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| Universal Love Posted: November 29, 2004 |
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Love is the heart of the universe, and the glue that holds it together.
All creation is born of Love, acts in Love, and returns to Love in the end. We are created in the Unity of Love, express that Love in infinitely diverse ways, and re-unite in perfect Love as consummation of our soul. The entire universe evolves from Love, in Love, and back to Love -- eternally.
Love is Universal.
Love IS.
It is this universality of love that is at the basis of the pure emotion we call Universal Love.
Universal Love is the unending outpouring of Pure Love from a perfectly open heart to every corner of creation, and beyond, to the source of creation itself -- the Infinite Field of Pure Love, beyond all space & time.
THE SCIENCE OF LOVE Universal Love is more than a fanciful idea. It is the factual reality of existence. While it's not our purpose here to scientifically analyze love, a few points will show that we are speaking of a real phenomenon.
The main effect of love is that it unifies. Love binds people to people, to places, and to loved activities. It governs relationships in the animal and plant kingdoms as well. Plants 'love' the sun, and actively grow toward it. Pigs 'love' mud, and wallow in it.
If we give love a practical definition that can apply throughout creation - one not limited to human emotion - we could say that love is that which attracts one thing to another. In that sense, love draws iron filings to a magnet, and gravitationally holds planets together.
While that may seem unscientific, remember that modern science has increasingly come to a unified view of creation. It is now even theorized that a single underlying law of nature unifies all of creation. Forces once thought to be distinct, such as gravitation and magnetism, are now seen as variations of a single attractive force. In that context, it is possible to define magnetic attraction in terms of gravity, and vice versa. If all of creation is ultimately unified, we can truthfully use any phenomenon to describe all others. As Einstein proved, everything is relative -- anything can be defined in terms of anything else. And love, being the most potent force of attraction in human life, is certainly as good a candidate as any other.
It is not that love is the only way to understand the unity of creation, but it is a very real way. Most important in the context of this lesson, it shows that Universal Love is not a fanciful idea, but a real phenomenon. This allows us to appreciate its more abstract qualities from a concrete perspective.
UNIVERSAL LOVE IN LIFE As expressed in human life, Universal Love is exactly that: universal. It flows to everyone and everything in creation. It is also called Unconditional Love, because it flows regardless of circumstance. This is because it is based on a feeling in YOUR heart, not on the quality of some person, place, or thing. In Universal Love, you don't love someone or something for their certain qualities, but rather because your heart is open, brimming, and flowing with love. It cannot do anything except love. Loving everyone and everything then is an inescapable consequence of the love permanently radiating from your heart.
Whether compassionately toward the suffering, as it flowed from Buddha, or mercifully toward his persecutors, as it did from Christ even as he was crucified, or sportively toward his 16,000 wives, as it did from Krishna, Universal Love pours out toward one's immediate object of focus regardless of the situation.
Universal Love accepts everything. It refuses no one and nothing. Universal Love sees through any surface situation to the underlying Love at its core. In recognizing that Love, drawing it out, and feeding it, Universal Love spreads itself by creating more open hearts in the world. It awakens Universal Love in others so they too may radiate it.
The Tantric Master Osho said it elegantly (Tantra is a spiritual path that awakens the heart to Universal Love; one of its tools is sacred sex):
| Quote: |
| "Tantra loves, and loves unconditionally. It never says no to anything whatsoever, because everything is part of the whole, and everything has its own place in the whole, and the whole cannot exist with anything missing from it." -- Osho |
LOVE IS ALL THERE IS It may be hard for people who do not experience Universal Love to understand how everything can be seen in terms of Love, and how we can feel Love for everyone and everything.
One of the best ways to see these is to show how love underlies and permeates all the emotions we currently experience, whether we know it or not. And the first clue to its universal power is the impact the word itself has on us. Think about it:
LOVE.
Rarely does a word stir up such deep feelings and emotions in our soul.
That itself is the first indication that Love is the very core of life. Our soul IS love -- it is Universal Love, and it responds powerfully to every thought of love.
Strangely though, many of the emotions stirred up by love seem to have little relation to love itself...or do they?
Many people mix or confuse it with lust, obsessing on physical 'love'. Others fear they will never find love, or feel anxiety when it comes to mind, fretting, 'I don't deserve love', or, 'Does he/she really love me?' Some stew in envy and jealousy over love lost to or enjoyed by others. Some greedily seek more and more, seeing it as a game or conquest. Still others fume with hate or anger when brooding over spurned, soured, or unrequited love. Finally, some cold-heartedly refuse to even acknowledge it, dismissing it as fantasy that never comes true.
Why is it that love can churn up such a wide range of emotions, even seemingly conflicting ones? The answer is that love inspires all these simply because they are all forms of love. Love is the one true emotion of the heart; all others are frustrated, blunted, sidetracked, deviant, misplaced, blocked, or otherwise 'impure' forms of love.
It may seem strange to say that anger, hate, greed, envy, and jealousy are all forms of love, but a close look reveals that it is so.
If we've loved someone and that person didn't return our love or otherwise hurt us in some way, we may feel we 'hate' that person. But our initial feelings for them are the clue that that can't be so. What has happened is that we want to love them, but something has blocked the flow of love. We feel that blocked flow of love as pain in our heart. That pain becomes the cause of our hate. But if truth be known, what we feel is not hate, but rather the pain of love slamming into a blockade.
The same is true of envy and jealousy. If we are envious or jealous of another, we really love what that person has and want it for our own. We may be envious of another's good looks or intelligence, or we may be jealous that someone 'stole' our lover. In each case, we love and want something we don't have. The envy or jealousy we feel is the pain of the unfulfilled love in our hearts.
