Logic can be a useful tool, but logic tends to deal with abstractions. It is logic that allows us to look at a map and then navigate our way, but the map is not the territory. There are differences in reality, that maps can’t begin to contain, or reference. A map is an abstraction of something real. Like logic, the mind can be a useful tool, but it is a pathetic substitute for a self.
When you look with the heart, rather than the mind, you gain a different perspective of reality. The heart perceives a deeper sense of what is going on, of how things fit together, and even who you are. The heart can remember that you are more than a particular person, with a certain set of attributes. You are actually something which is in a constant state of becoming: not so much a noun, but a verb. Then, as you look around, you may notice that, not only is that true of you, but you are existing inside of something else, which is also in a constant state of becoming. There is this stream of “you” and also this stream of existence. Sometimes there is a merging of these two streams. The part is meeting the whole, and the whole is meeting the part. When this takes place, something else arises, greater than both the part and the whole together. One word for this which arises is love. Love is an existential language, in and of itself. It is a language which exists without the need for words, concepts, or abstractions. It is immediate. It is real. Love (real love) is here, now. Love which seems to be “there, then” isn’t love, but an abstraction, a concept.
The Indoctrination of a Human Being
In our upbringing we are lured away from this immediate experience of reality. This happens for many reasons. For one, we learn that the present moment is where pain occurs. When we hurt, it’s now! We begin to entertain the idea that we can avoid pain, by avoiding the present moment. We discover that we can desensitize ourselves from the pain of the immediate moment, buy mental distraction. However, in the process, our connection with the heart is diminished, and eventually severed altogether. We become identified with the head and lose contact with the heart. In the process, we literally turn our backs on love.
This is understandable, because love is risky. To love is to move into danger − because you cannot control it. The outcome of love is out of your hands, it is unpredictable. Who knows where love will lead? The mind is certainly not capable of knowing.
So, in our development, we come to trust in the mind, over the heart. And the mind, just like any other tyrant, tries to stamp out what it cannot control. The mind would tell you that with enough control you can be safe, that indeed, the control it offers is your only hope of safety. The heart, on the other hand would tell you that you already are safe, but the mind can’t hear this. When you move in love, you cannot calculate the possibilities or the results. You can’t be attached to control and at peace with being in love.
For love, the future does not exist. There is only the present. You can know love in this moment, but you can’t take love with you into a projected future, or an imagined past. Love doesn’t allow you to plan, because you cannot plan what you cannot control. This is why love is both terrifying and exciting.
Culture is not your friend. –Terence McKenna
The society, the civilization, the church, the culture, all direct a small child to be more logical. They focus the child’s energies in its head. Once the energies are consolidated in the head, it becomes difficult to come from the heart. Every child is born with great love energy, they actually arise out of love energy. But then culture comes along and teaches logic as the primary tool for survival. Children are taught fear, they’re taught caution and to be careful. All of these together damage the possibility of love.
Then, with a belief that fear and caution lead to safety, if a man falls in love with a woman, his thoughts often move to making her his girlfriend, and then his wife. In so doing, he would reduce her to a certain role, which is more predictable than the reality of a beloved. A woman, in love with a man typically begins to plot and plan to obtain a commitments, leading to the big one where he becomes her husband. We find that love leads to a preoccupation, a drive to possess the other, and this preoccupation is grounded in the desire to control this beloved, thereby bridging the, seemingly, unfathomable gap between love and safety.
The problem is that surrender is the juice which creates the clearing for love. Surrender is risk. Love is risk. When you constrain your beloved, to create them as safe, what you find is that they cease being your beloved. And then you turn to telling stories about how they changed and didn’t end up being who you thought they were, when it is us who changed the context of the game, thereby converting our beloved into a possession, annihilating our beloved in the process.
