I have a serious question that relates to other threads that I have read on this site.  People talk about projecting PUL, or feeling love to elevate a vibrational state when confronted with a demon (which is a side issue - at the moment I'm interested in feeling/producing love).  I know that there seem to be times of my life when I'm able to produce loving feelings more than others, depending on if I'm doing things I should/shouldn't be doing.  But I find it hard to just feel love, or project love.  I've read in one of Bruce's books (his Afterlife Guide I think) that we should think about a time in our life when we have felt greatly loved or very loving towards someone else (I think this is probably the best advice I'll receive, but who knows).   And since love is such a high value emotion in Bruce's thinking as well as most of the major world religions, I was wondering -

Does anyone know personally of practices that have helped them to feel more loving towards other people and / or increase the amount of love they experience?

I think perhaps the human passing here in evolvement goes thru cycles of what is not-love, before finally understanding what is PUL.
we have variations or degrees of the emotion of love. it seems the universal eye keeps track of the smallest gesture of love though, and it brings in a type of law to boomarang back to the individual that practices that way.

I believe in the basic goodness of mankind and so that kind of focus acts to bring me evidence of that belief.
whereas on the other hand the basic goodness of mankind (PUL) is not reported for the most part in the media. So one of my practices is to not read what is not-love, such as a celebrity rag.

when on the path, and we all seem to be on a path of some sort towards death if nothing else, we share death and taxes in common. when on the path it is helpful to look at what is not love when we have felt slighted by another to whatever degree.
just in our personal life at first. We look for if there was any genuine love operating, we ferret it out mentally, so we can learn to recognize PUL on a more consistent basis, speeding up our brain frequencies, our mental areas to discover who we are.

PUL for me personally, seems to be a simultaneous release of judgment upon those situations in the past where I was hurt. I sought to understand how to avoid being hurt, by understanding the motives of the person who seemed to make me a victim.

then I would want to feel myself to be innocent of crime, and also the other to make innocent of crime, I would see us as one act. the relationship is one act. it takes two to tango in other words, so, the feeling bad of what is not love, slowly draws the consciousness into areas of what love is.
then forgiveness is another explanation for this kind of mental activity which releases you from obligation to one another, and as you know, being in a state of love, makes all things appear new...sometimes it means falling on your knees though. I admit it can be difficult. I like you asking this question. it helps me get clear also, I think you are on your way to a great area of your soul.

love, alysia

Greetings,

"Does anyone know personally of practices that have helped them
to feel more loving towards other people and / or increase the
amount of love they experience?"

Many of us come to PUL having experienced 'love' as full of risks,--- I sort of have to 'gather myself together,'
somewhat like when attempting a high dive at the swimming pool.  For a few moments I give myself a pre-PUL session, remembering as Bruce suggested an innocent time of feeling loved, then I still have to 'let my guard down,' allow myself to feel a bit vulnerable.

In a perfect world those attitudes wouldn't make sense as preparation for loving, but they are what is necessary
for me.

Love, Bets

Hi Bets. Tibetan Buddhist Tonglen or 'giving and taking' is the practice I'm familiar with. http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/tonglen1.php Pema Chodron writes well on this stuff.

I can say from experience that Tonglen is genuinely transformative. Giving love seems to follow the usual path of matters spiritual - we go from unconsciousness, to intellectual awareness and intention to with practice becoming a genuinely caring 'something else'.

It's not a small step, nor even an isolated aspect of our lives. You could argue that the spiritual path is about nothing except learning to live through love. Or as Bruce says remembering our natural state. The difficulty arises from the fact that almost all of our behaviour is habitual and conditioned - unfortunately by selfishness as this is mostly what family and society teaches us, and the view on which our whole culture is based. Not to mention the way the world (from one view) works.

As before I think the other issue that arises is that we almost inevitably as a result of the vicissitudes of life end up to varying degrees emotionally constipated, or blocked. We spend many years learning to turn a blind eye, closing down to the suffering of others to get ahead and so on and we pay a price for this.

Without this natural unthinking reflexive empathy for others it's tough to even become aware of our selfish non-loving behaviours. So a key step is the restoration of this wholly natural capability.

My experience with this has been that while I've still got a way to go that meditation, mindfulness Tonglen (especially overcoming a lack of self love), and help from others (spiritual healing) have delivered considerable progress. The indicator that you're on your way seems to be the emotional rawness I mentioned and posted the short verse on before. What I was getting at in the thread on heartache.

The 'extra normal' experience (the visit by my friend the tomcat, and the related start of communication) I described before  is involved too, but I don't know whether the heart opening that occurred with the start of it was cause or consequence....

