How can we love beyond common sense?

Love is a mystery. It cannot be explained or rationalized. It does not obey reason, logic, cause or effect. It cannot be controlled or directed. Love IS.

Being so, of course it directly dethrones Ego-self.  ‘What do you mean I did not create or destroy love from free-will? What do you mean that love is an external force that does not depend on what I say or do?
My late husband and I met half way between a falling angel and a rising ape (I needn´t say who was who!). We had a totally different understanding of life and love. Where I was always yearning with an instinctive longing for fulfillment from Love at a higher realm, he was proudly bragging the love he could generate. One lived an ethereal reality, while the other was earth-bound and totally physical.
Those who identify with the capacity to see beyond what the eyes perceive,  sense a reality yet un-manifest, understanding Love as absolute. Those who limit reality to tangible truths, proved by deeds, need bodies to love.
Of course, experience integrates multiple realms of: a physical, psychological, rational and spiritual nature. Love encompasses all. It cannot be fragmented, though our limited perception distorts that subjective understanding of it. But even so, it is ‘lovable’. It rings a bell as if tapping into our unconscious knowing that love IS, far and beyond our experiencing of it. So when I love, I am isolated, separated from other’s experiencing of it and yet merged into a flow where I lose my self-conceived identity and become ONE with others. I can feel totally alienated, when I perceive such unfathomable love.
Common sense cannot contain love. It cannot understand it. No matter how it tries to define love, it ends up limiting it. Love cannot be held or contained in the present; nor in the past. Only the future can hold the ethereal possibility of love, held in HOPE.
The challenge is not to give way to doubt but Be-LIVE it.

Confusing Confessions

I was born an educator. The first ten years, I taught by repeating; the next ten years, I taught from knowledge; the following ten years, I taught from experience. Now, I teach from my errors.

Nothing brings us closer as humans, than our shared foibles and vulnerabilities.  The old aphorism states that “Errare humanum est” (it is human to err)…and yet, I think it is errors that make us human. Behind every deed there is an attitude, our outlook on life. But behind that, there is a mental pattern of associations that we create from our beliefs. So behind every error, we must look for the faulty thought-sequence we believe to be true.

These are some of my errors, which I share, not with the false expectation that they will help you avoid repeating yours, because somehow we each have to live our own mistakes, but in the hope that my boldness will encourage you to seek and reset your own false belief systems.

The hardest thing in my life has not been: becoming a doctor or a master in public health, or my field training in epidemiology, or my training as a military; nor running a national program against AIDS or spiking risk among adolescents to build resilient, life-driven pathways from death to health, but rather- having been born a girl.

I was the first-born of a Mexican patriarch, and not being  a boy, I was born a disappointment. Perhaps to appease such grievance, my father named me after his first mistress and as a child I became his girlfriend; he called me:  “novia mia”. That was my first confusion. He used to give me money, while keeping it from my mother. I embedded rivalry, guilt and carried shame and misgivings.

Now, he would have had me become a lady, since he inscribed me to Vogue magazine when I was fourteen – but oops! second disappointment. When I became ‘of-age’ for the ‘sex-talk’, he insisted I shun all male relationships, lest I become a whore. Little did he know I was no longer a virgin and his lecture was only branding me: ‘disgraced’.

Now my Mom taught me that to love was to suffer. And boy, she suffered enough: being an American single daughter, who ran after her love from the first-world, to live in the third-world was in itself a sacrifice. But then having five children, each 10 months apart, epitomized it.

I also lived ten years with our British tutor with whom we sang as a family quintet, songs that set the tune and rhythm to my life: the Impossible Dream, the Quijote of the Mancha and Sound of Music.

