Love and fear are the two choices, and they appear in all our everyday experiences, moment-to-moment; so too does the choice of where we choose to place our loyalty. Are we aligned with love or with fear? This essential question meets our every moment. The choice we make determines the reality we align with and live in; if we choose love-based consciousness we will live that moment in love-based reality. If we choose fear thoughts, then fear will be the undercurrent and theme of our experience.

Buddhism thoroughly describes the nature of the mind and explains how it is our thoughts that create peace or suffering in our lives. This profound core premise is substantiated by Ernest Holmes and the teachings of Science of Mind (also known as Religious Science). What we think creates our reality. And like the Course in Miracles, both these traditions postulate that we have a moment-to-moment choice to feed the loving thoughts or to dwell on the fear thoughts.

All three teachings agree that where we give our attention and loyalty will reflect in the external creations in our outer reality and determine our experience. These paths, which I have found immensely helpful, offer methods to support loyalty to love-based consciousness, including meditation practices, affirmations, prayer, and self-examination.

Authentic Tantra (as differentiated from Western pleasure-focused sexual Tantra – “pop tantra”) is yet another path that aligns with this core cosmology. And Tantra adds another element to the understanding and to the methodologies for choosing between love and fear. Tantra postulates that the reality of love is both thought and energy patterns, consciousness and energy vibrations.

Conversely, fear has a very different consciousness and energy/vibration. Working with energy meditations, cultivating the vibration and energy patterns of love, is yet another powerful approach to aligning with love and creating a love-based reality.

The teachings and training of Tantra are based on the premise that command of the energy pathways in the physical and auric bodies will align a practitioner with the vibrations of peace, love, and joy. It also will quiet the ego fear thoughts, opening a space for tuning into higher consciousness.

Both the energy patterns and the thoughts of fear tend to separate people from each other, from life in general, and from the support of the spiritual kingdoms. On the other hand, loving thoughts naturally emerge when the mind is quiet and the energy has been raised to the level of the vibration of love – such a shift of energy and consciousness tends to create harmony, attunement, and oneness at any and all levels.

Another way to look at the choice between love and fear-based realities is to consider that it is a choice between harmony and conflict. For the most part, our lives are primarily about relationships – relationships with self, with Self, with others, with the world, and with Spirit/God.

Harmony and conflict are the relational consequences of love and fear. Thus love-based reality, caused by love-based consciousness and love vibrations, will naturally engender harmony with whatever and whomever we are relating to. Furthermore, it will magnetize harmonious relations at all levels. Conversely, fear will create and magnetize conflict, suffering, and separation.

This understanding is fundamental to the ancient Tantric path of spiritual intimacy. The great Tantric saints and yogis understood that harmonious relations were a stepping stone to spiritual intimacy, which in turn supported the cultivation of levels of love vibration and love consciousness that would manifest direct relationships with the great Buddha, Ascended Masters, and avatars.

Therefore Tantra, especially Buddhist and Tibetan Tantra, have emphasized practices that cultivate harmonious relations. At the core of this approach are the internal practices that form the foundation for the intention behind a kind and caring behaviors. The ancient teachers understood that the choice to create harmony began in the mind with the cultivation of sincere intention – from this would follow harmonious actions.

Compassion is the essential intention. In Buddhism and in Tantra, compassion has been seen as the higher vibration of love and the essence of the true nature of the heart chakra. It is through the regular cultivation and practice of compassion that one establishes a sincere desire for the end of others’ suffering and the blessing of happiness for all others.

Specific mantras, chanted daily out loud or silently, serve to align the Tantric Buddhist with compassion for others and to believe in the power of compassion. Such a mantra may be given to a student by their teacher, or simply chosen by the person because it has meaning and inspires. In a similar way, Catholics say the rosary and dedicate the prayers to the well-being and salvation of certain people. Like Tantric Buddhism, the rosary invokes the intercession of great masters (deities), in this case, Jesus, Mary, and God the Father, on behalf of the person being prayed for. Other types of prayers, both individually inspired or from other traditions such as Sufism, are used in a similar way, cultivating a sense of compassion by praying for the happiness of others.

Metta, or “Loving Kindness” is a famous Buddhist practice wherein one wishes for the end of suffering and the presence of happiness for certain people or for everyone they lay eyes on. The ancient Hawaiian kahunas utilized and taught a similar practice based on blessing everything that one wanted to have a loving, harmonious relationship with. In Science of Mind positive statements called “treatments” affirm the highest good for all and the most beneficial outcome.

All these practices put one into attunement with the Divine Power, which by its nature is loving and compassionate. The Hawaiians called it “mana” and knew that it had the ability to create harmony in one’s life. Furthermore, these practices orient a person into a loving, harmonious relationship with life – a true spiritual intimacy.

This is the essence of true Tantra – spiritual intimacy with all of life. When this was experienced in a state of high vibration it was called “Mahamudra,” which meant “ecstatic union with all of life” – a state of pure love, completely absent of fear. The great saints, masters, and yogis have been (to varying degrees) established in such a state. The greatest masters have become firmly stabilized there and are impervious to fear vibrations or thoughts. For example, “unwavering love” was a term I saw describing Mother Mary.

As I mentioned above, an advanced level of the Tantric path is to be in direct relationship with such stabilized love, learning to resonate and attune with the masters’ vibrations and consciousness. This is the ascending path, one of the characteristics of which is guidance for progressing spiritually and embodying spiritual intimacy.

Ironically, one of the typical focuses of the guidance is about offering compassion and service to those who are less fortunate or who are suffering. Thus the masters offer inner support to anyone who sincerely wants to choose to live in love-based reality, practicing compassion and harmony. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peace makers.” And Buddha taught that enlightenment just for oneself is not possible – one must sincerely want enlightenment equally for all others as well as for oneself. Certainly, that is choosing to live in the reality of love.