Of all the saints and sages, who were immune to jealousy, fear, anger, greed? Not one. These seeds are here in us as they are in the world. Indeed, we, as humans, are both the flesh of the earth and the rays of sky. We are the gritty, filthy grime of existence and we are the light.
There is always something that will stand in the way of love. All of life exists in the space between you and me. Is it a mountain that rests between us or a few stones in the riverbed? That is our choice. Do we dam the course or let the stream flow? Do we recognize our thoughts, emotions and feelings as passing waves, or do we get drawn into their tidal tugs? What I know to be true is: when we are caught in the torrents, we lose sight of the ocean.
The fight for love is not one of force; it is one of surrender. We cannot annihilate the seeds of suffering from our experience. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”. Love yields love. As Dr. Vasant Lad says, “in love everything flowers, including anger, grief and fear“. Acceptance and allowance are the grounds from which love rises.And, love, like all things, grows from necessity. For, darkness is the entrance light will pour through.
Love, in abundance, will continue to grow and spread; it touches all who remain open to its grace. Love persists and love defies. Love can and does exist in any and all conditions. It is up to us to see beyond the ripples and look, with the heart, into the ocean beyond.
We don’t drive out what is difficult, we don’t force an opening. We don’t ignore what is here in pursuit of love. Love is being with what is here. By softening into our present experience, we are letting love caress and encase us in its nurturing embrace. We catch the rain with our parched lips. We sing out with our longing. We practice love. We love with the suffering. We ask to know love. We hold the tension of our yearning with our simultaneous turning away. We choose love again and again and again; even though, part of us is scared.
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I am here with you in practice; I am learning just like you. I, too, feel the impulse to close off and close down, many times each day. I, too, ache from the stings of old wounds and cling closely to the conditionality the mind creates. I question my worthiness. I shield myself. I discern and prescribe the ways in which I want to be loved. I place certain types of loving above others. I meet these barriers day after day with soft hands. I react, I fight love, I fumble. I also stand back up and forgive and enter in anew. In all truth, these barriers may always be a part of my experience, but they will not keep me from love.
Love ensnares me; the power of love seizes and astounds me. Resist all we might, I know that love will take us to the shore of another (of many others). We will learn of the wellspring inside each of us. As for the hurdles in our way? Love will show us those same hurdles in another. Our suffering—rather than separating us from the arms of love—is the force that unites us in Love’s embrace.
“For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task… the work for which all other work is merely preparation.“
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
From Darkness, I Rise 