Stop Poking, Start Loving

When we love others sometimes we experience hurt.  Perspectives and attachments such as betrayal and blown expectations can be devastating.  And we tend to cling to the hurt.  We poke at the wound as though somehow being reminded will “save us” from it happening again.  But it doesn’t.  It just causes us to suffer and robs us of our light.

When it hurts and you’re tempted to pick at the sore place in your heart, remember.  This is the Home of the Beloved.  The Beloved has dwelt there long before your birth and will never leave you.  It’s never hurt you.  Its Face is reflected upon anyone you’ve ever loved and those you haven’t.  Even upon your own reflection.

Love this Beloved with the deepest abandon, as you’ve always wanted to.  Let the hurt remind you your Beloved is there waiting behind the bruise. Instead of poking the pain, express your love to this Beloved.  Let go of the pain and sink in the Love that’s there.   Be healed, for the Light of the Beloved shines for you.  Always.  And live without fear.

.

Love Knows No Differences

A child and a dog.  It’s a touching image known to poets and painters.  It evokes something in us.  It’s the bond beyond boundaries.  This video shows the love between this beautiful child and a dog that transcends handicap, species and age. It’s a heart warming reminder of the simple goodness inherent in life at any moment.

Happy Holidays.

I Thought You Were Real

Like a fool I naively thought you were real
It was a something between us I thought I could feel
I could touch you, hear you, see you were near
But beneath the surface was a growing fear
That “real” was something someone could steal
Leaving a scar that could never be healed

Real was also something I thought that I was
Obviously I’d have to be because
If there was a you, then there must be a me
It’s something we could both plainly see
But something in silence caused me to pause
Making the “you” and the “me” and the “us” just a cause

I had to back up and myself I did ask
“What is real and why did I never attempt this one task?”
It seems who I am can change like the weather
And what I deem real from one day to another
Is equally liable to wear a new mask
So then a conundrum I was left in to bask

If the real me changes from day-to-day
Then who I think you are is also mind-play
The “us” we perceive is a filmy delusion
But still we both love this agreed-on illusion
So resting my heart after much thought I must say
I love you whoever you and I are today

A Little Sweetness — Charlie Chaplin “Kiss Me”

City Lights

I enjoy the old silent films; sometimes more than modern films.  There’s something relaxing in the simplicity, something soothing in lack of dialogue, something more artistic in the blacks, whites and grays.  It’s become a lost art form a midst the spoon-fed splendor of digitally rendered eye-candy and deafening pyrotechnics.  Charlie Chaplin is my heart’s favorite.

The Kid

Here’s a little gem I found; an extra cube of sugar in your tea today.  I’m not one for overt romantics, they tend to repulse me.  But the sweetness I found in this video just made me smile.  I hope it brings a little sweetness and smile to you too.

Charlie Chaplin “Kiss Me”

If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy Charlie Chaplin and The Great Dictator:  The Speech that Resounds Across Time

What is Love?

A lifetime can be spent trying to define and understand “love” but the realization of what Love is can come in an instant of inner stillness.  It’s not something you or another being can make or will to be.  It doesn’t exist in the realm of the intellect, so it isn’t born of the mind.  Instead, it’s feeling the experience of Existence’s awareness that you, in your uniqueness, also exist.  This Love Force flows through you and is reflected back to you always in the vast spectrum of your life.  It’s only through self-inflicted delusions that you are ever apart from it. To be conscious of it is to be Love incarnate.  Suffering melts away and all that’s left is the soft glow of Love.  Like the most pleasantly warm healing water, it surrounds us and carries us, from beginning to end and beyond.  Be Love and you shine forth like a beacon lighting the way for others.

 

You Can’t Buy Love

Have you ever tried to define “love?”  It’s not so easy, is it?  Eventually you end up with a long elaborate list of rules, expectations and metaphors that still seem to wander off the path.  Well, they don’t just wander, they end up wandering off, tripping, and falling over a precipice never hoping to reach their destination.  Love, quite simply, is one of those things that defy words.  You know what it means.  If you try to intellectualize it, you end up with a confused mess.  But sit silently with it and there’s no mistaking it.  Love.

I’ve recently run across pictures that very humbly define “love.”  These pictures are of men who are homeless, at least that’s what I infer from the pictures.  They look cold and hopeless.  How does their predicament show “love?”  Just take a look.

