Unclear Journal: 12

Seventy-Eight.

Whatever we hold within our hearts, we see reflected everywhere in the world around us. If we possess an innocent mind, then everything in the world appears innocent to our eyes. Otherwise, when we harbor filth in our minds, we see only filth around us, noticing only the ugly aspects of our surroundings. A pure person never goes about seeking sinners everywhere; even if surrounded by a thousand evil influences, they still manage to extract some beauty from it all. Only when we can find beauty amidst the surrounding ugliness will we be able to sense the presence of the Creator. Without creating the presence of something beautiful within ourselves, it is impossible to perceive the Creator's presence. The Creator is visible in this regard; to find the Creator, we must return to ourselves. It is through the aesthetic sense of good deeds created within us, through artistic qualities, through sensitivity—through all these feelings that we can find the Creator, for the Creator exists consciously within all of us. The Creator dwells in all our active endeavors. When we perform all our tasks with consciousness, our work becomes clearer. All forms of transparency and purity embrace our souls, and these constitute religion.

Sometimes we find ourselves searching everywhere for something, searching continuously. We ourselves don't know what we're looking for. Our eyes, our hearts grow restless, seeking only the invisible. Year after year we keep searching. Sometimes we call it the search for truth, sometimes the search for the Creator. If we never find truth, is there anything to lose? If we never visibly reach the Creator's presence, is there anything to lose or any way to be separated from the Creator? Since we have never found any visible, certain form of our Creator, does this mean there is no such thing as a Creator? We know that even in our absence, the Creator remains ever-present. Yet we crowd like madmen into mosques, temples, churches, pagodas, and all the world's places of worship, hoping to find the Creator. If the Creator doesn't dwell within us, how could He dwell in places of worship? If the Creator is invisible to us, would He become visible in places of worship? One who doesn't have the Creator within themselves will not find Him even by visiting any place of worship. We search for the Creator in places of worship as if not going there would make us lose Him, or He would become separated from us!
If we are people conscious of religious truth, then in our search for truth we knock on the doors of every place of worship. We think that what we have lost or what truth we have neglected all this time, perhaps we'll find there, and eventually we return disappointed and empty-handed with broken hearts to ourselves again. We always think we've lost something, but until we know what we've lost, will we find it even if we visit all the world's places of worship? What have we actually lost? Are we thinking that we've lost our Creator? When exactly did we lose the Creator, or did we ever possess our Creator? Did our Creator appear before us in physical form? Did He say that He belonged to us, or when leaving, did He announce His departure? Then how does the fear of losing that great Being seize us—something that never came into our hands, that we never saw, whose existence we never felt, about whom we are completely ignorant? How can we lose that truth which we don't even fully know?
Until we know what we have lost, will our search ever end? If we keep searching for the Creator everywhere, in all places of worship, in all scriptures, then eventually our own being will keep telling us the same thing: we have visited all the doors of places of worship, but in the end we had to return empty-handed. Will we then blame the places of worship? Do the places of worship have any role in this? The rule of searching is to start from the starting point. How can we find outside what began as emptiness in our hearts? Whenever we become disconnected from ourselves and go searching for the Creator, we must remember what we have actually lost and what we are searching for. What we think we have lost—is it truly lost, or does it exist within us? If we don't know where we lost it, where will we begin our search? If we don't know what our illness is, what medicine will we take? Or if we cannot accurately identify our disease, is recovery possible even in a doctor's presence? There are some diseases that even the finest doctors cannot cure.
What lies beyond all scientific explanations and techniques is the disease of the heart. Even if we gather all the doctors in the world to cure this disease, we will always fail, because we have sought healing in the wrong place. Similarly, even if we search for our Creator in all places of worship, it will be impossible for us to find the Creator, because we continue to search for Him in the wrong place. At this very moment when we are searching for our Creator, we must go not to any place of worship, but to a spiritual teacher. A teacher is also a physician, but not of our external body—he is a physician of our hearts, a physician of our minds. And a teacher's first task is to clarify to the disciple what they are searching for. Because once we know what we're searching for, our search becomes easier. When a patient's disease is identified, prescribing medicine also becomes easier for the doctor.
Seventy-Nine.

