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Think back on the situation in which this proclamation of love occurred. Chances are it was a situation of purity, a situation freed from the chains of mental tension, fear, doubt and carnal temptation. Perhaps sitting across from one another at a candlelit table, where all the truth of the world is contained right there in the gaze between one another’s eyes, and none of the world’s illusions can get in: “I love you.” Or perhaps while lying entwined in one another’s bodies on a beach before the honest ocean: “I love you." Or perhaps sitting together hand-in-hand listening to beautiful music that cleanses complexity from your mind and illuminates your soul: “I want to marry you.” Perhaps in the mountains, or two as embraced as one while dancing, or in the sweet honest solitude of the bedroom after making love: “I love you.” Some may discount these situations where love is truly recognized and proclaimed as merely romantic, as if they were the moments of illusion. But they are the opposite. Candlelight, the ocean, music, mountains, dancing, solitude … these are the same type of situations that monks and shamans, artists and meditators, and all those seeking clarity have intentionally immersed themselves in throughout human history. They are the situations where truth reveals itself. They are gloriously romantic. They are pure. But so often people leave the love. The love has been recognized and the truth voiced in those deep and pure situations, but now the complexities of the mind and body from the often stressful, confusing and fearsome surface world come to make it too challenging for one, or both, to remain committed to the love, and they leave the relationship. Sometimes the complexities of the mind and body are in fact so dense, such an opaque entanglement, that the love that was once so clearly seen cannot be seen or even recalled anymore. We are spirits, but we are still spirits encased in these basic human minds and bodies with all of their complex illusions. That people leave the truth of love for mere thoughts and desires does not make them bad people. That people may never find that truth and recognize how it is the only thing worth holding onto in this world, or that they may finally find it but not with you, doesn’t make them bad people. It just makes them people. But still the love is always there. It is always ready. And when two people who are finally ready for it come together and recognize and proclaim the love, they commit to it, knowing that love is perfect, and their spirits are perfect, but the human minds and bodies they are each encased in are complex, frail and imperfect, and so that is where they always will be required to understand, tolerate, communicate and work. They know that the love, being all that is true, is well worth this human work. To know that the love is always there and always ready for us – love of the romantic kind but also the family kind, friendship kind, humanity kind, and other kinds, which are all ultimately of the universal kind -- makes the world such a beautiful place. It is true that some people lose sight of the beauty, or never see it in the first place, or have their sight of it temporarily torn away by others whose minds and hearts are blinded to the love. But the truth of the beauty and the beauty of the truth is still always there. Love is the constant. And no matter who you are or what you have or have not done, your deepest self already knows this, and your mind and heart can come to know this too and never leave it again. And you can take heart that others have come to know this, and they are ready to hold onto it too. That is why there is always hope. That is why we go on even when it seems like we don’t know why we go on. That is why, even with heart-break after heart-break and loneliness after loneliness and thinking all is lost and we should just give up, our spirits persist. And so, though your head may be clouded now and your heart hurting so bad that the pain shoots through every part of your body, persist. Persist, persist, persist. Love is there. Love prevails.
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