LOVE'S ADVENTURE

We long for love as much as we fear receiving it.

We yearn to be seen as much as we bolt at the possibility of being seen.

We hunger for the deep embrace of presence, tender eyes that gaze upon us with understanding and empathy, as much as we try to escape that very holding. It's too intimate. Too risky. Too exposing.

Nowhere to hide. To be seen is to be loved. To be seen is to die. Love is danger. Or so we have been taught.

A battle rages in us. The unloved one longing to hide, and the one who longs for the thrill and risk of living. Contraction and expansion. Breathing, in and out.

Unconsciously, we are attracted to or repelled by those who treat us, speak to us, hold us the way our parents did or did not. We are drawn to those who can heal us, and sometimes drawn to those who cannot, or worse. We think we are falling in love with a person, and sometimes we are just falling in love with our own image of them, which has nothing to do with the 'other' at all.

We love and we lose our images of love. We rise and we fall. Our hearts soar and our hearts break into a million pieces. We seek security and find insecurity and we find security in that. We seek freedom and find the prison of our own programming and lose hope and then regain it.

Sometimes it takes courage to leave a relationship. Sometimes it takes courage to stay. Sometimes it takes courage to do nothing, today. Sometimes it takes courage to admit how much pain you are in.

Sometimes it takes courage to admit how happy you are.

Sometimes you take a step without knowing why, and everything only becomes clear in hindsight.

You can't get it wrong anyway.

We lose ourselves and we find ourselves. We give more than we can take, exhausting ourselves in the name of "love". Or we run as fast as we can, exhausting ourselves in our flight from "love".

"Will somebody see me. Listen. Hold me. Let me break..."

And the drama of love plays out. And as the play goes on we learn more about ourselves. We begin to see our blind spots. Our unconscious patterns come into the light of awareness. We realise our assumptions. Our childhood fantasies start to crumble. Pain that we never wanted to feel, we suddenly feel. Grief. Anger. Feelings of rejection, abandonment. We want to run, go back into the old addictions, the old comfort, and for whatever reason, we don't. We get curious. We start looking and stop thinking so much.

We begin to relate to ourselves. Treat ourselves like the greatest lovers that we are. The most fascinating and beloved creatures.

With each day, we begin meeting ourselves more deeply. Discovering who we really are. What we feel, and what we don't. What we want and what we don't. Learning to say 'yes' when we mean yes and 'no' when we mean no and if that hurts someone, giving them back their responsibility to heal. Learning that love is not all butterflies and roses and positive feelings. It is work, too. It is mess. It is pain and the courage to breathe through that pain into joy and expansiveness. Love asks us to become more and more real, more and more human, more and more conscious, less and less perfect. More self-aware and willing to feel. And to feel more. And to feel more. And more. And to let our hearts break sometimes. To not know, sometimes. To be bored, sometimes. To be blissed-out, sometimes. To be full of life. To sometimes not know what the next step is. And to take it, or not.

Love is not a feeling, a state, or an experience. It's not a destination.

It's this extraordinary Light that shines from within.

It's this radiant Knowing that never leaves.

It's the Joy of being alive.

We can know it together. We can know it alone.

We can remind each other of it. We can forget, too.

We can trigger each other and help each other get curious about those triggers. We can do that work, or not.

We can meet in love's fire. Walk together, or not.

Share our hearts. Step back. Step towards. Or stay where we are.

Learn to love the dance of it, the spontaneity, the adventure, the mystery, the immediacy and the intimacy of it and the running too.

Learn to unlearn what we knew and embrace the unknowing as new knowing.

And get more and more content with the unresolveability of it all.

More and more happy with the unhappy one, certain about the uncertainty, so secure in the insecurity.

More and more blissed-out at our lack of bliss.

More and more curious about what's here Now.

Less and less solid, more and more playful.

Less a seeker of love, more a giver of it, and a finder, and a Presence that invites others into the same wild joy.

This is Love's Adventure.

Remind me ~Jeremy Goldberg (I love this!)

