|
Peaceful Abiding
I am happy to meet you. ... Meeting, togetherness, is love.
*Jean Klein. The Ease of Being.
So, where does the meeting arise from? What makes it possible? It happens again and again. From where arises our felt-need for togetherness? To be most prepared for the meeting, the togetherness, one becomes the space in which it can arise, be seen, and celebrated as something more than anyone in the space. That is, it comes from outside the space. If the word "love" fits this, it is not love.
Daphne Rose Kingma, poet, psychotherapist, and relationship teacher, recounts an experience in Hawaii. She was weary after a huge fire in her house and was lying on the beach. She did not want to have a conversation with anyone; she just wanted to be left alone.
A little girl with a pinwheel came to Daphne. The girl asked, "Can I sing you a song?" The girl sang a beautiful song about friendship. The final line was, "So I'm singing you this song, and I want to be your friend. Will you be my friend, too?"
Daphne gave the following comment on meeting the little girl...
It was an absolutely exquisite gift. I will never see her again, I don't know her name, but we had an experience of deep connectedness and true love in that moment on the beach. There are hundreds of these moments in life that are so tiny that they don't register on this chart that we've all built about what love is. We think love has to look a certain way, have a certain outcome. But we're constantly gifted with such moments, experiences that are just breathtaking in their purity and their absolutely consecrated perfection.
* * *
In simple, even subtle, sharings of love, the ordinary is seen to be sublime. Is it possible that, at times, our expectation of love arriving in a certain way obstructs our capacity to see how it is present already?
We can set an intention to see love as it appears in many ordinary yet sublime ways. Additionally, we can celebrate the small ways we are blessed to give and receive love daily, even if only for a moment, including with those we will never meet again.
One of my regular practices is celebrating love while in quiet heartfulness. I close my eyes and silently introduce the word "love" and inwardly see and feel loving encounters with others that happened that day. This practice is a way to recognize the love already present in my life and the various ways it manifests. Likewise, it introduces the nourishing, vivifying energies of love into the body. Sometimes, then, I rest in the thought of love, releasing any inner remembrances, and recognize that love is present right in the space where I am engaging in the practice.
(C) Brian K Wilcox, 2025
|