A husband seems to be something more solid than a lover. At least the law is there, the courts are there, the police are there, the government is there. They give a certain solidity to this abstraction we call husband. A lover seems more like a dream; not so substantial. People fall in love, and then gravitate toward marriage, such is the fear of love. Whomsoever we love, we start trying to control. That's just the way of it, until it’s not. It’s the conflict that goes on between wives and husbands, mothers and children, brothers and sisters, friends. It becomes a power struggle, a contest to determine who is going to possess whom, who is going to define whom, who is going to reduce whom to a thing? Who will be the master and who will be the slave?
Not very romantic is it?
The Way Out
Remember, the first error is that one becomes driven by the mind. The second error is that one starts substituting the need for love with the acquisition of things. We even attempt to turn our beloved into a thing, so that it can be possessed and controlled. This is a waste of life, and a waste of love.
Should you be fortunate enough to become aware that this is happening; not just on this page, but in your life, there is hope. Out of this awareness arises the potential to make a different choice. You can turn the tide and open to your heart. Check in, and see what your heart has to say about this. Although it may, your heart may not communicate in words. It may be as subtle as to come as a feeling, or an insistent longing. Making contact with the heart can undo what has been done to you by society, undoing all the nonsense that has been promulgated by your well-wishers. They may have thought they were helping you. They themselves were likely victims of their parents and their culture. It doesn’t help to blame them; you just don’t have to continue to believe what they taught.
When the head becomes dominant it squashes spontaneity. It becomes dictatorial. It does not allow the heart to even utter a single word; it forces the heart to be completely quiet. What is required is to listen again to the heart. It is helpful to loosen the attachment to logic, to having it all figured out. Become comfortable with not knowing. Love requires you to take risks. It requires that you step into something that “you” can’t control, and to live dangerously. When you develop a tolerance for these risks, you will move toward the unknown, and you will come to love persons, and not things. Love requires that you love what you cannot possess, and be willing to lose what you love. The moment you begin to dictate to love what must be, you turn from love. Love and surrender go hand in hand.
The automatic way of being for humans, is to fall in love with someone, and immediately your conditioning starts trying to possess them. My advice is to resist that temptation. Open yourself to the wound of love. Falling in love can be like an embrace in heavenly wings, and yes, there can be a sword hidden among the feathers. Falling in love can place you in the tiger’s jaws, having lost the chase. And then, the most delicious thing can happen. Something dies: something that clutched, and struggled, and worried, and fretted, and manipulated, and coerced. This something realizes that it is done for, and it lays down its weapons and surrenders. For many people, this doesn’t happen until the body is facing death. Then, when it is clear that death can no longer be avoided, the identity gives up, and peacefully, the heart steps forward, Spring time arrives again, and love is reborn from the ashes of a surrendered ego. I recommend going there sooner.
Whenever you start possessing you are killing love. You can either possess the person or you can love the person, but you can’t do both. It is not possible.
The ego actually thrives on error. The ego loves lies, because truth is the undoing of the ego. Lies strengthen it. This is so true that it doesn’t really matter what path you choose. Any path, travelled in earnestness, will lead you home, because truth is the path. So whenever you feel that your ego is winning and fulfilled, beware! You have consumed some poison. When you are in a state of surrender, you may relax. Surrender to What Is, is the antidote to the poison.
It comes down to a simple choice. You can tell the truth, and you can surrender to love, or you can listen to the mind, the ego. You can set out on its mission to prove that you are somebody, that you are a significant human being, who thinks significant thoughts, and probably, actually, the most important person in the world. You can collect the trinkets it seeks. You can possess lots of money. You can marry, and thereby possess, a beautiful woman or a powerful man. You can become famous and get the admiration of others.
Yes, those trinkets are there for the seeking, but only the ignorant or the insane would trade them for love. None of these trinkets will give you ultimate satisfaction, because they all require you to be separate, and what you want is to be whole. They require you to be in your head, and what you want is to be in your heart. They require you to view the world as an adversary to be conquered, and what you want is to know the world as your beloved, and to cherish it with abandon.
Another Map
In this writing, you have another map. The only value this map has is that you may use it to navigate your way to love.
© 2009, by carson boyd
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