Remind me to always lie with you, but never to you, and that hurt only hurts while it lasts. Remind me to hold hands but never hold back.
Remind me of love, remind me of heart, and remind me that life will not tear me apart today, but if it tries and when it does, remind me that I’m good enough to be enough for you.
Remind me that the only way to make it last is to put us first, and remind me that the past is a prelude and pain is a choice, that I’ll get knocked down but I can get up quick, and yes, I’ll get destroyed but I can rebuild again.
When you see me flailing in rough seas, coughing up lungfuls of dark waves, and I’m thinking I’m sinking because my arms are numb and I can’t feel my legs, remind me with a hushed assurance and a knowing grin, “You’ll drown slower if your chin’s up, friend.”
Remind me to have faith.
Remind me why I love you.
Remind me that the stargaze stares we share and the galaxies we wish to explore are inside, not above, that the paths we long to travel are internal, not foreign, and remind me when my dreams seem lost like faraway lands in disrepair, that you’ll hold my hand and always care.
Remind me that it’s me you think about when you wish for happily ever after.
Remind me that not all aches are bad, that black nights still shine light and even in rainstorms or when hail comes and the sky is filled with emptiness we run from, the sun is always out somewhere.
Remind me that I am filled with light.
Remind me why your eyes do such funny things to mine and how, sometimes, time stops in the shadow of your smile.
Remind me that storm clouds are just water up high in the sky, that water is needed, that water gives life, and though it may arrive in drops of sweat or tears of strife, remind me that I can heal.

Remind me to keep you close but to never go too far, and remind me that even if we feel like a lifetime stopped and stuck in its tracks like a frozen statue of our distant past, even if it feels like pointless paralysis or a beginner’s magic trick, even when we resemble an empty well all out of wishes, remind me it will be okay and already is.

Remind me that you are strong, and remind me so am I.
Remind me that you aren’t scared when, can’t run from, won’t hide, and don’t mind my pain when it’s all I know and feel and fear.
Remind me that we’ll never know how it ends until it does, and even then, it doesn’t because what we have and who we are isn’t something we can just pack up and leave behind, like some kind of shooting star in some cold and fleeting night.
Remind me how I love getting lost in you.
Remind me that you are an adventure worth taking and never forgetting.
Remind me it starts now, today, for always in all ways, and remind me to remind you of this, all of it, always in all ways.

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close." ~ Pablo Neruda

WAKE UP, DOROTHY...

This is the spiritual search in a nutshell...

It begins:

"Is this moment all there is?
It's just so ... ordinary!
There must be something beyond this!"
It concludes:
"This seemingly ordinary moment is quite extraordinary.
It is everything, it is all there is, for the curious heart.
Full. Rich. Bursting with life.
A complete expression of the beyond.
Sacred. Precious. Home."
In every moment,
the search ends
exactly where it began.
Everything changed,
nothing changes.
Did anything happen at all?
Was she already Home?
- Jeff Foster

Gift by Rabindranath Tagore (A favourite poem)

O my love, what gift of mine
Shall I give you this dawn?
A morning song?
But morning does not last long—
The heat of the sun
Wilts like a flower
And songs that tire
Are done.

O friend, when you come to my gate.
At dusk
What is it you ask?
What shall I bring you?
A light?

A lamp from a secret corner of my silent house?
But will you want to take it with you
Down the crowded street?
Alas,
The wind will blow it out.

Whatever gifts are in my power to give you,
Be they flowers,
Be they gems for your neck
How can they please you
If in time they must surely wither,
Crack,
Lose lustre?
All that my hands can place in yours
Will slip through your fingers
And fall forgotten to the dust
To turn into dust.

Rather,
When you have leisure,
Wander idly through my garden in spring
And let an unknown, hidden flower’s scent startle you
Into sudden wondering—
Let that displaced moment
Be my gift.
Or if, as you peer your way down a shady avenue,
Suddenly, spilled
From the thick gathered tresses of evening
A single shivering fleck of sunset-light stops you,
Turns your daydreams to gold,
Let that light be an innocent
Gift.

Truest treasure is fleeting;
It sparkles for a moment, then goes.
It does not tell its name; its tune
Stops us in our tracks, its dance disappears
At the toss of an anklet
I know no way to it—
No hand, nor word can reach it.
Friend, whatever you take of it,
On your own,
Without asking, without knowing, let that
Be yours.
Anything I can give you is trifling—
Be it a flower, or a song.

Excerpt from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

My favourite Urdu couplet

Raat yun dil mein teri, khoyi hui yaad aayi
Jaise viraane mein chupke se bahaar aa jaye
Jaise sahraon mein haule se chale baad-ae-naseem
Jaise bimaar ko be-wajaah quraar aa jaaye

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

F & B

Rain, mists and clouds
Beauty and her beloved
Walking down a narrow path
Treacherous but safe,
In the hands of her lover- Faith