What does it mean to open to God,
or to love God?
Imagine somebody you love the most in your life, perhaps your child, your mother, your lover or your best friend. Feel what it is to love that person.
Now, pick an object near you, like a book, or the floor beneath you, or a nearby pillow. Love whatever object you choose with the same intensity with which you love your most-loved person.
You may feel strange loving a book, floor or pillow so fullybut you can do it. Practise loving until you feel your chosen object with the same love you offer your most-loved person.
When you can love an object as fully as your most-loved person, then practise loving the space around you :) Love the space extending in front of you, behind you, left and right of you, above and below you. Love outwardly in all directions, with the same feeling with which you open to your most-loved person.
Then practice loving everything within you - even your darkest secret places of shame and perversity - with the same love you offer to your most-loved person. This may take some time, or you MAY be able to do it right away.
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If you love one person, you can love God. God is everything and what is beyond everything - all of which you can love. Love everything and everyone whom you know and don't know, and you are loving God. Open to everything inside and outside of you, even the unknowable mystery beyond everything. Open to feel and love all, the visible and the unknown. This is opening to God, or loving God.
Every instant you love so fully is enlightenment . But because you are habitually used to contracting your feelings, in the next instant you may suddenly find yourself absorbed in picking your nose or scratching your chin as you work for world peace by writing your congressman.
Your loving may be truncated for days as you become lost in duties, chores, and emotions - raising a family, succeeding at a career, talking, sexing, or eating. You may not be opening to God for the sake of your temporary experience. Your ever-changing life never quite fulfills you for good, and you know it.
Instant enlightenment is to love, right now, as if you were loving your most-loved person. No matter what you are feeling or experiencing, inwardly or outwardly, you can love without holding anything back. This is what it means to love God.
So start by feeling the person you love the most, and open to include every aspect of each moment in the openness of your love.
Offering yourself open in this way is instant enlightenment.
Forgetting to love is the usual life of subtle torment.
