Love is typically not something that’s easy to talk about. The reason for this is that love can mean many different things to many people. As humans, our experience of love is so profound that we use it to describe the things which we care about most deeply. However, love comes in many forms and it is often to difficult to get a handle on what exactly love is. For instance I can love coffee, music, a significant other, a family member, a friend, God or the ocean. So is love a mere preference, a deep emotional bond or the greatest spiritual truth there is? Perhaps it is all three.
In my work as a metaphysician, the concept of love arises constantly. And it is through living life from a spiritual perspective that provides one with an even greater appreciation for what love is and what it truly can be. The feeling and experience of love, as many faceted types there are, can ultimately can be divided into two distinct forms: Relative love and Absolute Love.
Absolute Love is permanent, unchanging and vibrates with the infinite. For example, the goal of traditional transcendental meditation is to awaken to the ground of all Being and experience what I call Absolute Love. From a state of pure consciousness, meditation allows us to awaken to this truth and experience of the infinite unbounded consciousness – or God. God embodies the love which is eternal and knows no boundaries or limits. This absolute love is the very foundation which creates the universe in each moment.
Relative love on the other hand is our experience and interpretation of this Absolute Love in physical reality. Relative love is impermanent, non-absolute and constantly changing. Our experience of what we think as love is really just all relative. Even a deep love between two people at its heart is still just relative love and a mere expression of the Absolute.
In our realm relative love is dominant and constantly subject not only to change but many times to conditions. This is the clear distinction between this type of love and the Absolute. However, it is our task in this lifetime to become the greatest possible expression of this Absolute love by embodying what is called unconditional love. Unconditional love is still just a form of relative love, but it is the highest expression possible in our current dimension – for now. This type of love comes with no conditions: you love someone or something just for who or what they are – simply because you can. Making the choice to give of your love with the recognition that is infinite it the highest task to which we can aspire.
It seems that many people on Earth today confuse Absolute Love for relative love. This is mainly because not many people have had significant spiritual experiences of Love Absolute or awakened awareness. Before a true spiritual awakening, or enlightenment, we can only guess what eternity feels like. I am fortunate enough to have had several experiences of Absolute Love, many in the dream state, that have afforded me the great opportunity and blessing to experience this eternal bliss of cosmic consciousness. One such instance was during a lucid dream where I received a phone call from Gandhi and several of his “disciples”. In the dream we began chanting a mantra over the phone which got louder and louder. As the mantra increased in volume I felt my body dissolve into the sound as one harmonious vibration. It was the sound of creation itself: OM. My body had converted to its true form: pure unbounded energy – connected to and part of the entire universe. My consciousness was a drop of water in the ocean recognizing for the first time that it is actually the ocean itself.
At this point in the dream I was literally rocketed off to the center of the universe. It was here that I was overcome with divine presence and pure, eternal love. I knew and felt all there was to know about the universe and it was pure Love – and it was all perfect and all at peace. I literally felt at one with God – there is really no other way to describe it. You have to experience it for yourself.
As soon and as quickly as I realized what was happening, I was awake back in my bed. But the memory of what just happened was so fresh in my mind that I was able to recall everything about the dream. I rushed to my dream log to write down the experience and what I felt so that I would not forget any detail. I am glad I did, because we often have profound experiences while we sleep but never remember them unless we record them when they are fresh in our mind. This is just one experience of awakening I’ve had among a handful of others. The dream state serves as an excellent testing ground for states of higher awareness and I recommend that anyone interested in con development to pursue dream work.
In time, if you continue to develop and cultivate your con you will also find these experiences to be quite common. All of a sudden life becomes a spiritual experience and everything and everyone around you is recognized as a part of this great cosmic journey of love. The more you learn and think about these deep truths, the more you will find yourself having similar experiences quite often – both in meditation and in the dream state. Or even perhaps while looking at a sunset or while surfing. As time marches forward (to 2012 and beyond) and humanity continues to evolve, these experiences will become even more common for everyday people in everyday situations.
Our experience of Absolute Love is the discovery of the nature of God at rest – it is the eternal peace that we experience in deep meditation and profound realizations of enlightenment. But remember that God is not only at rest. God is also Eros, or the creative impulse. In this regard, relative love instills within us a sense of ecstatic urgency – a desire to evolve. This aspect of God and ourselves is never satisfied – it’s the part of us that always wants to learn and grow. It is a tremendous paradox: God is existing in eternal bliss and non-action (Being) while simultaneously always seeking new experiences through living (Becoming). This energy of Becoming is made most apparent in humanities sexual impulse or the need to procreate. However, it also has higher forms of expressions such as the desire to create. And its highest form of all is the creative impulse of God Himself: the urge inside us that says: “I must become more conscious – I must evolve.”
So indeed, love is a very difficult thing to talk about. This is mainly because it is such a complex and multidimensional aspect of our existence. It is only highly evolved humans that can experience love in all its multifaceted glory, but there can be no higher aspiration for which to work towards. But at the end of the day, it is up to each and every one of us to heroically aspire to become the highest expression of our own deepest recognition of what love truly is.