The Beloved

Q: "Puran, you said, 'The Beloved can't be found, but He can be created.' But isn't the Beloved already here? Aren't we just shifting our perspective to recognize what is already here all the time? I love my husband for everything that he is. Instead of overlooking his so-called faults with the hope that they will improve, I try to embrace them without judgment. Isn't that true unconditional love?"

A: Yes! There are two ways of doing it: the left-hand path (The Saint) and the right-hand path (The Master). The left-hand path is to recognize the divinity in the human, the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the temporal. The Beloved is in your husband already; you only need to see Him. In the Saint's view the imperfections that others see are part of the beauty, not a mask over the beauty. This sight that can see the Beloved is creative -- your husband will be affected by being seen and will respond by becoming more the way you see him.

The right-hand way is to see the potential for being the Beloved in another. You see the Beloved and you see the persona that covers it. You see how his fears, doubts, wounds, guilt, etc. keep him from being the one he could be. If you see him this way, then it becomes your responsibility to help create the atmosphere that will heal the wounds, ease the doubts, calm the fear, etc., so that he will emerge as the one he could be.

The same two processes work with spiritual teachers. There is the Saint, who never criticizes you, never complains, only gives you blessings, and there is the Master, who shakes you to your core and supports you through your rebuilding.

Both processes work, but we each have to choose the way that works for us. Both processes are creative. Both require patient confidence. In saying that "the Beloved cannot be found," I mean that there is no one walking the earth that can come up to our ideal, if we look objectively. The Saint has no objectivity, she looks with the eyes of the heart and so she sees the Beloved everywhere. The Master sees things the way they are, with all their difficulties and shortcomings, but also feels the self-confidence and power needed to bring about change. Consequently, the Master can ignore the difficulties and draw out the purity behind them.

This is different from seeing a person's flaws and accepting them, without a view of their perfection. That is simply becoming accustomed to the way things appear. If you see a person's perfection, their "soul", then there are two possibilities: either you see how that perfection is built up from the idiosyncrasies of their personality, or you see through it and see their idiosyncrasies as a veil over the divine face.

When you see a crushed beer can in the trash, you can see as the Saint does that the way it's crushed catches the light and reflects it better than a perfectly round cylinder, and you can smell that the drops left within it are hosting billions of bacteria that would otherwise not be alive. Or you can see as the Master does that you could polish and clean this can and use it in an aluminum sculpture; or straighten it out, cut off the end and use it as a planter; or melt it down and produce a pure cube of metal. The ordinary person just sees a piece of garbage.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
© 1999 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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