If we cannot identify the true location of our problem, then it's impossible for us to go to the right physician. If our problem is in the stomach and we go to a dentist, is recovery at all possible? It is said that half the illness is cured once the disease is identified. But if we cannot identify our disease, then no medicine in the world will bring recovery; rather, the danger may increase several fold. Our heart is a throne. Whenever we turn outward in search of truth, we flee from that very throne, searching for other places. By birth, humans are born with love. But gradually, through the combination of surrounding environment, family, relatives, education, culture, and society, they begin to lose that blessing of love. This loss creates a void within us. Then we search for the Creator. Actually, under the pretext of the Creator, we search for our lost love.
To regain something, one must first allow it to be lost, and our nature helps in a cyclical way to lose the love we received at birth. We never actually lose the Creator; we only lose the means to reach our Creator. And the primary means of reaching the Creator is love. The very moment we regain our lost love—that is, the feelings of love—from that moment we arrive at our Creator's door. The Creator has no form. We will never find our Creator unless we establish some relationship with our Creator. The basic method of finding someone is to create a spiritual connection with them. And that spiritual relationship begins through love. When we are completely blind, it's impossible for us to see anything. If we are blind, is it possible for us to see sunlight? Therefore, even the truth that always exists around us cannot be seen if we are blind. When we have no vision at all, then even if truth is right before our eyes, it won't be possible for us to see or know the truth. Love is that light of our eyes which helps us see the invisible.
The Creator is actually before us, but we lack the vision to see Him. Love is the only power that can sense the Creator. Before feeling love for the Creator, we must feel love for ourselves. We must know ourselves completely. Knowing all our faults, inadequacies, failures, flaws—everything—we must completely reveal ourselves to ourselves. For this we can apply a technique. We can stand completely naked before a mirror and observe ourselves very precisely. This will bring our beauty, our incompleteness, our flaws to our attention. Each time we see ourselves in the mirror, we will look steadily and concentratedly into our own eyes for exactly five minutes and say, "I love you!" We will stand before the mirror many times a day and say this to ourselves, and for quite some time we will apply this technique on ourselves before the mirror. This will create a genuine love for ourselves, and good feelings about ourselves will arise within us.
During this process, different emotions will stir within us at different moments. And each time we look into our own eyes and tell ourselves "I love you," we will notice, if we pay attention, that our mind refuses to accept these words. In that very instant, our flaws will somehow create pressure somewhere deep in our mind. Our mind will then try to convince us that we don't love ourselves at all, because we committed some unworthy act with ourselves a few days ago. Or our mind will tell us we cannot be loved because our skin is dark, or sometimes the mind will say we haven't done good work, and therefore cannot love ourselves. My mind will convince me that the things I have done are unacceptable—if people knew, if they knew more about all the despicable things I have done, none of them could love me. At times we will see ourselves as frauds and deceivers before our own eyes, those who have sometimes deceived ourselves and sometimes others, or we might think that if only we were a little taller, then we could be loved! Actually, we can never do it this way, because when we look at ourselves with conscious, sharp scrutiny, everything about us appears to us in this manner—we think all these things in our unconscious mind.
At just such moments, many want to stop this game, because some do not want to reveal themselves even to themselves, or they burn in a kind of inner conflict, and many cannot accept this easily. But despite this, the game must continue—we must not lose patience. This is the strategy of this game. Whenever we continue the game, something even more wonderful will happen within us the next moment—our mind will want to love itself despite all these countless inadequacies and flaws, and will be able to feel love for itself. This is precisely what we are doing with ourselves and with our other relationships. This is our internal thought process, which always keeps us separate from ourselves and from others. Each of our relationships is like a mirror that we use when we look at ourselves. When we hold up a mirror before ourselves, it helps us see what our relationship with ourselves is like. Similarly, when others come and stand before us, this is actually that same mirror we were standing before. This reveals everything—our relationship with ourselves, our attitude toward ourselves, our relationship with others, our attitude toward others.
