Aahh the perenial question...subject of endless books, postcards and bedroom wall posters!

Love has been described as many things. Perhaps that's why to me it means completeness - or more specifically inner completeness.

We are one being expressed in multiplicity of form. In my truth, that one being exploded gloriously into life with an unbelievable out pouring of light energy - the creation of our universe.

In its entirety, the universe is a mirror for this one being and experience of itself is gained by the interplay of its apparently separate parts - through ourselves and all sentient life forms.

When a life form becomes self conscious, by design there is belief of separateness from all that is. This is necessary - without it there could be no experience at all because for there to be experience, there has to be perceived separation. I know hot in relation to cold for example and me in relation to you.

However separation of course is an illusion, just as the whole universe is an illusion. All sentient beings hold inside themselves the memory of the original condition of oneness.

It is what makes us feel complete, whole and without need. This feeling is an experience beyond experience - in fact it is the total lack of experience. Only through total lack of experience can you have infinite potential - that which we are.

To know this state, we have to first know what this state is not. So we choose to forget the state of infinte potential and identify with something - an identity - in the relative universe. In other words, we identify with something less than the all of it.

Our experiences in the relative universe closely mirror this experience of the original condition. So for example when we fall in love with someone we have experiences that remind us inwardly of completeness - this is of course is the beautiful perfection of 'love making' - two (apparently) separate beings becoming one.

However until we are awakened, the tendency is to associate that feeling of completeness that love making gives us (amongst many other things) with someone or something external to ourselves.

We convince ourselves that we need that certain thing to give us what in fact we already have. Consequently we head off on a search throughout the universe looking for more of that completeness.

This aspiration is what drives everything on our planet whether we know it or not. Love does indeed make the world go around!

Of course in this frantic search, all we really end up finding is mutual dependency - conditional love, "I'll do something for you if I get something in return."

If we can surrender these perceived needs stemming from an illusionary idea of non completeness, then ultimately we dissolve into a state of absoluteness - this to me is profound love.

Chris

Beautiful response Chris. Wise words.

Love seems to be, practically undefinable (well done for the articulation above :0)), and my experience is that it has no opposite, nothing to contradict it, it has no shadow, it is the infinite expression of divinity.

When right - wrong, male-female, ying-yang,
joy-sadness, up-down, hot-cold melt into one another and we accept absolutely everything exactly as it is, surrendered of personal need, we begin to experience a taste of 'love' as an expression of ourselves! We find that we ARE the love that we seek. When we are whole and complete within our experience of life, we are in love, and divintiy begins 'making love' through us as the ultimate expression of who we are. This is divine union...

Trin
x

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.

And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.

And if I dole out all my goods, and
if I deliver my body that I may boast
but have not love, nothing I am profited.

Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.

It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth

It covers all things,
it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things,
it endures in all things.

Love never falls in ruins;
but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or
tongues, they will cease; or
knowledge, it will be superseded.

For we know in part and we prophecy in part.

But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.

When I was an infant,
I spoke as an infant,
I reckoned as an infant;

when I became [an adult],
I abolished the things of the infant.

For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face.
Now I know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known.

But now remains
faith, hope, love,

these three;

but the greatest of these is love.

"Love is an endless mystery,
for it has nothing else to explain it." Tagore

"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along."
Maulana Jalalu'ddin Rumi

(For me)Love is the all pervading energy of the Divine which shines on and into us all like the light from the sun, and just as it is possible to feel the warmth of the suns rays so it is possible to feel the sweetness and sublime beauty of Divine love. As we become used to our capacity to feel love, so too can we become used to our capacity to give love, though these two things may not be naturally in place due to the circumstances of our lives to date. A state of connection and wholeness gradually arises as we become familiar with these ways of being and a recognition of the meaning of "unconditional love" becomes apparent. As the Divine flows through our heart we awaken to a state of oneness.

That is the best I can do in words to describe my experiences of love and to add that spiritual practices such as meditation, firewalking and the sweatlodge ceremony can help with having your own experiences. Human to human experiences can often be very confusing!

With love,
Lesley

Thanks Lesley for your words. I agree - words don't really 'cut it' where love is concerned. I'm often 'accused' of being reasonable eloquent but quite frankly this feels more like a 'cross-to-bare' than a blessing (of course it is both). In the midst of the most beautiful moments, there's frequently the thought 'so how do I capture that to share with others?' Ultimately divine love is better experienced than described!

