On articles like Layers of Love, I’ve talked about how deep love can go. This is akin to degrees of bliss.
“The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.”
― Rumi
I’ve come to see that most intimate relationships are driven by needs and karma. Sometimes, people are enjoying the support of having supported others in the past. Or they’re trying to work things out through relationship. Often both and often with souls they have a long history with.
As we clear our backlog and gain inner clarity, the dynamics become more clear. I’ve been surprised how self-inflicted some of our difficulties are. What needs to be resolved is often our own poor response to past experiences. If we’re also unwilling to deal with this baggage, the resistance grows on itself. We end up living in our difficulties rather than in peace and love.
Sometimes, you meet people where there is a strong resonance. You feel good around them (unless they cause you to purify) and there is a kind of sync or intuitive connection. Such people may be useful allies on your journey or may arise to help you see something or see through something.
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
― Rumi
But there is a deeper kind of relationship you may have sensed but have not found. It’s been much less common in recent, darker centuries. Consciousness has not been high enough to support it. But that is changing.
This is not about meeting needs like security or connection. It’s not about fulfilling desires or resolving our past, although some of that may come along for the ride. This is about flowing love, about being a vehicle for love to express through.
“They say there is a window from one heart to another
How can there be a window where no wall remains?”
― Rumi
That doesn’t mean this love or that love but love rising within and flowing through all the layers that are open.
As persons are inherently me-oriented, this would be unlikely to arise in a relationship between 2 persons. A usual prerequisite is that both be awake. We could say it’s a relationship between everything and itself. It’s not personal and yet it’s not impersonal either; it’s cosmically personal. The cosmic focused to a point that reflects it back. Words don’t do it justice.
This is infinite, eternal love to the capacity that we can embody it.
“Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.”
― Rumi
Such a connection is profoundly intimate as there are no appearances to maintain nor constraints. It’s devotion but not to an other. Yet there’s a superficial distinction that allows the flow to take place. Flow requires a focal point*.
Interestingly, such a connection doesn’t require physical proximity. Because the connection is deep, space is just the container of expression and not a boundary. It is larger than a thousand universes. It is the source of ourselves and all we experience.
And yet it is right here, now, in this moment. It is only for us to discover what is already here.
Davidya
*we may experience flow without a focus, but this is observing flow. When we’re in (of) flow, we discover it has intention and purpose and thus a direction or focus.
Last Updated on May 22, 2018 by Davidya
Hi David!
Really beautiful!!! …totally beyond my relationship experience but hugely inspiring.
Thanks, Michael
It’s very new territory here too.
I should note that the article is told from the current perspective. This higher form of love may well arise in the context of a typical relationship. It is only that here, it is showing up distinct from that.
This is a beautiful one.
As a lover of literature it often strikes me how similar the wording and the metaphors of love literature and spiritual texts are throughout history, across all borders and in various cultural and religious settings:
„My heart has become capable of every form; it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,
And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Ka’ba and the tables of the Tora and the book of the Koran.
I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith“
Ibn Arabi
https://holybooks-lichtenbergpress.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/Ibn-Al-Arabi-Tarjuman-Al-Ashwaq.pdf
„On that glad night in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything with no other light or guide than the One that burned in my heart. This guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he was awaiting me – him I knew so well – there in a place where no one appeared.“
San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross)
http://onetruename.com/StJohn.htm
„Nothing brings you closer to God or makes God so much your own as the sweet bond of love. A man who has found this way need seek no other.“
“God is love because with His love He drives everything that is capable of loving out of all plurality. As far as God is lovable in plurality, the love that He is drives this out of all plurality into His own oneness. ”
Meister Eckhart, Sermons
https://philocyclevl.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/meister-eckhart-maurice-o-c-walshe-bernard-mcginn-the-complete-mystical-works-of-meister-eckhart-the-crossroad-publishing-company-2009.pdf
Agreed , Herwig. One reality, known through many forms.
Thank you for this post David, I understand and agree. LOVELY writing.
Thanks, Theresa.
a favourite topic!
🙂
and a lot of fun to explore.
seem like all relationships dissolve two into one at first. if both are aware of this oneness prior to the relationship then it becomes one to one… as if nothing happens when meeting, yet everything happens.. a mirror looking into itself.. wow!! the only way to deal with this is to pull out a game of jenga, get some wine and put on a blue oyster cult album. Your both done.. enjoy the night and the next endless time.
Hi Michael
Yes, many relationships do go through a round of oneness until the ego reasserts itself. But thats fairly superficial unless you’re awake or close to it.
Sounds like you’re describing awakening – nothing happens and yet everything. (laughs) But yeah, such a connection can be quite remarkable.
Or relax into a deep discussion of the things that are arising by just being together. Melt into them…