Love Without Limits: Becoming a Conduit for the Infinite [Episode 56]

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

This is an event about love, and I want to say a few words at the beginning about what I mean by love. Because love is a word with many different connotations. We use it in many different contexts to mean different things.

The love without limits, the infinite love we’re going to be exploring here, specifically refers to love that takes the form of care.

Because we can have romantic love, which is really attraction, feeling attracted. We can have deep love with our mate and our family, which is a profound bond, an attachment. And I don’t mean that in a negative sense. We’re bonded. We have healthy attachments, things we hold dear.

We use the word love in many different ways.

But the love I’m pointing to is our capacity to care deeply. Not just for someone else and their welfare, although it includes that. But the capacity to care for the spiritual elevation of humanity, of this cosmos, of this planet, of consciousness itself.

It’s our capacity to care for what’s most important.

And I mean that in an ultimate sense. Ultimate reality. Spiritual awakening. Sublime consciousness being expressed through human beings and manifest between us.

But I also mean the ability to care for what’s most important in any situation. To put first things first for real. To have our priorities aligned with what truly matters moment to moment.

And that changes moment to moment, so there’s no prescription.

But this extraordinary capacity we have to align ourselves with matters of ultimate significance, and to devote our lives to expressing a life of profound significance, extraordinary care, great risk for all the right reasons, profound wisdom, innovation, creativity to help uplift this whole event we’re part of, without putting too tight a boundary around it, that’s the kind of love I’m speaking about.

And that’s the love we’ll be exploring. How to surrender ourselves to it. How to become fully conscious of it. Ultimately, how to let it flow through us so freely that it finally becomes our only home in this universe.

When Love Moves Through Us

We often think of love as something we feel. Something we can tune into.

If we’re spiritual practitioners, we may want to sense into the heart, maybe feel divine love or unconditional love. And we tend to think that the more we feel it, the more we’ll be able to express it.

I could be very loving if I felt very loving today. If the feelings of love are there, then I can express them. But that’s not really how love works.

The way love flows is that when we choose to step into a place that only love can fill, when we choose to step forward in a way that only love can meet that demand, then love shows up from somewhere we know nothing about. Somewhere we cannot control. Somewhere we do not create.

And this is where we transition into a conversation about spiritual awakening.

The Discovery of Our True Nature

I teach a way of approaching spiritual practice that I call the Practice of Direct Awakening.

It’s rooted in the recognition that spiritual awakening is the discovery of something that already exists fully formed within us.

Spiritual awakening is the discovery of an already enlightened, already luminous essence that has always been here and is always here in every moment. And this extraordinary essential nature, what’s often called our true nature or our natural state in some Eastern traditions, already contains many of the extraordinary capacities we human beings are striving to manifest.

It already has access to a kind of extraordinary intuitive wisdom. It is already naturally creative, innovative, fluid, dynamic, flexible, adaptive to situations. And it is already overflowing with infinite love and care.

That’s who we are.

That is the natural expression of a human being.

The fundamental premise of spiritual awakening is that human beings are remarkable creatures with extraordinary capacities. With the capacity to become a kind of super-conscious, enlightened, divinized being. And that this is our natural expression.

The natural expression of what we might call an optimized human being. A human being who has removed the obstacles to that naturalness, that fluidity.

So you see what I’m getting at in terms of love?

Love is our natural state. Being loving is our natural state. Being filled with love, overflowing with love, is the most natural way of being human. And I want to invite you to reflect for a moment.

Aren’t those the moments when we feel the most alive? The moments when we feel most aligned with the spiritual and moral axis of the cosmos?

The moments when we are freely giving, freely caring, freely loving without self-consciousness, without concern for how we’ll be seen, without concern for whether we’ll still have enough for ourselves if we let love sweep us away and express itself fully and unconditionally through us.

Is Love Asking Us to Sacrifice Ourselves?

Now, I know what some of us are thinking, and it’s a fair thought.

Some of us are thinking, “Oh man, you’re talking about giving all the time, caring all the time,” and it can sound like a kind of outward-focused life that feels exhausting. And I know many of us have had the experience of feeling like we’ve spent our whole lives giving to other people.

Often, and forgive me for invoking gender here, this especially comes from women. Because women in our society, and really throughout much of human history, have often been expected to be the ones who care for everyone else. The ones who nurture, who hold society together, who hold the family together, who take care of everyone else’s needs and don’t worry about their own. That expectation has been deeply ingrained.

