On True Love

Love is the song of the universe.  Love is what brings matter into harmony, whether it is the physical matter of two human beings in love or the physical matter of stars and galaxies, there is something new created when matter collides.  Whether we hear Jesus telling us that we are so dearly loved that He laid down his life to ransom us from the usurper of our souls, or we hear the Buddha telling us that love for ourselves is the foundation of love for another person, the underlying message is one of Love.

It can be confusing, this figuring out how to love ourselves and love others, or, especially, how to love one other in particular.  It is a delicate balance between sacrifice and selfishness, isn't it?  It takes consciousness; even then, even when we are certain that we are entirely awake, we may be self serving.  Even when we claim we are practicing healthy self respect, we may be oblivious to the wounds we inflict on others.  Even when we think we fully know ourselves, we are--if we are lucky--still growing.  We are not entirely finished products as long as we draw breath and can think, or, perhaps better said, will think.  We still have time to be  reduced to love.  We romanticize love but fail to grasp its immense transformational power.  We do not give ourselves fully to the experience.  We hold back, we keep ourselves inside.  Some of us may convince ourselves that such stinginess is fine, after all, there may be something better, someone better, just around the corner.  Some of us convince ourselves that we are better off without such nonsense, that we are "above" needing to love and be loved.  We convince ourselves that there is something to be gained by holding back, something admirable about refusing to give birth to ourselves, something to congratulate ourselves about if we fail to ever engage in intimate authenticity with one other person in our lifetime.  We deny the most powerful experience of life and think we do ourselves a favor.

But for those brave ones among us, love grabs wisdom by the hand as it grows within us.  We should try to never be fooled into thinking that Great Wisdom can ever exist without Great Love.  Love, real love, is a prerequisite for any Wisdom.  Any head knowledge we may acquire will always pale in comparison to what our heart can learn and understand.  There may be crowds who throng to us and hang on our words, but if we have not been able to truly love another person, we should not fool ourselves into thinking we are so great just because the crowds like us so much.  The crowd has not needed us individually to find out whether or not we are truly "there" for those who need us.  The crowd does not know whether or not those closest to us can complain about our insensitivity and have us truly hear those words and repent of our pride.  Perhaps we can wake up enough to realize that Real Love will require sacrifice, and perhaps we can awaken enough that we start to give ourselves to others, even when--especially when--we don't feel like it, particularly.  Maybe we can begin to wake up enough to think of the other person as worthy of our time and attention and care.  Maybe we can stop being so selfish and proud of ourselves.  Maybe we can stop pretending that we are untouchable. Maybe we can stop being fools of the worst sort--maybe we can stop building walls and start tearing them down.  Maybe we can accept that without being vulnerable, we will never be able to experience love.  We might be brave enough to take a chance on getting hurt.  There may be no remedy to undo the pain. 

When we have finally learned to love another, we may finally begin to know ourselves.  If we have allowed ourselves to love, we may end up getting hurt, betrayed, abandoned.  Loving another person does not mean that we will be immune to being hurt.  Indeed, loving another person usually means that we will be hurt, somewhere along the way, by the beloved.  But this is when the quality of our love is revealed.  Forgiveness and grace are inconsequential if there has been no real offense.  It is only when we have been injured by someone dear that the true cost of forgiveness reveals itself.  Only when we recognize the right of another person to leave us, irrespective of the reason(s), does the true cost of grace appear.  We can talk loudly and authoritatively about the danger (to ourselves) of being prisoner to a grudge, the liberation of finally forgiving, the entry into grace, but no one should be foolish enough to think any of that happens easily, quickly, or, least of all, without a lasting rending of the heart and soul.  There is always risk involved in telling ourselves the truth, in finally letting go.  