These are men who have run across hard times.  They have the clothes on their backs.  They also have their dogs.   Dogs and human beings snuggled close, giving each other warmth in the cold, but if you look more closely you can see something else.  Besides body heat they are also sharing that wordless need we all have; to be wanted, to be needed, to give love and be loved in return.  I see the food of hope in that essence between men and dogs.  I see it fanning the dim spark of faith and keeping it tenuously alive; a “maybe” for tomorrow.  I see safety and security of the soul even though it doesn’t exist for them materialistically.  I see love in all it’s silent beauty.

It’s all the proof in the world you can’t buy love.  These men have nothing to give these dogs that they can’t give themselves to survive, but they have their bond of love.  In its simplicity nothing is being taken for granted.  It sure gives you perspective.

Moribund’s Demise

Moribund the Shadow Thing sat like a knot.  He was frustrated and frankly, not in a very good mood.

“You’re seriously not afraid of me?”

“Nope,” said the little girl, smiling up at him like an annoying little cherub.

“Not even a little?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He deflated.  One last child to frighten and he would earn his Junior Demon status.  He summoned up a belly full of bile and made his most horrific face at her.

“I love you, Mr. Silly,” the girl giggled and hugged him tight.

“No!”

And with that, Moribund disappeared into a puff of smoke.

MS Word Count:  100

This is a creative writing piece for the Friday Drabble.

Other 100-word installments in the Moribund saga:

• Derp’s Dilemma
• Glenda Gloop’s Failed Surprise
• Love Dies an Ugly Death Under the Sink
• Toad Slide
• Moribund’s Demise

Copyright Jean Mishra 2012

The Mystery of Love

“The crown of spiritual experience is the attainment of divine love – a love that overflows the bounds of all human calculations and standards and inundates the entire world.” 

– Swami Ramdas

This is a worthy quote, but how many of us really understand this “love” he’s speaking of?  I know for most of my life I didn’t have a clue.  Trying to untangle this “love” stuff everyone is seeking, having or lamenting over is enough to drive anyone insane, but I persevered for most of my life.  The only constant regarding the concept of love I was sure about was the certainty I was missing something intangible.  In so many ways I was right, and in so many ways I was dead wrong.  I think I’m coming closer to figuring this whole love thing out.

“Love” is one of those slippery terms; like “truth” and “god”.  The moment you try to define it you’ve already lost the battle of doing it.  The longer the list, the more confused you become.  I’m finally beginning to understand it’s because it defies the intellect.  “Love” is not separable from “Truth” or “God” in this respect.  This is the way I view these terms, whether right or wrong:

• God – the “what is”; that which is the source of and fiber of all that is.  It’s not a physical being or thing, this is where our confusion begins.  It’s existence is beyond what we can perceive of physically and quantify intellectually.
  
• Truth – a Higher Intellectual expression of that “god” and truth than those born of and intellectualized in the physical world.
  
• Love – A Higher Emotional expression of “god” than those emotions born of and felt in the material world.

I realize, believe me I do, this really doesn’t clear much of anything up.  Unfortunately, by their very nature it’s probably as close as we’re going to get to a no-nonsense definition.  These are abstract things best expressed through the arts and experienced in deep inner silence.  I’m convinced the closest most of us come to experiencing it is in that brief instant when you’re overtaken by the beauty of something.  It happens when your mind is suddenly stunned into stillness and your heart is ignited by sheer awe.  It’s present in that momentary hush.

I think there’s a lot of confusion out there regarding the “inundation of divine love” into the world as Ramdas states.  A lot of folks beating the spiritual trail think this is something they need or have to do.  It’s a noble idea and gesture, unfortunately in the doing we’re involving our own mighty human egos.  Goodness knows the world needs a little more kindness and good deeds are certainly needed, but realize those deeds for what they are.  Without judgement, they are actions arising from the ego and not the pure state of divine love.

The effect of divine love, in its purity, involves no doing.  From where it springs there is no doer.  Divine love is manifested into the physical realm through the realization of itself in you.  Once you’ve consciously been in the experience of it, the lamp is lit.  Your own being becomes the only doing to shine it forth into the physical world.  You know people like this.  They exude a certain “something” without having to speak a word.  Peacefulness surrounds them and the weight of the world seems something alien to them.  Their proverbial cup runneth over.

So the intangible thing I was missing is that this is a state that exists and is available to everyone.  You walk in it, swim in it, sleep in it.  It’s never apart from you.  What’s missing is the simple realization.  It’s not magically found in the relationship with another person or ideal.  It’s found in the stillness of the heart when the mind is silent.  Once realized, the relationship becomes with existence itself and spills over into everything you do and everyone you relate to, in whatever role that may be.

Beloved

To love existence
As you would your beloved
Reveals God’s secret

My plan for the coming year is to “be” in “love”.

Copyright Jean Mishra 2012