"The Future of Love" - Finding Love Part 3

“If you cannot directly face your sexuality, you will never discover your true spirituality.” - From the Taoist text “The Bamboo Immortal” c.1748.*

The river of Life has, and is, creating a torrent of change in my own personal universe. Since publishing Part 2 of “Finding Love – The Purpose of Attraction” on July 14th, I had originally titled the third part of this series as “Sexual Healing, Eros and Heart Therapy”. But now I’m having a laugh…for Life does intrude when you’re making other plans. Obviously the times have changed since mid-July, and so has the title. I too have changed, and so have my personal circumstances. Nonetheless, the way is clearer within and without to bring this particular series of articles to a close.

We all are looking for love and a sense of belonging and security, and so seldom do we find it. Or when we think we’ve found it, something always seems to be missing or it all goes awry. We are now being exhorted almost daily to love ourselves instead of looking outside for fulfilment or happiness in our relationships. “If only I were more spiritually-minded, and more self-sufficient, or loved myself more, I would be happier…”, or so the spiel goes.

The very innate human desire and longing for meaningful connection with not only other humans, but also with non-human life and the wider Universe is at the core of our souls and awareness. We are inherently capable of behaving in a kindly and loving way, so why is happiness and the experience of love that we know we should experience seem so elusive?

To deeply surrender to Love that occurs in a seemingly serendipitous way requires a certain degree of ego death and a temporary relinquishing of our usually strong sense of self-identification, and that can cause big problems. Fear enters the picture. Projection replaces perception, and whoever has the most ‘self’ to lose will tend to retreat hastily back into the safety of the familiar. A dear friend and professional therapist describes this place as the abode of “comfortable uncomfortableness”.  Then, when the coast is clear, these souls will come out of their shell and gradually wonder what it was that may have happened, followed by a sense of grieving or relief. Usually, the searching for ‘it’ starts all over at some point in the future.

Now this is an oversimplification of the nature of Love, and I don’t mean to imply that all encounters with Love that have a capital “L” are predicated on meeting one’s soul mate or twin soul. However, this notion cannot be dismissed entirely and nor should it be held up as the only way that any human being can come in contact with Love or Eros as part of The Mystery.

Indeed, many have touched the face of Love, or shall I say been touched by it, during some of the most ordinary moments one could imagine. Moments in Nature or just staring at the stars in the night sky can evoke a sense of awe that is a prerequisite for entering into the sublime state that the Mystery of Love offers. We all long for that which will take us out of our small selves, and expand us into something greater than our sense of “I”, and we do sometimes desire it to be a shared experience with another human being. This is where real poetry comes from. And the “Other” in song, prose and poetry is just another “you” after all. Though some may view the human fascination and need for deep bonding as co-dependent, I prefer to recognize in it the core of interdependence that underscores and validates the very web of Life.

 “The Sin of Original Guilt”

I coined the above term for a chapter in my book “What Really Matters: A Guide for Spiritual Awakening” in 2007. It means something different to me now, as I’ve been shedding many belief systems over the past year. A good example of this turn of phrase is covered in Wilhelm Reich’s book “The Function of the Orgasm”, which wasn’t just about the potential for human beings to realize and accept their sexuality and capacity for pleasure. It was a vivid and impassioned condemnation of salvation-based religions and the patriarchal notions that gave birth to it. He equates the deliberate suppression of our sensuality as the main cause for the rise and existence of fascist tendencies and movements. To believe, even in the slightest, that we were ‘born into sin’ is to make a grave error that ends only in paroxysms of shame and guilt. We feel like victims of circumstance, which is not a very healthy state of affairs. Even worse, we then find that we are now separate from our own natures and Nature itself.

As a species, we seem to have inherited a manipulative program, a deception that colours how we perceive ourselves and our relationship to love, to each other, and to the Life Force itself. Think about it; if you have to be ‘commanded’ to love, as we are told in Christianity, then why? When you love someone or something, you are just responding to what love is and does. You don’t need commandments, or threats of punishment, in order to make you a good and loving person. So, the trick of shame and guilt that has been handed down to us for over seventy generations has done immense damage, to our psyches, to other humans and life forms, and it is now this distortion threatens the very biosphere itself. So, how do we heal ourselves…how do we end the suffering, depression, violence and confusion?