Pratekya,

What I've leared is that in order to do anything well in life, I first need to be ok with my own self.  For me, being ok with my own self simply means that I sort through and organize the parts of my self and my life, take all areas of myself that end up getting scattered about and I really take a look at them.  It's especially helpful if I'm feeling badly about myself or something I'm going through and feel like I have absolutely no power over what I'm experiencing. 

It's just a simple meditation exercise that I try to do often.  It only means that I close my eyes and slowly think about this part or that part of what's going on in my life and I think about how I feel about it.  It could be broken down into categories like work, friends, my husband, my kids, my health, my house, my whatever.  And as I go through each section of my life and I look at how I've been handling things, what my reactions have been, how I could have handled things better for a different outcome, how I wish I hadn't made one mistake or another and what I can do to improve, etc, it all helps me to slowly integrate myself into one place of just accepting me and accepting that things are the way they are.  What always happens is I end up seeing that the only control I have over anything is my own feelings and reactions to those feelings.  So, if I don't like something about myself, I have to change how I feel or change how I react to how I feel.  It helps me to let go of stuff I'm holding onto that is just clogging the system, and then I can just focus on where my real power lies. 

After this little meditation exercise I get a sense of feeling like that scattered feeling is gone.  I feel integrated, loving, and accepting of myself.  In essense it humbles me.  When we can accept our own selves and feel love and patience for our own growth, then we can much more easily see and feel that in others. 

Vicky

   And btw, much like Recoverer said, you don't have to become an active supporter of illusion to become loving and love personified, sometimes its more "loving" and kind to not support illusions or temporal negativity.   And sometimes to do that, you have to address that which is illusionary and negative, and point to a different way.

just sharing a bit more, its really a good thread for me, thanks for introducing it Pratekya. I remember some years back we had a gal Ginny was here, doing explorations and sharing. she mentioned one time how PUL expanded perceptions, producing even more PUL.

I had an aha moment as I flashed back to a relationship, how I had "felt" to be in love with just this one person. the mind had opened up to greater possibilities, as well in the mental dept and the emotional dept. that feeling the skys the limit, opens up the mind, everything is new and nothing gets you down. (while in love).

so I was having this aha moment to examine what it means when the honeymoon is over, so to speak, held up to how love makes you hear birds singing, the sky is bluer, etc, chores suddenly have a purpose, etc etc.
then I was thinking well, we all fall out of love for some reason, I wondered if we could be in that state of consciousness even without a lover.
this led me to contemplation on spirituality principles and a thirst for higher knowledge and a need to explore my inner self, thoughts, emotions, connections to higher self, my behavior, like Vicky describes, to look at my own self, might be causing a sense of unloving situations to come to my life.

then I did proceed onward that it is possible to have this loving acceptance for one's self and all others if they sense you accept yourself, that you are human as they are, like children I notice, they fight, then the next moment are great friends, they just accept each other, but adults get baggage or blocks to the awareness of love's presence behind the universe.

I guess it would be explainable from one viewpoint only, still doing a take from Vicky, that a process occurs. I would read as Bets mentioned while doing the necessary things, but I got in the habit of asking myself as an exercise: "what am I feeling at this very moment?" so I would check the thermostat inside there, so I would not feel like an automatic creature in a habitual state of climate.
If I found out that I was in a habit of feeling down on myself, I would ask myself why and some answers would pop up what issue I needed to work on to release, or work thru, or sometimes I would have apologize to someone as I'd said something stupid and now had to fix it. not stupid, but careless, to not consider people can always take it the wrong way even if you didn't mean it that way. its still taking self responsibility, which means I can't change another person, but I feel loving towards myself if I can change myself, then that allows the other to smile and thats PUL expressing.

so I suppose thats one way Pratekya. its like undoing an error that I made so the mind gets expanded and the emotional field sends and receives this energy to others, like Bruce said, an extension of self begins to happen without any effort, does extension happen, so it's almost like the higher self, for those who subscribe to this thought system, the higher self has implanted itself down into the denser, subconscious C1 self, and gradually, for my pov, the conscious mind and the subconscious mind begin an integration process and the monitor remains consistently in the middle, a good temperature to feel comfortable, or in control of one's life, destiny. another definition is forgiving self..which follows easy to have compassion for others then.

but the main point is the aha moment. I like the expanded feeling when I feel PUL.
you're not boxed into anything that way.

one last thought after I read Kathy who was posting the exact same time, I was taking a psychology class once and they said if a person feels they are in a rut, to start looking for ways to break out of the rut, practical ways, like driving a new route to work, taking the scenic route and conquering the small fear you are going to get lost maybe. then get lost, let that be, and experience the joy of finding the way back, the new route. these are just practical things to apply, like taking up the hobby you thought about, but just wouldn't do it for whatever reason. maybe I'm talking about taking a risk and finding out you did the right thing.
thanks Kathy! love, alysia