But what is Love? First Reading: God at the Traffic Lights'. It is now more than a month and the incident is still alive and crystal clear in my mind when many experiences have already merged into the background. It was just dark and the evening was moist with the potential for mist or rain. It could go either way. The traffic was light and I put relaxing music on the radio. It was a normal evening and I was going home to some extent on 'auto pilot' after dropping our grand daughter off at her own home in time for bedtime. I approached the traffic lights still some two hundred metres away, having slowed down to go past the speed camera I noticed a difference. At first it was it was only faint but as I progressed towards the traffic light so the feeling became stronger. The feeling is difficult to describe. It was not 'a brightness'. Time didn't stand still. I was able handle the car as usual. What I felt was an increasing 'specialness'. A feeling that encompassed my surroundings and included the car and myself. As I drew to a halt at the traffic lights, unable to turn to the right because of the stream of traffic coming towards the junction, the feeling was very strong. It was the feeling of being a part of the whole. I felt totally connected to everything around me. In fact it was as if everything was a part of me and I a part of everything. There was no feeling of separateness at all and yet I was still an individual in my own right able to operate the car and watchful of the chance to make the right turn. An individual bound to all the other individualities that made up my reality at this time, where living and non-living were bound together. At some level I felt I was everything. I felt at peace. I felt supported. I felt loved. I was stationary for two to three minutes and then the chance to turn right came and I drove away from the junction. As I drove away from the junction, towards home, so the intensity of my experience began to wane until it disappeared some 200 metres away from the traffic lights. It was as if I had travelled through a static bubble of a different reality. I was a bit stunned yet had no desire to turn around. The experience seemed complete in itself. I drove on without any feeling of a sense of loss. I had experienced what I had known about for a long time and I had already come to, intellectually, know. The reality of oneness. Experiencing this reality is so much better. It was so fulfilling, this experience of God at the traffic lights. Second Reading: 'Talking to God!' I was enjoying the course that I had been on. The activity focus had been meditation. Two days of almost end to end meditation, none of which were longer than thirty minutes. Paired with this activity was the heart and brain monitoring of a different group of students for each meditation. The course was to promote knowledge about 'awareness'. Perhaps what I experienced was because of this meditation, or perhaps it was because this course followed on from another, EFT course, which involved, as a member of the audience, continuous tapping of acupoints for two days. Perhaps it was or perhaps it wasn't. Either way I was enjoying myself. It was interesting. I had no idea that I was about to start the first of three linked experiences or events that would directly affect what I think about God, myself and what my future path might be. The first thing that I noticed took place on the penultimate meditation of the second day of the course. We had been introduced to a form of Zen meditation where you chose something that was important in your life as the starting point. You say this starting word or phrase in your mind and then immediately follow it with "Why this?" or, in my case I just said "Why?" And then wait for what pops into your mind for the next step, fairly simple really. Even I could do this. I started with the phrase "the house" because we were trying to buy, at that time, a house that we, my wife and I, could use as a retreat. My mind, seemingly of its own volition, followed my "why?" with "be there". I questioned this word with the 'why?'. Up popped "release - freedom" and then this was followed in succession by "why?" "to be"; "why?" "connection" and "why?" "source". It was with "release - freedom" that I recognised that something increasingly odd had been going on with the last few words. With this I had noticed that there was a distinct feeling of pressure inside my skull. I maintained from that time on a constant 'watch' of my inner head with my 'awareness'. A funny word that but that is what it felt like, it wasn't looking, I was just aware of this inner head of mine focussing on the internal change. With "to be" the pressure increased and I recognised this as an increase in energy pressure rather than a physical pressure in my skull. With "connection", my fourth word, the energy pressure was now quite strong. With my fifth word "Source" this pressure exploded outwards beyond the limits of my skull and I was amazed! Amazed doesn't come near to expressing what I was experiencing even though the words I will use didn't quite reflect what I was experiencing. I was completely bowled over. My awareness which had been focussed on the inside of my head, now no longer recognised my skull or the rest of my body. They just weren't there. There was just energy which I felt was me. I was a centre. 'I' was the centre of a mass of seething energy the light of which streamed outwards from this centre and fading with distance though it was wider laterally than any other direction. It was then that my amazement became even more intense. I became aware of that which was beyond my energy. Beyond this self there was nothing. There was total emptiness in all directions. I cannot say that this place was dark or light. It was just empty. It was an unending emptiness, a limitless nothingness that went on forever….. I was totally alone and I wasn't frightened. I was more than a bit 'gob smacked' about this happening and I blame this for not making full use of my time 'there'. Then the meditation was brought to a close after just ten minutes as this was not an 'easy' meditation. No mind blowing results were expected, I suspect and we were only getting a taster. Also, I suspect that, as the course was nearly at an end the presenters perhaps were keen to get on and reach the end. This taster left me faced with two opposing feelings. One of utter amazement at what I had experienced and one of utter disappointment that I had not taken full use of what had been on offer. I say this because that is what I felt. I had come across, on a number of occasions in books, the idea of this place of unlimited emptiness which is sometimes called the 'void'. I knew from such writings that I had read in the past that this could be a place where you can talk to God and receive an answer. I could have asked anything. I could have asked any number of questions. I would not have been limited to just three questions like in a traditional fairy tale. So with my amazement and disappointment I completed the last meditation and then went home without sharing what I had experienced. The second event happened a couple of days later while I was carrying out a reiki treatment, aided by my wife. Giving such a treatment can on occasion be painfully boring because a reiki practitioner is not a part of the process but rather a focus or connection through which the client's need draws the healing energy. This evening I was bored. What I did I would not recommend to my students but I did it anyway, as on occasions like this I would do a short five minute meditation. This time I decided to repeat the Zen meditation that had triggered me into the void and it had the same effect..... I was back in the void. This time there wasn't the streaming energy just me, bodiless. So I asked my questions. "Is there anyone here?" a bit silly really, as if there could be anyone in that emptiness that stretched forever. There was instantly a response. "Yes I am here" came a gentle male voice. Was it male? Yes, on reflection it probably was male. "What are you called?" I said. "Many people call me God though others use other names." "What is God?" I asked. "Everything" came the reply. "So does that mean that you are Jacob?" Jacob is a 'being' I used to meet in meditation some while ago. "Yes, I am Jacob." "Does this mean that you are me?" "Yes, I am you. I am everyone. I am everything. I am all things and much, much more." "So what is God?" there was a slight pause. "Love seems the best word. I am that which holds together and underpins that which you call reality. I am also all of reality. I am everything, at all levels." "If I am also God, what is my role and purpose here?" "It is what you have to do." was the reply. "You have to make your way home, back to me and become wholly God. Your experiences help in this process, to become as one with me - to become God." There seemed to be a long pause as I couldn't frame the next question and then I said, "OK then so why is this house we are trying to buy important?" "It will make the next step easier" was the reply. Immediately I found that I was back in my body and it was time for the reiki treatment to finish. As normal at the end of a reiki treatment I asked my client a question about what she had felt and where she had felt it. It was then that I had another surprise. She turned to me and said. "What is the empty place?" It seemed to be empty for ever.... I explained very briefly what little I knew of that place and then our chatter moved on to other things. On reflection it seems that perhaps in some way my own 'journey' had somehow caused her to come along too. Perhaps it is just that she needed to be introduced to the void and the idea of the void for use as a stepping stone later? On the third event occurred on the following reiki session with this same client. I tried the same technique again to get into the void. However, this time the result was different. It was like I was in the void with one leg yet the other leg was firmly in this world and as had happened before I asked some more questions. "Why is it important to have this house?" "So that you can take the next step, to be able to grow, to become. It will make the next step of your journey easier", was the reply. "So what do I have to do then?" "Meditate." "Where do I have to meditate, at the house or somewhere