Cathy,
Love your free-wheelingness and I am grateful you are inviting me in it. I very much appreciate your sharing here, it feels that this has been an important and pivotal part in your spiritual journey.

I can see how such ways of seeing oneself/the world etc like ‘All is Love etc’ can be imprisoning and causing lots of suffering as opposed to liberating/expanding and reducing clinging. Your experiences I hear/read, honour and acknowledge as evidence to this. And I agree with all the sentiments you put forth – all very clear and make sense. I personally have recently met a couple of people who abide to this way of perceiving, which I understand adheres to the New Age camp. I don’t have practical experience of New Age approaches, so I can’t comment in depth. My camp, if you like, is Buddhist-oriented traditions and the meaning of love, compassion and eros there is very different to what you are describing. It is also very different to how I feel and perceive. So, I can only share my truth reinforced with a Buddhist-oriented perspective.

Let me just share first: For now, I feel that there is no objective reality out there, which is separate from the way one perceives. So, everything I perceive depends on the way I perceive it and does not have some independent existence. There are openings of sensing and perception which become skilful ways of looking because they release clinging and liberate more. I consider spiritual practice as ‘the opening of perception’ towards ways of looking at experience that are more liberating, construct less self and there is more letting go. In fact, saying this, the very first thing that caught my attention in the Openhand approach when I first watched the 5 gateways documentary was the word ‘open’.

In view of the above, you say: “I've come to better grasp that the divine is in love and in hate but is not those things. The divine is beyond all judgment, beyond all definitions and identities.” I do like this and - to me - this is a way of sensing/perceiving that offers more freedom. However, personally, and currently, I feel that ‘the divine’ does not exist as an independent truth out there. It is a perceived truth because of the way I am perceiving and therefore I make real. Now, this may be a difference in ontology that we may have and that’s ok. What matters to me is what this way of perceiving does to my sense of self, other and the world. Does it embrace, open, is of service to the world, lessens suffering or not?

Divine, Love, Oneness, Source etc etc are the narratives that accompany ways of perceiving. So, for me, oneness/divine refers to interdependence, in that nothing has an independent existence – not even God. When this really sinks deep, then one has an erotic relationship to the world/nature etc that propels him/her to action. This sank about 7 years ago at a certain degree. Then at the New Year retreat with Openhand, it sank deeper (multidimensionally) and my way of perceiving opened more. As a result, my life which is all about activism in many forms has deepened and become more effective.
I love this quote by Wendell Beery,a philosopher/activist, which I recently discovered. It refers to activism.
“Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence”.

So, Holy Erotic Love with Nature/oneself/other/world sacralises through the idiosyncrasies, the particulars, the “quirky quirks and unique imperfections” in all their glory. Love universalises, is holistic, it binds and dissolves the self in oneness. Love and Holy Eros together with Compassion (feeling the suffering of others as our own) plus Equanimity – for me- are the components of a freer life that I deepen into gradually.
:) Thank you again Cathy for catalysing this beautiful exchange of inquiry.

With gratitude xx