An act of love always leaves you feeling fabulous. Anything that doesn't leave you feeling fabulous isn't an act of love, no matter how much you think you "love" doing it. Don't judge by how much you're attracted to doing something; we get attracted to all kinds of stupid shit. Judge by how you feel after you do it. An act of love leaves you in better shape as a human: more generous & forgiving; more satisfied & benevolent. If doing something leaves you feeling icky, cranky, crabby, out of sorts - that's not love. By leaving you feeling fabulous, acts of love brighten the day for those around you because they make you sweeter and easier to be around.
To commit acts of love:
Let yourself be guided by what feels great. For instance, being intentionally kind & generous to anyone, close friend or perfect stranger, always feels great. Pay attention to what feels great; that's love's guidance. Let yourself be guided by love, your love. Not some guru or holy book, church or meditation, but your love in you.
What do you love to do? Who do you love to be with? That's your guidance; that's love speaking to you directly. Forget about religions, teachers, gurus, preachers, retreats, self-help books and all that crap; that's got nothing to do with love. People usually do all that stuff out of self absorption, not as an act of love. Concern with your inner peace, your salvation, your spiritual development - that's all self absorption, and self absorption sucks. The only way to have more love in your life is to work with the love that's already there. Pay attention to love if you want more love. Forget about self help, salvation, spiritual development. Pay attention to love.
You add love to your life whenever you do what you really, truly, deeply love to do. When you live the kind of life you love to live. When you show your love to the people you love. When you act out of love by choosing to be kind & generous. That's how to get more love in your life, by loving more. That's the only way. There's no need to surrender to some guru, you are the guru. You know what's right for you. Nobody else does. Nobody!
When it comes to love, you can't rely on other people's ideas or guidance; you can only rely on the love you feel, the love that's already in you. Meditation, prayer etcetera are only helpful if you do them out of love and with love; it's the love that's helpful, not the meditation. Anything you do with love, out of love, because you love to do it, is helpful. Wash the dishes with love and you have more love in your life. Go on a month-long retreat because it's "good for you" and not because you love doing it is worthless, and the dishes still need washing. Instead, spend a month intentionally discovering how to love washing dishes; that's a worthwhile project! Don't retreat from your life, study it and learn how to love it more.
There's just you and the world. As far as any of us know, that's all there is. We like to make up stories, parables, religions etcetera, but that's all made-up stuff. Books are written by people; don't take your holy books too seriously. Love is more important than stories & books; pay attention to love. Be especially suspicious of any story where you get to be special, one of the lucky ones, and people who subscribe to some other story are not as lucky as you. I mean, c'mon. That's kids' stuff.
The stories & books are full of invisible beings, invisible worlds; I say pay attention to what's visible, what's right in front of you: the world. The world, everything coming in through your senses, is what you have to love; that's all you can love. If you want more love, love the world more; there's nothing else to love. Don't waste your love on invisible stuff, magical realms where everything's magically better; don't waste your love on dead prophets. Love what's real, what you actually have in front of you to love: the messy life you're in the middle of. Love of the imaginary is imaginary love.
Loving the world means loving it as it is; there are no other versions, so you have to love this one. People want to save the world, change the world, but the only world that exists is the one you're in the middle of right now. That's the one you have to love, because that's all there is. Working to make it better is great, but you're not going to do any good unless you love it and act out of that love. Acting out of indignation, reactivity, anger etcetera will not make the world a better place. Only love can do that. So first love the world as it is right now. That'll take all the love you have to give, but that's OK because there's nothing else to love. And hey, you know what? If you love it, it will be better: enormously better for you, and potentially better for those around you.
Here's a starting point: intentionally love this breath of air, the one you're taking in right now, and then the one after that. Keep coming back to loving this breath of air right now as you take it in.
If you watch the news etcetera it would appear that the world is going to hell fast. I suggest you don't spend your time watching the news. Spending your precious attention on all the shit that's coming down all over the world is the equivalent of voluntarily submerging your head in shit. Instead pay attention to what's really there, what you actually have around you in the space you physically inhabit that's not mediated through some electronic (or paper) medium. Pay attention to what's real instead: the people, things & spaces around you, your direct experience of the world rather than some canned version. Media have their uses, but they're a really lousy excuse for a world to live in.
Once you're really paying attention to what's actually all around you, there's only one other element to add: love. Treat the world you're in the middle of with absolutely all the love you can muster, all the love that's in you. That's what you can do to save the world; that's how you can make a difference: love who you are, who you're with, where you are, and everything that surrounds you. Do everything you possibly can to love the world.
