Love.

One word can change everything!

Love. There’s so much wrapped into this one four-letter word that seems to describe the whole world in its entirety, cosmically yet also closely, intimately and revealingly. Love has a raw, emotional angle, an appeal to the senses to be felt, experienced, danced with, infused.

Just four letters that can change the world. One who has not loved will be ever poor in the world.

Perhaps the allure of love is because it’s way beyond definition—boundless and inexhaustible compassion.

“Those who practice love have neither religion nor status.” ~ Rumi

Love is God, as God is Love.

And love is within, just as God is within.

We keep love as separate, but neither you, nor I are “other”—we are as one. We keep love as “other” and this way we stay separate from each other, from God.

It is our closeness to love, that reflects our proximity to God, to ourselves, to life itself.

“Love is the ultimate state of human behavior where compassion prevails and kindness rules.” ~ Yogi Bhajan

Valentine’s Day is a reminder that we have a warped view of love, a romantic notion that deceives us.

Love is in the darkness we hide from, in the nakedness we reject, in the ugliness that repulses us. Love is in the darkest part of our shadow self, that which we most pity about ourselves. We try to escape into the light, and search for only the pretty love we have defined for ourselves, the love we want, found in the light. Really, love is in the shadows too, love is in the vacuum, love is in oblivion too.

In Buddhism, there is a concept of being nothing, of ceasing to exist. The ultimate in self-sacrifice. For what is the “self”—is there even such a thing? We exist in comparison, we are whom and what we think we are. Our identity is largely a “created” entity, and mostly from the conditioning around us.

What if we were nothing, no ego, no self, no false identity—just the “no thing” that has no identity. Perhaps in nothingness, we come closer to Love itself, closer to understanding the depth of love.

As human beings, we are always searching for love, always seeking our experience in the “Other.” Seeking something external that lies within. The easiest way to experience love, is to get out of the way of ourselves.

If we are able to shed the layers of our self, the layers that exist around our heart protecting us from being hurt, the layers of identity that we believe sustain us—if we face ourselves at our core—the self we are most afraid of meeting, the secret fear that prevents us from truly living. Love is alive in nothing.

Love can never be found when you search for it, it always exists, it always is. It never was. It never wasn’t. It has no beginning or end. We find love, when we are willing to lose ourselves, to let go of our identity, our false ego.

I am united in my love. I am nothing, yet love is everything.

Love is limitless—just four letters that go on forever…

What am I?

I
am
Beginning
and
End
Eternal
Knowingness
Forever
Love

Disclaimer:

This is not selfish spirituality, egotistical showing off, or selling something. Imitation spirituality shows its power with its false prophets and ever more fancy book tours. Genuine spiritual experience can be glimpsed via these forces, yet love is the most convincing force, and cannot be commoditized, bought or sold.

 

Relephant:

Sound & Spirituality: The Harmonic Oscillations of Divine Love.

Author: David Arenson

Editor: Travis May

Image: Flickr/Sibel