>I’m gonna talk about love. And not a “take my hand,” “pinch my behind,” “flowers on Valentine’s,” “hold my hair back when I have the flu” kind of love. I’m talking about the highest love. Ultimate Love. Infinite love, and why living from the place of trying to hold that truth can be a treacherous, tricky and sometimes bogus business.
This morning Marianne Williamson offered up via Twitter:
“Love is a Divine creation. It is Who We Really Are. Everything else is a mortal hallucination, and will fall away as we remember who we are.”
It irked me. If you saw that tweet feed, pre-coffee, post fight with your boyfriend, or waking up with a crink in your neck, it might irk you too.
I love me some MW and went through a huge phase of her sassafrass, gorgeous depth about six years ago. She was one of my first chosen woo gurus and I inhaled her audio recordings and books on daily stretches of six-mile walks one summer in Vermont when my world was in a very different place.
MW teaches on “A Course in Miracles” which is super-long text laid out in teachings of a one-year course, slowly crowbar-ing our eyes open to the highest Truth. Although MW was raised Jewish, the course comes from a Christic perspective. I’ve studied it, but never got through the whole thing.
It so very rightly postulates that there are only two things in this world, love and fear. Our consciousness, as over-arching Brahman, in the perfection of every moment as it is, is only love. But we don’t see that. That’s our “misperception.” Our ‘original sin’ as a species, if you will.
The course leads you through this realization delicately, but others I find cheerlead to always look for the love. Look for the LOVE (exclamation point, smiley face, heart emoticon) which is Nettly McNettlesom to hear if: a) you don’t feel like lookin’ for the love, or b) you can’t find it.
People cheerlead for love because it’s more marketable. Happiness, peace, money, sex!!! Comeandgetit!! If I titled lectures, courses, as “come join me and be with your suffering” that would be uber-depressing.
Things have been evolving ridiculously quickly in the last few months; both in my personal life, and if I can be so bold to speak for others—as a human race. Outrageous things happening and with those things people and events come in tow, which I lovingly (and sometimes not so lovingly) refer to as: crazypants.
I use this word so often, that my closest friends and I use the abbreviation: CP—this makes texting efficient, and a possibility to reference crazypants in perhaps a public setting where the word might not be the most generous to lob out.
CP refers many times to zesty people or events that I can’t yet, for instance, reference to my mom. And it’s not necessarily negative. I have TOTALLY been CP myself; I would happily wear a t-shirt labeling myself “Miss CP 2011” especially if that designation came with a ribbon and a tiara.
Particularly when we are on this path we will have glimpses, stretches into this Ultimate Love, into seeing the world as it truly is, and naturally we want to express and embrace that moment as it happens. Bring it on.
However, when we’re not there… over-enthusiasm can be annoying. There was a moment when I was last in India, futzing with something on my laptop in the “dorm” room, when a woman who I adore came in, brimming with the light a high state, arms outstretched, stopping dramatically in the middle, proclaiming “ohmigosh—do you FEEL this?? There is SO much LOooooooVE in this room.” I didn’t roll my eyes. That would be rude. I internally rolled them.
I wasn’t in that space, and so I wasn’t feeling it. I certainly don’t want to squish anyone’s self expression and I absolutely value spreading love, 100%, spread it everywhere, tattoo it on your wrists, point it out when you see it. I only want to mention that we are not always living in the state of the highest Ultimate Love, so we’re not collectively ready to make that our parking spot.
People come to me with heart-wrenching stories of suffering, heartbreak, loss, confusion, that are very very real to them in their present moment. If I were to say, “oh just feel the Ultimate Love” pat them on their head and send them away in crisis, that would be not only irresponsible as a teacher, but as a human being.
It goes the same for any of the highest teachings. At the top tier nondual level, none of this exists. You don’t hear me talking about that so much, because how practical is that to us at this moment? Um, it’s not. Friends of mine have found enlightened Advaita masters and then gone into self-proclaimed six-month couch potato periods… what’s the point if it doesn’t exist?
