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THE GLUE OF LOVE
Love is the life of the soul.
Love is the greatest joy of creation.
Hafez
What a man loves a man is.
St. Augustine
354-430
This chapter presents some of the most
non-linear content on Meditation.dk. Dreams often lack a conventional
timeline, and upon awakening, we attempt to create a coherent narrative from
these dreams, sometimes overlooking vital messages they convey. In a similar
vein, when we experience love, we find ourselves in a reality comparable to
a lucid dream. Therefore, I endeavor to write from within this dream-like
state, striking a balance between practical language and the language of
visions. Intriguingly, the dream of love is exceptionally lucid, occurring
in a state of consciousness even more awake than our typical waking state.
In this context, one must 'wake down' rather than 'wake up' to attempt to
articulate it effectively.
Allow me to share a story. A
close friend of mine was once filled with rage in his youth. Fearless and
possessing an imposing athletic build, he was always prepared to confront
any street fight, regardless of the odds. At 18, he left Denmark to join a
war against jihadists in the Middle East. After two years and countless
battle scars, he returned to Denmark and became the leader of a criminal
gang. He eventually found himself in solitary confinement for almost two
years. Shortly after being released from his (monk) cell, he
stumbled upon a YouTube video featuring a kaleidoscopic tunnel accompanied
by a deep voice proclaiming, You are that! You are the ultimate truth. He
was so ripe for a shift in consciousness after these two years of solitude
that even this simple video clip triggered an explosion of cosmic
consciousness within him.
Completely unfamiliar with mystical experiences and thankfully free from
New Age conceptualizations of enlightenment, he realized that he
was one with the divine, omnipresent and that everything is
love. Initially, this divine rapture was so intense that he
for two years could do nothing but surrender to ecstasy, oblivious to the
world and worldly affairs. As he gradually returned to a
somewhat grounded state, he began to view the world around him
as a manifestation of his own Self. The thought of fighting
anyone now seemed impossible. He abandoned his previous life as
effortlessly as changing clothes and transformed into the most loving,
compassionate, and wise man one could imagine. Suddenly, all the energy
within him could be channeled through intelligent and expanded conscious
awareness.
Today he is one of the most enlightened beings I know, a fact that he tries
his best to hide.
The Footprint of Love
Love, an ethereal adhesive formed through profound understanding,
emerges from the expanded consciousness that perceives unity in all.
Love is a glue created by insight. This insight in
expanded consciousness
realizes that all is one. This realization intertwines everything,
from cellular symbiosis to human relationships and societal constructs. Love
is the force that unifies and sustains.
It is love that makes the mafia man protect his family; finally, it is love
that makes us transcend all our denial of being the other. In the discourse
on consciousness, as explored in "What
Can be Said About Consciousness"
its elusive nature is acknowledged.
We
cannot understand or verify consciousness in itself because it is a higher
dimensional entity or even being. However, this in itself invisible guest in
our dimension
leaves footprints that we can observe.
Consciousness, a higher-dimensional
presence, remains unfathomable and unverifiable. Yet, it leaves discernible
traces in our realm, with love being its most prominent manifestation.
This primal love wave emerged from a pervasive, albeit faint,
everpresent pan-consciousness predating humanity's ability to amplify it
through the brain's intricate functions. This nascent, universal love,
though subtle, was potent enough to bind simpler entities into intelligent,
complex structures, paving the way for life's genesis. Darwinian evolution
played a role in this journey, not through random mutations but within
preordained frameworks. These frameworks, composed of intelligently designed
elements akin to Lego blocks, guided evolutionary paths.
Consider the metaphor of a ping pong match. The ball's motion appears
random, yet it is confined within a strategically designed structure. This
setup permits certain trajectories while precluding others, just like the
evolutionary process. The ball, representing life's evolution, cannot
deviate unpredictably from the game's inherent design.
LOVE AS DEVINE RAPTURE
Don't be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with
others.
Unfold your own myth.
Rumi
I declare myself guilty in advance. What I am
about to narrate now is crazy.
However, It's always best to tell the strange stories about yourself before
others do. Five years ago, I would have shaken my head in disbelief at what
I'm about to share. I simply wouldn't have been able to understand - just as
many of my close friends over the past 40 years don't really understand me
now.
Lovers and lunatics have such seething
brains,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
William Shakespeare
It's so far from words, I can only laugh. Yet
I use words. It's absurd. Words croak like frogs at the bottom of a well.
What can they tell of the birds' life in the sky?
If you think truth can be known through
words,
If you think the Sun and Sea can pass
Through the small opening called the mouth,
Then someone should start laughing loudly.
Hafez
Writing about it is impossible and somewhat
arrogant. One must experience it at the screaming cellular level to resemble
what I'm about to tell. If one doesn't resemble it, it makes no more sense
than sounds carrying words.
