"Love is extolled by poets, tawdry and brilliant alike. For songwriters it’s a near ubiquitous theme. Scarcely a bestselling book or film lacks a love interest. Mystics avow that ‘God is Love.’ The Beatles sing ‘All you need is love.’ No doubt about it, love is a biggie." Thus begins the essay in BECOMING called Aligning with Love. But what does love even mean? How do we love? What about love and Love? These questions have beleaguered me, and there have been times when it has seemed as though I don't know love, or how to love. The essay continues:
"Sometimes it has felt as though there is a yawning hole where my heart should be, a hard knot in my chest, closed and defended. I have been alarmed at times, and saddened, at the occasions and ways I am shut down, numbed out and deadened, like a proverbial zombie. "Part of the confounding is that love has so many meanings, and is so hyped in our culture, if not lived. As I delved into my experience, it became clear that the love I wanted to know--explore, live, embody--was not romantic love, parental love, or the love of friend or even devotees. I'd call these forms of love, love writ with a small 'l'. They are important, beautiful, and have their place, in our hearts and the evolution of our species.
But there is a kind of Love that is deeper, beyond the personal, though it can manifest in a personal way. It's mysterious, universal, inside us but not only...poets like Rumi write about it,
mystics breathe it...spiritual traditions point to it...
Hear Teilhard de Chardin: "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides , and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire." Chardin is speaking of Love with a capital 'L'. What is this Love? How do we know it, be it, do it? Or can we? What happens when we live it, succumb to it, are enveloped by it?
Through a mutual friend, Suzanne Barois, (integrally involved with transformation and human potential through the Be the Change Earth Alliance), I have serendipitously come to connect with Anne Hillman. Her work speaks to these questions in a profound and universal way.
Anne was inspired, deeply and early on, by this quote of Chardin's, and her recent book Awakening to
the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time, is a rich, thoughtful treatise on these energies and their capacity for transformation. Awakening provides a context for the big questions, and moves us toward understanding, resolution, and a new level of consciousness and capacity for love. And it's high time! Anne says "We stand at an evolutionary juncture, called to awaken to a new kind of Love. This Love is not a feeling; it is a great power...The power of Love initiates a complete change of mind--the fundamental transformation..." that when we awaken to it, is indeed akin to the discovery of fire.
I invite you to hear the call, to explore the depths, to listen to the whisper that there is something deeper, grander, fuller in us, and we in it, than we experience in our daily lives. It's truly an Invitation to Awakening, which is the title of the first chapter in Anne's book, and the book itself.
Helen Keller wisely counsels that "the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."
If touching on these topics has ignited the fire in your heart, you might want to consider these
Questions for Relection: What is your relationship to Love, to the energy, to the flow, the power of it? Name some ways that you touch into Love in your life. What is your experience of yourself when you are loving? What assumptions and beliefs do you have about love and Love? How do they limit or expand your capacity to align with Love?
You may purchase BECOMING on line, or ask your local bookstore to order it. BECOMING can be a valuable therapeutic tool as well. Read a therapist's perspective on its numerous benefits. Another idea: the collections of essays makes a good option for your book or study group!
