I Just Called To Say I Love You

Reflections on the Multiple Meanings of Love
a new article by Andrew Cohen

One of the things I like about Andrew Cohen is that his spiritual teachings celebrate the union and subtle interplay of absolute and relative truth, and at the same time honor our unique ability as humans to integrate and manifest these apparently opposing views.  As some of you know, I am a huge fan of the relative world, the vibrant world of objects and people, where stuff is real and where what you do or don't do matters.  At the same time I deeply appreciate that everything that appears in my consciousness - including consciousness itself - everything that gives my life joy, meaning and purpose - everything that I love - arises within that absolute space of emptiness, awareness and luminosity.

But what about love?  How can we as humans embody and express love in all its dimensions - absolute, relative and beyond?  Well, you'll have to read the article to see what Andrew Cohen has to say about that, but here are some highlightss...

One fundamental distinction that I have found helpful for navigating this challenging territory is this: some forms of love are relative, and others are not. Spiritual love, for example, is non-relative, impersonal, and absolute. It is permanent, unwavering, and always vibrates with the infinite. Love that is relative or non-absolute is impermanent and changing; it is always connected to that which is personal or unique to the individual and his or her culture.

In order to understand what love really is, we need to be able to place its various forms and expressions within a hierarchy of values. Spiritual love, the nature of which is non-relative or absolute, is at the top of the hierarchy. Non-spiritual love, the nature of which is always relative (no matter how powerful the emotional experience of it may be), always comes second in this hierarchy. And within that category, some forms of non-spiritual or relative love have greater value or importance than others. For example, my love of my wife obviously has greater value than my love of my little Yorkshire Terrier; my love of music has greater value than my love for corn on the cob; and so on. These simple value distinctions are ones we can probably all agree on.

However, the larger distinction I am making, between relative and absolute love, is not always so easy to discern.

Cohen shares a fantastic account of his first spiritual awakening as a teenager, and a similar experience some years later after having met his guru.  I cannot possibly do justice to his description of those events, but those of you who take the time to read it may experience a profound shock of recognition...

How to describe the indescribable? For no apparent reason, the doors of perception opened wide and suddenly I lost any and all sense of boundaries. My experience of awareness grew and grew to such a profound degree that I quickly found myself drowning in an infinite ocean of love and bliss that seemed to be absolute in its nature. In it, I could see no beginning and no end. It was as if the entire universe and everything beyond it had awakened to itself in an instant, and my experience was of being not separate from the ground of that consciousness that was making it possible for me to behold the enormity of what I was bearing witness to. It was like the infinite nature of the creative process was already self-aware and I had suddenly woken up to that dimension of reality. In this higher state, the very center of that awareness expanded in all directions. The center was where I was and paradoxically it was also everywhere else at the very same time. There was awe and wonder at the majesty of the entire panoramic display that was physically overpowering

In that exalted state, it became clearer than clear that there never has been nor ever could be such a thing as death. There is only infinite becoming. And not only that, but it was obvious that there was absolutely nowhere that one could really go in space or time. That was because any place, anywhere, that one could conceive of going could always only be that same one place that one could never leave. We are all always in the very same place, no matter where we go or what we do. The most significant gift that this unexpected visitation from the unknown bestowed upon me was the clear and tangible recognition that there was a miraculous and seemingly self-conscious intelligence that is inherent in the entire process. The love and ecstasy that was surging through me felt like pain because it was just too much to bear. Under the weight of this kind of intensity, one feels like one is on the verge of dying.

Once we experience this absolute nature of spiritual love, Cohen adds, our understanding of what love is and what it means changes forever.  We no longer mistake that which is personal and relative and that which is absolute.  Having already spoken of distinctions within the realm of personal or relative love, he takes us on a journey back in time to reveal the source of absolute love...

Before the Big Bang, before the universe was born, there was no time and no space. Impersonal, absolute, always overwhelming love is the nature of that timeless, formless, unmanifest realm from whence we all came.

But as this unmanifest domain awakens to and experiences the friction of contact with the manifest world of time and space, that very friction causes the simultaneous arising of that love which is absolute. Absolute or non-relative love is the manifest expression of that infinite eternal ground as it encounters the world of form and time. This love is the experience of consciousness as it perceives the world of time and form from the perspective of its own eternal nature. This is what we, human beings, experience as the love of God. The experience of this love is beginningless, endless, and ever-new. Because of its infinite nature, it always transcends any notion of individuality, any feeling of uniqueness, or any separate sense of identity whatsoever. It is the perennial, mystical awakening to “One without a Second.” In that love without another, there is only THAT.

That's the part that leaves me breathless - for me what he is describing is that razor's edge, the vanishing point where the absolute and relative meet and come alive - where the infinite eternal ground meets the world of form and time.  But there's a lot more to come.  Cohen goes deeper into this love of God to reveal that God is not only at rest, God is also active...

If Being is the nature of God at rest, Becoming is the nature of God in action—God as Eros or the desire to exist in time and form. What is the defining quality of the absolute desire to exist? Urgency. Ecstatic urgency. The creator God is experienced by human beings as simultaneous ecstasy and urgency. Eros is the experience of that ecstatic urgency. When do we experience it? First and foremost, we experience it as the desire to procreate, the sexual impulse. But we also experience Eros in more profound and significant ways, at higher levels of our own being. Human beings are the only life form that is compelled by an inner impulse to innovate and give rise to that which is new.

The love of God that emanates directly from the Ground of Being is the source of what is commonly referred to as unconditional love. This love recognizes no differences and makes no distinctions. It is the spiritual wellspring of all true healing, both of individuals and also of the entire world. The love of God that is Eros, however, has a different quality. It only ever seeks to create and give rise to that which is new, at any cost. And the more we awaken to it, the more we experience its powerful demand to give wholeheartedly to the evolutionary process. It is a force of nature, a vertical impulse in consciousness that creates new ideas, new inventions, and new worlds. It perpetually gives rise to higher potentials. Our understanding of what absolute love is must always contain both dimensions of this ultimate paradox.

So again, dear readers, I am grateful to Andrew Cohen for being able to speak the unspeakable, to explain what cannot be explained, and to put it out there in a way that it goes straight and clear to my very being.  I know more clearly now what I have had inklings of before - that what I long for lies neither solely in the realm of the absolute nor solely in the relative world, but at that indescribable, ecstatic place where they meet - that place where this unmanifest domain awakens to and experiences the friction of contact with the manifest world of time and space.

Love is indeed a difficult thing to talk about... in the end, it is up to each and every one of us to heroically aspire to become a powerful expression of our own highest recognition of what love truly is.
~~~~
HERE is the whole article

~~~~
when I came back from where I'd been
my room, it looked the same
but there was nothing left between
the Nameless and the Name
all busy in the sunlight the flecks did float and dance
and I was tumbled up with them in formless circumstance
I'll try to say a little more
Love went on and on
until it reached an open door
then Love itself, Love itself was gone
- Leonard Cohen
~~~~