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.

Learning to love: Befriend your demons

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

 Befriend your demons

It´s hard to admit one is wrong, but harder still to re-cognize one’s a “bitch”. Yet, without it we cannot love. We tend to project our shadow-selves on others, blaming them for our worst fears.
Disowning the dark side of our soul is loving, ‘half-heartedly’.

I started thinking about this when my daughter twitted that she had stopped fighting her inner demons “…we’re on the same side , now” (@tandorantes). I was proud of her inner strength, so much stronger in her generation than ours. Hatred and evil horrify me. She takes them for granted. What horrifies her, she said “…is stupidity”. At first, I thought that was funny but the more I think out it, the closer to hard reality. Yes, man isgood and evil. That is a fact. Evidence proves it. But he has a choice, which can only be made with ‘intelligence’. To be horrified with man´s evil is to deny one´s own capacity to think, and possibly ‘react’ if given the circumstances, with the same destructive force.

“Actually”, says my daughter, “survival in this world needs demons. Only with them, can we have that added ‘intelligent edge’ which you can´t see when you´re blinded by ‘sweetness’ ”
…. So much for my blog!!!

 I suppose she is right. The more I think about it, the more I recognize the inner work I have to do, to accept my own inner demons. All this self-righteous ‘goodness’ cannot be real if it is not grounded by its shadow. Yes, I have been and am a ‘bitch’. So there!

Long before confessing or even repairing any damage I’ve done, I have to recognize: the wrath with which I hate anyone who cuts in front of me in the traffic…'I could kill them!'; my avarice that has me holding on to cluttering memories and ‘things’ that I can’t get rid of; my cowardice that prefers to smile, be stepped upon and play the martyr; my pride that looks down upon everyone, not because I’m haughty but with the certainty that  ‘I am better”.

Befriending my demons would require I talk to my shadow-self to try to understand why- the wrath, the avarice, the cowardice and the pride. Perhaps I’d learn that my wrath stems from repressed anger, for pain from constant abuse. Knowing about it, I can respond with anticipation, setting limits on time. I´d learn that my avarice comes from a hollow inner emptiness that yearns for recognition and I’d prepare for the day, asking my loved ones for an extra ‘hurray!’, so as to avoid begging for it from others at work. I’d learn that my cowardice comes from fear and insecurity, after having been rejected and made fun of so many times, and I’d learn to avoid bullies. I’d realize that my pride comes from over-confidence, from spoiling and getting my way all the time and try to do things on my own, despite my fear of failure.

So perhaps, we do have to get to know our darker selves, to enhance conscious awareness. Both foolishness and kindness may overlook negativity; the real fool, from ignorance; the kind man, from generosity.

The Kamasutra says that “virtue is a luxury, inaccessible to all”. Only those who know their inward capacity for evil can have patience and understanding for all.
It’s OK to be a ‘bitch’. It gives me the courage to stand up for myself and others, and to look at reality head on.  So look out, here I come!

                                                Even the heart has compartments unknown to itself.

Learning to Love. Surrender

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Surrender

 One of my big errors in loving has been- giving in, to my lover. I surrendered completely to him, delivering my personal power, as I handed him control over me. I gave him body, heart and soul with the false notion that it was a way of proving my devotion. In so doing, I lost myself and lost him, as he lost interest in me. I was left dis-empowered with no self-esteem; just shame. Myths and fairy tales are about this type of loving that erroneously values losing oneself, to the loved one. IT IS WRONG.

I was left empty, heartless and hopeless, with an after-taste of bitterness. It took me ages to ‘re-member’ who I was….as I put my broken self together again and picked the pieces of my heart up, from abandonment.

NEVER GIVE YOUR HEART AND SOUL TO ANYONE. They are yours to be treasured and cared for. They are the inner light of d’ignity and Higher Self. To do so is degradation that belittles self and he or she, whom you entrust. No, one cannot surrender and give oneself over to someone else. We are each, responsible for ourselves. Nor can we accept that someone else deliver his/her personal responsibility and dignity over to us. We cannot carry anyone other than ourselves.

Rather, we must surrender our Ego and yield unto our Higher Selves; not as defeat or failure, nor as giving up or submitting oneself to fate. It has to be done with the parallel strength of endurance. It requires inner stamina and uprightness to yield our lower, egotistical nature to our higher understanding of Love. Our lover may not like it, since it entails doing things right. It is not about pleasing our lover or submitting to his desires, but about personal adherence to everything that is good: kindness, generosity, patience, humility, temperance. It is yielding to our inner ´god-ness’.

 

Everyday little things can become opportunities for this type of surrender: awareness of others and their needs; a smile; a kind word to a stranger. With our lovers, it entails being True…true to ourselves and to him; true to God-ness.

To be righteous is a personal challenge and a profound responsibility that requires developing strength, courage and fortitude.  Invariably we will find opposition from others with criticism, cynicism and doubt. If your lover is worthwhile, he will value your Higher Loving. If he is egotistical he will be among those who attack you.  Leave him and stay away from those who belittle your efforts to surrender to your Higher Self.

 

Learning to Love. Limits

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Limits

Although love is everywhere, the experience of loving is individual. Rather like oxygen, spread throughout the atmosphere and yet contained in each cell. To individuate this experience we have to set boundaries with clear-cut limits, much as cell-membranes envelop and contain individuated life.

Differentiation makes every cell specialize in the functions of a specific tissue, such as muscle cells, bone cells, erythrocytes etc. People are also different, each able to develop specific capacities to benefit the whole of society. Membranes establish points of reference, contiguity, exchange, interaction and bonding between cells. Skin contains internal fluids and organs; it separates but also offers the possibility of contact and encounter. Limits trace boundaries in a relationship, establishing individuated rights and responsibilities.

Using the analogy of cell-membranes, to understand the interaction between lovers in a relationship, we find that membranes are not rigid, but flexible and permeable, open to receiving and excreting substances through pores. Relationships should, likewise allow interaction through flexibility and mutual acceptance. Giving and receiving is what allows life. Intolerance in a relationship makes us close all possibility of dialogue, exchange and growth.

Lovers open these boundaries to share an ethereal space of mutual loving (rather like the process of endocytosis in cells, where membranes open up to engulf external substances to internalize them). This fusion implies trust and responsibility. Once we have shared our lover’s intimacy and known his vulnerability, we are empowered with capacity to either help or destroy him. This is the risk of loving. This is the responsibility of choosing the right person we let into our heart’s hearth. Having someone break that trust and hurt us, impairs our integrity. The membrane is severed.

I´m sure everyone has suffered from heart-breaks that destroy innocence. We must, as cells that constantly repair and revitalize tissue, care and repair our hearts. Trust is built with generosity. We have to give loving, a second, third and chances ad-infinitum.  Anger is repaired with patience. We have to transform the ‘rage’ of having been hurt, into ‘cou-rage’ to uphold faith in our loved one’s dignity, especially when he forgets it.

Cells keep their shape through a cytoskeleton; bodies, their uprightness, with their bones. Souls are kept righteous through virtue. It takes kindness to ‘re-pair’.

In human tissues, a lesion takes time to heal, hardening through a process of scarring that renders it insensitive. The same thing happens in loving. We harden our hearts in distrust, becoming cynical and vengeful. We must, therefore, be selective, treasuring exclusivity. We must ‘adhere’ only to people who build us, constructively. We have to learn to say “No”, to say “stop”, to say “not now”. We have to establish clear rules of mutual  respect.