PS - if that causes anyone to ask 'then why write about it?', I do believe because the mind is so tricky, we must sometimes use the mind to escape the prison it builds for itself so that we can allow feelings such as divine love to blossom.

Chris

I read a comment somewhere recently which said that love is letting go of the fear. That fear is the opposite of love and by letting go and releasing fear, only then can you experience true love.

I also agree with Lesley - human to human experience of love can be a very tricky place to be. (In my experience) Rarely can two people be completely together as one and be their own true selves at the same time. I have only glimpsed it fleetingly but even so - it was very beautiful then.

I also think it's really important to write about love regardless of the fact that words don't always do it justice. In fact, sometimes this is the very essence in which we must write about love - at least when looking at something like poetry. Each and every word is loaded with meaning, beauty and love just bursting to get out of its confines. The experience of the poem doesn't have to be trying to understand someone else's truth in it, but could also be finding your own truth within it, so that it's meaning can transcend the imposed limits of language and allows you to lift the meaning beyond what is there. Does that make sense?!

Yes I agree fear is the opposite of love. To me it is that experience that was/is generated by separation of the universe into its constituent parts - fear is the forgetting that we are whole and complete and without need. It is a necessary experience to create relativity - without which there could be no experience of the completeness at all.

Fear was first generated by the realisation by the absolute that there needed to be separation for there to be experience. Therefore to create love it had to create fear. Therefore paradoxically fear is an extreme version of love - which confirms (in my truth) that in the known universe there is only love!

Yes I totally agree with you that we need the words to express such things as love even though the words don't cut it. God/love is in and through every experience including mind/thoughts/words. I often hear people say we need to get out of the mind and into the heart but this separation is an illusion. The key is to bring love into the whole universe including the words!

I guess love and fear are one of the same thing, yes. And yes, I think it's great when the mind fuses with the heart and the words that result can bring love into the universe.

I like these words to sum up how simple it can be:-

If you're the stamen within your petals
And I, the carpel within mine
And you seek not to need
And I seek not to cling
And separately we exist
Then together we exist
Of different plants,
But of the same flower

In my opinion, there is only one love and this love is the energy that we feel in all things. There are times when it is strong and pure, and times when it can be weak. But I think deep down, within us all, it is always present.

Beautiful words! We share the same opinion :0) Love is ever present.

You make perfect sense S... we will each find what we are looking for in a poem. I never could understand in high school english class why we were required to diligently interpret poetry, when it spoke to each of us uniquely. Words sometimes give such an exciting dynamic to this experience of life.

With Love
Trin
x

Excerpt taken from "Apprentice of the Heart"
Lessons in Life only Love can teach
By Guy Finley

Seated in the center of the heart, as surely as the essence of a tiny seed holds the promise of a towering tree, lives within us the Presence of a Power that can dispel any gathering darkness and change what is unkind into conscious compassion. What is this great Presence and Power lying latent within us? It is Love.
No matter who we are, all of us have known some kind of love in our lives. Love has as many forms on this earth as there are human hearts to reflect and reveal her countless expressions. There is the love we may feel for objects and places, the love we know through relationships with those closest to us, and there is the love of excellence, of natural beauty, and of all things shining bright with unfulfilled promise.
But as stirring, fine, and noble as these loves may be, they tell but a small part of a much greater story hidden from plain sight, yet evident to those with "eyes to see"; for just as radiant energy from the sun, which is not the sun itself, reaches down into creation to animate all of its myriad forms, so is it true that behind and above the everyday loves we have known there dwells an abiding Love of a far greater magnitude; an unseen and supernal Love whose emanations make all other loves possible.
It is this higher, Divine Love that teaches us about love in all its forms, initiating us into the mysteries of our own heart by gently wiping away the borders that stand between our love and our beloved, so that two become as one. Beethoven, Rembrandt, Curie, and Einstein - these and other great souls didn't so much master their respective arts, as much as a great love for their art served to master them. Love educates whoever will embrace her. So it can be for us; to become masters of our own lives we need only learn how to let Love master us.

I am moved to tears by the profound resonance I feel with your quote Lesley. Divinely breathtaking!