**Eighty.**

We can understand what kind of relationship we have built with ourselves by observing our behavior toward others, our attitudes. When our loved ones behave badly toward us in ways that might seem objectionable at first glance, if we look a little more carefully we will understand that this is actually the result of our own relationship with ourselves. We cannot accept our loved one, some attitude or behavior of our loved one, or we are unable to, because we have not been able to accept that behavior within ourselves. Since we want to cut away that behavior from ourselves, when we see something similar in others, we can no longer accept it. This entire matter is actually completely the result of our inner conflict. This is not called true love—love that emerges from departing from one's true self is never true love. It is not possible to love others this way either. If we can love ourselves by accepting all our ugliness, if we can accept ourselves, then why can't we accept others in the same way? Can this even be called love?
If we constantly cast a judge's eye upon ourselves, presenting ourselves as inferior and mocking in our own eyes, then we will see others through the same eyes, because we have not been able to forgive ourselves, we have not been able to fully enter our own realm, we are somehow denying ourselves. For precisely these reasons, despite having love, we lose our loved ones. The power of our thoughts is immense—if we think and believe something, then even if we never worry about it again, it takes concrete form in reality through the help of our complete unconscious mind. If we want to maintain good behavior toward others, toward our loved ones, if we want to love them, then we must first be good to ourselves in our own eyes, we must love ourselves, no matter how unacceptable we may be! We must fully accept ourselves, we must be good to ourselves in our own sight. We must shake off all evil thoughts from within ourselves. We always attach a condition before loving ourselves. How so?
We say in our minds: if I were a little thinner, if I were a little more beautiful, if our eyes were more beautiful, if that particular person looked a little more handsome, then I would love him, or if he had done that task for me, then I would have loved him. Each time we are attaching some condition before loving ourselves and others, which prevents us from opening the door to true love. We must certainly move away from this conditional attitude toward love. If we want to experience life's true happiness, we must love unconditionally. Many of us do not know what unconditional love is. We ask others to be like us. We think that if he becomes like us, if he becomes according to my wishes, moves according to my wishes, only then will I love him. This is by no means unconditional love. Unconditional love means: however the person may be, whatever their behavior, their capabilities, their external appearance, their mentality, their position in society—whatever it may be—rising above all of this, I will love the person. In unconditional love, one person expects nothing from another, not even love in return—one simply gives.
Such unconditional love makes the feeling of love infinite, multiplying the love within us many times over. This creates a unique, extraordinary supreme feeling! When we can love ourselves knowing all our ugliness, flaws, helplessness, inadequacies—knowing everything—that is true love. Such love contains no artificiality, no failed attempts to hide ourselves. This is the true form of love. Love creates that sensitivity within us through which we can wash away all the impurity within ourselves and open all the doors of our mind, so that whatever comes to our door, we become capable of receiving it with our tenderness. At such times, everyone around us becomes our loved one. Even if an enemy comes to our door, we receive them as a friend. Because we then know that within ourselves too there are many ugly forms, there are imperfections as well, but despite this we can love ourselves, and as a result we learn to love and accept those around us with their imperfections.
When we learn to embrace the entire world with love and supreme tenderness, this entire world becomes our home. Then no one remains unknown or foreign to us. We are all bound by the same bond. We have no enemies, we need fear no one. When we find the meaning of true love, then everywhere we see only friends and loved ones. The person who finds the door to love finds the door to the Creator. If there is no love within us, or if the sense of love is never born within us, then we will never find our Creator, because love is even above the Creator. If we do not know love, do not find it, then how can we become capable of realizing our Creator's glory? The Creator's greatness, the Creator's excellence, can only be attained through gaining the feeling of love. If we did not receive the feeling of love, then even our Creator would remain narrow to us. The Creator's presence will never give birth to love within us, but if we can hold love, then it will certainly bring the feeling of the Creator within us.
**Eighty-one.**

It is not possible to attain love through the Creator; rather, it is possible to attain the Creator through love. And to find love, we must first discover where we have lost our love. Because a lost thing can only be found where we lost it. But to do this, we must first run against the current, meaning we must turn back again. The more we advance toward material things, the more we will lose love. The more we run opposite to material things, the more quickly love will advance toward us, and reaching the Creator or arriving at the Creator's door will become that much easier for us. A ladder has two ends, through whose two ends one can go to two opposite destinations. Love and material attachment are the two ends of a ladder for us. Love shows us the path to heaven, while material attachment drags us toward hell. If one is upward-facing, the other is downward-facing. The more we advance on the path of love, the more upward it becomes. When we abandon love and lean only toward material gains, we become increasingly downward-facing, gradually advancing toward hell's door.
