Adyashanti. Redemptive Love: The Healing Power of Descending Grace.San Jose, CA: Open Gate Sangha, 2014.

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

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

To truly accept is to love. So what the ego “can” do is to be fully present and remain open to a Love that is always present but often ignored.

Redemptive Love blooms when you as an ego let go of your resistance and your resignation, and allow room for something to arise that the ego cannot create. The key here is to completely and absolutely let go without reservation. Only then can the divine power of Love gain access to your heart and mind. You have to completely let go of what you cannot control and utterly depend on the loving presence of Grace. This is not an act of resignation (which is of the mind); it is an act of surrender (which is of the heart).

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

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

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

If we resist the suffering in the world, we are resisting a fact of life. We are in a sense saying no to life. However, there is also a natural impulse to help others in need, not because we have an existential resistance to their suffering, but because love and care are our natural and instinctual responses to the sorrows of life…. To resent suffering is itself suffering, and it does not help anyone.

Redemptive Love transmutes suffering by uconditionally opening to it as a loving act of sacrifice.