else?" "Go to the hills from whence comes the Lord." was the reply. I felt that this was some sort of biblical reference but I had no idea where this might be in the bible. "But where?" I asked again. Immediately both the void and my ongoing treatment vanished and I was feeling warm and sitting on a hillside. It definitely was a hillside, perhaps a high one though. I say this because there was no hint of the worn sparseness, gauntness or the broken rock and cragginess of our British mountains. A faint breeze barely rustled the grass. I felt warm and really good as I looked down the grassy slope. Immediately I was back with my reiki treatment and I said nothing about this experience. I wanted to perhaps have time to make sense of it and to perhaps find out where this rough brown tinged grass slope was. This didn't happen until quite recently when having lunch with my wife. We had walked all morning and then struggled up the hill to our designated lunch spot. The hill was high but hardly a mountain, rather uninteresting with little to recommend it other than coming up it would continue to help my long term blood pressure. It was a clear day though, and the views of real mountains and the valleys around looked wonderful and spectacular. I had clicked away with our camera intending to make up a panoramic view which, I am sorry to say, I still haven't managed to do yet. We also needed a rest as it had been a really steep and sustained assent. Having walked across the unmarked and uninteresting top of the hill we dropped into that relatively calm spot that hills have in the lee of the wind. It was while we ate our lunch and resting our legs that Lynn said, "It feels really good here, it would be a great place to meditate wouldn't it?" I was surprised and jogged out of my dozy daydreaming. I looked out at the slope, feeling warm and hearing the slight rustle of a breeze through the grass and realised that this was the place. Feeling somewhat surprised I said, "This is the place! This is where I went. This is where I was told to meditate." I went on to explain the details of my last experience. But What Is Love? 30th November 2008 Last autumn I started to talk about what love really was. All I really managed to say was - what love wasn't. That sermon focussed on the misconceptions we all have about what love really is, and it is nothing to do with sex or any other emotional aberration that we might have concerning ourselves or any other person. Today I want, again, to try and pin down what love really is. In today's first reading, I described what happened to me some years ago. In that spiritual experience it was as if I lived the reality that there was no separation between what I saw as myself and that which was around me. However, my thinking capacity did not merge into everything else and disappear into the 'mish-mash' of a combined everything. No, I was discretely present as an observer. Despite this, I was also in some way everything around me that lay within my bubble of awareness. When I wrote about that experience the only word that at the time seemed to fit and still does today was 'love'. But why is that word so suitable? It is because the word 'love' seemed, at that time, to reflect an aspect, of what today I will call the 'greater love' to distinguish it from the 'everyday love' that we all tend to misuse to a greater or lesser extent. Let me describe what I recognise as this aspect of the 'greater love. I was in my bubble of awareness and at the same time I was 'in this world'. I was aware that there was no barrier or separation between myself and my reality around me. It all was an integral part of me and I an integral part of it. In this state anything that happened to any object or life form, great or small, would have been happening to me because it all was me. When I think of this, or relive that event in my mind I realise this is what love is, or a part of it. Love is the capacity to empathise at a really deep level, with everything, animate or inanimate because everything is you. This is why Jesus's 'love thy neighbour' was so important. This is the practical reality of what Jesus was taking about. There are no barriers at all in the greater love. It is all one. We are all one. Because of this, if you help someone else, especially if they don't know who has done the helping, then their alleviation of hurt, or calming, or any positive outcome of your 'action' will always have a positive spiritual effect back on yourself. Why? because at some level you are 'at one' with each other even now as you sit together in this church. Even being positive about someone else will have this 'rebound effect' for you. This is how this aspect of the 'greater love' seems to work. So what if you don't help your neighbour directly. Well if you focus on yourself so that you change spiritually, for that is what we are talking about, then the effect of this 'new you' will spill out and influence others around you whether you want it to or not. This is the same principle, as described previously, but in reverse. This is the other side of the coin, so to speak. Because others around you are within this combined 'oneness', then anything