Extract from Unmani’s new book ‘Die to Love’

Before you can really know the Love that I am writing of, before you

can recognize what I am pointing to, you have to lose it all.

Otherwise, you will either toss it aside as a ridiculous concept, or you will

say, ‘that’s interesting but it doesn’t do much for me’. You might compare it

to what someone else says, or just store it as interesting information.

It is very possible to hear this message and say ‘So what?’ To hear it

as an intellectual theory or philosophy, and either agree or disagree. You

might even take it on as a new attitude or belief. But what I am pointing to

is simply recognised or not. I am speaking of the end of all beliefs and

attitudes. Losing all of them. Losing all reference points and all boundaries.

Losing all hope that one day it will be better. Being totally and utterly left

with nothing.

Awakening will not fit into your life as you imagine it or the self you

imagine yourself to be. Love or Truth is not something that you integrate

into your personal view of things. This is reality without your distorting

stories, ideas, and beliefs. It is not hidden, but in plain view.

You have to lose all ideas of who you think you are before you can

know who You truly are, and to value who You truly are. Lose all that you

hold sacred and special. Lose all hope. Be totally left with now, this.

Surrendered to what is. Stripped naked. No more maybes. No more what

ifs. No more ‘someone else might know’.

What does losing all hope mean? Any hope for a better moment than

this moment. Any belief that someday life will be easier or better or that I

will attain something one day. When you have come to a point when you

realise that there are no more possible avenues. When you have tried it all

only to find that nothing gives you what you really want. When you have

realised that anything that provides pleasure or happiness must also bring

pain or sadness. When you see that any pleasure or pain is only temporary.

When you have had enough of chasing pleasure and trying to avoid pain.

The end of hope is really a readiness to die. A readiness to give it all up only

to know the truth. To know the truth no matter whether it is going to bring

pleasure or pain. Really ready to see that the answer does not lie in this

world of phenomenon of pleasure or pain.

Losing it all means no longer trusting thought to know it all.

Thought can think endless theories and can ask many questions, but none of

them hold any real answers. Even experiences are seen to come and go and

are not reliable. Pain, pleasure, pain, pleasure, pain, pleasure…. No more

waiting for the end of pain and a permanent experience of pleasure.

This is the end of the search. In hitting rock bottom and seeing the

pointlessness of it all, either when something traumatic happens or just from

a weariness of searching for so long, then it is possible to hear this message.

This message is of the end of hope, but also of the beginning of Life. It is

not a dry, depressing conceptual message, because in that emptiness, when

all is lost, then there is the space to see the fullness of it all. The space to

really know the Love that is, beyond any concept or fleeting experience of

love.

© Unmani Liza Hyde, 2008