Both Yogananda and the Bible teach that God is love, and they both teach that we have been created in God’s image. Therefore, at the deepest layer of our being, we too are love. Yet we humans live from and also identify with our surface self. The surface self has many layers: our constructed self-images, our habitual emotions, our narratives about ourselves, our traumas, the voices of our parents and other authority figures, and so forth. If we could magically let go of these various layers, we would know ourselves as pure consciousness without a hint of karma, ego, or distortion, and we would experience ourselves as blissful love, as one with the Divine. I never tire of saying that the ultimate goal of meditation is to be emptied of these various levels of the surface self so that we can abide in our true nature and experience our true nature as abiding in God. For this reason, all of life’s daunting challenges are actually gifts because they ultimately move us toward our own sacred depths. Our problems help us to come to terms with the inherent limitations of the egoic-personality (the surface self). When Saint Paul tells us, “God’s power is manifested in powerlessness, he is referring to the powerlessness of the egoic personality. As we evolve in the spiritual life, it is not that the personality disappears altogether, but that it becomes increasingly transparent so that the heavenly light of our souls may shine through.
God is love;
I am love.