Rather than seeking our Creator, we should seek only love, for this is the sole path by which the Creator can be found. If we can follow love alone, then everything around us will simply follow us, just as our shadow follows only our path. Love is that one destination through which everything becomes attainable. But if we wander about like lost souls, seeking only the Creator, then no matter how much we toil, we must ultimately return with nothing but a broken heart and empty hands. For love alone carries within it that power, that light by which we can find the Creator. It is impossible for a dull, lifeless, luminous person to find the Creator. Our slumbering self, our anger, hatred, and hostile mentality can never guide us to the Creator. Only love's nectar can make streams of joy flow within us. When a child is born, no matter how it may look, we find it beautiful. Whether a child is dark, fair, or even physically disabled, we embrace it with equal affection and love, because it is born with a being full of love, and remains filled with love.
Then gradually, as it begins to grow, the love within it also begins to disappear. Yet every child is so vibrant, enchanting, alive, full of love. Have we ever seen an ugly child? The sole reason is that it spreads only love around itself, without judgment or discrimination. It is the child's very love that draws everyone near, compelling them to love it, no matter what it may be like. But gradually, as it grows older, it begins to lose this, because we help it walk down that ugly path. We do not teach it how to love; rather, we raise it by teaching how cruel, how merciless, how terrible the world is. We teach it how people around us might harm it, how to protect oneself from them, how to survive by avoiding all this violence. As a result, a kind of fear is born in the child against everyone around it. We force the child to accept that love is something very risky. We create doubt about love itself in the child's mind. We teach it that people show love on the outside because it's a trick of deception—through this trick, people extract various advantages from us. We further teach it: surely all these people are hypocrites!
Since we all do this, everyone's inner self grows together in this very mentality. A wall is created within each of us, as a result of which we eventually create a subtle wall even with those closest to us. Then we fear losing our love. We always think the world is overrun with cheaters, yet how easily we forget this simple truth that the Creator exists everywhere. We teach our children how to protect themselves from all these cheaters, how to keep a constant watch on them. We teach them how to view everyone with suspicion, so that whenever someone comes to hurt us, we can attack them first. We always teach our children to keep their eyes and ears so open that if they don't, some great blow might come upon us at any time. After this, our children eventually learn to master these habits completely. Our children become capable of hiding themselves completely behind masks—we then call our children "mature." We consider them intelligent. Because now they have managed to present themselves to everyone as a person of imposed virtues, or as a hypocrite.
We don't actually realize that from precisely such moments, a child completely destroys its capacity for love through all this. It loses its inner genuine feelings of love, trust—everything. From now on, that child will see only enemies around itself. It won't be able to think of anyone as a friend. And when a child even looks at its own father with distrust, we say, "Now it has become worthy of surviving in the world!" We then say it can no longer be cheated by anyone, no one can deceive it anymore, because it's no longer that innocent child. But unfortunately, the sad thing is that the child will now begin to deceive others itself. Because through all this, it too has learned how to deceive, what to do to become a hypocrite—we have all pushed it down that very path together! In truth, when we are deceived by others, no matter how great the deception, we lose nothing, but when we deceive others, then we actually lose everything. How does this happen?
Eighty-two.

Suppose today you deceive someone very cleverly with sweet words. The person you deceived may be harmed after being deceived by you, but then when such a situation comes before them again, they will understand exactly how someone deceived them before, so from now on they will be cautious about such matters, and they won't have to feel small before their conscience for harming anyone. When you approach that person again, whatever else they may do, they will stop trusting you or having faith in you. In this way, you will lose one honest relationship, and they will lose merely a hypocrite or deceiver! What greater defeat could there be in your life as a human being? In fact, whenever we resort to deception, our capacity for love naturally diminishes. How can I love someone whom I have decided to betray? When we become tormented by a thousand fears about the person we love, then we can no longer love them, because fear is a kind of poison that grows alone, inside.
