist, presence doesn’t either.

Where does love come from within us? It is not our thoughts, yet can control our thoughts. Who were we before we were born? A child starts with a pure loving consciousness. This is given to all of us. As we develop, we seek to maintain loving consciousness, finding and living with the child within. 

What do we mean by states of consciousness? There are laws that govern these different states. In sleep, or “waking state,” everything happens, is mechanical and subjective. This state is filled with identification, lying, inner considering, and emotional deficiency. Most of humanity lives here.  

Self-consciousness is a different state, the way to sustained consciousness. It is here where flashes of uncreated light can happen.

Objective Consciousness as the Highest State

Objective consciousness is the highest state, seeing things as they are. Flashes of this state are the result of long inner work on oneself. This leads us to uncreated light and the ability to know objective truths. 

I have enough of loss, enough of gain; I have my Love, what more can I obtain? – Hafiz

Another important law to remember: consciousness can exist without functions, and functions can exist without consciousness. I verified this at the age of twelve, when my eyes met the eyes of my father who was dying of ALS.  His bodily functions were dying, yet the conscious love that came from his eyes penetrated me with an indescribable and unforgettable conscious love. He had clearly transformed suffering. He is the reason I have been working on higher states of consciousness all my life. 

The Measure of Love

What better measure of our work than love? Setting the bar for our highest work on ourselves as being the weighing of our actions as coming from love, we have a simple, immediate mirror to use. 

If I love myself I love you.  If I love you I love myself. – Rumi

In a high state of consciousness, one feels connected to nature and all beings in a significantly aware way and has much more attention to what is in the moment. Here light and love enter. Nature evokes the child-essence, so love is more fluid. 

Nature is God’s art. – Dante

Here is a Rumi poem I recite daily: 

“Inside this new love, die.  Your way begins on the other side.  Become the Sky. Take an ax to the prison wall, Escape!  Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.  Do it now. You are covered in thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die. And be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign you have died.  Your old life has been a frantic running from silence.  The speechless, radiant sun rises now.”  
(Dying refers to dying to the lower self / false personality). 

Most of humanity is quite mechanical and for the most part is ‘lost in thought.’ Lost in the ten thousand random thoughts circulating at any given moment, often fueled by fear.  This has been compounded by cell phones and computers so that we are doing not just two things at once but multiple things at once. This is not conducive to higher states of consciousness. It was an emotional shock for me to see a father at the park mechanically pushing his child in a swing while looking at his cell phone.  The child seemed to accept this as normal. 

Love and Attention

The Fourth Way suggests looking within deeply and listening to the small still voice within. By paying attention, working to be in a state of loving presence and trusting the heart, one can open to higher mind and higher emotions.     

The evolution of humanity will occur if love wins. We will grow not in the same old destructive ways but in ways wiser, kinder, more collaborative and loving. We can start to experience conscious love.

Gurdjieff wrote an objective truth:  
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response. 

Love Overcomes all Obstacles

Yes, love overcomes all. Hold on to the reins of love and don’t be afraid.  Hold to the real behind the false and don’t be afraid.

You must know that the Beloved you seek is none other than You.  Hold to this truth and don’t be afraid. – Rumi

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Susan Rainer is an architect based in Northern California.