And yet, maybe words... If I can experience this miracle, it means that all
- now, before, or later - will be able to do the same. I can't possibly be
the only son of eternity! ... Everyone is! - Oh, my dear Meister Eckhart!
How right you are:
What is true of Jesus Christ
is true of every good and godly person.
Are you the one on the net, reading this and
nodding instead of shaking your head? Your recognizing smile makes it all
worthwhile. Is it you I'm talking about? All I can give you are words,
carrying sounds from my heart's tuning fork. If they wake the tuning fork in
your chest, then you will see it, feel it, and then sing it. For perhaps
words from the heart resemble light. Light can be seen. Words can be
understood. Light can warm. So can words.
Only from heart to heart can the mystic's
ecstasy be transmitted.
Hafez
The Lightning Strike
In recent years, I've experienced 'something' that surpasses even my
wildest youthful imaginations of what a life in Meditation could bring!
Lightning struck my heart. How can I describe this strike?
Of all words, I find the most worn-out.
That word is love.
"Holy cow, this is insane," I mutter to myself again and again.
How the hell
is this even possible!?
Let me explain in passing on the meta-level why I feel like using swear
words here. We consist of at least 100 personalities of all ages, some of
whom don't even really know each other. When the sacred lightning struck
from a clear sky, it knocked down my entire inner third-world parliament of
disagreeing personalities. The lightning even hit my inner sluggish and
greedy caveman, and now I let him, like a revived Frankenstein, hurl excited
oaths in the name of love's unfathomable miracle.
For life has taught me: Without the inner Frankenstein on my
side, I get nowhere. He has never thought of God, simply because he rarely
thinks, but now he feels and bursts out laughing: Is this a joke or what!
I add: We are truly like the Indian beggar who sat on a treasure all his
life without knowing it.
We laugh loudly and can't stop. Never have
we been better friends.
What is this precious love and laughter in our hearts?
It is the glorious sound of a soul awakening.
Hafez
It's so wild that 'I', the caveman, and the
remaining 98 personalities in chorus mutter to themselves: Even if the party
were shut down right here and now, we have received more than we could ever
ask for!
"Child of Humanity"
The refrain of the Christian rock song I'm listening to goes, 'You are
so beautiful!' ... Yes, of course, I am, says the little child within me.
Words are indescribably indescribable. I'm talking about extreme states of
love. This love curls all-encompassingly into and out of itself
like a
tennis ball suddenly turned inside out. Love explodes like a rocket battery
in the chest, ripping open the ribcage to reveal the bleeding heart.
Light will one day split you open
Hafez
My nerves stand like a tree, stripped from
roots to crown of flesh and glowing in colors full of emotion.
Simultaneously, the universe implodes into 'me'. Neurons reach out to the
furthest stars, caressing them. The ecstasy is so close to pain that the joy
is almost unbearable. The billions of cells I called 'me' just moments ago
now make love with God. This lovemaking again spawns cascades of other
emotions, so far from words they are impossible to name. This is pure
eroticism, and far, far more intense than anything I've experienced before.
The heart is the largest and most fantastic sex organ in the human body.
The heart is an instrument with 1000
strings,
that can only be tuned by love.
Hafez
The Heart's Chernobyl
At the peak of this divine rapture I found myself in Chernobyl at
the moment of meltdown. The intense radiation from the melting uranium
sticks burned away the flesh from my body, until only inner core of me in
the form of a four year old golden child stood back recieving gods radiating
love.
Only the purest innocence and trust could enter this
holiest of spaces, where uranium rods of concentrated pure love at the
melting point burnt my imperfect adult body to atoms.
What remains alone in this radiant cathedral was the innocent heart-child of
God. The child says: I am the one You waited for.
Love is the pyre where the heart lays its
body
Hafez
Never has destruction and death been so
beautiful and meaningful.
And now, life after the resurrection. The wild and mystical love seemingly
won't go away. It stays with me as light peeking through cracks in my now
perforated self-perception. Wow! I am far more than my little comical life
drama! I am connected to everything! Love encompasses everything from the
smallest to the largest. From the joy of seeing a peeing dog to the
unfathomable feelings at recognizing my own face in the sky even on a rainy
day. This love is in every stone I step on.
And between grains of sand and clouds is what I love most: the people close
to me. In their eyes, I see myself. In their eyes, I see, in concentrated
form, the light that connects everything. This light bestows not just
recognition, but also warmth. In this encounter, God sees Himself.
A life without love is worthless.
Don't ask yourself what kind of love you should seek,
spiritual or material, divine or ordinary,
Eastern or Western... separation only leads to more separation.
Love has no labels, no definitions.
It is what it is, pure and simple.
Love is the water of life.
