Revealing the Mystery II

Finding Love (Part I)
Isaac George

“There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of Spirit on the body.” – Rumi

I am feeling Love’s touch upon my heart…a nudging, a longing, a call to follow without question or concern…what it is that I yearn for, dream about…ache for.  There is no cure…only bland prescriptions that offer temporary relief of the symptoms.  Love melts away all that is unlike itself. It is a hard teacher sometimes, demanding that the absolute best in our souls stands revealed and utterly alive. To be this alive will require much…will demand much.

Love will ask us to sacrifice knowledge in order to acquire wisdom. It will tease us and say “You can only know me if you let go of your arrogance, your preconceptions!”  If we are stubborn or afraid, Love, like an underground river, will erode away that resistance without our even being aware of it. One day, our faulty foundations will collapse into the torrent below, and we will fall into it, thinking at the time it may be the end of our hopes and aspirations…or even the end of our lives. Actually, it will be only the end of our false dreams and projections.

Love…how do you find it? You don’t…it finds you!

When you least expect it, and usually after you’ve resigned yourself to what has become routine and familiar in your lifestyle, there will be a surprise, or a shock…and that’s it, the transformation begins.  When you are looking for love, you may only be following your projections. For a time, you will believe in your projections, and only experience a taste of Love. These projections are accumulated experiences of when you never felt loved, or were denied love, or lost love in some traumatic or horrid experience.  Love is innocence, and when our innocence has been violated by another, the scars that form are hardened against Love, even though they were created to be a shield against further pain and loss.

Love doesn’t knock on your front door, come in for tea, and then escape out the bathroom window in the middle of the night. Love is inherently the same thing we have come to call Life. Life comes from Love, Love permeates Life. It doesn’t come and go. What it does seem to do within the human experience is to flow and ebb according to its own needs, and the deepest needs of Her Children…which is, of course, every life in the Cosmos. Those needs are only hinted at within our limited perception of “I need this”, or “I need that” in order to be fulfilled and happy. Those needs point to the deepest parts of our heart space, where the secrets of our Soul reside. It is in that place the Love arises to stir the longings, and through passion and desire, it destroys what no longer serves and creates something unique and new. We are called to sit with our needs, and follow them inward so that we can glimpse the yearning in our Soul, which comes from Love.

The redemptive power of Love is often seen as something to be achieved and once it has been formalized by ritual and promises, it is hoped that it will stay tame, behave well, and meet one’s needs and expectations. Even Love can become a goal – revealed through meditation, prayer, ritual, Tantra or deep relationship negotiations, i.e., “working on our relationship”.  All of these forms are useful tools or skills for uncovering our hidden patterns and wounds, but they are but offerings to be laid on the altar of Love, to eventually be laid aside in the fire of direct knowing of who we are.

What Love will always do is to provide you with a way to open to that which is unexplored and unexpected within you. It will never conform to my idea or your idea of what it is, how it will behave, or what its deeper purpose is for us. From a purely spiritual or metaphysical perspective, I could describe the archetype of Love as God, or Goddess, or Spirit, or Universal Oneness, or some such label. Those who have approached Love via the mental or abstract spiritual paths and disciplines have named Her “Presence” or “Consciousness” – the All That Is. The philosophies that espouse this approach touch certain parts of the face of Love, while avoiding the more chaotic or passionate aspects. Too much of that is not welcome, for it disturbs the hard-won tranquillity of the mind. However, Love is Eros, and will not be limited by human perception.

Love is about bliss, tranquility, intimacy, closeness, nurturing, patience, telepathic communication and synchronicity. It is also about passion, creative potential, wildness, fierceness, and dissolution. What Love is not trying to do is to keep things safe and predictable. If we truly believe that Love is the inherent “stuff” of Life, then there is no constant except change itself, or evolution if you will.

Looking for Love in the arena of human relationships is one of the most promising and confounding things about the times we currently live in. No matter what is happening on the world stage, all one has to do to take the pulse of humanity is to look around and see how many books, magazine articles, blogs, websites, workshops and counseling services are devoted to the realm of relationship and sexuality. Tantra and sacred sexuality practices and seminars strive to restore our faith in human relationships and the bonding between couples via an ever more desperate search for more bliss, intimacy, ecstasy or novelty. Open relationships, polyamory and other paths are being offered to guarantee our experience of Love as a constant in our lives, while the crisis of trying to find Love continues to elude many who strive to grow beyond their conditioned understanding of human relationships.

We are at a crossroads…and we now need to understand something that Love has been trying to teach us for a long time. We won’t find and keep Love in a box.  It’s time to throw away the box.

What do I mean by this? Well, have you ever “fallen in love” with someone? If you could put that moment into a projector, and slow it way down, what is your first and most powerful memory of this experience?  How did it feel?  What went through your body, and specifically, your chest area? When the experience of “being in love” progressed, what stages did you notice? Did you think about “the Other” a whole lot of the time? Did you feel invincible? Did you feel happy?  Did you suddenly notice how colors were brighter, how food tasted different, how beautiful and extraordinary the ordinary had become?

Did you feel utterly ALIVE?

Well, if you said yes to any of these questions, you have been touched by Love.  Love unhinges us from the familiar, and we become obsessed with feeling deeply again.

Love also contains the following ingredients:  infatuation, pheromones, subconscious projection, and energy merging via the subtle bodies (etheric, psychic, etc.). These are the fractal aspects of the kaleidoscope of Love. We need to be aware of these ingredients for they form a complex set of variables that will differ from one person to the next. However, it is not helpful to condemn them or marginalize their importance to the overall purpose that Love has.  We are capable of using these phenomena to grow beyond our conditioning and experience more freedom and love.

Love will also destabilize situations that have become unresolvable, so that any crystalized patterns in each person are upended, and the individual soul can reconnect to its Core principle and begin to evolve again. It is essential that the Soul be included in any form of cognitive therapy, Tantric practices, or relationship negotiations. To exclude the Soul is to again avoid the origins of our deepest dreams and purposes.

Love is The Mirror. When the projections have burned away, and we are confronted with our true nature, and the reality of the other human being in front of us, we have a mirror that is two-way and very clear. We enter into exalted states that may be buffeted by the harshness of daily life, but then, in just a few moments of being with the other, we may return to our true selves. There is a gaze that is soul-to-soul, which communicates without words. Two human beings who are in this state of resonance see their own soul through the eyes of the other soul, and understand and accept each other without effort. Work turns into play, conflict becomes play, differences are harmonized…because Love is ever-present, and ever welcome.  The illusion of a separate ‘self’ that needs to control, be totally sovereign and ruggedly individualistic gives way to a new type of relationship. One that is completely interdependent and allowing.  Each is complete, and yet more complete when symbiotically aligned. Dreams dreamt by these dreamers become real through a natural cooperation that escapes articulation.

The box dissolves…and is forgotten, because in finding Love, and being found by Love, there is nothing left to look for. Love always finds itself.

Next: “Finding Love Part 2: The Nature and Purpose of Attraction”
Copyright © 1999-2014 Isaac George