Sekhem: The Feeling of Love as a Doorway Beyond Form

Sharing: Unconditional Love Beyond Form

Sekhem teachings with Patrick Zeigler.

Question: How do our spiritual selves relate to our physical bodies?

Response: A song was created with the experience of parents who have lost a child in mind. Women make up about eighty percent of the classes, and some have experienced this loss. The child who has been lost can be the one who opens the heart most deeply. This is part of the process. When that loss entered the conversation, the direction of the work became clear: this was what needed attention, rather than all the other things being discussed.

Sharing: “I deliberately did not mention it. I wanted to test myself and experiment. Is this the only link? Can I do it without this? How easily can I meditate and connect myself to the spiritual world? Do I always have to rely on this, or do I initially have to rely on this vulnerable place?”

Response: There is no need to rely on it forever. The teaching through this child is unconditional love. That is what there is to connect with. Unconditional love has no judgment, no anticipation and, in the end, no form.

Remaining attached to the form of the child as a baby can limit the connection. The soul is bigger than that form. It is formless. This is the level to connect with. At the soul level, everyone is connected; there is one great soul shared by all. The child is helping open that connection, but it is already within. Nothing else is needed to supply it.

Question: “That is what I am trying to ask. Can I rely less on my child, and then we can still meet in that world? That is why I did not want to mention it. I wanted to see whether I could.”

Response: Yes. The difficulty is that the testing is still happening in the mind. During the practice, a wave of connection would begin to come in, and then attention would return to the head. The connection was happening, followed by a movement back into thinking. This, too, was practice.

Let the Feeling of Love Be the Doorway

The invitation to feel a child is a way of returning to love rather than continuing to reason about connection. It can be a living child, another child, or anything that brings the feeling of love. The particular form is not the essential thing. The feeling of love is the doorway.

Sharing: “I tried. It is interesting that you describe unconditional love as having no expectations. I love my living child, who is happy and brings me happiness. But perhaps there are expectations because I also feel responsibility. With the child I lost, perhaps that does not exist, because the love is infinite. I cannot help trying to make logical sense of everything in my life. That is part of my character.”

Responsibilities are real. Looking at the larger picture can also reveal how love changes when the immediate responsibility for care is different. Grandparents, and especially grandmothers in this example, can hold a strong quality of unconditional love.

With a grandchild, there may be more freedom simply to love because the grandparent does not carry the same daily responsibility for care. A grandparent can spoil the child, enjoy the relationship and then hand the child back to the parent. Children feel this quality. Sometimes they develop a deeper love for their grandparents because of it.

If there is a purpose to speak of here, it is to learn unconditional love. Move beyond the concerns of ego and the belief that there must be some grandiose task to accomplish. The purpose is to love.

Family Life and the Search for Enlightenment

Patrick recalls being invited to speak at a women's conference. A woman asked, “What do you think about women? What do you think their purpose here is?”

His answer was that their purpose was probably to do the greatest job on the planet: to raise a child. He spoke of the body being designed to give birth, feed a child and nurture a child. The women reacted strongly against his answer. “How could you say that?” they asked. His recollection was that they hated the answer.

This brought the teaching back to children and family, and to another experience from Patrick's own search for enlightenment.

On his first visit to another country, Patrick met a Sufi teacher. At the time, he was involved in Hindu practices, including celibacy and the idea of having no family. He thought this would be how he achieved enlightenment: by not becoming attached.

The first thing the Sufi teacher told him was, “If you really want this enlightenment, get married and have children.” The encounter directly challenged the idea that avoiding family and attachment was the route to awakening.