The ultimate love is heiros-gamos, a Greek term used by poets, Jungians and mythologists referring to spiritual communion, the marriage of the masculine and feminine parts of our being. It is the Holy Grail when the land (woman) and the king (man) are one. When this union occurs, we reconnect with the Divine and our hearts open in lovingkindness for all beings.
There are many different kinds of love but all stem from the love of the Divine from us, between us and to us. This love can be expressed as spiritual, religious, mystical, platonic, paternal, maternal, sexual- the list is endless. Love inspires the bravest poets and the saddest souls. It comes gently or tornadically and the ecstasy it unleashes burns and scorches leaving scars of passion and growth. Most of all, love is necessary in order for all creatures to survive. It changes lives and brings forth sublime music from the soul.
Abanaki Song
Now you will feel no cold,
Now there is no loneliness for you;
Now you are two bodies,
Go now to your dwelling place,
And may your days be good
The more love that it finds, the more it gives
And the more souls who resonate together,
And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly understandning, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who showed it to me? Love. What showed He me? Love. Wherefore showed it He? For Love...In our making we had beginnings; but love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.
- Revelations of Divine Love
Quatrain 9
The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful
Kabir says: Fantastic! Don't let a chance like this go by!
Love keeps watch and is never unaware, even when it sleeps; tired, it is never exhausted; hindered, it is never defeated; alarmed, it is never afraid; but like a living flame and a burning torch it bursts upward and blazes forth.
Love is quick, sincere, dutiful, joyous, and pleasant; brave, patient, faithful, prudent, serene, and vigorous; and it never seeks itself. For whenever we seek ourselves, we fall away from Love. Love is watchful, humble and upright; not weak, or frivolous, or directed toward vain things; temperate, pure, steady, calm, and alert in all the senses. Love is devoted and thankful to God, always trusting and hoping in him, even when it doesn't taste his sweetness, for without pain no one can live in love.
Wake up! flowers of the forest, sky-climbing birds of the prairie.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
but this, in which there is no I or you,
When it's cold and raining,
And the snow brings me
The Inner Secret, that which was never born,
I can't explain the goings,
and I am nowhere again.
Quatrain 1246
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
Someone Digging in the Ground
Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
A lover is always accused of something.
This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,
You and I
- from trans. Arthur Waley. In the country of Yueh, when two people became friends they set up an alter of earth, made sacrifices on it and recited this oath.
Come, my beloved, let us go up the shining mountain, and sit together;
we will watch the sun go down in beauty from that shining place.
We will sit there till the Night Traveler rises in beauty above the shining
mountain; we will watch him as he climbs to the skies.
We will watch also the little stars following their chief.
We will watch the northern lights playing their game of ball in their
cold, glistening country.
We will sit there on the beautiful mountain while the thunder beats his drum.
We will see the flashes from the lit pipe of the lightning.
We will see the great whirlwind race with the squall.
We will sit there until all creatures drowse.
There we will hear the great owl sing his usual song: "Go to sleep, go to sleep,"
and see all animals obey his call.
We will sit there in beauty on the mountain, and watch the small stars in their sleepless flight.
They do not mind the song "Go to sleepÂ’; we will not mind it either,
but sit more closely together, and think of nothing but ourselves
on the beautiful mountain.
Again it will be heard: "Go to sleep, go to sleep," and the Night Traveler will come closer to warn us that everything is sleeping except ourselves and the little stars.
They and their chief are coursing along, and our minds go with them.
Then the owl sleeps; and his call to sleep sleeps; and the lightnings flash from a long way off; the great pipe is going out; and the thunder ceases to beat his drum; and though our bodies urge us to sleep, we sit in beauty, very still, upon the shining mountain.
- trans. John Reade, adapted by Robert Hass
Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be a shelter to the other.
for each of you will be warmth to the other.
now there is no more loneliness.
but there is only one life before you.
to enter into your days together.f
and long upon the earth.
The love of God, unutterable and perfect,
flows into a pure soul the way that light
rushes into a transparent object.
itself; so that, as we grow clear and open,
the more complete the joy of heaven is.
the greater the intensity of their love,
and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.
True prayer must come from love. We need to be able to relax into this
love and trust in its natural flow. We need to realize that love is the cause of
all creation, and love will flow where it is needed when we ourselves have
surrendered to it.
That was just the magic that had happened to him during
his sleep and the Om in him-he loved everything, he was full
of joyous love towards everything that he saw. And it seemed
to him that was just why he was previously so ill-because he
could love nothing and nobody...