However, having some reasonable fear in matters of love is good for maintaining relationships. Many times when we live in fear of losing the person we love, we take slightly better care of them. But whenever we are completely assured that no matter what happens, the person won't be lost, then instead we neglect them, unnecessarily increasing the amount of torture. Only a hypocrite can grow up without worry. Whenever we try to secure ourselves through money, housing, bank balance, etc., we must also remember that we are simultaneously closing the door to our love. Essentially, when we close all the doors of entry into ourselves, then perhaps dust and dirt don't get a chance to enter us, but at the same time, light, air, sunshine—everything's entry into us becomes blocked. This looks like a tomb, where we remain after death, where nothing from this world has a chance to enter. Does a dead person need to be loved by giving them anything, or by sacrificing something for them, by enduring them, by caring for them, by looking after their well-being? So loving a dead person is actually quite easy.
Loving the Creator is even easier, because we don't have to do anything for the Creator. We never have to hear the Creator's abuse, we don't have to see the Creator's angry face, we don't even know whether the Creator's face is beautiful or ugly, because we are ready to accept external beauty in all circumstances. Even if it is "terrible," we're still willing. That's why loving the Creator is easy. Loving a child is easy, because they haven't yet faced life's realities. So they are safe for us! At least completely safe in terms of causing harm. We have placed so many walls around ourselves for our security that our entire surroundings, walls included, have taken the form of a graveyard. Our own security has now become the greatest threat to us. Yet if death once sets its claws, will these walls of security be able to save us? In fact, uncertainty and insecurity create life. Where there is no uncertainty, fear, or insecurity, there is no pulse of life, and there life is dead, simple. Life's fundamental principle is uncertainty, insecurity.
We must make life so simple that it has no security perimeter. A stone is safe because it is dead. Let storms blow over it, let rain fall, let the heat of the sun touch it—still the stone lies in exactly the same place. It doesn't taste any flavor of life, but it is safe, because no one can harm it. Yet a flower spreads fragrance, sways in the breeze, bathes in sunlight, gets wet in rain, can be blown away by storms, even a child can take the flower's life, but despite all this, it lives with life. Do we want only a safe life like a stone, or do we want an unsafe but living life like a flower? When we place such walls around ourselves, we live a stone's life, but love is like that flower, whose every moment of life is unsafe, but beautiful. Love is the world's greatest flower, which is always unsafe. But love alone brings life into us.
Love itself means an open door, through which we can stand beneath the open sky. Keeping all doors open, remaining under the open sky may be terrifying, but this is what brings essence to life. Through this, two things can generally happen. First, an enemy might come and destroy us completely. Second, a friend might come and embrace us in love. But if we want to protect ourselves from enemies, we will lose friends. Because we do not know what is coming to us in the future. If we build walls around ourselves in this way, we are actually constructing our own graveyard, and in such moments we will always be thinking only this—what we seem to be losing, what we no longer have. Actually, we have lost nothing. Through all this, we have merely closed our own hearts. We have never let our hearts breathe under that open sky, as a result of which our hearts have forgotten how to spread their fragrance. This only means that we never learned to love at all.
Eighty-three.

We are constantly molding our children for such a stone-like secure life. When our children return home from school having topped the merit list, we are very happy, we caress them, embrace them to our chests, praise them in front of others, distribute sweets to others. Have we ever thought about what we are actually teaching our children through this? We are actually teaching them that they must always come first like this. We teach them to compete with others, to fight, to remain steadfast in their goals at all times, we teach them that by hook or by crook, in exchange for whatever it may be, they must come first. We teach them how to always be first. In time they learn to come first in every phase of life, but at a certain stage they realize that they may have succeeded in coming first, but they have lost their capacity for love. In this world, only those receive love who know how to be willing to stay last of all. One who loses the power of love loses the most precious thing in life. One who always holds power and rules over others—you may think such a person is doing very well, but let us see what the great politicians were actually like!
If we think a little, it becomes clear that they had no true friends at all. Around them were some people greedy for power. Indira Gandhi, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and many other great politicians of the world met their deaths at the hands of those very people who were closest to them, whom they considered safe friends or who were employed in the profession of protecting their lives. A politician actually lives surrounded only by people entangled in lust for power, none of whom love him but rather love his power. This is why politicians generally do not keep any minister in one position for very long, because if someone once rises to the peak of power, they can misuse that power at any time. This is a traditional strategy of politics. Basically, there are never any friends in politics; it is completely surrounded by enemies, where there is only competition between one person and another. When we mold our children into competitors, we are actually making them into such despicable, self-destructive, violent, rival beings.
