Good is the union of all the opposites. Evil no longer exists. --Deepak Chopra, How to Know God.
Human Love is the physical expression, the simple intimations, and the outright utterance of what Love is. Through Human Love, a big hug, a sweet kiss, a word of affirmation spring from the depths of human heart, so Love can be shown in its common but deep manifestations. Divine Love, on the other hand, is the Soul of Love, its true, pure, and intangible nature that cannot be grasped by words and concepts, nor can be defined by physical actions and logical conclusions. Together, these two "kinds" of Love become one: the Sacred Union, the union of Divine and Human Love.
Robert A. Johnson, in his book, We: The Psychology of Romantic Love, tells us that this Sacred Union is comparable to the incarnation, like that of Christ, who is an incarnated God; the pure, Divine Love born in its human form. The Sacred Union shows that Divine and Human Love are different forms of the same essence, and both are in their incessant change of being and becoming. Whenever it is difficult to grasp what Love is, a loving touch makes Love truer. Yet a touch alone cannot express the infinite, intangible Love, unless Love alone is the sincere cause that makes physical touch possible.
Romantic Love is a form of Sacred Union, where Love bonds the lover and the beloved. This is beyond how Love is merely defined. Wonderful emotions spring from Romantic Love, but only if Romantic Love is realized. Love cannot be limited by our emotions. This is behind our failed concept of Love, where most of us think that for us to Love, we must have that wonderful feeling as a proof of our Love. Once it goes away, Love, too, is gone. This raises a question on how we understand Love: do we only Love based on our intense emotions? Emotions cannot sustain Love, for emotions are only impermanent expressions of the unchanging Love. Love can exist with or without emotion. But because we are human beings, emotions are indications of how Love expresses itself. That is why we feel Love rather than think of it. Discerning this Sacred Union entails a different kind of awareness, where we don't muddle up the emotion with the purest form of Love. Tapping to the true source of Love allows positive emotions and infinite possibilities to cascade, making our lives richer and more colorful.
If we continue to suffer in anxiety and loneliness, our negative emotions remind us that the Sacred Union is yet to happen, and it calls for our active participation. Being aware of the Love within us unites our Divine Love - our nature - and Human Love -our expression- to become one inseparable truth. This union is a potential source of energy, like positive and negative terminals of a battery, wherein all that is good, including positive emotions and material blessings, flows and inundates our lives.
The Sacred Union is comparable to a holy marriage, or what Carl Jung termed as hieros gamos. This is the union of all opposites. Opposites are not opposing. In fact, they are nondual. Like hot and cold, or hard and soft, they are all transformations of the same essential reality. A soft can also be hard or vice versa.
A man and a woman are opposites, yet they are not in war or in domination of each other. Their partnership is strengthened by the bond of conscious Loving. Man's masculine energies of action and physicality combined with the woman's feminine energies of passion and soulfulness forms a true identity of Oneness. This holy marriage becomes the evidence of Love, through the couples' commitment in living Love in their lives. Beyond the usual concept of rituals and legal rulings, the holy marriage takes place within the consciousness of both partners.
This is a continuous, never-ending process. Sacred Union is not a one-time event. Love between a man and a woman manifests in gestures of Romantic Love, when Divine/Human Love is experienced. It is a continuous choice, to choose Love moment to moment of existence. This is the Rhythm of Love that gives music to strong bonds and relationships. When a partner fails to be conscious of Divine Love, an act of Human Love reminds again. When a partner fails to show Human Love, the feeling and memory of Love empowers more.
Romantic Love, therefore, leads us to an insight: that Love is beyond romantic emotions and sentiments, techniques and how-to's, cultural concepts and the like. Romantic Love is the Sacred Union of the deepest understanding of Divine Love, and its own tangible expression as Human Love. There will be no more confusion between being human or divine, for in the Sacred Union, all opposites are equal. A man and a woman achieve this great union, by the virtue of Love's utmost truth, giving birth to the Soul of Love through their lasting presence. Love is both human and divine within them, and they bring greatness to the true nature of Love.
Romance is the key to Love because it opens lovers to appreciate all the miracles of Love in a different manner. It brings people to the understanding of Oneness, a powerful connection that never before experienced in the world of separateness. In each others' arms, lovers find the meaning of life, and they begin to value the manifestation of things unseen. What used to be an abstract, like the reality of the Soul, becomes palpable in the presence of the object of affection. A beloved becomes the Soul of the lover, and his or her presence transforms subtle truths of joy and peace into the reality of physical intimacy.
