We talk a lot about it. But I don’t think many of us really know what Love is. I know I didn’t.
You bet, I was taught a version of it. Littered with enough gems of truth to make it easy to want to believe in. A lie, what my husband delights in calling “black magic”. Black because it’s dark and dark because it hides something.
That’s the only purpose for dark…to hide something. Something we fear to see.
I looked.
There is a poem by Kahlil Gibran “On Love”, from his book “The Prophet”. Here is how it reads, free of any polarity/duality ideas.
“On Love
When Love beckoned to me, I followed,
Though Love’s ways were hard and steep.
And when Love’s wings enfolded me, I yielded,
Though the sword hidden among Love’s pinions wounded me. When Love spoke to me, I believed,
Though Love’s voice shattered my dreams, as the north wind laid waste my garden.
Even as Love crowned me, so was I crucified. Even as Love supported my growth, so did it provide a pruning.
Even as Love ascended my heights, and caressed my tenderest branches,
So Love descended to my roots and shook them from their clinging. Like a sheave of corn I was gathered.
I was threshed to make me naked.
I was shifted free of my husks.
I was ground to whiteness.
And kneaded until I became pliant.
And then I was assigned to Love’s fire, in order to become bread for God’s feast.
All these things Love did to me, that I could come to know the secrets of my heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s Heart.
If in my fear I would have sought only Love’s peace and Love’s pleasure,
Then it would have been better for me to keep covering my nakedness and pass out of Love’s thrashing floor.
Into the season-less world where I would laugh but not all of my laughter,and weep, but not all of my tears.
Love gives nothing but of itself and takes nothing but from itself.
Love possess not nor will be possessed. For Love is sufficient for Love. When I Love I do not say: “God is in my heart”,
but rather “I am in the heart of God”.
I am not so foolish as to imagine I can direct Love’s course, being found willing, Love now directs my course.
Love has no other desire then to fulfill itself.
But since I love and have needs of desires, this is my desire,
To be like a running brook that sings its melody into the darkness.
I know the pain of too much tenderness.
I am wounded by my understanding of Love;
And bleed willingly and joyfully.
I wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of Loving;
I rest in the afternoon and melt in Love’s ecstasy
I spend the evening at home in gratitude
And then fall asleep calling for the beloved in my heart, with a song of love on my lips.”
Love loves us even when we’re unlovable.
But it is only in facing how unlovable we are,
That we become Loving.
Sue Ann Edwards
CordieB
Mark
February 16th, 2010 - 9:00 am
Thank-you for sharing the wisdom of this poem.
February 17th, 2010 - 3:13 pm
“Love loves us even when we’re unlovable.
But it is only in facing how unlovable we are,
That we become Loving.”
So true. Thanks for sharing!
PLL, C.
February 24th, 2010 - 12:31 pm
As you can see, there’s some communication issues concerning gravatars {{Mark}}. I happen to know your gravatar isn’t either one popping up, so I do apologize. I will *tinker* with it…
Enlightenment always causes disillusionment. We are glorified and crucified at the same time. It has been said Wisdom always comes with Sorrow but this hasn’t been explained.
“Sorrow” is the letting go of our attachments to glamor and illusion. Quite often it feels as if part of our self has died. Which essentially it has; the part of our self that counted on a reality that turned out not to be real is no more.
What we do not understand and this is critical to maintaining a perspective of love, is that Sorrow carves the depths of our Joy. There is nothing to fear, our cups will be filled.
February 24th, 2010 - 12:57 pm
You are most welcome {{Cordieb}}. For a few decades of my life I was s(addled) with fears of abandonment. It was living hell.
Then one day it came to me the Understanding of the Law of Cause and Effect. It’s something I wasn’t taught about and as best as I have been able to determine, most of us aren’t taught about it, either. It makes too much sense. It’s too simple.
But not easy.
Be-ing “lovable” is a cause and be-ing “loved” is an effect.
If I desired to be Loved, it was simple, I just needed to be lovable. If I desired to be adored, I just need to be adorable.
Simple cause and effect.
Which I add, most of the authority figures in our religions, are proofs of living in denial of.
Much can be gleaned if we ask ourselves “what” the emotional nature of our “God” IS?
Does this “God” of ours express the nature of the Heart of a Dove?
No animal is trained through fear, ask any trainer.
Nor can the animal or the beast within us, our instinctual nature, be trained through fear, either.
It’s Beauty that loves the Beast.
I learned I need not fear abandonment, if I first did not abandon myself. I set my sights on becoming “lovable” by learning how to be loving towards myself. Because I can only give as good as I got.
I started carving in 1991. What came out scared me. It was obvious to me that there was a Beauty within me that the “me” on the outside was definitely NOT an accurate reflection of.
And I ~knew~ it.
I didn’t especially like the feeling of ~knowing~ it. So I set out to change it.
Simple but not easy.
So may I ease the way for others…