So if you feel like, “Hey Craig, I’m finally at a place in my life where I’m putting attention on myself, my own self-care, my own adventure of life, my own self-expression, my own fulfillment, my own goals, and now you’re pointing me back into that old role of care, care, care, give, give, give, forget about me,” I completely understand that response.

I’ve had tens of thousands of people go through my courses, and we’ve had these conversations in great depth over many years.

So I fully understand the concern that this whole idea of selflessness in spirituality can feel problematic for someone who has already lived a very selfless life and is trying to finally include themselves in the picture.

So I want to reassure you. I am not suggesting that. I’m not talking about returning to a mode where you tirelessly care for everyone else at the expense of yourself.

Love Includes Us Too

I want to invite you to tune into the deeper truth here.

If love really is the nature of the universe, if it really is woven into the fabric of the cosmos, if it truly is the essential energy coursing through this whole event, if it really is the deepest essence of our fullest humanity, this kind of limitless love I’m speaking about, then wouldn’t that love care about us too?

If it’s Love with a capital L, you can be sure it is not asking you to forget your own needs or suppress your own needs in order to prioritize someone else’s.

It doesn’t work that way.

That is the old paradigm.

And that is definitely not what this is pointing to.

We Are Not the Source of Love

For any of you who thought this sounded exhausting, stepping into a life of limitless love or infinite love, I think it only seems that way if we imagine ourselves to be the source of love, or the owners of love.

Because that’s another way we tend to think about love.

If we think about love as care, which is what I’m speaking about, where do we imagine it comes from in our conventional understanding?

From within us. I care. I care for you. I care for this situation. I care that things go well. I am the source of the care. I’m the generator of the care. I’m the one who’s loving. And if we look at it that way, then yes, it does feel like a finite resource. I’ll absolutely agree that love, in that sense, is not infinite.

If it’s something we have to generate, then we only have a limited amount. And many of us have experienced caregiver burnout because of that. People who spend their lives caring for others can become deeply exhausted.

Because in a pre-awakened paradigm, consciousness prior to awakening to our true nature, which is infinite love, love does seem limited. And we do need to be careful that we don’t burn out. That we don’t over-give. But in spiritual awakening, that entire paradigm gets turned upside down.

Love Flows Through Us

In spiritual awakening, we begin to realize that we are not the source of love. We are not the owners of love.

Love is not something we have and then give away. It’s not something we create. It’s not something we first have to find within ourselves and feel within ourselves so that we can then offer it to someone else. Love is not something you possess and then distribute.

That’s simply not how it works.

Even in spiritual contexts, we often think of divine love or infinite love as something we as individuals can receive. How many of us have prayed in some way, “Fill me up with love”?

Maybe we imagine some greater power, however we conceive of it, filling us with love like we’re a bowl or a vessel or an urn. And then once we’re full, we can go out and pour love onto the world because now we have enough of it.

But that’s not how it works either.

The only way we can truly and consistently experience the infinite love that is our true nature is when we realize we are not vessels meant to contain it.

We are conduits through which it flows. We are pipelines. Doorways. Gateways. And when we can open our hearts and truly get out of the way, when we stop clogging up the pipeline, love naturally begins to flow through us infinitely, without obstruction.

Because love is the essence of this cosmos. It is your essence. It is the essence of everything. It permeates every speck of existence. And because it is the greatest force in the universe, the moment we get out of the way, it’s as though the floodgates burst open. The dam breaks. And suddenly love begins to move through us.

The Experience of Being Love

Then something very mysterious begins to happen. We start to experience love all the time in some form. Not because we’re holding onto it or possessing it, but because it’s flowing through us. We only truly know the experience of being love when love is moving through us into the world.

And where is it flowing? To everyone and everything else.

So the call of love is a call to be a giver, but on a completely different order than we’ve usually imagined. It’s a call to let go of every limiting belief that prevents this sacred essence from streaming through us, touching everyone around us, uplifting them, challenging them, nurturing them, calling them into their greatness.

And love takes many forms. Sometimes our images of love are a little one-dimensional. We imagine nurturing love, motherly love, sweet romantic love. But when we’re talking about love at this level, we’re talking about the force of evolution itself.

We’re talking about the force of creativity, the force of manifestation and expression. Love is the creative impulse moving life toward greater complexity, greater harmony, greater unity.

The Spiritual Heart Wants Wholeness

Don’t we all feel that drive toward unity? Thank goodness we do. It hurts when there’s separation. It hurts when things are divided. Look at how polarized our world is politically right now in so many places. There’s a pain in feeling that division.

We feel, “How could we be so divided? We’re one humanity.”