One of the most compelling and beautiful definitions of love is attributed to the apostle Paul: "Love is patient, love is kind.  It neither envies, nor boasts, nor is proud.  It is not rude nor is it self-seeking.  Love is not easily angered and it keeps no record of wrongs.  It does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.  Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. "  (I Corinthians 13: 4-8)  In the Living Bible paraphrase, it says, "If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost."  So many of us think this means that we will stick up for someone else if another person is condemning our beloved.  But what if we are the ones condemning the beloved because of an injury to us?  Do we remain loyal even then?  Do we go on loving even then?  It is easy to love another person when there is no pain involved.  It is easy to love almost all of humanity if a particular person, someone we dearly love, someone whose love we also want, loves us, too.  It is easy to spout platitudes then, too.  It is only when we have been deeply wounded by the beloved that we are tested as gold is tested: by fire.  It is then, only then, that we can see the transformation that the Holy Spirit has made.  We may never recover from our wounds; the scars may be a constant reminder of the process of purification.  It is impossible to understand the mysteries behind our experiences.  We may not be taken out of the fire, but we may discover we are not alone while burning.

Awakening into love is the only way.  True love does not go it alone.  Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who teaches mindfulness, said, "When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That's the message he is sending."  When we can see that the beloved hurts us out of his or her own pain, even if, even when, that pain is entirely unrecognized by him or her, we can reach out in love and try to meet on the field of healing.  When we are angry ourselves, rather than keeping it inside or lashing out at the beloved, Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that we should go to our beloved and say, "Darling, I suffer.  I am angry.  I need your help."  http://www.scribd.com/doc/548488/Anger-Thich-Nhat-Hanh  If the beloved does not respond, our anger is there to increase.  We will have to learn to care for it as a mother cares for her baby, with tender love and patience.  We may have to leave the beloved if there is a persistent closed mind and heart, however.  We must be careful to not remain in situations where we are abused and diminished; neither should we leave just because things do not go our way.  It is a delicate balance to understand healthy love and unhealthy love.  

But let us assume here that we are healthy in ourselves, whether we have stayed with the beloved and he (or she) has stayed with us or not.  Let us assume that if we have awakened to love and have taken down our walls and have given our real self to another person without guile, we may have been injured in our innocent love.  It is only when we have been deeply wounded by our beloved that love exacts its truest costs.  It is only when love comes at a cost to our own heart and spirit, when love equals loss, that the quality of our love shows itself for what it truly is down deep inside. It is only then, through loving in spite of personal loss, that the quality of our character is revealed.   It is only then that we see ourselves for what and who we truly are, too.  

April 2010

Man and Consciousness

While still an animal, before Man awoke, Man’s response to his (her) experience was limited to instinct.  Instinct, while thought to exist at lower thought levels than human thought, is nevertheless very sophisticated.  It requires interaction with not only the present, but also insists upon connection to the future as well as the past.  Instinct cannot arise out of a void.  Is it possible that instinct came into existence because of trial and error?  In other words, as a species made effort(s) to survive the present, the information about its attempts and correlated outcomes was encoded at the cellular level.  Eventually, the awareness of trial and error became a part of DNA.  This is the connection to the past.  In order for instinct to exist, there must be a (limited) consciousness about the future.  Instinct is, after all, about survival, and survival is always concerned with the future, in addition to the Now. 

When a pregnant elephant is ready to deliver her baby, she typically does so in the company of the herd.  Recently, Sixty Minutes produced a report on orphaned elephants.  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/19/60minutes/main4677338.shtml  The elephants are orphaned because of ivory poachers.  In the course of their investigative report, one of the female elephants was ready to deliver.  She separated herself from the herd and delivered her baby, safely, naturally, but alone.  Within a short time period, she and her baby were surrounded by six lions.  The lions enacted a highly successful approach, using distraction and strength in numbers.  The elephant calf did not have a chance at survival.  Research suggests that elephants mourn, that they grieve, and most scientists agree that elephants have some kind of memory that is above that which we usually connect to most mammals.  Perhaps this sophistication has reached a level where generations of genetic expression—trial and error—are no longer required for learning a lesson.  In the case of this particular elephant, the next time she was pregnant and the time of birth arrived, she remained in the protection of the herd, and thereby increased her calf’s likelihood of survival.  In a similar manner, the lions increased their own likelihood of survival by engaging in a group approach.  It is unlikely that, had it been only one lion attempting to win the elephant calf, that s/he would have returned at the next birth, with a group, as though a light bulb had illuminated over its head while lamenting its lack of dinner, “Aha!  Maybe next time I’ll bring the gang and we’ll have baby elephant!”  Yet, it can be assumed that, in fact, this is the thinking that eventually was relayed genetically through trial and error, so that now lions know to hunt in groups and coordinate their approach without having to convene a powwow first.  It is noted that the mother elephant engaged in typical elephant behavior with respect to the lions—stamping toward them, raising her trunk, trumpeting—all behaviors that typically fend off lions—as long as the elephant is not alone.

