Redemptive Love

“Redemptive love is the means through which we embody and express the transcendent wisdom of spiritual awakening.”   ~ Adyashanti

What is it to fully pour ourselves into life as an act of love? What is it to fully receive this love that redeems all confusion and heals all wounds? In this five-part audio course, Adyashanti leads a transformational journey into the depths of redemptive love and grace—that innate quality of freedom that opens us to the fullness of incarnate existence. While transcendent wisdom is realized by dropping one's attachment to body and mind, it is redemptive love that opens our hearts in an honest and intimate way to the hidden love flowing through all of creation.

This study course includes a series of talks and dialogues, weekly exercises, and a 58-page study guide (printable PDF) with written Q&A between Adyashanti and the original course participants.

THEMES OF EXPLORATION:

SESSION 1

Topics:

• Transcendent and Descendent Awakening
• The Origin of Redemptive Love
• Redemptive Love as a Movement of Grace
• Relinquishing the Ego's Resistance to Suffering
• A Sacrificial Act of Love
• Cleansing from the Inside Out
• Transforming Identity and Victimhood
• What's Beyond the Frontier of Our Will
• Perceiving Wholeness from the Eyes of Eternity
• Caller 1: The Freedom in How People See You
• Caller 2: Grounding Intense Energy
• Caller 3: Opening Beyond Your Boundaries

Quotes:

"When redemptive love blossoms within you, it's as if everything is suddenly made right. The beauty of existence starts to shine forth."

"Redemptive love is an act of grace. We cannot make it happen."

"Redemptive love can only be experienced when ego has completely relinquished resisting its own suffering or the suffering of others."

"By pushing against suffering, you're actually holding on to it."

"You can experience the suffering of humanity without it causing you to suffer."

"You cannot fake redemptive love. You can open yourself to its mercy."

"Redemptive love knows that there is nothing to cleanse. There is nothing to forgive, because everything is forgiven from the beginning. It knows that everything is made whole by seeing that it always was and is whole."

"I'm not talking about replacing bad stories with good stories; redemptive love cleanses you of stories. It allows you to start to perceive life as it actually is, to perceive life through the eyes of eternity."

SESSION 2

Topics:

• The Myth that We Are Flawed
• Commentary on Rilke's Poem "You Darkness, That I Come From"
• The Unseen Dimension of Life
• Allowing Life to Find You
• Revelation Is Born in the Dark
• Relinquishing Your Old Story
• Yearning and Fearing the Void
• The Vitality in Not Knowing
• Embracing the Full Measure of Your Life
• Caller 1: Remaining Faithful to Clarity
• Caller 2: Nurturing Silence in Small Moments
• Caller 3: You Are Redemptive Love

Quotes:

"Unworthiness is the pandemic of Western culture."

"All essential inadequacy is an illusion, but redemptive love has the power to cut right through that illusion and dissipate it."

"The redemptive quality of love comes from the dark womb of the unknown."

"Spirituality is the art of allowing yourself to be found by the greater dimension of existence."

"By directing the light of consciousness beyond the current frontier of our knowing, we allow the unknown to find us."

"We are here to be free in this world, and to love in a way that your presence redeems the sorrow of life."

"When there's absolutely no story, there's nothing to confine the dynamic of love."

"When we connect with the greater dimension of life, what we come to see is that old way of looking at life was like the tiniest speck within an eternity which is trying to reveal all of itself through you, in you, as you, and take the shape of your incarnate existence."

SESSION 3

Topics:

• Embodying Redemptive Love
• Redemption and Sacrifice
• Expressing Your Innate Dignity and Sufficiency
• Turning Compassion Within
• How the Radiance of Love Moves
• The Perspective of Redemptive Love
• How to Stay in Nirvana
• Transforming the Myths We Live By
• Caller 1: Seeing What the Word Love Evokes
• Caller 2: Seeing Through the Myth of Unworthiness

Quotes:

"To experience redemption is to experience your innate sense of value, your natural, true sense of inner dignity."

"A dramatic experience is not qualitatively more profound than something that's experienced more subtly."