That part of us that feels the pain of division, that’s another thing I mean by the spiritual heart. Because the spiritual heart longs for wholeness. It already knows wholeness inwardly, and it wants that wholeness expressed outwardly.

And this is another characteristic of the love I’m pointing to. Because infinite love, from one point of view, is actually a little selfish.

What does love want?

More love.

Love wants to see itself expressed through more and more human beings. More and more conduits, willing to get out of the way so that love can move freely through them. And you probably know this from your own experience. Nothing uplifts us more than witnessing human beings expressing the best and most noble parts of themselves.

The Feeling of Elevation

About fifteen years ago, social scientists identified and named a new emotion. They called it elevation. And hopefully you know this feeling. It’s that unique feeling we get when we witness someone doing something selfless or courageous for a greater good.

You might read a story or see a moment on television where someone acts heroically for another person, for an animal, for their community, and suddenly something moves inside you. You feel uplifted. Elevated. Who is it within us that feels that elevation?

I would say that, too, is the spiritual heart.

It’s the part of us that recognizes when someone is giving themselves to love. When someone is taking a stand for love. When someone is allowing love to move them beyond their comfort zone into a profound response to life.

And what happens to us when we feel elevation? It awakens something in us.

This has actually been studied. When we witness acts of goodness and generosity, it makes us want to act that way ourselves. Not because we’re trying to imitate someone, but because love is contagious. Someone else living a life inspired by love pulls that same impulse out of us. It awakens generosity of spirit. It awakens the desire to uplift, to serve, to elevate. And that movement itself is love recognizing itself.

Learning to Get Out of the Way

So how do we do it? How do we become a conduit? How do we get out of the way so love can freely flow through us?

The practice component of this is interesting, because love isn’t a feeling. And it’s not something we acquire and hold onto. So it’s not actually helpful to sit down and try to evoke love in ourselves so that we can then go express it. That’s precisely the misunderstanding.

Love can only really flow when we’re not looking for it. It comes from somewhere the mind cannot see. It moves in ways the ego cannot predict or understand beforehand.You can’t watch for it and say, “Oh, there it is. I’m starting to feel it now. Good. Now I can open the floodgates because I’ve got it.”

That’s still the vessel metaphor. The idea that love fills us up and then we distribute it outward. But it doesn’t work that way.

The Leap of Trust

Living a life of limitless love requires a tremendous leap of trust. If you think about it, something either takes courage or it takes trust. If you have trust, you may not need courage. If you have courage, maybe you don’t need trust.

If I had to choose one, I’d probably choose trust because it’s more vulnerable. More surrendered. And living a life of love without limits is fundamentally about becoming vulnerable to a mystery. A mystery we cannot fully know with the mind, but can open to through the spiritual heart.

We can allow ourselves to become receptive. To become someone who can be moved by the infinite. Touched by grace. Surrendered enough that something beyond conscious awareness can slip through our defenses.

That doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do. It just means the practice is more counterintuitive than we might expect.

A Practice of Surrender

One thing we can do is meditate. And I want to lead us in a brief meditation.

Then afterward, I’ll talk more about what the practice of this looks like in daily life. Because learning how to get out of the way of something greater than the mind is a fundamental spiritual capacity. It’s a foundational spiritual practice that opens the door to everything else.

So I want to give us a brief taste of that now. And we’re not going to focus on love directly, because the love I’m talking about is beyond imagination and beyond conception.

Guided Meditation

I want to invite you to settle into a relaxed meditation posture, whatever that means for you.

It can really be anything, because this is only a few minutes.

Meditation posture mainly matters because of how it supports extended practice.

It’s probably easiest with your eyes closed. But if you meditate with your eyes open, just let your gaze rest gently downward with a soft focus.

First, I want to invite you to become utterly innocent in this moment.

Innocent in the sense of humble. In the sense of not needing to know anything at all right now.

Just relax your awareness. Relax your consciousness. Relax your mind’s grip on reality.

Allow yourself to simply be present with no need to know anything.

No idea about anything. No idea what love is. No idea how to feel your heart. No need to understand any of it right now.

 

And as you rest in this innocent place of unknowing, allow everything to be exactly as it is.

Let your experience be. Let this moment be. Let yourself be exactly as you are.

Letting be means letting go of the need to be any particular way. The need to have any special experience, even an experience of love.

You’re simply letting the moment happen however it naturally unfolds.

Let go of control. Don’t try to manage your experience in any way right now.

You’re simply allowing this meditation to flow. Allowing your experience to move naturally from one moment to the next.