“Return to the Garden”

“Religion protects man, so long as its foundations are not revealed.” - Rene Girard, “Violence and the Sacred”

A major part of our growth will be to learn what it means to love ourselves. That cannot happen if we still are invested in the false story of humanity, about its so-called “Fall” and it’s Redemption through some non-human extra-terrestrial means. We must reforge our connection to the planetary sentience of Gaia, through Nature, and refute the doctrine of the victim-perpetrator bond that is at the core of redeemer-based religions. Our sexual and spiritual healing must come from more than immersion in Tantric practices, techniques and philosophies, as these are still human inventions that arose out of a culture steeped in patriarchy-based spirituality, and which carries the seed of the belief that we must transcend the flesh in order to realize our inherent divinity. The body is the Soul, expressed.

In terms of so-called ‘modern’ or contemporary spirituality, there have been some recent but minute shifts away from transcendental philosophies that regard Nature, the physical body and material world as impediments to self-realization and holistic living. The New Age, with its obsession on ascension and merging into some elevated super-human state of mastery, misses the mark entirely. The Anthropos, the genomic core of human identity, is already divine, already connected to the divine spark that is both Goddess and Earth-based. It is already in harmony with the benign and generous Originator that dreams and emerges through all that exists.  

Upon closer examination, non-dualism is another strategy…a lofty view that holds material reality as inferior and illusory. It is the mirror image of another aberrant belief...split-source duality, the belief that evil and good can come from the same Source.

It is interesting to note that the original meaning of ‘Maya’ is not illusion. It is the appearance of illusion. Bump your head and you will feel it! And the more you try for stillness, the more you will encounter the Life Force…in constant and passion-filled motion. Underneath the quietest landscape the telluric currents of Life are swirling. We can become still to observe it, but we cannot and should not endeavour to distance ourselves from it. This is one of our core errors, the religion of self-reflection, which has been useful, but which we now need a bit less of if we are going to discover our true natures. The world needs less mindfulness and more soulfulness.

“The Future of Love”

What I can recommend to you, the Reader, is to start where you are and look objectively at all of your belief systems, sacred cows and cherished pets. Are they really your core structures? Do they feel liberating or stifling? Can you change them, and if so, what would you change to? Ask yourself, really honestly, what your role might be in the repatriation of your humanity to its original intent. How would that look, feel, sound, feel or taste like? Where are you avoiding being embodied? Where do you retreat to when you feel ‘less than’ or shameful, and do you feel weak or inferior when you cannot deal with uncomfortable emotions or challenging people and situations? For your own sake, don’t feel like you have to be supermen or superwomen, and think you ought to be over this or that. Seek out help and counsel if necessary, as we are not designed to operate as closed systems of consciousness.

Love a lot…whatever that might be. Nurture and be nurtured. Fall in love, get and give cuddles, cook and enjoy food, dancing, sunrises, walks on the beach in bare feet, your sensuality…just connect with whomever or whatever and be fully present, fully engaged. To fall in love again and again is not an error. Only not learning and growing from your mistakes leads to error. The future of Love depends on our expression of it, both towards ourselves and outwardly towards others. In actuality, there is no ‘falling’ in love. What falls is our resistance to Love.

Love is always there for the finding, because it always seeks Itself. Soulmates are proof of that.  The Garden of Eden is a state of happiness. Happiness is possible to a heart that is open and believes. Gaia is awakening and wanting the best outcome possible for Her children, for all of us.  Yes, it will feel like work...hard work, at times. And yes, you will notice more happiness as you shed the skins and the veils fall from your eyes, and the emotional scars heal. Then the Garden will be seen…in all of its glory and sweetness, within and without.

I leave you with the lyrics of from this old song, and recommend you have a good dance along with it when you have a chance.

“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.” – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Woodstock)

In Love,
Isaac

Links:
Finding Love - Part 1
Finding Love - Part 2: "The Purpose of Attraction"

Isaac offers spiritual counseling sessions worldwide via Skype and is available in person in Cork City and West Cork, Ireland.

To make an appointment contact Isaac via email: archariel@hotmail.com, or call in Ireland: 00353 (0)870 978204. In the United Kingdom call: 0044 (0)7875 123406.

www.isaacgeorge.com

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