Second is the emotion of love. I would say that the negative opposite to this is anger. So if we have anger in us, how to remove this? The breath work targets this on multiple levels, it does purify the nerves and cleans the body, it purifies the thoughts and also it purifies the emotions. Emotion resides deep down within. Relating to this I would like to share one story of Sheikh Mansur Al-Hallaz. Sheikh Mansur Al-Hallaz was given the deadliest death in the whole human history. Jesus was crucified and killed in a comparably shorter time. Mahatma Gandhi was gunned down, which was also an easier death, comparatively. Socrates was given poison, that was also an easier death. But Sheikh Mansur Al-Hallaz, he was given the deadliest death. First his legs were cut, there was a mob and he was stoned and when his legs were cut and the blood was going down, then he took the blood with his hand and said, “Allah, today I don’t need to take water to do the vuju.” In Muslim tradition, before the prayer the hands are washed and other body parts and in the process of washing they use water but the best vuju is when it can be done with our own blood. It doesn’t mean that you get the blood of somebody and do it. But when our own blood is coming and we can still do the vuju and still have belief in God and continue it, that is considered as the highest. So when his legs were cut, the feeling arose inside “Today, I don’t need to take water, I can just use my blood and do vuju and perform the prayer.” See the relation. In that much pain he is still feeling this. Further, when the mob was throwing stones at him, finally his eyes were attacked and then they put rods inside the eyes and that time he said, “Ya Allah! I was afraid that in these moments I might not have love. But today I want to say that Mansur won!” The people were saying, “What kind of stupidity is this. What have you won? We have cut your legs and now put rods in your eyes, what have you won?” He said, “I won because I was worried that if someone would harm me like this, anger and hate would arise. I won since I still have love for these people.” In moments of such deep pain when one can only scream from suffering, he is feeling the emotion of love. Seeing the peoples’ ignorance and that they don’t know what they are doing. In the crowd there was one person, instead of throwing a stone, he threw a flower. At that time Sheikh Mansur started to cry. The emotion of tears came and he said, “The one who has thrown this flower is my guru, he knows what I am saying, he warned me before.” The king of that area had called his guru and said, “Tell your disciple Mansur to stop saying Anal-Haque.” Which means: I am Brahman. That’s against the concept of Islam. His guru called him and tried to make him understand “Mansur, you are not the only one who has known this, many have known this but they don’t say it out loud like you. So stop it if you want to save your life.” And Mansur said, “Say it? I don’t say it, he says it. It’s not me who is doing it. ” His master did his best to make him understand that “You are not the first one who has known the truth. I also know. I also know Anal-Haque. I am Brahman but I don’t say it loudly.” Mansur said, “Since I am not saying it, then how can I stop it. He is saying it, he is doing it, I am not the doer of it.” He didn’t listen to his master and so he was killed. In these extreme moments of pain, he had love. Anger could have come, but love came.
The question is, how can we develop this? Cleansing the body is fundamental, the body must be pure and the thoughts must be pure. Third, emotions must be pure. For emotions to be pure, we have to change the way we look at things. One way to look at it is, between the two days there is night hence darkness. The other way is, between two dark nights there is one day with light. If we change our attitude and grow to having more and more positivity, the purity in emotion increases. To begin with we can choose objects which are not reacting, like nature. So if we start spreading our love sharing it with nature, this raises our love towards nature.
For example, we are sitting near the ocean, by sitting with the ocean, watching its layers, we feel calm, we feel peace. We are receiving the peace from it and we can give the same back to it. “I give my love to you, you gave me love.” We are walking and we see a broken glass. Lots of people in this area drink alcohol and throw the bottles away. We have done a lot of work to remove the glass, but still we find pieces. We see a piece of glass and see that it could hurt someone, we remove it and put it somewhere where it will not hurt someone. We see a stone, walking on the beach, walking on the road. We can look at it and feel it is our fundamental right to be aloof and we pass by. Or we just remove it. This development is a certain growth. That doesn’t mean that for instance when we do the laughter meditation here in the jungle you stop and you go collect empty plastic bottles. That’s different since you are laughing with totality, being involved totally in that process. The feeling to do it needs to arise from inside. “I do this, I don’t expect anything in return for doing this. Nor will I go and tell someone that I cleaned up the beach.” Just doing it because we love doing it. It’s a small thing. But life is a collection of these small things. Doing any one thing in a day where we do not expect anything in return will increase love in ourselves. I consider the opposite of love to be anger. Acting upon these small impulses of love arising from inside helps bring the anger down.
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