Love Embodied: Blessing? Or Curse?

Of late, the notion of divine Love has been at the forefront of my contemplation. Understanding love...can we? Maybe we can over-stand it. Maybe love cannot be said. And, for those of us who find ourselves on the arduous and wildly transformative spiritual journey, seeking God's Love, (though we know it is already and always a part of us, is contained within and without us), for us, does human embodied Love support or hinder the journey towards Self-realization? These questions are meaningless and yet indicate the mistake, the human error. What is love? Where is it? Why is it? Divine Love?

I had the immense pleasure and opportunity to write a paper last year in my comparative literature class that does not fit into the usual mold of academic paper writing. Therein, Shakespeare, Rumi, John Donne, Hildegard of Bingen and St. Augustine, all conversing in the Akashic field, examine Plato's Symposium in an attempt to decide whether or not it displays an adequate understanding of the nature of Love. It was fun. If you you were interested in reading it, do let me know! I'd me more than happy to e-mail you a PDF. Keats makes an appearance at the end! "Beauty is Truth."

This morning I found myself heading down a nostalgic deep road of Bon Jovi. He has a beautiful rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" that I had never heard before. The line, "And remember when I moved in you? And the holy dove was moving too. And every breath we drew was Hallelujah." Like that, earthly love becomes momentarily divine. And those moments, so powerful, though fleeting, are difficult to let go of. Moments of rapture on the way to realizing eternal and unwavering bliss. Do they detract? Distract? Create addictive like behaviour? They certainly can. Yes. But they also bring forth knowing that there is a greater Love, a constant and ever-present Love. Breaking down the barriers that we've created against it. And in my Bon Jovi marathon, a line from "Bed of Roses" resonated: "I wanna be just as close as, the Holy Ghost is...and lay you down. In a bed of roses." Humans seeking divine union. A curse? A blessing? This depends on the clarity of purpose held by each Soul, I suppose...

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

― Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems