Love – the antidote for violence
“Once love has penetrated your heart, God is there. In the thrill of love is the beloved: In the vision of Love is the vision of God.”
Osho – Love’s Mysteries
Self-aware women recognise that outward experiences, both personal and collective, are a manifestation of inner states of awareness. The excesses of crime and violence in our society is stark testimony to our collective “lovelessness”. Women – mothers and nurturers of the earth, possess the emotional resources to heal our wounded society.
Building more substantive love relationships is a long-term antidote to the fear and hatred displayed in acts of violence and aggression.
The act of loving offers growth lessons essential to spiritual evolution. Loving and harmonious relationships benefit both the giver and the receiver. Everything we do advances our own evolution. In seeming “selflessness” there is a deeper cosmic motive of “selfishness”.
Love and Awareness
In Love’s Mysteries, the Indian mystic, Osho considers love and awareness polarities through which we evolve. Love is the outward movement of energy toward the object of our love: The beloved. The object becomes more important than ourselves and is the source of our joy. If our beloved is happy, we are happy. Without the other we feel lonely. The other polarity – awareness – is operative when we are alone with ourselves. Awareness is the inward movement of energy back to the Source, back to ourselves. Both polarities – love and awareness complete the circle of evolution.
In love, we lose ourselves in order to gain ourselves. A fish living in the ocean is oblivious of the ocean and its benediction. Only when caught, thrown on the shore in the heat and with thirst will it have intense longing to return to the ocean. We evolve in awareness through the gift of paradoxical experiences. The harsh heat of the day stirs appreciation for the soft coolness of night. Adam left the Garden of Eden and ventured into the far country to gain maturity. Adam – outward movement means love: Christ – inward movement means awareness. Adam is potential Christ, and Christ is actualised Adam.
Love honours freedom
In loving another we honour their freedom. We can possess power and money, but not people. Freedom is more highly valued than love and individuals will resist possession at all costs. An attempt to possess another intimates a desire to control, not to love. Eventually it produces only frustration – the catalyst that leads us back to ourselves. Love is subtle bondage but it is an essential experience for maturity. The less we posses, the closer we feel to the beloved. Freedom creates greater bonds, and thus, greater love.
Love Authenticates
Love makes us real. In The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams beautifully illustrates how we become real through love.
“What is Real?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having a buzz inside of you and a stick-out handle?”
“Realising, how you were made,” said the Skin Horse. “It is a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are REAL, you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up?” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL, you can’t be ugly, except to people, who don’t understand. Once you are REAL, you canít become unreal again. It lasts for always.
“Without the realness of love, we remain a fantasy, a dream, without substance. Aches, pains and hurts of love strengthen and build integrity: Wounds provoke and challenge us to greater awareness. In trying to escape love out of fear, we diminish our self-awareness. The arduous, uphill journey is necessary to ascend to the peak of intense joy earned through effort.”
In Love’s Mysteries, Osho expounds on love: “A loving orgasmic experience is the first experience of ecstasy. It will make you more thirsty. Now you will know what is possible, you cannot be satisfied with the mundane. The sacred has penetrated you, the sacred has reached your heart. God has touched your heart.”
Now you would like to live in that moment forever, you would like that moment to become your whole life. It does become – and unless it becomes man remains discontent. Love – will give you great joy – and the thirst for eternal joy.