So my guilt came from my father; my self-sacrifice came from my mother; and my idyllic fantasy, from my tutor. These became my belief systems.
When my prince charming appeared, a stalwart Catholic believer, and asked me to marry him, I felt unworthy. And of all things, out of love for him, I self-sacrificed becoming a nun; a cloistered nun at that! Of course, I was fully equipped to enter the monastery: I was a whore in disgrace, who needed penance, to love;  a “problem to be solved”-like Maria in Sound of Music.  I even remember singing to the St. Joseph’s Carmelite nuns, from a ladder, as I enacted the theme song : “The hills are alive”. Little did I know it was the first scene to the screen-play that I would play-out throughout my entire life.
Now, my monastic experience was heart- wrenching but glorifying. Away from TV, radio, computer, newspaper or even books, with a vow of silence, poverty and obedience, I learned to wash, clean, mend and soothe my soul. My past Harvard aggrandizement of self-worth, mopped away. My years as a postulant, as a novice, and as a nun committed by marriage to God (in my Mother´s wedding dress) confronted me with the inner battle between my higher and lower selves. Everything became a metaphor: medieval ceremonies such as laying in meditation in a coffin, as a symbol for the need to die to the body in order to be reborn in spirit; old nuns in brown and black coiffures singing rocking songs to an enamel representation of Jesus, throughout the night; the intention of saving souls with every spot, obsessively cleaned…are memories that have rescued me from turmoil later in life. The grounding experience would have been enough to save me had I left, from my own free will. But my belief system (and cowardice to face life) was wired to have me play out the shame of having been ‘put out’. My restlessness could not be acquitted with self-flagellation; too much of a free thinker, too much of a dreamer.  Imagine the disgrace and drama of having been rejected not only by nuns but by God himself. ..paradise lost…and with it, the hope of being ‘good’. It just ratified that I was unworthy; painfully defeated as I witnessed my prince-charming’s marriage to someone better, when I returned.
Now these are examples of how we thread the canvas of our lives into self-built dramas; the threads of thought and their color are set by our beliefs and attitudes.
I won´t abound on the same dramatic pattern I have relived over and over again: my marriage to an older, wonderful man, defeated unto death by the guilt of his son’s suicide; my remarriage to a problem drinker, damaged by resentment against a mother who let her lover abuse his sister…
On and on… I have continued playing out the Impossible Dream, fighting ‘the unbeatable foe’ of AIDS, trying to ‘ right the un-rightable wrong’ even unto court, in an international white-collar scandal that deviated AIDS funds and unjustly blamed me ; fighting for women´s rights among sex-workers, and dignifying the right to love beyond color, race, sex, social institutions and even personal judgment. Love should not be erased by contract or divorce. Love is eternal and we should strive to strengthen its bonds, networking with good will. And yet, we are what we believe.

Now, none of this is true. Its a product of my own thought formation. We build associations with what we believe.

Check your own belief patterns. Which ones have molded your lives?

Be selective. Not all beliefs are bad. My heavenly husband still walks with me and despite my unworthiness, even gave me a late child born on Christmas Day.

Some beliefs do come true.

Learning to LOve: Families

Families are containers for re-latedness. To relate (lat.: re-again; latio-side/beat) is to re-establish contact from a different side; to re-establish timing to a re- newed  ‘beat’. Both acceptions require the containing framework of an encompassing family. Thus, I can break away from my personal ego-centered stance and shift to the perspective of a loved one within the safety-grounds of a trusted environment. Change and ‘development’  is easier within this ‘envelopment’.

While in the Mexican Association of Sexology, we did a research on ‘families’, establishing up to 29 different structures: nuclear families, extended families, divorced…with ‘your’ children; ‘my’ children; ‘our’ children; adopted children; grandparents, uncles, aunts etc .It included indigenous structuring of families, where twins share wives;  where father and son share wives; even villages with a shared ‘wife’. They all hold love. ‘upholding strongholds as holdings’ held together by relatedness.

This Spring I invited my ex-husband to our family town house. I did it for him to get away and have a break from the hardships of everyday life (and aging), he started the year with. I was surprised, however at everyone’s reaction. Despite our having dinner together once a week, for over the 11 years we’ve been divorced, my daughter’s reaction and that of my step-children and sisters was one of ‘shock’. No, we are not planning on getting back together, again, but what is  wrong with ‘caring’ for each other, beyond the marriage vows? As Western society would have it, love is only allowed in marriage. We like to believe we divorced out of love. If we had wanted to hurt each other we would have stayed married to continue making our lives miserable!!!!

The experience was interesting. My parents shared mutual enjoyment with his presence, perhaps from the wisdom, borne of time, that values everyday as if it were the last. No strings attached; no false expectations; just ‘living the moment’ gratefully. I enjoyed the old comfort of knowing each other well, making it all, relaxing and easy-going. However, there too, were surprising changes. He opened the car door for me! And even thanked me for making his bed. ’Change’ is ‘strange’…both, with a hidden ‘angel’ within.

 In my understanding it confirms that love can be extended beyond what is socially acceptable. But it needs family.