"There's a time to turn compassion within and offer it to all of the apparently broken parts of yourself."

"Redemptive love never colludes with illusion. It operates from a state of wholeness."

"You stay in nirvana by lavishing nirvana on everyone you meet, by giving it away as fast as you receive it."

"The current state of suffering for so many people is actually created by their unconscious mythology that disconnects them from themselves, life, and each other."

"Just watch your mind. You'll hear the story of the myth that you live by. The nice thing is that it can be rewritten."

"See if love can find you when you can't find it."

SESSION 4

Topics:

• Being a Loving Presence in the World
• The Transformative Attitude
• Relating from Our Shared Presence
• The Happiness That Comes from Contributing
• Ego's Engagement Strategies
• Love's Engagement Strategies
• Moment-to-Moment Honesty
• Redemptive Love Takes Courage
• Being Free of Freedom States
• Operating from Love vs. Ego Patterns
• Caller 1: Bringing Redemptive Love to Inner Contraction
• Caller 2: The Love That You Are
• Caller 3: Agape vs. Redemptive Love
• Caller 4: Enlightenment in the Small Moments

Quotes:

"When you stop resisting the limitations of the ego, it becomes porous. Your boundaries start to become pliable. You can experience something coming in from a different dimension of experience."

"Love's basic stance towards life is that it accepts life as it is."

"True creative engagement, true relating from non-separation, arises from acceptance."

"Love isn't interested in getting what it wants; it's interested in being what it is."

"Redeeming love comes from a state of the overwhelming power to restore something to its original nature or being."

"Sometimes it takes great courage to live a life of freedom and liberation."

"We're liberated from the concern about whether life is easy or difficult."

"Liberation also means we're liberated from wanting to feel really free. There's something more important, a more fundamental agenda."

"It's one thing to experience redeeming love or deep awakening. It's something else to really live it, to allow it to inform the way you relate."

"When your center of regard is relaxed, it gets vast and wide, and the old ways of relating don't seem compelling anymore."

"On a deeper level, there is a kind of love that is not something you receive, but something that you are. The love that you are isn't something that can be given or taken away; it's an aspect of the truth of your being. It's a love that is innate to you." 

"If there's a withholding of truth, there's withholding of love."

SESSION 5

Topics:

• Letting Go of the Myth of Inadequacy
• What Are You Offering?
• Receiving Love Fully
• The Perspective of Real Love
• Caller 1: The Transition from Mind to Heart
• Caller 2: The Profound Aloneness of Eternity
• Caller 3: Getting Off the Roller Coaster
• Caller 4: Meeting Your Humanity Head-On
• Caller 5: Getting Out of the Way
• Caller 6: Redemptive Love and No-Self

Quotes:

"Everything arises from the ultimate core of your being. Tap into that resource over and over again, because that's your heritage. That's what you're given."

"When you leave the old story of inadequacy behind, you don't just leave it behind for yourself; you leave it behind for all the generations that may come."

"When you get stuck in judgment and self-criticism, you're in service to judgment. You're giving it the most important things you have, which are your energy, attention, and action."

"Whether it feels like it's poured in or arises out of you, redemptive love is redemptive love. What matters is the coming alive of it."

"Love listens first. It really wants to understand."

"We're not given the gift of revelation simply for our own enjoyment. We're given it so that we get on with the business of being it."

"If you want love, then be it. If you want understanding, then be understanding. If you want deep acceptance, then be acceptance."

"Sometimes love stretches you and sometimes it fulfills you. Sometimes it takes great fortitude to follow through on acting on that love."

"Love doesn't move away from suffering; love turns toward it."

"When the self really falls away, the only thing that moves life about is a force or an energy that could be called selfless. It's a force of love."

"Go out there and be a loving presence in the world, and abide in the presence of your being."

Please note: All the recordings and PDF included within audio courses are available to download for 30 days. 

Recorded in San Jose, California, March, 2014. Recordings and course handbook are published by Open Gate Sangha, San Jose, CA.
Music: © 2007 by Eric Fischer.
© 2014 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved.