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Love is the order of the universe and we are its
atoms.
It is the ocean and we are its drops…
Through love the heavens are brilliant;
Without love even suns and moons are eclipsed
Wherever and whenever people meet, it is never long before love and
relationships – their problems and confusions, their bliss and beauty - is
discussed.
Love is as essential to us as air; a force that drives us all. It determines
who we are, who we become, what we can achieve and, through this, how the
world will evolve. It may even determine how long we live. Policy advisors
to government now claim that the single strongest predictor of whether an
individual will be alive in 10 years time is his answer now to the question:
“Does somebody love you?”
Psychologists have found links between love and self-esteem, mental,
emotional, and physical well-being, and freedom from stress and anxiety. By
sad contrast, those working with Romanian orphans have also found that
children who are denied love can develop a “virtual black hole” where the
emotional centres of their brains should be. Because of this, they can never
grow up to be “fully human”.
Studies like these show us the importance of love. And yet, so many
questions remain unanswered. How many of us can say, for example, what love
really is, or how to find it, nurture it, and learn from it so it can feed
and enrich our souls? How do we make our relationships work so that they –
and we - are healthy, happy, and whole?
These are questions which scientists cannot answer. For that we need a
Master who can teach us love’s simple truths and guide us onto the path of
the heart.
RUMI: THE MASTER OF LOVE’S SIMPLE TRUTHS This year marks the 800th
anniversary of one such Master. Sufi mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi was born on
September 29 1207 in Eastern Persia. As a child he gained a reputation as a
gifted spiritual teacher, and went on to establish the Sufi order of
whirling dervishes known as The Path of the Master.
During his life Rumi composed thousands of verses of mystical love poetry,
the messages of which concern the notion of tahweed (unity), where, through
love itself, we become one with “the Beloved”: the divine spirit of love
within all of us. For Rumi, we are all divine and there is no problem we can
face which does not have a solution, no question we can ask which does not
have an answer, as long as we remember who and what we are. What, after all,
is impossible to God? And the essence of God is love.
To love well, therefore, may be our most important task as spiritual human
beings, because only by this can we overcome our difficulties and
distractions, and reconnect with our true selves. Through love we can make
miracles.
To find love, however, we must surrender to love, knowing that our partners
are reflections of ourselves and that we are both capable of the deepest,
most soulful, and intoxicating of loves – if we choose to see things this
way. But let us start at the beginning…
WHAT IS LOVE ANYWAY?
The word ‘love’ is nowadays poorly defined. It stands for so much yet can
mean so little. Other ages and cultures were clearer, suggesting that they
were more thoughtful about and respectful of it. The ancient Greeks, for
example, had many different words for love, describing its various forms and
how each feels, including eros (sensuality and passion), philo (the love
between friends), and agape (the love of God, or, more generally, the
kindness and compassion we show to all people when we recognise them as
divine and special beings, just like us).
For Rumi, any (and all) of these forms of love is a gateway through which we
can step to meet God. When we are loving and loved by another, our
perceptions change and things become brighter, clearer, and more meaningful.
We see the world as it really is: alive, intelligent, and benign. Even a
gesture from our lovers can leave us swooning in sacred meaning. We wake up
to the world and, through this awakening, we realise that everyone and all
things are part of a single consciousness: We are One - and, more remarkable
still: We are all God.
The problem for modern relationships is the pace of life. We do not have
time to reflect on love, to experience it fully, or even to be in the
company of our lovers as much as we would like. We are always wanted
somewhere else. On top of this, in the modern age, we are all consumers and
consumed. As consumers of a fast-food lifestyle, we have grown to expect
instant answers and gratification; to simply be ‘in love’ and our lovers to
feel the same.
Love’s confusions arise from this because love, despite the spin which makes
it look so easy, is never really that simple. It requires that we look more
deeply at ourselves and our lovers, who have been gifted to us by God for
our mutual spiritual advancement, and not approach them just with
expectations to be met.
If we accept love in this way, we will learn from it and grow; if we have
demands and expectations, however, we will be disappointed and experience
rejection and hurt when love does not go our way. These feelings click into
our deepest wounds and lead to defensiveness and conflict – the opposite of
love in any form.
To avoid this, we must be clear on what ‘love’ means to us, because when we
know what we want there is less room for misunderstanding. We must also be
willing to explore and release our feelings of rejection if and when they
arise. By doing so, we free ourselves from hurt so that in future – and in
Rumi’s words – we “Do not revisit the past” because “This fleeting moment
must not be wasted”.
HOW CAN WE BE MORE LOVING?
Intimate relationships are our universities of the heart. In them we will
find challenges and blessings, ecstasy and sorrows, and come to realise that
our lovers are our mirrors and we are reflected in their eyes. If there is
conflict in our relationships it is because we ourselves are in conflict; if
there is joy and fulfilment it is because we have found peace within
ourselves.