The access to the love is through the present moment. I’m telling you. Don’t reach for love. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your efforts. Be where you are. It comes.
The Ultimate Love, and all other juicy phenomena such as compassion, right action, bliss are naturally and organically present when we have glimpses of, experiences with, and (one day soon) collectively reside in a permanently awakened state. When in this state, there is absolutely no need to reach because it is all that there is.
There could never be anything else and so in a way, it doesn’t have to be a celebration, because it is so vast and all-encompassing if we celebrated every moment that it happened there wouldn’t be cakes enough in the world to underline its sweetness.
The love I’m speaking of is a merging, the oneness with anything in front of you. It is a devotion, attention and care you would give to a slammed left elbow combined with a simultaneous marvel that the elbow exists in the first place. However the “Tao that can be named is not the Tao.” These words fall so hopelessly short of this Reality.
Something happened to me last night for the first time ever, so I’m going to round off with a short crazypants example. I first had glimpses of this about five years ago but now they are coming more and more regularly, without any reaching on my part, so I share this experience with you.
There’s a way that we can communicate with each other, without words. (This is total sci-fi movie stuff and I wouldn’t have believed it until it started happening to me, so please bear with me…)
It is a kind of telepathic understanding and my experience has been thus far that it’s not through the mind, its highway is the heart. We merge with someone and we see who they are, what their thoughts or feelings are, their experience becomes yours, you know them.
It’s like what making love can be at its most intimate, but you don’t have to be naked, sweaty or even know the person. It doesn’t need to be preceded by a fancy dinner, four-inch heels and flirty SMS.
So last night I’m at an old stomping ground. One of my fave Italian spots in the city, at the foot of a downtown hipster New York hotel. I’m with someone I know and love very well (someone definitively not *spiritual*) and myself having been in hibernation, whom I had not seen for some time. We’re having a lovely long meal and at one point, I’m sitting across the table and give over some news about a person very close to us both.
His face is absolutely self- posessed, seeming even, to not register what I said. In the same instant, I, across the table, suddenly feel a punch in my solar plexus and it churns, deeply. It rips open with an ache of loss, hurt.
I am taken aback. Huh? What is this? This is not my emotion. I had/have no attachment/charge with the news… where is this coming from? The reaction is not mine. “Mags” is not feeling this. What the CP-ness is this?
His face is placid, but a moment later he tells me:
“That’s the worst news I’ve ever heard.”
A great businessman, his pokerface did not betray his emotion. I, across the table, experienced what was happening inside of him.
It was not an empathy, because I had no idea of his mental reaction until he told me. I did not at any preceding moment know I was going to share this news or anticipate what he might feel. I could never have expected he would be so hurt by it— frankly, I wasn’t aware that he cared that much. Ours was a registering, an understanding, a communication of the heart. I did not chose to feel it, it arose spontaneously. I could not lay claim to it—it was not mine.
This was a form of the Ultimate Love. Because even in experiencing its pain, that was the raw truth of the moment, and the connection, the oneness it provided, however “unpleasant,” was real. It was authentic and that made it beyond beautiful—that made it the ultimate beauty: life.
Why do we want this? Why do we want to get to this place? Because it’s f*ing awesome. Any rah rah ‘live your best life’ rhetoric you’ve heard? Bleached Benjamin James china white by comparison. It’s not even the same ballpark, much less the same sport as this Ultimate Love.
Love in every moment, no matter what it looks like. In angst, in grittiness. This is why I adore New York with its dark corners and debilitated sidewalks. Its millions, its masses, all with the greatest potential for that infinite love. How far experience can soar between our dark lounges and dramatic skyscrapers—how thrilling the latent probability of an impending Ultimate Love in its dirt.
Love is being where you are. We might not see it as that in the moment, but it will reveal itself… one day soon that will merge for us all. Bliss isn’t only shiny, it’s dirty. Let’s open our eyes to the possibility of not knowing what that will look like. That is truly opening ourselves to love and all its crazypants.