Deeply at ease. Deeply easeful.

There’s no problem anywhere. Nothing you need to do. Nothing you need to solve. Nobody you need to become.

Just allowing.

And if you notice something stirring within you, some subtle movement, some sense of depth or higher consciousness beginning to emerge, don’t grasp onto it. Don’t try to hold it. Don’t focus on it or amplify it.

Just allow it. Allow it to move through you.

Allow it to flow like the current of a river carrying you somewhere your mind cannot go, but that is your deepest home.

Now I want to invite you to let go of the meditation itself. And letting go of it means allowing it to be whatever it was.

This was only a brief experiment.

Maybe something opened. Maybe nothing opened.

I mostly wanted to offer this as a simple demonstration of a practice you can do daily on your own.

Practicing Openness Every Day

I strongly encourage everyone I speak to to meditate daily right now.

Truthfully, I always encourage people to meditate daily. But especially this kind of practice. Because this is an opening practice. A getting-out-of-the-way practice.A surrendering practice.

Letting go. Letting be. Not knowing. Not controlling.

These are things we can practice.

And I especially encourage it right now because the world can feel very challenging. Even half an hour a day of what we just did can have a profoundly deepening effect on both you and the people around you.

Because when we learn how to get out of the way and allow something greater to animate us and move through us, touching everyone we come into contact with, then we begin to live a life that is fundamentally a stand for love.

For the kind of love I’ve been speaking about.

Taking a Stand for Love

Now, of course, where the rubber really meets the road with love is in daily life. So I want to offer some precepts. Some awakened life practices. Practices for living awake in the world. And all of them are rooted in this same principle of getting out of the way.

We begin to explore what it means to relinquish control more fully in our lives.

Here’s the essential orientation:

Take the position that you are taking a stand for love. A stand for infinite love.

Which means saying: “I believe in love.” “I want to be someone through whom love can operate freely.”

And if that’s true, then I want to live a life of getting out of the way. Which means relinquishing rigidity. Relinquishing fixed ideas. Relinquishing certainty and the need to already know.

It means living in openness and receptivity to what I do not yet know.

It means surrendering to the needs of the moment instead of entering every situation with an agenda and trying to force reality into conformity with what I think should happen.

The Posture of Love

What is the posture of love?

It’s this: “I want to serve the greatest good in this moment.” “I want to be available for what’s truly needed.” Because what’s needed is different in every situation, every encounter, every moment.

What’s needed now? That becomes the question. And we can still have strong ideas. We may even have the best idea in a situation about what’s needed. But that’s different from pushing an agenda.

It’s more like, “This genuinely feels right to me. This feels needed.” And at the same time, remaining open to other perspectives, other possibilities, other needs we may not yet see.

Love stays open. It stays receptive. It allows other people to expand our understanding.

Showing Up for the Greater Need

To live this way means being surrendered to what’s needed and being willing to step forward for it no matter what it asks of us. Even when it’s difficult. Even when it feels uncomfortable, risky, or frightening. Even when it feels like sacrifice. But only when the greater need truly transcends the personal need. That distinction matters.

Of course we all have personal wants and personal needs. But sometimes there is a greater need calling us beyond ourselves. A life of love is a life where we show up for that greater need.

Love Is Not a Feeling

One of the most important things to understand is that love is not a feeling. It’s not something we need to wait around to feel before we can express it. What if we made that our orientation?

“I don’t need to feel love in order to express love.”

Now, I know I’ve spoken a great deal about how love is not something we control or possess. It’s not something we personally manufacture and then hand to someone else. But even so, we can begin by consciously stepping forward in alignment with it.

Because the real question is: What allows love to flow into the world?

Part of it is learning to get out of the way, both in meditation and in life. But another part is simply saying yes.

Saying: “Whether I feel loving or not, I’m going to express love.” “I see someone who needs support, and I’m going to offer it.”

Not because I feel spiritually elevated in the moment. Not because I’m overflowing emotionally. But because love is needed there.

Saying Yes to Love

When we take those steps, when we stand for love, when we choose generosity and care, then something begins to move through us.

If we remain open and out of the way, suddenly we realize: “Oh wow. Look at all the love that came through.” So much love moved through us into another person or situation because we stepped aside and allowed it. Because we said yes to care. Yes to generosity. Yes to love.

And many of us are afraid to care that deeply. We’re afraid that if we care too much, it will hurt us. That we’ll become overwhelmed. That we’ll become vulnerable.