...Currently, and especially in tough interpersonal situations, I invite Love itself to guide me. Without exception the path paved by Love has brought unexpected depth of understanding, reconciliation, and peace. My only explanation is that inherent in the sincerity of my invitation is the spontaneous surrender of my ego agenda and the simultaneous opening of my heart to a higher good. My triggers, hooks and attachments automatically shift to neutral, making room for compassion and patience while firm boundaries prevent the slide into martyrdom. I can only speak about what happens to me. It is an ongoing mystery of Divine alchemy and another encouraging demonstration of the application and implication of free will. Close friends who I shared this approach with and who have also tried it note the same improbable positive results...
For as verily as we shall be in the bliss of God without end, Him praising and thanking, so verily we have been in the foresight of God, loved and known in His endless purpose from without beginning. In which unbegun love He made us: and in the same love He keepeth us and never suffereth us to be hurt (in manner) by which our bliss might be lost...
Quatrain 27
It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they
swing between the arms of the Secret One you love,
Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your
eyes,
and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of
night.
Bring your face up close to his ear,
and then talk only about what you want deeply to
happen.
Kabir says: Listen to me, brother, bring the shape,
face, and odor of the Holy One inside you.
Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates; the new
love opens them.
woman asleep.
The Imitation of Christ
Love is a great thing, a great good in every way; it alone lightens what is heavy, and leads smoothly over all roughness. For it carries a burden without being burdened, and makes every bitter thing sweet and tasty. Love wants to be lifted up, not held back by anything low. Love wants to be free, and far from all worldly desires, so that its inner vision may not be dimmed and good fortune bind it or misfortune cast it down. Nothing is sweeter than love; nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider; nothing happier, nothing fuller, nothing better in heaven and earth; for love is born of God...
- trans. Stephen Mitchell
Speech destroys the functions of love, I think- that's a hell of a thing for a writer
to say, but I believe it to be true. If you speak to tell a deer that you mean it no harm
it glides away with a single flip of its tail. The word is the harm...Love has teeth, they bite, the wounds never close. No words, no combination of words can close those lovebites. It's the other way around, that's the joke. If the wounds dry up, the words die with them.
- from The Body, a short story in the novel Different Seasons
Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings-
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all the strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.
- trans. by Jane Hirshfield
Calling-One's-Own
Wake up! Wake up! surprising fawn-eyed one.
When you look upon me I am filled up, like flowers that drink the dew.
The breath of your mouth is the fragrance of flowers in the morning.
Your breath is their fragrance at evening in the moon-of-the-fading-
leaves
The red streams in my veins flow toward you
As the forest streams to the sun in the moon-of-bright-nights.
When you are beside me my heart sings; it is a branch, dancing.
Dancing before the wind-spirit in the moon-when-the-strawberries-
ripen
When you frown upon me, beloved, my heart grows dark-
A shining river the cloud shadows darken,
And then when you smile comes the sun and makes look like gold
The furrows the cold wind draws on the water's face.
Myself! Behold me! blood of my beating heart.
The earth smiles- the waters smile- even the sky of clouds smiles-
but I,
I lose the way of smiling when you are not near.
Wake up! Wake up! my beloved.
-trans. Charles Fenno Thompson
I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way simply because I don't know any other way of loving
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
- trans. Stephen Mitchell
This marriage be wine with halvah, honey dissolving in milk.
This marriage be the leaves and fruit of a date tree.
This marraige be women laughing together for days on end.
This marriage, a sign for us to study.
This marriage, beauty.
This marriage, a moon in a light-blue sky.
This marriage, this silence fully mixed with spirit.
- Written for his son's wedding, trans. by Coleman Barks with A.J. Arberry
You are more beautiful.
even closer to Your Lips.
You are That Freshness, and I am with You now.
or the comings. You enter suddenly,
Inside the majesty.
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
They're in each other all along.
An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Legs: To run after.
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.
But when he finds love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
On the way to Mecca, many dangers: Thieves,
the blowing sand, only camel's milk to drink.
Still, each pilgrim kisses the black stone there
with pure longing, feeling in the surface
the taste of the lips he wants.
while the real work is done outside
by someone digging in the ground.
Married Love
Have so much love
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one bed.
- trans. Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung
I want to be your friend
for ever and ever.
When the hills are all flat
and the rivers are all dry,
when the trees blossom in winter
and the snow falls in summer,
when heaven and earth mix-
not till then will I part from you.
Resources for further thought