“Your task is not to
seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.”
-Rumi-
It’s a funny thing about this next post. It has literally been months where a beginning
to a post, a rough draft of past inspirations has sat, disorganized, and
untouched. It has been guarded behind my
own wall built of unwillingness, and ungraspable concepts, collaged without an
ending of understanding. Part of the
beauty for writers and artists is that often when they create a piece of work,
they don’t have a clear vision of how it will turn out. Oftentimes writing the piece, or chiseling
away at the statue or painting will create a deeper understanding of the
subject becoming even clearer in the artist’s mind, something therapeutic and
even cathartic. That being said, this
piece was something of that type of creation.
What was to start as a lesson in love learned, turned out to be
multidimensional-- a showcase of duality, the opposite of love . . .
****If only we could see
from outside, or see from above, the
many facets that glimmer on a situation.
Instead, it seems we’re plagued by the predestined blind spot in our
scope of vision. But yet, it must be there for a
reason…****
There are around 5 types
of love as described in Greek culture.
Eros, that fiery feeling of sexual passion, losing control and falling
in love through desire is predominately conveyed in our society and exemplified
in our movie culture alike. Sanskrit apparently
has 96 words and types for love. Imagine! In the English language, there is just one. The expansive spectrum of love’s true nature
consequently comes with a limited view and narrow understanding. But it does leave room to grow . . .
It wasn’t love at first sight. That conventional, superficial phrase did not
apply nor was in the same playing field of our experience together. Rather at first sight . . . were his smoky
jade eyes . . .
I once read somewhere that the eyes are the windows to our
soul. Perhaps in that initial encounter that
was our version of “love at first sight.”
A glimpse of the soul gave a sense of something I could recognize. A reflection?
Yearning for unity?
Emptiness? Hope? There was definitely something cool about him
that I found myself excited and interested in knowing what was inside
there.
Fast forward to where intimacy plays a role in our
love-experience. Eros rules in desire,
indulgence and satisfaction. How often
we boggle up sex and love. How often we
seek fulfillment and acceptance of ourselves through another person! Using others to feel good about ourselves is
not a rare occurrence, and I have known many people who do it still, both
consciously and unconsciously. It is
true that we as a species are conditioned in a way that enables our egos to
flourish, consequently creating a divide between our sense of true self and
separate “other” self. What this does,
whether we’re conscious of it or not, is create internal suffering, which can
lead to fun things like, self loathing and or a search to find meaning and validation in persons or things outside of
ourselves. Substances seem
to be the cure for many; the more poison we can pour in our tank the more we
supposedly wont be able to feel and be in the pain. Aldous Huxley puts it well, “The obscure knowledge of what we really are
accounts for our grief at having to seem to be what we are not, and for our
often passionate desire to overstep the limits of the imprisoning ego.” A lot of us forget that even
seeking love from another person for the purpose of self–validation, whether by
sexual means or not, is also in essence, a substance. Now that I’ve finished that tangent, I
digress back to the examples at hand. Once I understood that concept within my being, I couldn't help but wonder if all along, my search for true love was a search that was really about validating my own sense of worth? Could it be true?
“If you asked the sages of ancient India, they’d probably
say that love is not what we’re actually chasing. Instead, we pursue the
intense but fleeting emotional high of “falling in love,” which generally
doesn’t last very long.”
As with any new relationship, when it’s going well, we’re all
familiar with experiencing what has been deemed, “the honey-moon” phase, the
time where you’re crazy about one another, passionate, sexually indulgent, and
high off the rush. This “coming-to-love
story was me being used to that eros experience in the past, and simply expecting it in my
present relationship. It was so much a
part of my conditioning that I actually saw the relationship as that. (Our minds can perceive any story the way we
want!) Once I came to, floating down
from my continual high, what was there was of a different nature. For all the beauty that was painted around
our relationship, there was an equal part of suffering and confusion. After the initial stages of our coming
together I found myself in a great deal of personal resistance towards the relationship, even titles like "girlfriend" freaked me out, because I had lost my belief in them. Through time and grace I willingly moved
through the muck and fear. We became
each other’s healing and were able to move through periods of fears and
unreleased past pains that surfaced. I was ready and felt dedicated to the
relationship, and unafraid to be called his girlfriend. However, once I made the leap, he wasn’t
always there to meet me. Continually I was wrought with feelings of
dissatisfaction and emptiness. There was such inaction, often I
was unsure that he actually liked me. Never did we talk about “us” or the
relationship and its intentions. I
consoled myself through acceptance of “loving in the moment,” a spiritually detached space forgetting that future matters. There were many times his distance was so
apparent that I thought for sure we were over.