 

Learning to Love: Order

The popular aphorism, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”, reminds us of the importance of counteracting the entropic tendency of everything going to chaos. We have to consciously, put effort into reverting this disintegration, by putting order. It dispenses energy and continual effort.
I have kept myself busy (and out of trouble) cleaning closets, painting walls and doing spring cleaning, these last days. It is not only good for the house, but good for my body (Reverend Mother always said, that the best exercise was doing housecleaning!) and my soul. It discharges dirt, disorder and negativity, depression or guilt, making way for singing!
My Mother’s Puritanical upbringing got me into the healthy habit of keeping everything clean and orderly; of arranging and re-arranging things for everything to have its place; of picking things up immediately after use, so as to avoid cluttering; of continuously giving things I don´t use, to someone who may need them. However, I don´t obsess about it.  I like to think our home is clean-friendly, where my rat-like nature has me saving everything; the cat and dog get on the furniture to share with us and eating is allowed in the ‘living’ room. Ceremonials on Christmas, Halloween, Easter…bring change to our daily life with re-organization of the furniture and routines.
Making a ‘home’ in a house is a full-time job. It hopefully, makes your loved ones want to be there. So it is important to keep a stress-free ambiance to allow them to relax. Not only dirt, but screaming and fighting have to be actively avoided. I was shocked when the sex-workers I gave HIV tests to, told me that husbands who bought their 'favors', frequently blamed the conditions they lived at home, for their wanting to avoid it. Rituals from shamanistic and religious settings help cleanse such negativity. In the Carmelite Monastery we would cleanse every room before sleep, going through them in choral prayer with a lit candle, incense and bell. It holds true for homes. Peace has to be borne from the heart.
Not only the home, but the body has to be cherished and cared for. Even the astral aura can be cleansed (not necessarily with shaman flowers or eggs!) but a simple shower after a nightclub or a rough day. One always picks up negativity, from people in angry or stressful situations such as traffic or endless queues.
In loving, it´s always good to shower together before love-making; perhaps a bath. At least wash your hands before touching!
I feel so ‘re-lived’ when I clean. It´s even better than confession, because you are left with tangible ‘ordi-nation’ and makes you feel ‘good’…worthy of being loved.

Learning to Love: Keeping Busy

Gloria Ornelas

There are two types of people: those who love and those who ‘think’ about loving..(guess which one I am?!!!). The first ‘act’; the second, ‘re-act’, ‘enact’, ‘subtract’….
Reverend Mother, in the Carmelite Monastery used to remind us constantly, that the ‘father’ (she actually said ‘mother’, but I changed it!) of all sins was ‘boredom’…doing nothing (not the same as ‘leisure’, which is the ‘time-out’, necessary for meditation and contemplation).
Those of us who go around moping and complaining about how unjust ‘life’ and ‘love’ have been to us…aren’t loving. Even those who go around ‘re-membering’ the broken pieces of heart, or proudly trumpeting their ‘ideal come true’, are merely re-flecting..not ´living´love.

I recently asked a Nun what love was for her, and she sat down, took my hand and was silent. I was immediately engulfed with an upsurge of warmth and energy. I sighed, unexpectedly, as I heaved with relief.
“What are you doing”, I asked. And she looked straight into my eyes ‘lovingly’. I had an image of a flower whose petals were opening up as she began to share her secret.
“I breath Love in, as I evoke Eternal Grace ; plead for forgiveness as I assimilate its ‘Goodness’; and exhale a blessing on all I know, all I come in contact with, and all who may need it” .
“You do that all the time?” I asked horrified, as I realized that it would imply having to ‘let go’ of inner dialogue. I would have to stop analyzing, judging, comparing, self-justifying, let alone have to set a distance with people and their luscious gossip.
“It is Living Love, every minute of the day” she answered, peacefully, and continued.. “When I pray consciously, I use my imagination to take me into the ‘Heart that Loves me, Unconditionally’ and let myself  feel embraced and lulled. It is from that Higher Loving that I ‘p-ray’  ,‘raying’ it onto others”.
“Take the Rosary,” she continued  “..when I pray it, I imagine myself imbued by Mother Love, and feel ‘im-pregnated’  with Higher Loving, so that I can embrace souls that may feel lost, using imagery to envelop them  in an Imaginary Womb, while I wish them  protection and Love”.
I was shocked, half thinking she wasn´t  ‘all there’….but she went on, disowning my doubts.
 “Use your imagination to make Love happen. It’s like magic. Imagine you have a ‘wand’ and bless everyone who comes across you during the day, wishing them all kinds of goodness. If anything, it will keep your mind busy, free from idle thoughts and out of trouble”, she said  laughing.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since, even trying it. I don’t know if I’m loving any better, but it certainly keeps me mind busy.

