Ever ask yourself what it is that you love? I don't mean trivial things—things like baseball in October or prime rib with a good Bordeaux. What exactly is it that you love? When you get down to the nitty-gritty, there's only one answer you can give: yourself. When you find someone to whom you say, "Oh, I love you," what are you loving? What do you see in this man or woman, this object of your affection? What do you see in them? What's the only thing you can see in them?

You can only see in them what you see in you.

You see that in them, whatever it may be, and you love them. You can't stand the rest you see in them: their slovenly habits, their weird attraction to French movies or the New York Yankees. If you could only get rid of those weaknesses, it would be a perfect relationship.

But this original awareness that prompted you to feel love for another is what love is all about. Being conscious of that awareness, you become aware of who is who. Now you look at this other being and what do you see? You see that same awareness. You see your Self, fully. Now you look around and everywhere you look you see your Self. When you're in love, you're constantly in this state.

This is what John meant when, in a burst of understanding in his first letter, he wrote "God is love." What a fantastic definition. If you've experienced the love that flows from having seen yourself, you can understand what he meant: the awareness in the heart that is everywhere, which is constantly flowing, which is the abundance of everything. When you're tapped in like this, everything is love. There's nothing else. And that's God.

Here's how this awareness enters the heart: first, through awareness, which is a function of the mind. When awareness is connected to in the mind when you look out, you recognize yourself in every being. You recognize You, and you can't help loving you. There's no other way.

There was an old song I remember—old enough that we had it on an old crank-up 78. It was called "My Love." Maybe the Ink Spots sang it. The lyrics went something like this: "I see your face in every flower, your eyes in stars above..." It sounds like the most typical treacle, but if understood a certain way, it describes the experience of love that I've been talking about.

When you've been in love, however long ago that may have been, what did you see? You saw the person you loved everywhere. It was a constant thing—everything that was beautiful was them. This is the essential experience of the lover and the beloved. This is the constant theme of the Sufis—the relationship between the Absolute and the lover. It's a love affair, and it makes the Islamic hierarchy, the fundamentalists, itchy as hell.

This Sufi approach is, on the face of it, almost adolescent—they're always talking about love, about being drunk on love, about how they can't get enough of the beloved. That's just the surface of what you can see, but it turns out that the adolescent version of love is the same at the God-realized level of being. It's the same, except now it's immense, encompassing, complete. It's still the same paradigm. Love is love no matter what. You love a dog. A cat. A child. A spouse. When you love something, you can't get enough of it. It doesn't wear thin. If it's the real thing, it keeps getting deeper, fuller. It's all you see.

If there's only one cupcake left on the plate, the lover gives it to his beloved. That's what lovers do. This is why, in poor countries where there is little food, parents won't eat—they give their food to their children. They may die, but they'd rather their children live, for the simple reason that they love their children.

Let's be specific. You run up against someone and all you see is this thing that is other than you. They insist they are not you. They laugh at the idea. They insist on being who they think they are, and the one thing they know is that they are not you. Not even close.

So here you are, you've had a taste of this love I've been talking about, and you're ready to love this person. But he's not interested. He resists and resents the very idea. You're ready to embrace him and all he can think to do is spit in your face. "I'm not you," he says. "I'm the other. I'm different from you. I'm me. We're enemies, not lovers."

Now, how do you love someone like that? How do you get past what they've put out? This isn't unusual behavior—people do it all the time. What do you do? How do you handle it?

You have to see past the resistance, see through it to what you know, and relate to that. That's where the real testing gets done. What do you do when someone slaps you in the face—whether it's a real slap or a psychological one? You know the answer, at least according to Christian doctrine: you turn the other cheek. You take it and you don't return fire. You don't go down to the level of your attacker but stay connected to what you know about love.

To lose your awareness of what it means to love is to be in hell. To keep hold of it is to be in heaven. With every moment, we're in one or the other; we're either there with our awareness or without it. We're always moving, shifting, from one place to the other. You can dwell in the constancy of hell, the world of anger and hate and denial, or you can discover the constancy of heaven. That's what's meant by the phrase "Thy kingdom come." That means let it come here, so that I'll be in it. I'll be remembering my awareness constantly—knowing who I am constantly.

At the risk of being repetitious, let me repeat myself: Being who I am—being a lover of all I see and recognize as my Self—that's being in heaven. Not being who you are, ignoring or denying the reality of love, is hell.

It's your choice.