Rūmī has written, "Whatever I have said about love, when love comes, I am ashamed to speak." At the same time, if Love is the essential power within and behind this universe and our inner life, no subject has greater precedence.
*Kabir Helminski. The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation.
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Helminski shares the following account -
Once a certain shaikh [or sheikh], someone who had given a lifetime to the path, was visiting us. He spoke about the efforts and sacrifices that are needed if we truly want to know the Truth. There was a guest in our circle that day, someone who was filled with a sentimental enthusiasm. "But what about Love?" she asked with her dreamy eyes. "Love? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," our foxy mentor replied. "Well, love is wonderful, love is incredible, love is what spirituality is all about. You mean you don't know about love?" An excruciatingly long pause followed. "My dear," he said to her, "should one use such a word unless in the moment that one uses it, one is that love?"
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She asked the Sage, "How do I become the love you speak of? I give love. What is the secret of becoming love?" The Sage replied, "No longer have the thought of 'I' give love or 'I' love. With no thought of giving love, you open the door to realize you are love. In giving love, you give yourself. See... the secret is no secret at all."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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The ego, only a thought-energy, cannot be love. Yet, the 'i' can claim to give love - interesting, an idea claiming to give something. Egos go about claiming to love all the time. Yet, what is not cannot give anything. Egos fail to realize the lover is the love, even as the one loved is the love. Yet, the thought of 'i' giving love is a valid step toward knowing that one is love.
Yet, as the Teacher in the above account knew, this love is not a sentimental feeling, or emotion. He knew it is not a feeling period. Helminski refers to this love-feeling as "free-spirited mystical sensuality."
However, love does not exclude the rising of this sensuality into the body-mind. Such love-feeling may arise, but it dissolves back into the Heart. What remains is love, for love was what was before and during. Love stays, love-feeling comes and goes. We do not need to repress the love-feeling; we only need not attach to it and the illusion that the emotion often identified as love is love.
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When I say we are conduits of love, what do I mean? The self, or person, is a means for love to manifest. I am saying, then, that the person can be a conduit of love, or not, but regardless, you are love. If the personality represses love, the personality represses your true self - our true self - there is only one.
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There is a love-sense. This sense is love, love the sense. Yet, this subtle sense is not the love-feeling, not an emotion for not arising from the person - the 'i.' In love itself, one may often sense something but cannot name or describe it. Love carries a scent, so to speak. One learns to rest in the sense. One in love with Love emanates with the Beloved's scent. Others may, then, through the lover, sense the sense, the scent.
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One may provide an understanding of love when contemplating love outside of being love. When the person moves to the background and the true self to the foreground, the understanding of love dissolves in the pure experience of love - understanding becomes knowing, one indirect, one immediate, meaning spaceless and timeless. That is, in love, one does not understand it - or anything. One knows.
Consenting, therefore, to the Light means to yield awareness to be taken into not-understanding. The ego in ego-centricity resists this. The ego bowing to Spirit welcomes the darkness-of-love.
I felt a strong love-feeling in relating with Grace for many years. I felt like I had a passionate love affair with God and Jesus. Then, I went through what the Christian mystic John of the Cross (1500s) called the "dark night of the senses." In this night, with two phases, one is slowly weaned off reliance on emotions. One learns to love Spirit and enjoy life with a non-sensual, so non-sentimental, love. I, sometimes, miss those days of passion, but I cannot return. I cannot undo what Grace has done. One learns to trust love is present without having to feel something they previously called love. Remember, if you are present, love is present - but the ego struggles to accept this.
Yet, through detachment from love-feeling, love is enhanced. We love Spirit, others, and ourselves more lovingly. If an emotional feeling we can call loving arises, we receive it. We know it will pass. And we can enjoy relationships without demanding such occur. We grow to be content with the deeper, subtle sense of union, a sense one with the Heart - that we are, not that we have.
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To learn to live without attachment to the love-feeling has been a big challenge for me. This is to say, the ego has struggled to trust its experience without the proof of the validating sensation. Yet, I find freedom in being love. I seem more loving in some way, yet I cannot know just how that happened. Still, I have not arrived. The journey continues. The less of Brian, the more the Heart shines - likewise, with you.
*Brian K. Wilcox, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