This truth is lasting, as far as the awareness of Love exists in the consciousness of lovers. Every physical act is an act of Romance, such as the rituals of giving flowers and gifts; of kissing, cuddling, and intimate bonding; of songs, poems, movies, photos, paintings, and letters; these are all symbols and statements that celebrate Romance. Romance is as important as the flow of consciousness, the unconditioned and unseen reality of Love. Love is often the definition of Romance, but to see Romance as the physical form of Love is another story. With Romance, every positivity and goodness wells up because they are Love's way of becoming physical. Love remains nebulous in the realm of our consciousness without Romance as its expression between the lover and the beloved.
The main symptom of relationship failures is the thought that expression of Romance is enough to prove that Love exists. Our society's romantic culture limits our understanding of Love, and we have accepted that for us to experience Love, we must be in a romantic situation, or else we would remain lonely and deprived. So we are in search of a romantic partner, of a soul mate that we believe will fill our empty lives. We believe that falling in Love breaks the curse of loneliness we feel. The lover we will find is our savior, a hero that will bring us out of the pain and suffering of being unloved. Eventually, we become disenchanted, for this hero could not serve our ideals of perfection. Thus, we end up bitter, swearing never to be fooled again by Love.
Despite our limited views on Love, Love can never be boxed in by our assumptions. True Love, though formless, remains unyielding and unchanging. This Love cannot be found outside, nor in any ideal partner. We can never demand Love from someone. Romance may help us to discern Love, but Romance can never equal what Love can give and become. Love transcend the boundaries of labels, for it exists not only in romantic context, but in many possibilities of human relationships and interconnections.
Love simply is the person we call ourselves. I am Love. You are Love. Our purpose is to discover how Lovable and Loving we are, without a lover's approval or acceptance. To discern that I am Love, a being that is worthy of my respect and acknowledgment, allows me to become the truth that I am. In this process, we stop finding the physical evidence of Love on anything or anyone. We begin to see that Love is as touchable as our whole being. I appreciate myself, and therefore I begin to see that I need no thing or person to make me happy, for I am happiness incarnated.
Our recognition of the power of Love in our awareness leads us to find another being who has done the same. We find another complete person, whose Soul has unfolded in understanding that he or she is Love. We never more try to be filled by the presence of another. We are now, in fact, resonant with that presence. This discovery results into Romantic Love. Two lovers who discover that they are complete, Souls filled with the Love they have found within themselves, begin to connect with each other through Romance. This sacred union becomes Romantic Love.
Our society is in search of the eternal Love. This search is not just taking place in our contemporary society, but it has been a distressing saga in all eras of human history. This search is a distressing need, which arises in different ways, basically in a desire to have a powerful, swift, magical change in all aspects of Life. If there is one easy way to find this elusive experience of Love, Romance is the most common answer. Romance allows us to become sacred and powerful, where we can harness the energy of creating possibilities. Our sense of limitation collapses, and where time and space becomes irrelevant. Falling in Love and spending time with someone empowers any person to become a lover of Life, breaking all the rules and boundaries of our physical existence. In other words, Romance brings us to a new definition of happiness.
Man's deepest need, according to Erich Fromm in his book The Art of Loving, is to overcome his separateness. Being separate or disconnected from anyone is perhaps the sole reason why the whole humanity is in trouble. Separateness exists in many forms, and apparently this is the symptom of all problems that plague us since the beginning of civilizations . So the need to connect and to belong is by far the only key to happiness that opens the door to eternal Love. Romance, more than a concept, has become the easiest way to meet the need to connect and be happy. And since the experience is a glimpse of eternal Love, Romantic Love is a universal fulfillment of how Love is realized.
An average man or woman thinks that with Romance life can be meaningful. When he/she falls in Love with a woman, he/she experiences the ecstasy of Love, where all joy, harmony and creativity naturally unfold. This indefinable Love is happening without much reasoning and explanation, and often escapes the logical assumptions of right and wrong. One could not anymore discern if his/actions toward loving is wrong, for every decision that comes from Love -Romantic Love, that is - is always right. In other words, it is natural for us to Love rather than to think, and often Romantic Love is the only common transformation of Love for a person who just begins to understand the purpose and meaning of life.
All romantic rituals aim to sustain the flow of Love's purest experience, whether it is physical intimacy or courtly manners. These are all coming out of a blend of human instinct and cultural conditioning. Dating, courtship, ans sex, as well as the undying desire to make long lasting relationships are all but romantic pathways where Love in its exclusive form can be expressed. Romance is an organic outgrowth of falling in Love, where anyone can positively behave, bearing all the sweetness and goodness that can be shared with a partner or spouse.
Romance plus Love becomes a "happy-ever-after" concept and experience, and its outcome, Romantic Love, diminishes the destructive negative outlook in life. We resurrect the fairy-tales in our lives, and look forward to perpetuating the happiness by refusing to see the evil of this world.
Though the aim is all to be well, Romance, as seen as Romantic Love, still fails to bring us genuine, unending Love that can change the whole world. Failure after failure, relationships between man and woman have become battleground of ego, and authentic happiness is an elusive dream. It brings more sufferings to the once ecstatic beginnings. Many couples end up separating and disillusioned, and could not anymore reconcile with the first realization of falling in Love.
As I said, Romance is the key, but it is not the door. The door is true Love. To fulfill the dreams of authentic Romantic Love, we must deeply understand what Love is, and how our concept of it inadvertently shapes our attitude towards happiness, success and fulfillment, and influences our consciousness of truth and Life.
Valentine's day is such a universal celebration. We have always associated it with Love and its twin concept Romance, which is also a common pleasurable experience. Combined together, we call them Romantic Love. Yet this pair has a mistaken identity. It's a double-edged sword. A profound truth of Romance and Romantic Love may lead us to deeper meaning of Love, if precisely understood. So we must look beyond how we understand Romance and Romantic Love, lest it would only bring us in a vicious cycle of unending suffering.
Like how we want to understand Love, we must be aware on how we define these concepts. Romance, Love and Romantic Love may mean the same, but they have slight distinct characteristics, so we must see them in a different angle. The three of them are a sacred trinity, a unity of ideal philosophy that underlies wonderful marital and romantic relationships. Like a tripod, each of them cannot stand on its own (except Love, which we will explore later). True Love supports the existence of the other two, which makes Romance and Romantic Love meaningful and lasting. Yet, without Love as a foundation, they are a house of cards that crumbles easily at the slightest agitation of life.
Romance and Romantic Love are both interchanged, but they are not interchangeable. Often, we have thought that both are synonymous to Love. It would be difficult for many of us to discern the difference, since we have learned to accept that Love is all about Romance, and there are other kinds of Love out there that can be categorized according to the people whom we give Love. But there is more to how we grasp it.
The common confusion is that Love can be categorized into different kinds. I have always shared my insight that if Love is something seen and touch like an object, it could be no less than water. Water is neither hard nor soft, invisible nor visible. Water becomes solid and gas depending on conditions. Water becomes ice in low temperatures, and vapor in high temperatures. It is powerful enough to flow and shatter and dissolve all solids. It has all the qualities of nonduality, a concept which most us have difficulty understanding. Nonduality means that we can never categorized things as opposing to each other, however they are opposites. To see things as nondual is to see that every thing is One, though they may seem to be different.
We can now see Love as we can see water. We cannot cut through water. We cannot cut through Love either. We can never divide it, the way we often divide and separate things -and people - from each other. Water takes the shape of the container. Love, in the same manner, takes the shape of relationships and situations. If the relationship is between a parent and a child, Love takes its shape, and becomes Parental Love. In a friendship, Love becomes Platonic Love. Between a patriot and his country and countrymen, Love becomes Patriotic Love. Among people, Love is Brotherly Love. And between a man and a woman, Love becomes Romantic Love.
Romantic Love, in simple terms, is not a categorization, but rather a transformation of Love. Since we cannot divide the concept and experience of Love, the natural laws of Love allow it to transform, like water, based on the need of the context, or the kind of relationship. All experiences of Love are present: joy, harmony, peace, abundance, freedom, gratitude, growth, kindness, etc. Transformation, in a sense, tells us that Love is a transformative experience. It encompasses all experiences and becomes a distinct, labeled experience depending on how it is perceived and expressed.
We often say we "fall in Love" with someone whenever we are attracted and inspired. Our society defines this as the door to Romantic Love. Yes, this is true, yet there is more. How we take Romantic Love is quite different from the truth that underlies it. Romantic Love is beyond attractiveness, sweet nothings, thrills of courtship, or painful and bittersweet encounters. Becoming clear on how we understand Love and Romantic Love, we can redefine our experience and rediscover that Love itself is much richer than the way we believe it is.
The vision of PATHFINDERS' COMMUNE(Latin: to be one with) is to bring back the awareness of Oneness through sharing, understanding, and experiencing our true human nature: LOVE. We are Communing, thus we are Loving.
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