And a lover is a soul of fire!
The universe changes course when fire loves water.
Shams Tabrizi
Without hesitation, I feel the best words
ever:
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
For you, dear reader, are also the way, the truth, and the life. I see,
beyond layers of trauma and tired survival masks, the smile on my face as it
passes by in numerous fractal repetitions all around me.
Since this experience and those that followed, I am no longer who I was. The
meltdown caused such severe 'radiation damage' to my ego that it can no
longer mount an effective defense against the eternally glowing primordial
light of love.
"You are self-centered," says one of my old friends when I try to tell him
about it. He's somewhat right, but at the same time, he doesn't understand
because he hasn't experienced it. A skeptical habit-thinking mind, like a
psychiatrist's, might assume that my next stop should be hospitalization.
However, I've become much physically healthier, have far more energy, sleep
much better than I have in years, and have more creative success in my work
life than ever before. I can no longer hide my laughter over the beggar's
treasure that I unknowingly sat on for so many years. Sometimes when I call
my god-friend Michell, neither of us can get a word in because we are
choking with laughter and can't stop until we hang up.
I am sure there are many others out there who have experienced something
similar. In fact, I gradually know a handful. We've never been on Sigmund
Freud's famous couch, so we don't exist in the literature. The only place
I've 'found' us is among the wise men of India. Also in Christian Mysticism,
but above all in the wonderful poems of Hafez, Shams, and Rumi!
That said, there are no roses without thorns. The next section will tell
more about that.
WHEN I DISAPPEARED IN WAKEFULNESS
It all started when I was 23 years old and studying on the university.
I disappeared when I closed my eyes.
In my very first attempt at
meditation 46 years ago, I encountered an utterly unfathomable 'nothing'. I
was wide awake but saw nothing other than what saw. Nothing I had
experienced until then had developed words to describe it.
I had recently borrowed a book on meditation from the library out of
curiosity. The book said to repeat a sound, a mantra. I made up a
meaningless word and turned inward purposefully. When I opened my eyes
again, to my great surprise, ecstatic light came out of everything I looked
at. I lived at the Skjoldhøjkollegiet in Aarhus. I went out to the common
room. It was much larger than usual and full of light. I went out into the
rain. The college consisted of gray concrete, but now a wonderful living
light came out of the rain-gray walls. I looked up at the dark clouds in the
sky, and light came out of the clouds like on a cloudless summer day. I
walked around in amazement and joy in this landscape, which just an hour
before had been the frame of my all-too-familiar everyday life.
There is no Road without Bumps
This first spiritual feast, however, ended with serious hangovers in the
form of an existential crisis maybe on the borderline to a psychosis.
Isolated, unable to share my profound experiences, they starkly contradicted
the beliefs I held as a progressive, young student. Although texts on Indian
sages and medieval mystics shed some light, I was unprepared for managing
the turbulent, yet intimidating, inner transformations.
Decades later, 46 years to be precise, my perspective has transformed.
Surviving a period of decline, I regained my stride. The most vital lesson
from my journey, possibly inspiring for others, is this:
Don't shun fear. Fear is not an adversary but a sage guide when venturing
into the unknown. Embrace it not as a foe, but as a valued companion. Do not
fear fear itself.
Love is incompatible with fear and pain,
for the waxing of love is the
waning of fear,
and when love is perfect all fear is gone.
But at the beginning of the
virtuous life fear is of
use to man, providing him a thoroughfare for love.
Meister Eckhart
Another key insight: Cherish the company of virtuous people. Immerse
yourself in a community of similar spirits. Let these individuals be your
friends, allies and confidants, enriching your journey.
Finally, an essential realization: Whenever you sense even the faintest
glimmer of love in your heart, embrace it with gratitude. This feeling,
however small, is a precious gift to be cherished and acknowledged with a
thankful spirit.
Ultimately, it is not the grand, life-altering events that shape us most
profoundly. While these experiences may open windows of opportunity,
offering a glimpse into new paths and directions, their transformative power
is fleeting. It is in the aftermath, through the open window of these
experiences, that we come to realize that true change often lies in the
minutiae of our daily lives. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
It's not about altering the core of who we are; rather, it's about
cultivating vigilance and the ability to recognize the myriad of small
things in our everyday existence that hinder self-love. Life is composed of
millions of small repetitions. If even the slightest touch of love were to
reach these repetitive moments, they could transform into evolving spirals,
making each day subtly but significantly better than the last, no matter how
trivial the change may seem.
From this perspective, the object of our love becomes secondary. Whether
it's love for God, a cat, or anything else, what truly matters is the act of
loving itself. It is love, in all its forms and expressions, that drives the
subtle yet profound changes in our lives.
If the only prayer you ever say is thank
you, that will suffice.
Eckhart
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