Is Love an Investment?
Author: Bernie Prior

Is Love an investment or is it a way of surrender?

How much investment do you have in your life? How much investment do you have for enlightenment? If you have a partner then what’s your investment in that partnership? Have you ever looked at it this way? Do you have an investment to be here on this Earth? If you have, it’s going to block or stop your direct cognisance of your Being. With any investment in this life whatsoever you won’t be able to stay in the stillness, you won’t be able to know Being.

How is your investment doing? Are you getting a good return on your investment? It’s not too good a return is it? Do you see how all investments are falling? You could get pretty scared as you start to watch your investment crumble because you’ve been associating yourself with it for so long. But why associate yourself with something that has nothing good and vital about it, something that’s polluting you and this Earth? You know of its pollution inside you because there’s no Beingness, no nourishment in it. You’re in complete and absolute closure. Your investment is closing you down to living reality. It’s closing you down to what love is. It’s closing you down to the fragrance of the Self.

If you want to open to Being you have to let go of the investment. Will you completely and absolutely give up and surrender your investment in this life? Of course you can still have an investment in the world but at what cost? The cost of real communion, real communication in yourself and in this projected reality. Will you give up your investment so you can flow immediately home to where there is no projection, no gap, just the purity of Being? Then there’s openness. Then you open. Then you can totally and absolutely be yourself, even with the old shadow of the investment still hanging around - because now you’ve seen it. Now you can completely be at rest with the old investments as they turn up. They will still turn up you know. But you don’t have to live from them do you? You don’t have to live from the investment. It’s just a question of whether you’re fully prepared to completely surrender any investment in any moment - in other words surrender in love, right now.

If you’re coming home to Being you’re going to face all those investments that life brings you. Something has to break through this body. Something has to cut through the arrogance that is holding this bogus identity together. It could be a lover leaving you, it could be cancer, or it could be just plain simple honesty. What do you love? Do you love your investment or do you love the truth? Do you want to become fully alive - not in another bogus body or another bogus time - but now? Life is available now. It’s here right now for everyone. But are you still going to use the mind, the emotions, or the body to create a more subtle investment? Or are you opening, maybe even cracking open, because of the circumstances of your life? Or maybe you’re just finding something that’s really real pulling you inside? Something in you is awakening but you have no idea what it is.

If you really want to awaken, and awaken to what is absolute – absolute meaning that’s the end of it, everything’s finished, only Being remains - then maybe you have to face your personal investment in this life. It’s that personal investment which causes us even more suffering. Before I awakened there was no problem. I was living in the world, and there was hassle and all the rest of it. Yet as I awaken I start to face something perhaps more dreadful than before – I start to face myself. I start to face my investment and to see how truly I was invested in something for me. This investment then starts to sneak in to my awakening. I start to be invested in this love and this truth and this freedom.

If there’s any investment in your awakening you’ll just end up in a bigger illusion than you had in the first place. So whilst awakening there’s a transition in one’s life to be clearly and absolutely honest to your own heart. To have that integrity inside your heart where you see you’re awakening for love, you’re awakening to the source and so it’s the end of who you think you are. It’s the end of you as a historical reference point - but it’s the unfolding to something that’s so wondrous. It’s an adventure - if we give it everything, if we no longer try to take the world in us into that awakening but if we dissolve the world through our love of what is absolute, through our love of our source, through the love of life, through the love of truth. Many people embark on awakening but still perpetuate the illusions because there’s no honesty to the heart - not honesty to some moral system, some religious or cultural system, but simply and utterly true to your own Self, to your own growing integrity of Being. When we awaken if we want to fully know and not just taste the flow of Being that is our birthright – that freedom, that depth, that knowledge of this moment - it’s the end of investments in life. Because those investments in life have you holding on to some identity that is born of past.

Now many people come to this point and say “ But I love my past, I love my history”. Well if we’re to discover what is absolute, and if that flow of well-being is to come into this body, then we must discover also if your Self has any history? Does the divine Self have any history? Having a past and looking into the future, isn’t that an investment – an investment that you want to repeat the past or avoid it? If we’re really true and engaging what is absolute and true in our Being - and we know it’s freedom, we know it’s complete love, and that it’s the potential on this Earth to be experienced - then surely we have to return to a way of life of innocence, a way of life that absolutely trusts the source where we spring from? We have to trust that implicitly otherwise in will come fear, and with fear will come another investment to avoid fear. So we’re always going to be in fear or avoiding fear. If we want to truly experience and unite with our Being surely we have to be in the way that is absolute? The absolute is eternity. It’s eternal so it doesn’t have any investment in past or future. It’s wholly in the presence of now. It moves in a clean, deep, real way - simply living right now from the source. It’s possible for every man or woman to come from that place, to express what is absolute and live what is absolute, if only we could give up our investment in a personal life.

In the letting go of investment what I would suggest would take place to the individual - and also on a human scale in terms of the planetary scale - your Being, that which is free of past and future, would now fit. It would now have free access to you as an expression of Being - because you have no past in you and no future need in you, no controller in you, no investment in you. So that which you’ve been seeking with your partner, with your job, going to the beach, in so many ways, would find you - because you’re letting go of the past and the need to exist in the future. You’re returning to a true state of your Being – one that doesn’t have an historical reference point or somewhere to head to, one that is totally and absolutely moving in freedom, no longer holding on to any particular birthplace or particular name. It’s a letting go of all that. Then you’ll be functioning in a real way of your Being. You would find your Being rising in you much more, the joy rising in you much more – for no reason. Not because you’re doing anything in particular but just because you’re now functioning in a way of living truth and allowing your Being to show you the way home, allowing your Being to show you what is completely and absolutely here right now. Then your Being would start to teach you completely and utterly how to move as a Being within humanity. Yes, tomorrow would come – if you don’t get hit by a Number 9 bus – but it would now be an expression of your Being and not of historical reference points. You’re returning to innocence, your true state beyond all investment.






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BERNIE PRIOR is a self-realized teacher from the UK who lives in true simplicity and devotion to source. In the 1980’s Bernie had several awakenings into source – into the mystery behind all manifestation. During this time Bernie’s utter love of a woman revealed to him the living truth of Man and Woman in relationship. He now travels internationally, addressing ever -growing audiences worldwide.

Bernie’s teaching covers all aspects of truth including the love between man & woman. Inspiring yet thoroughly practical, Bernie’s way draws those who are ready to embrace absolute truth. His uncompromising stance as a spiritual teacher brings clarity and openness through softening and embracing life honestly in truth.

Bernie will be touring California in September & October 2003. Please see website www.bernieprior.org for his full itinerary or email being@bernieprior.org for further information.

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