Love is particular; there's nothing general or abstract about it. Love is between you and someone or something real, in the world, that you have direct contact with. You can't have a relationship with something that isn't there. Generalizations, abstractions, beliefs, ideas - none of that is actually there; those are all constructs, mental figments. Love can only exist within an actual connection, and connections are mediated by the senses; we have no other way of connecting with the world. If your senses have nothing to grasp, there's no love, just imagination: imaginary love, being in love with your ideas, your own phantoms. Convenient, I guess; your own ideas & phantoms will never disagree with you, never talk back. But lonely. A very poor excuse for the real thing.
Whenever you're fortunate enough to be free to do whatever it is you really love to do, take full advantage of the opportunity. Don't just do it, absolutely devote yourself to it, give it everything you've got. Don't just love it, be aware that you're loving it as you love it, and look for ways to love it even more. Do it with more love.
When you don't get to do what you love to do, work on loving what you have to do. A time-honored way of doing that is choosing to be kind & generous no matter what you're feeling. Being intentionally kind & generous is a way I can insert some love into a situation where I may not be feeling any; it opens the door to love. If I can find a way to love what's already in my life, I become much more effective at working to make it better. I can't work on my life effectively unless I love it.
It's the right kind of life if it feels right through and through when no one else is looking. Only you can tell what's right for you. If your life doesn't feel right and you want to make it more right, you have to try something new & see how that feels. Whenever you try something new, there's probably gonna be somebody who doesn't like it. If you let what other people think determine what kind of life you live, you have next to no chance of creating a life that's right for you. It's hard as hell to do that even if you don't take everyone else's opinion into account.
But nothing that anyone else thinks can make a wrong life right for you, or a right life wrong. All the approval & admiration in the world - from your family, drinking buddies, teacher, revered saints, or anyone else - can't make a wrong life right. Their disapproval may make you uncomfortable, and can sometimes have more serious repercussions, but it can't make a right life wrong. Sometimes we have to bear disapproval to make progress.
Watching somebody else's life is a poor excuse for having one of your own. Live your own life instead of watching somebody else's, real or imagined. You get little or nothing out of watching, but every time you actually do something, present & paying attention, you get something out of it. Even if it's just a exceptionally keen sense of what not to do. Don't sit on your ass & watch, get up & dance!
People watch instead of live: TV, movies, plays, spectator sports, books, concerts, museums - that's all watching instead of living. Same goes for "life" online - social media, games, this whole world: "cyberlife" has value only if it contributes to real life. Otherwise it's merely watching, with a fake veneer of interaction. Watching someone else live isn't living. Quit it!
Presence is the big picture, what all of this is about. Meditation is an artificial scenario you set up to practice being present. The goal is to be present all the time, but we can't do that yet so we practice meditation. Meditation is moving into the actual present moment as best you can and staying there for awhile, being as quiet as you can inside and just feeling what your life is like right now, with no distractions, entertainment, chemical enhancements, etcetera. It's stopping all the input & output for a while. It doesn't matter what form it takes or what you call it; what's crucial is just stopping. Not doing anything. Just sitting there and quietly feeling your life. Or taking a walk and quietly feeling your life.
The goal of meditation is to feel what your life feels like right now, without any entertainment, company, activity, or other distractions. There's a good chance that'll be unpleasant at times. But meditation isn't about feeling good & getting high, it's about how your life feels when you turn to face it. Stuff that gets you high, like chanting or ecstatic dance or religious rituals or drugs etcetera is no good for this; meditation is simply the no-frills version of your life as it is.
Don't flinch if it's unpleasant; stay there and feel that. That's what you have to work on, that's the feeling of your life not working. Meditation lets you know how well your life's working; treat whatever's unpleasant as incentive. If you keep at it, it'll be better. If your life is working, just being quietly alive will feel pretty damn good.
It's wonderful to have special moments, when everything is feels so good; they're inspirational. But it's a mistake to live your life in pursuit of them; it's simply bad strategy. Peak moments are by definition rare; that's why they're so special. Trying to recreate a special moment by recreating all the conditions you think contributed to it has a fatal flaw: you. You're not the same person you were that first time. The same conditions probably won't do the trick. Instead of trying to recreate a special moment, instead of chasing a ghost from the past, work on having more love in all of your life; love elevates your whole life: peaks, valleys & everything in between.
The underlying problem with focusing on peak moments is that it confuses form with substance. The goal is to have more love in your life, or you can call it spiritual development or enlightenment or whatever; that's the substance. The peak moment was a peak moment because it was a moment when you made some progress in that direction, and tasted love or enlightenment. You can't have that moment again because you've already made that progress; now you have to make more progress.
Making progress is always a matter of particular circumstances, but the same circumstances won't keep working. That's OK; there's no limit to the ways you can make progress with love. You can make progress at any moment, no matter where you are or what you're doing by choosing love, by choosing kindness & generosity. Use whatever forms work for you, but don't confuse the means with the end. Aim for more love in all your life, not just at special moments.