Learning to Love: Destiny

 

L´earning to Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

 Destiny

In today’s society, man´s pride has imbued in us the notion that we each forge our own lives. However, as mine unfolds, the idea of ‘destiny’ makes more sense.
In Greek mythology, three ‘Moirai’ thread the canvas of fate, the inevitable destiny we each have when we are born. Nietzsche goes further with his ‘Amor Fati’, the acceptance of this predetermination, through ‘choice’. The unpredictability of life, with its creases and folds, more of the time, depends on variables that have nothing to do with us. That is fate. We may choose or not, to go where fate leads us, rebelling and resisting that which we most dread, in fear of losing control over our lives. Sooner or later, we will end up where we began, anyway.
 Love is inevitably interlaced to fate. We think we choose our life-long partners or children, naïvely pegging reasons and qualities that earn our favor, ignoring the fact that our souls respond to another call. We are beckoned to live out our soul’s longing, either to learn or repair, or help others into awareness. We can try to ignore this path, laid out long before we are born, but that is only fooling ourselves. It is not merit that earns us love. Sometimes it’s need from imperfection; sometimes it’s desire to help, entwined with co-dependence; sometimes, it’s inexplicable. It is  not about choosing what 'cross' to bear or what sacrificial penance to accept. It’s a call, an ‘e-vocation’.

Love is not indiscriminate or dispensable. It does not overflow from abounding generosity or virtue. It is intricately nestled in our lives’ design, for reasons we may not understand, till we do; most of the time, near death. We must play out the role love deals us, acceptingly. I should have learned that in the Monastery when I pledged a vow of obedience. I thought it was to obey Reverend Mother; later, I thought it was about obeying my superiors in the Navy; later, obeying my husband, much as I had obeyed my parents…..I had never realized that the obedience, expected, was to fate. Love is not about being kind and dispensing compassion over those, ‘less benefitted´. It is not about charity from pity or compassion. It is about loving him or her, next to you; him or her, you most reject; him or her, fate had you be born with. It is not about pleasing or satisfying our will’s desire, but about fulfilling our destiny. In the light of this truth, fidelity makes sense.

The other day I was reminded of this, as my ex-university-classmates and I met after almost forty years. I was so grateful for them reminding me who I was, as we remembered outrageous scenes from our youth… It was one of them that pointed out that I had always been different (as we all are) and always set a sense of duty before me. It was she who reminded me that I had a destiny to fulfill, maybe even yet.

 

Learning to Love: Spiritual Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

The Bible’s Song of Songs, attributed to Solomon (though it clearly describes a woman’s way of loving) starts with a first verse that seems to talk about two different types of Lovers: one physical, and the other, spiritual:
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.

Your love is more delightful than wine.

Delicate is the fragrance of your perfume,
Your name is an oil poured out,
And that is why the maidens love you.
Draw me in your footsteps, let us run.
The King has brought me into his rooms,
You will be our joy and our gladness.
We shall praise your love above wine;
How right it is to love you.

(quoted from the Jerusalem Bible)

 Not all versions of this verse are the same, but it clearly talks about the physical love bestowed by the King and the joy with which loving God, enriches their romance.
 
Traditionally, these verses have been interpreted to be the love between a mystical Bridegroom (God) and Israel (the Bride). Erotic symbolism has been described in its metaphors such as “Let my lover come into his garden and taste its delicious fruits”. It describes the ‘innocence’ of enjoyment lived in Eden, later missed as ‘experience’ drew man away from God.

The profound yearning and dolorous longing for the Love once known, is painfully familiar. It describes our way of loving today, after a broken heart. Strangely, it is only the woman (Bride) that talks to her mystical Beloved (God-Bridegroom), while her physical lover praises only her physical qualities. It is as if only women dialogue that intimately with God, merging their sexual arousal with their mystical yearning. In the verse, it is plain to see that while kisses are good, God´s love is better. Man’s love cannot quench the thirst for greater spiritual satisfaction.

Having been betrothed to God in a Carmelite ceremony where temporary vows to poverty, obedience and silence are made, I can relate to this type of loving. It is as a sigh that takes  a deep breath, gasping in need, for that Loving we have felt, but lost in the ‘dark night of the Soul’. Santa Teresa, St John of the Cross, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz all have erotic poetry loving God.

I wore my mother’s bridal gown and walked down the aisle alone, as my family bid me farewell with a song. I crossed the threshold of ‘life’ as I entered the cloister and died to social life. I lay postrate, face down, on the floor with my arms extended in the shape of the cross. My ‘sisters’ shaved my head and put my habit on…then I lay in an open coffin, to meet with My Loved One in contemplation of death. It may sound eerie to disbelievers, or those who haven´t been exposed to Catholic tradition, but it is really quite romantic.

 Bernini's statue of Sta. Therese in 'orgasm' as she is struck by Love

Later lovers and husbands, have filled an important aspect of love…but my spiritual Lover does the rest.