When the ego is seen through, all there is is what is. This is actually love, this is the real love.

Q. What is the relationship between love and non-duality?

A. Non-duality, as you call it, when it is fully seen, has nothing to do with trying to become more loving. But when the intrinsic-Freedom-that-already-exists is recognised, there is a tendency to become more loving, more open. Not that that actually matters. Openness and love are just what tend to happen when the illusion of a separate doer-entity is seen to be illusory. They are side effects.

Q. If in seeing this Freedom one tends to become more loving, then why do you say non-duality has nothing to do with being more loving?

A. This is about what is true, not what you want to be true. You may want to be more loving, more ethical or more whatever, but so-called ‘non-duality’  is about seeing what already is, right now. It is the ego or person that wants to become more loving, more ethical, more radiant, more popular, and so on. So the desire to be more loving is actually a subtle form of ego. ‘Non-duality’, or whatever you want to call it, is not about a continuation of the ego, but seeing that this ego is a fiction, that the sense of doership is an imagined belief without any evidence to underpin it.

It is the ego or person that wants to become more loving, more ethical, more radiant, more popular, and so on.

Who cares about love? Who cares about being ethical? It’s the ego of course. The ego cares, the doer-entity cares and it is the ego that wants to improve itself and therefore perpetuate itself. Ask yourself, ‘what is this entity that cares about being loving, being ethical?’. If you really are interested and you look, then it can become obvious that there is no ego there, it was all just a belief all along, a false belief. The story of doership is false.

Then all there is is what’s happening. Nobody doing anything, just what’s happening. I call this Freedom, but it doesn’t really have a name. It is simply what’s happening. It is simply the way things actually are, not they way you want things to be based on your projection which is in turn based on beliefs and concepts. It is the simplicity of life stripped clean of false notions and narratives, in which false notions are seen through as they arise.

I call this Freedom, but it doesn’t really have a name. It is simply what’s happening.

In Freedom, you don’t care about love, or any other projected ideal. You don’t try to be more ethical. Maybe you are more loving, maybe you are not. That’s why this automatically tends towards love – because there is no motive, because the ego is not at play. It may go against intuition but love does not care about love. Love just is when things are seen for what they are. To put it more poetically, in seeing truth (of no-self), love is.

In seeing truth, love is

Q. What about happiness?

A. Again, who cares about happiness? It’s the ego! The ego cares, and the ego is a fiction. Relax your mind and look for the ego – where is it? It is just empty thoughts, there is no entity there! But you have to really want to know the truth to see this: by that I mean that you have to be willing to drop all your ideas and concepts about yourself and your life. Then you really have to actually look – at least most people do. Some people just see this spontaneously, but all you have to do is notice what is already true.

When this is seen, that there is no ‘self-entity’, the neurotic drive for happiness naturally dissipates, and then Joy naturally arises. Why? Because the (neurotic) drive for happiness is actually a form of suffering. When there is no concern for happiness, then Joy naturally tends to manifest. A feeling of wellbeing may not always be there, but who cares? That’s just the way things are. No feeling-state or mind-state is permanent. Everything changes. Nothing lasts forever. Who cares? That’s the freedom.

Investigate the present reality instead of chasing a future projection.

When you are trying to get somewhere, you are chasing a projected ideal, something conceptual, not something actual. Instead of chasing the conceptual, why not remain with the actual, with what is actually happening now? Investigate the present reality instead of chasing a future projection. When the ego is seen through, all there is is what is. This is actually love, this is the real love. The lack of a centre, the lack of a doer, that’s what love really is. It’s not an emotion at all. It’s not necessarily even feeling loving, although that may happen when it’s appropriate.

When the ego is seen through, all there is is what is. This is actually love, this is the real love.

Without the ego at play, all there is is natural functioning. Emotions then act accordingly when they are required. It’s not healthy to be happy all the time, nor is it likely to be physiologically possible. Our varied  emotions, fears and mental states are there to guide us as we navigate the world.

So, when the ego is seen through, this is what we could call love, although love is just a label for this as it actually is. This ‘love’ is not what most people mean by ‘love’. It is not an emotion, it includes everything that is happening, and it is not dependent on what is happening. It is un-conditional you could say. It is always here because it is none other that what is here. It is universal motion seeing through illusion. It is what is recognising what actually is.