truth beauty love

Truth

Beauty,

Love

If we meditate, if we take time to go into ourself, if we allow the mind to become still, we can get to some very refined, almost ethereal, parts of our being, parts where it's difficult to use words at all. For example, we can reach the place where the sense of I as a separate self has disappeared. Standing here now listening to the birds and the cow mooing, when my mind is quiet without words, there's no need of this I, this me, this person. It's not in the picture at all. There is just the sound. There's no distance between me and the birds. There is just the bird's song. I have disappeared into it and the bird has disappeared into it too.

So as we distill ourself into these ever more refined states of consciousness, what is left? What is there, when this sense of I has gone, with all its dramas? 

There's a feeling of truth and of beauty and of love. And even using these three words is misleading. Truth is there when our misconceptions have dropped away, but it's not a truth in words. It's the simple truth of the bird song itself, not some theory, not some philosophy, just what is in this moment.

And beauty, beauty too is here. If one is listening to the birdsong and one has disappeared and there is just the birdsong, it's not a neutral feeling. There's a great bubbling over of joy, joy with existence. In fact, it is the joy of existence, being felt, being sensed, and this is beauty, this is beauty.

And love. How can there be anything but love? Ahh. One would have to be a hard, callous person not to appreciate all this beauty, not to be moved by the simple truth of what is, and this great appreciation is love. But it's not an intellectual appreciation, and even to put it in the heart is to constrain it too much. This love is permeating the whole being. It is the being. Truth, beauty, and love.