like ocean tides, for the ocean is
love given and received, love felt and not-felt
neither comes nor goes
for is
Have you known love for someone or something, that simply arose and you did not know from where, from whom or what you know not? A love that was sensed in the body as not coming from the body, untouched by anything usually associated with "human" ~ that is, body, mind. From whence arose this love? When it passed, where did it go? Or, does it not come from anywhere, or go anywhere? If so, then, we can speak of this in two words: love is. That I do or do not experience love, or giving and receiving love, does not mean love is not present.
Love appears to come, or arise, to be given or to be received, for love is, or it could not appear to do so. And, if love is, love cannot not be, and love goes nowhere, as it came from nowhere.
And, love is only love. Love is. When we add a descriptive, like human love, divine love, neighborly love, teenage love, marital love, Christian love, ... these are after the arising of love, and after love is prior to the arising of love. These are thoughts about love, not love. No one has ever, for example, experienced marital love, only love in marriage. Truly, there is no love but love, and so all these ways we characterize love are a move from the simple truth that love is, love being not not this or that kind of love, love is.
There is no essential difference between love for a friend, for family, for a sunny afternoon, for a pet, or for what one worships as a higher being. Again, love is, so cannot be anything added to this, or love would not be simply love.
Yet, for most of us, to be able to accept this simplicity is a long journey of intentional spiritual practice, or by a spiritual awakening due to a life crisis, or in the dying process, such as in terminal illness. We need the consolations of conventional understandings of love, as long as we need them. When we no longer need that, we no longer need it, and it will naturally drop way. Then, we will know directly, through immediate understanding, the whatever and whomever we love, even love for our own self, is simply love, for love is.
Continued...
