Another of the great gifts of age is that perceptions—even cherished ones– can seemingly change in a flash. All the life experience, all the trial and error, all the observation and contemplation finally amounts to something. It is as if each of us has a spiritual Rosetta Stone: a touch-point that unlocks the key to freedom. For some, it’s acceptance. For others, it’s fulfillment. For me—for many of us—it’s love.
Although one can certainly touch the state I’m getting at through loving relationship, I’m thinking more of existential love: an ultimate destination from whence we come and to which we will return. I picture this as a vast field of love, both personal and transcendent: a place of unity with the universe in which your individual story recedes, and your heart breaks open with clarity and compassion for, well, everything.
I know that many of us have glimpses of the field of love, but most consider these transcendent moments to be treasured exceptions rather than the rule, as if the love and beauty of life is something scarce that comes and goes, and is, at best, a sneak preview of coming attractions. But what if the truth is that we never left the field of love that we envision as both preceding and awaiting us? What if it just feels like we pass the bulk of our days on less luminous terrain because for a number of logical, inevitable reasons, we’re blocked? Like standing in a field in the bright noon sun but with eclipse glasses on.
So what if the field of love is not something you left behind or are going towards? What if it’s not an exception but everywhere? All the time. Right here. If you were to take off your glasses, right now, you know what you’d see? All those folks who you wished wouldn’t have to be quite so bad are just a bunch of people standing around in the field with you, with their shades on.
You will only know your own glasses are off when you can look at the dysfunction all around you and simultaneously experience grief and compassion. And what’s this? You will recognize others scattered about whose glasses have already been tossed off, who have been waiting patiently for you.
The external world may not ever change its story line, but you are now free to cease preoccupying yourself with all the apparently unloving stuff that’s happened to you and to others, and see beyond your own compelling but tertiary story, as well. The mystics put it like this. Consider the possibility that spirituality is not just a way to alleviate the problem of being human with sporadic moments of transcendence. Rather, you are made of the very same stuff as the field of love, itself.
So that’s everything. The story of our lives and the truth of things. Not a matter to be defended, compared or exalted. Not just a place we’ve come from and are heading towards. Rather, we are here. We are now. And whether your glasses are on or off, distorted, thick or too dark to see through presently, everything you’ve always ever really wanted is standing by.
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