ANSHAM FOR ME

It’s funny but I have this feeling that talking about love gives us the experience of a coveted, yet elusive, state that resides somewhere off yonder, way far from my reach.

 

Words are peculiar instruments that once probed too much, lack the meaning we attach to them. It’s like talking about GOD or ENLIGHTMENT – these words only serve as pointers to an experience that is never conclusive or authoritative. Many of us have played with words by repeating a word so many times that soon we can no longer feel the connection between the real experience and the word it describes.

Such is the illusion of language as a distinct and arbitrary object, and as an abstract entity communicating ideas; it often creates a rift between these two independent worlds.

 

LOVE, in my experience, is the principle of creation, the whole creative energy encompassing all human experience. It is the kind of energy that transforms and melts any other energy into positive possibilities – possibilities of creation, possibilities of change.

 

Feeling LOVE is being willing to be open to accept all incongruities, contradictions and disparities in our emotional landscape. It is being able to embrace fear, anger, sadness, confusion, despair, joy, compassion and pleasure as vital occurrences in our lives. Embracing the vast range of feelings and emotions is the key to allowing the energy of LOVE to manifest in all its healing power.

 

To me, LOVE is not some obscure or far-fetched phenomenon granted to a few privileged beings. It is our very existence at every moment. It is joy and compassion, but also anger, fear and pain. It is the range of emotions and my relation to them. If I deny or ignore my fears and confusion, how am I going to be able to have a glimpse of understanding into the universe of another being? If LIFE is about change, what would be “that” which is intrinsic to life and undergoes any process of change, but remains unchanged? 

 

It seems to me that I must first accept myself unconditionally in order to experience LOVE in all its unexpected forms. It is never through limiting and constricting, but rather through openness and expansion.

 

The mind is a very tricky organism. It can easily make us prisoners of fixed ideas and lofty moral standards we defend at any cost. We soon forget that LIFE happens independently of our concepts and our attempts to fit it in some magic formula that can be administered to everyone. That is why judging a given reality, someone’s behavior, opinions or beliefs will invariably lead us to a distorted construction of the complex experience of the manifestation of life. The mind is never impartial, and obeys to individual acquired schemes that categorize a foreign or unknown event or reality according to its epistemological history.

 

I firmly agree with the idea that there are as many realities as there are thinking minds. Nothing is absolute or conclusive; therefore we should always be open to a positive pluralism of interpretation when faced with the mosaic of life’s experiences and expressions.

 

The human experience is about relationship.

 

The minute we are conceived we are involved in some kind of relationship. As we move through life we go through a series of relationships: relationship to our family, environment, objects, work, food, etc. It is also part of our process to undergo different levels of conditioning. Our behavior, attitude, beliefs are all conditioned by an infinite array of external elements that impose themselves on us through social institutions such as education, religion and family. As we think about all this, we start to realize that freedom is actually a far cry from our inner urge to rebel. Freedom will slowly be revealed as the responsibility to understand the entanglements we are subjected to and the ways to unravel the spirit  in our quest to discover our self. We yearn for union and the collapse of the ego, but it is through our individual differences that we will attain this goal. It is like looking at a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, and seeing that each piece will contain the vision of the whole.

 

In a romantic relationship we often lose touch with the core of who we are, melting, therefore, into the universe of the other, then we flail our arms and struggle for fear of losing the identities we’ve created for ourselves. Since losing an identity is a form of death, dying is imperative to renewal and growth.

 

Many times, I have a feeling I know nothing about LOVE, and, then, I feel its power all around. It is volatile and yet its energy lingers in the air we breathe.

 

When in doubt, I close my eyes and surrender to its music, trusting, that, somehow, my body will create its own dance.