Every spring for the past six years, a male and female bird find the nest that was built on a pillar on my front porch.  This year, the couple seems to be some type of wren.  In years past, they have been swallows.  They attend to the nest, pulling out what they do not want (perhaps last year’s refuse) and bringing in new bits and pieces to adjust the nest to their liking.  To their liking?  To their genetically coded necessity?  While I have not been able to watch this couple enough to see if they engage in the same behavior as did the swallows, I do know that the survival of the babies depends on their ability to function in a way that most likely guarantees their success.  With respect to the swallows of past years, they have taken turns bringing food, taken turns leaving the nest to bring back sustenance, even though I have also often seen the male keeping watch while the female flits back and forth.  They are acting out of a historical understanding of all the birds that have come before them, as they act out their preparation for the future and the survival of their young.  They must be glad my cat cannot climb the pillar.  That is to say, he cannot climb it yet.

What is instinct’s relationship to Higher Consciousness?  Is instinct, as some Biblical Creationists claim, evidence that God created animals with a “knowing?”  (see http://www.creationmoments.com/)  Giraffes do not have a long neck because of having to find their appropriate food (acacia buds) up high; they eat acacia buds because God has given them particularly long necks along with—what a thoughtful creator—the appropriate high blood pressure needed to keep their brains alive.  While there are certainly those who discount evolution (entirely), the author assumes that the scientific community at large ascribes to the theory of evolution.   It is the search for the origin of Man—or perhaps more accurately the search for the origin of conscious Man—and not “just” the origin of human life in the Universe, that continues to provide opportunity for DNA transformation within Man. 

We only know that death is a part of life because we have a historical knowing that we will die.  Lives and deaths have been recorded in different ways in different places.  To the extent that we can decipher that history, we can discover what previous generations knew or believed about death.  Each generation does not discover death; however, each individual does discover his or her own relationship and understanding of death, and this understanding and relationship depends on many variables.  This week, archeologists uncovered tombs of mummies in Egypt; what they unearthed seems to be a veritable treasure chest of death.  Vivid colors adorn the wooden cases and one can imagine the excitement of those who found these mummies.   It is postulated that there may be some findings that will alter previous scientific assertions.  However, these mummies, ancient as they may be, are much closer to us in the present, on Earth’s timeline, than they are to historical Man.  Ancient Egyptians had a specific understanding of life, death, and the after life.    It can be argued that their understanding(s) of such things were highly dependant upon their ancestors’ experiences with life and death.  Man is conscious, and because of this consciousness, death has ceremony.

Hindus burn their dead (there are a few exceptions)  in order to release the soul from its connection to its earthly body, as it is believed that as long as the physical body retains a form, the astral body cannot leave.  (However, burning alone is sometimes not the only way the body is treated.  At a certain point, the skull may be cracked open in order to allow the soul to depart.) After cremation, there begins a days-long experience that includes disposing of the ashes into a river, and culminates in the crossing over and going beyond (for the departed).   There are ritual cleansings for not only the dead, but the family members, as well.  Zoroastrianism (Parsees) dictates that bodies must be disposed of in the way which is least harmful to those still alive.   The Zoroastrian funeral ceremony requires that the dead be exposed to sunlight and to flesh-devouring birds.  The deceased is carried to the Tower of Silence by specific individuals.  The body is left, not only to the elements (as are the funeral cloths in a pit) but, left to become only elements.  As the dead are offered to the birds of the air, and subject to the elements of time and weather, so are the dead returned to the basic chemical elements which comprise organic matter—whether through decomposition or ingestion. 

Funeral ceremonies are a manifestation of belief about the supernatural.  As such, funeral ceremonies belong only to evolved beings, but this does not mean that all evolved beings believe the same thing about the supernatural.  In fact, at this point in the consciousness of Man, it can be argued that our ideas about life, death, and the supernatural (or whether there even exists such a thing) are as diverse as the languages on our planet.  Yet one thing is sure:  When consciousness arose, God was discovered by Man.