-The beauty of duality-
**************************************
So I get my legs waxed the other day, and
even after numerous times going, the pain doesn’t seem to lessen. Whatever mood I was in that day gave me a
great realization that the more I flinched, stressing my body when trying to
avoid the pain, the worse off it all really was. So, I went deep into the sensation of each rip and removal. The more I was present with it and focused
in, the less the pain intensity became.
I think that this concept can be applied to our lives in such a profound way. Told truthfully, I am a poster child for any type of pain avoidance. Although I’m a tough B when I’m put to the
test, I would MUCH rather live life in my happy place, away from disturbances,
dramas, and negative energies. Being a
sensitive little cancer at times means FEELING things way too much at an
extreme. So many of us, too, want to avoid
pain and find ourselves going down the path of outer substances, like alcohol, to quell any
symptomatic yuckiness. Avoidance of pain can often manifest as inaction, and so instead, I decided to
apply this new method of pain conquering to the relationship.
I accepted that I suffered and I allowed myself to feel it. I
accepted that a lot of my suffering was self-inflicted. I also accepted that I thought part of my
suffering was due to my Beloved. When I finally confessed all this suffering to
my partner he was able to confess his own awareness of his inaction. It turns out it all had nothing to do with me personally or our relationship, but rather his own internal self did not understand why he was blocking love left and right, and did't know what to do about it.
Atma-prema arises from the realization
that beyond our personal faults and foibles—beyond even our name and personal
history—we are all children of the most high. When we love ourselves and others
in this profound yet impersonal way, our love loses its boundaries and
becomes unconditional.
It seems I've finally chiseled away at this work of blog art. When I started this blog piece, I thought I'd be writing about the experience of a relationship that is different to my transitory Eros default. Months it sat, uninspired and unsatisfied. The ending to this post revealed its true shape, and that shape was just waiting for a surrender to love to transpire. I couldn't have finished it until my self made a shift. That severed "separate self" no longer ruled and the chance for unity emerged. It seems the beauty of all the duality that transpired in our relationship is that I have been shown a truer, longstanding type of love. I've deepened my understanding of myself and love through moving from an indulgent, selfish, Eros love into a more Atma Prima love of oneness and transcending ego. From my place of self love it has opened up an expanse for the relationship to flourish in a longstanding (Pragma) love.
So don't be an escapist and drown in substances! Love hurts! Not only does it hurt while you courageously have faith and love to go through the "muck" but it hurts because you actually feel the vulnerability of surrender. And then, the pain is gone. I learned my own reflection of atma prema through
experience, that through true, unconditional self love we don’t need another soul to recognize the love
within us and complete us. Yes, soul mates do act as beautiful mirrors to us. Yes, we do need outlets with which to shine our
love. But using our mates to complete us,
one must question whether we really need it. We are complete beings inside, its just that
we’ve let the crack, the divide which established our egos, overtake us in the
realm of fear and our lost sense of true self. We could all agree that the opposite (or complement) of fear is LOVE; so it would make sense that we'd need to experience fear in order to find the love that is already there, within.
When we think with love, life is peaceful (heaven), when we think without love, life is painful. To surrender is to let go and love.
-Marianne Williamson-
Exhaust me in our love affair.
Open your eyes
Stare at my soul
with the sacredness of existence
Be with me in love divine
Love me like I love you,
like I love me
Show me the way
Beyond the stare
Show me romance
Make me bliss
Fall into your love sphere
Shake me to my core
Pause in presence . . .
That forever more . . .
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