Love seeks balance, stability, and a subtle deepening. For it to evolve in a
positive way, it is not necessary, therefore, to force things in our
relationships or to worry that we are not doing enough or being as loving as
we could; it is only necessary, as a first step, to Do No Harm. This is the
first principle of love and Rumi urges us to use it to find our equilibrium:
If you are like the wind: sometimes hot, sometimes cold, Find the place
within you where heat and cold are no more
Then love can evolve naturally towards its perfection.
In Sufi tradition, life is a mystery and we cannot know its secrets, but
there is a logic to the universe beyond our understanding and things are
unfolding as they should to help us learn, heal, and to love. We are all as
perfect as we can be in this special moment.
The relationship you have now, therefore, is perfect for who you are at this
given time because you still have more to learn from it. But that doesn’t
mean that you or your lover cannot become more perfect still! Each passing
second brings change, the possibility of healing, new insights, and new ways
of being. Perfection is not an absolute, but a process of evolution. “In
aiming for perfection”, Rumi reminds us, “it is God that we become”. As we
become more loving, we attract more love to us.
Every relationship – even the most unsatisfactory – is part of this
evolutionary process, giving us the opportunity to practice our love, to
open our hearts, and create perfection in the moment. If we are wise to love
we will learn from it and this will allow us to better understand ourselves
and move forward.
To do so, we need to look at ourselves, at what motivates us or holds us
back, and at where we must place more of our attention so we are balanced
and whole. When we are perfect beings, perfection cannot help but flow
towards us. Rumi’s advice, then, is simple:
Keep company with Saints
And you will become a Saint!
AND WHEN PERFECTION SEEMS HARD TO COME BY?
It is difficult, when our hearts are broken or we are sad at the world, to
feel that such perfection exists or can be found, or that we can trust
enough to give ourselves completely to another. It is our challenge to do
so. We must be the “Spiritual Warriors” Rumi implores us to become, and not
give in to despair at our ‘failures’, for they are opportunities, too, for
learning and growth.
Come, come, whoever you are!
Wanderer, idolater, worshipper of fire,
Come even though you have been broken a hundred times!
Come, and come again,
Ours is not a caravan of despair!
Relationships work because of openness, vulnerability, and a desire to love,
no matter what. When we approach our lovers with a bitter heart or with
sadness and fear in our souls, that is what we bring to them and what our
relationship becomes: “I have run to you because I am afraid of myself.
Please don’t give me back to myself!”
No relationship can ‘save’ us from the problems we bring to it. Instead, it
will magnify them so we see what needs to be healed and are given an
opportunity to do so. If we find it hard to give love, for example, then it
will be equally hard for love to find us, and this will be central to every
relationship we have until we decide to heal it. Our relationships reveal
these truths and this is our lover’s gift.
It is clinging to hope and expectations – the ‘what could have beens’ – that
cause us pain when we absorb ourselves with relationships that have failed.
When we learn from them and let go, however, our pain is released and we can
greet new lovers with wisdom, dignity, and respect for ourselves and for
them.
There is a simple law of the universe that embraces us in times of sorrow:
Love seeks balance, and our pain now is equal in measure to the joy that
will come. Trust that it will and allow yourself to be blessed for, as the
Master of Love remind us, “Peace always keeps company with troubles”.
The important thing, then, is to know the unresolved issues in our hearts.
In this we find freedom, not shame. By understanding our pains and fears we
and our lovers can find creative solutions so that love can flow once more.
Knowing our answers, we can navigate our relationships so that, one step at
a time, we give more of ourselves and open our hearts to love.
The person we are learning to love is always ourselves. When we understand
this, our lover becomes our ally in helping us reconnect with our souls so
that what is hidden becomes visible to us.
The mirror of my soul is your face, my love; You reflect my perfect being
WHAT, THEN, ARE OUR BLOCKS TO LOVE?
There is a conflict within all human beings between what our souls know to
be true and what we are taught is true. What every newborn child knows in
his bliss-state of being is the reality of love; what he is taught by life
is to fear. We will all have far more training in the latter than in how to
love and to recognise it in others! Through our conditioning, we become
experts in withholding trust.
Fear closes us down and, since the world we create is the one we perceive,
once we shut ourselves off from love, fear is all we know because it is all
we see. To change this we must be courageous in love so that, through our
example, those around us can also wake up to the truth. By acting from love
- no matter what - we create a more loving world, free of the limitations we
have known.
“Leap into the fires of love”, writes Rumi.
When you know ecstasy
You cannot live without the flames
We must embrace love and allow it to flow – fearlessly, passionately,
uncompromisingly – as the route to freedom for our souls. The path of the
heart is one we must walk now.
The time for staying home is over.
It is time we entered the garden,
For the sun has risen on a new day of happiness:
Our day of vision and unity
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