They eventually become mere money-making machines. They become separated from love and in time their lives become completely devoid of love. Those who truly love never chase after money, after power. Wealth always works against love, and it is never possible for a miser to love anyone. When we become capable of spreading sufficient love around us, one day, when we need it, it will flow like a flood into our lives. When there are some loving people in our lives, only then do we understand that the Creator is taking care of us. At such times we will feel that if the Creator takes care of even the smallest things in this world, then why would He not take care of us! And when we make wealth our friend instead of love, then in our days of trouble we only keep looking at our wealth. But when we go to the final stage of our lives, if there is no one to lovingly shelter us, to worry about us, then on whom shall we depend? Who will give us refuge in our weariness? Who will embrace us to their chest with supreme affection?
Eighty-four.

What would such a life feel like—one with no love, no helping hand, only wealth all around? Do we ever think about this? A rich person who is complete only in financial terms is so lifeless that in time the burden of his wealth becomes the greatest burden to himself. The meaning of love is sharing one's love with others. The more we spread our love around us, the more it will spread around us in ever-greater dimensions. Just as when we throw a stone into a pond it gradually spreads in circles all around, love will spread around us in the same way. A person with heart spreads love around himself in this way. Our heart is that center of our love from which it spreads around us. The deeper we penetrate into our hearts, the more the turbulence of our center will continue to increase. Often, for the sake of preserving our honor, in the name of social propriety, we place an extra burden on our children, where only our personal interests lie hidden.
We want to see them in high government positions, we want to make them Napoleon, Alexander—amid so much pressure we forget to create our children as truly valuable human beings. Because we think that if they become true human beings, it will not be possible for them to become Napoleon, Alexander, or any so-called dignitary of the state. Because none of this makes our children capable of earning money with much certainty. Love leads us to the Creator's path—we hide this difficult truth from our children because we need money. As a result, our children gradually move away from their own souls, they never feel the need to know their own individual being. Actually, they can no longer know that they have something called their own essence. They lose love for themselves. They sever the relationship between themselves and their hearts. They begin to live in a groundless state, and trying to live by uprooting their own roots, they live with a kind of emptiness their whole lives. Looking at them, it seems as if something has been lost from their lives, yet they don't know what has been lost from their lives!
When they began to lose this, they were very small. And when they begin to feel this emptiness, they have become a sufficiently conscious young person, but all their consciousness then works against them, because using all their knowledge and awareness, they still cannot know what they have lost, when they lost it! When we gradually remove our children from true love, they are very young then, they don't have the mental capacity to understand what we are actually taking away from them, what we are separating them from. They trust us, they believe all the commands and prohibitions of their parents. They follow the advice of their parents, teachers, everyone; they are completely dependent on us, because besides us there is no one else close enough to educate them. This is why it is said that a child's first education comes from their family. Our child doesn't even know that in their ignorance, unconsciousness, those closest to them have taken them away from their own soul, separated them from their foundation.
In Japan, a certain type of tree is cultivated in a special planned way. These trees are called bonsai. Although bonsai has many forms, their pattern is basically the same. These trees are about two to three hundred years old, yet they are only 6-8 inches in height. Why don't these trees grow tall in size and height despite being so old? Because these trees have been cared for in a special way for hundreds of years, so they don't grow. These trees are planted in a hard iron small container and in limited soil, through regular fertilizer and water, their roots are cut from time to time so that they cannot grow as they wish. Day after day, year after year, it has to grow in a small space, in a specific place. Since it is never planted in open soil, it can never grow up. Although its body looks much deteriorated and old, although it is very old in age, in terms of size it always remains small. How can the tree grow big if its roots are trimmed from time to time and it is allowed to grow only in a limited scope in a specific place? This is exactly what we do with our children. We regularly separate them little by little from time to time from the natural growth of their own hearts, we keep pruning them, we gradually keep taking them away from love, we keep separating them from their true roots. Just as this tree never knows what is being done to them, we too, when we grow up, don't know what has been done to us!