So we close down. We limit how much we allow ourselves to care. But the limitless love I’m speaking about asks us to dismantle those walls. To risk caring fully. To risk loving fully. Even if it means we might get hurt. Even if it feels overwhelming.

Because when we truly get out of the way, something mysterious begins to happen.

We realize we are only the conduit. And the more we let love move through us, the more we step up and give, and serve, and live generously, the more we discover that a mysterious power and presence begins to appear. In the space we make, it shows up. Again and again.

Acting Before We Feel Ready

This is one of the great paradoxes of spiritual life. Most of the time, we wait for a spiritual capacity to appear before we express it.

We think: “Once I feel more loving, then I’ll love.” “Once I’m enlightened enough, then I’ll act.”

But enlightened consciousness often appears only after we take the stand. After we align ourselves with the highest truth we know. After we begin living in accordance with the greatest good we can sense. We risk for it. We embody it. We express it. And then suddenly something greater shows up through us.

And we wonder: “Where did that come from?” “That wasn’t me.”

Many of us have had experiences like that. Something moved through us that felt beyond our ordinary self. You could say it was the deeper self, the real self, a dimension of ourselves we don’t yet fully know. Or you could say it was the infinite moving through us. It depends how you look at it.

Challenging Limiting Beliefs

Another essential part of this practice is learning to question and relinquish limiting beliefs.

Because all of us have them.

“I’m not whole enough.” “I’m not strong enough.” “I don’t know what to do.” “I’m not clear enough.” “I’m not loving enough.”

“I might get overwhelmed.” “I’m not worthy.” “I’m not good enough.” “I’m not deep enough.”

We all have our own versions.

So part of the work is learning to get out of the way, saying a great yes to love, and then noticing all the limiting beliefs that arise to stop that movement. And they do arise. Again and again. Day after day.

But each time we notice them, we can recognize them for what they are.

“Oh, there you are again.” “I know this story.” “But I’m not going to organize my life around you.” “Because I’m taking a stand for love.”

Releasing False Views About Love

Part of the practice is also recognizing the false paradigms we continually fall back into.

The first false belief is: “I am the source of love.”

That love is something I personally generate and possess. And because of that, I only have so much of it.

The second false belief is: “I’m a vessel that needs to be filled up first.”

Once I’m completely full of love, then I’ll finally have enough to give. But that’s not how it works. And these perspectives show up constantly in subtle ways throughout our lives.

So we begin observing ourselves carefully. “Oh, there I go again thinking I’m the source.” “Oh, there I go again believing I need to fill myself up before I can give.”

And gradually we learn to identify and relinquish these false views. What Buddhism would call wrong view. We begin cultivating right view instead. A clearer understanding of how love actually works. Again and again: “That’s not how it works.” “This is how it works.”

The Science of Love

So the practice becomes keeping our orientation aligned with the way this actually works.

Aligned with what we might call the science of love.

In the Indian traditions, there’s the word dharma. Dharma refers to the underlying truth of how awakening works. The deep structure of reality. The way enlightenment actually functions. And in this case, what I’m pointing to is the dharma of love. The methodology of love. The way it truly operates.

So we begin rejecting these false paradigms and returning again and again to what’s real. And you don’t have to believe me simply because I’m standing here saying it. I hope you can begin to verify this in your own experience.

Maybe even in experiences you’ve already had throughout your life. Because if you look carefully, you may begin to notice: Love isn’t something I can know beforehand. It isn’t something I first have to feel beforehand. It doesn’t originate from me. And I’m not simply a vessel filling up with it so I can later pour it out.

Becoming the Conduit

The real paradigm is much simpler than that. I get out of the way. I become a conduit through which love can flow. And only then do I truly experience it.

Not as something I possess, but as something moving through me into life, into others, into the world.

It’s actually a very simple formula. But it’s incredibly subtle. And there’s so much contained within it. Really, I’ve only opened an inquiry here. An inquiry I want to invite all of us to participate in as we move through our lives.

A World That Needs Love

I hope there’s something here that genuinely serves you. Because this is a moment in history when so many people need our support. A moment when the world may need our love more than ever. And the world cannot wait for us to finally get everything together before we begin giving something of ourselves.

We can’t wait until we’re perfectly healed. Perfectly evolved. Perfectly ready. Somehow we have to learn to do both at once. To continue growing and unfolding while simultaneously stepping forward in service to something greater than ourselves.

And honestly, this is the only way I know how to do that. And it works. It works miraculously. That’s why I invite you to try it for yourself. And I sincerely hope that something here has elevated you. Inspired you. Moved you to go out into the world and give that love away freely.