positive, or negative for that matter I'm afraid, that you do will have a knock on effect. But not just a single knock on effect but an ongoing knock on effect. This, of course, is the 'taking the plank out of your own eye'. If you change, then those around you, if they are aware, will detect this change and they will automatically and often unknowingly respond to this change. This is the effect of becoming more at one with 'yourself', more accepting and more nonjudgmental of others, happier even. It is, of course, becoming more loving, that is, in the 'greater love' sense. You become more positive then everyone around you will become more positive. So you change and this causes everyone to change, perhaps only in a small way, in the direction of love. So we are all bound together in the great oneness which is the 'greater love'. This truth will not change if you ignore it but neither will you then reap the benefit of it either. The choice is always yours. So what about the second reading? Well these experiences have certainly faced me with the certainty of whether God exists. This, I had previously accepted only in an academic way. Now I can no longer hide from this truth or this reality. Yes I know that you may be thinking that all of this is just some form of self created hallucination. Perhaps there is some truth in such a statement. Perhaps it was only me creating the 'God voice' in my head? Was I just answering my own questions? Perhaps I was. But if what God said to me has any truth, and I 'know', in the centre of my being that it has, then there is no separating me from God. God is me and at some limited level I am also God. There cannot be a separation from God can there? There is a choice of course. Perhaps this choice is all there is, because the choice is simple, this choice has only two possible outcomes. You can ignore God, and build protective walls around yourself. In which case there will then be no meaningful God contact, or experience, for you in your life. This is because you will have closed your eyes, ears and mind, whatever that is, to God. Or you can encompass God and gain the benefits. Remember the phrases that Jesus would end his parables with, "Those that have eyes to see, let them see" and also "Those that have ears to hear, let them hear". As Unitarians we should also add the phrasing, "Those who have minds to think, let them think, for this is an important tenet of Unitarianism. If you close your eyes, ears and mind then you would be in a prison of your own making inside the walls that you have erected." If you have walled yourself off from the 'greater love' which is God, because they are an inseparable whole, all that positive stuff that could be yours would be gone or would not be available to you except in a very limited way. Perhaps your life would become a pale reflection of what it could have been? It could be OK but all the greatness would be gone because you would have refused its existence in your life. Now that isn't my problem though and it isn't really what this sermon is about. That is your decision. It perhaps has to be your choice, totally and solely your choice. It is your choice to turn towards God, or not to. So what does this 'God experience' teach me about love or the 'greater love' phrase that I am using today. Let me read you again a small section from my conversation with God. I had asked the question, "So what is God?" and God had replied, "Love seems the best word. I am that which holds together and underpins that which you call reality. I am also all of reality. I am everything, at all levels." What does this mean in terms of the 'greater love'? It is saying all that I have already said earlier, based on the first reading. The 'greater love' is God as is experienced. God, or the 'greater love' is absolutely everything and more. The 'greater love' is me. It is also you. The 'greater love' is also the thief, the murderer and the child abuser. God is the seat you are sitting on, the refuse tip and the sunset. The 'greater love' is everything and everything is God and everything that is God is love. God is the 'greater love' that I am talking about today. There is nothing else. God is not proactive in this relationship. God waits for us to accept that God is a possibility. The 'greater love' waits for us to become open to the reality of the 'greater love'. Everything is our choice and is of our making. OK this is along with the making of everyone else of course. But really we are the ones that have to change. We are the only ones that can make the change, by accepting the real reality and all the possibilities that are open to us. Remember the words of God in reply to my question, "If I am also God, what is my role and purpose here?" "It is what you have to do." was the reply. "You have to make your way home, back to me and become wholly God. Your experiences help in this process, to become as one with me - to become God." That is the spiritual journey. Perhaps it is the only important journey. The journey home. To become God. To become the 'greater love' for that is what God is. So what is love? It is everything and more and it waits for all of us. Amen Joe Potter  30/11/2008