What about people with whom we have no prior love relationship? What about when we hate or fear someone for something they've done or some quality they have? Here the truth is a little subtler, but the same nevertheless. In such cases, the person has broken some unspoken 'rule' you have in your heart about how people should be.
We each believe people have basic qualities that make us part of the human family. These are not true standards (because everyone is part of that family), but we may have them anyway. They may be as silly as how a person should look to be part of the 'in' crowd, or deeper, such as the religion one should embrace or human values one should embody. So long as a person fits our criteria, we 'lovingly' accept them into our world family. If someone doesn't meet our standards, we may fear or hate that person. But really we are affronted that the person has broken a rule that defines our family. To exaggerate, we may think, "How dare they be/act that way!" They have broken the trust that unites our personal world family. They have abused the love we would otherwise show.
In fact, this understanding even reveals the nature of Universal Love. Universal Love has no such false standards about how human beings should be. Universal Love doesn't believe you must be Christian or Muslim, or black or white, or American or French, or conservative or liberal, or cool or nerdy, to be accepted into the human family. Because Universal Love has no such false standards, no one can be or do anything that would deny them loving acceptance.
This is how every emotion has love at its basis. Picture the heart as a lake and love as the water. All the lake can do is flow in love. Downstream, there may be a dam or a mud-fill, or the channel may narrow, or the stream may be diverted onto rocky ground. And you may fear or hate the cause of the block, or envy some nearby free-flowing stream, but the essence of your own stream is still water, through and through. You just need to see past what is apparently there to the underlying truth.
The great Sufi Mystic Rumi profoundly wrote:
| Quote: |
"Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it."-- Rumi |
Another, even simpler, way to see it is to look at the effect each of the 'non-loving' emotions has. When we fear, hate, lust, and envy, we strongly attach ourselves to the object of our emotion. Hate, etc., binds together the hater and the hated. And that binding effect is the same as that of love. We cement a relationship with that person. That's the definition of love. We're in a love-hate relationship.
Indeed, we may obsessively cling to the hate even more powerfully than we do love. This is because there are blocks in our heart to love, so we can't feel it. But we powerfully latch onto its distorted forms as our only way to satisfy the universal desire for loving attachment.
Love is the underlying emotion in every case, whether one knows and admits it, or not.
YOU ALREADY ARE LOVE The fact that love is universally there, while hard to comprehend, shows us how easy it is to enjoy. There is nothing outside to attain, no great act to achieve, not even any real inner transformation to undergo. You ARE Universal Love already, and you flow in it every moment of your life. You have only to let go of the obstacles you put in its path - the false standards, the excuses, the 'ifs' and 'buts' - that stop the flow of love in its tracks. You don't have to do anything; rather, just STOP the closed-hearted notions that keep your love from naturally flowing. Simply surrender to your natural tendency to love.
Like water down a slope, nature takes care of the rest.
UNIVERSAL LOVE & PERSONAL LOVE Universal Love is distinct from personal love. Universal Love is Absolute, while personal love is relative. Universal Love flows unconditionally to all of creation at all times. Personal love flows conditionally toward desired things at desired times. Universal Love is Spiritual Love. It is Divine in nature -- perfect & pure. Personal love is worldly love. It is human -- personal and changeable.
Personal love is solely dependent on compatibility between the person and the potential object of love. If the person resonates with and is attracted to another person, place, or thing, they have personal love for that. A different person may have completely different love interests. (For a full discussion of this, see the Personal Love Forum.)
Despite the distinction between Universal Love and personal love, they necessarily merge in the life of a single individual flowing in Universal Love. Universal Love simply IS. It is abstract, without a concrete object of focus. Like an ever-full ocean, left to itself it would simply BE. Universal Love needs personal love to give it direction and flow. Personal love is the stream that draws from the ocean of Universal Love, and flows over the land, making for fertile growth. Each stream flows in a different direction.
Thus Universal Love flows in an infinite variety of personal ways. These depend on the person involved and the circumstance. While such relative things don't slow or stop the flow of Universal Love, they do color the flow. And the color of the flow is always appropriate to the situation.
The first thing that impacts the flow is the natural personality of the one flowing in Universal Love. Such a person may be compassionate by nature, as was Buddha, and help the suffering. Such a person may be wise by nature, and teach loving wisdom. They may be simple and loving by nature, as are Indian saints like Ammachi and Mother Meera. They may even possess common qualities and live like the masses, spreading their love in small ways according to their personal lives. To use a familiar distinguishing feature between people, some may love cats and shower their Universal Love on felines, while dog lovers flow for their pooches.
The flow of Universal Love is also impacted by the need of those who receive it. If one is suffering, they may draw out compassion. If doubtful and questioning, they may get wisdom. If happy, they may get loving friendship.
Universal Love can even flow wrathfully, if it is the need of the time. Just as a mother lovingly admonishes her child when in their best interest, so may Universal Love chastise one who needs to receive it in order to evolve in life. Thus we understand why Christ would overturn tables in the Temple, while teaching 'love your enemies'.
RECEIVING UNIVERSAL LOVE To be on the receiving end of Universal Love is a gift like no other. It is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, penetrating deeper and permeating further throughout your being.
It works its magic not because of the Love poured onto you by another - though that in itself is powerfully transforming - but rather by kindling the light of Universal Love in your own heart, so that you enlighten yourself. Your own heart opens and radiates in Universal Love, even if for an instant, giving you a taste of True Love.
On the receiving end of such Love, there is often the desire -- even yearning -- to take it personally. We want to feel that that Love is directed toward us, and only us. This is all the more true when our lives have been devoid of such Love so far.
But Universal Love, because of its very nature, should not be taken solely personally. It should be received as it is given: both personally and universally. This allows your heart to taste and more easily rise to Universal Love itself.
The fact that Universal Love mixes with personal love when it flows from a human being gives it a very special quality. The love has the power and timelessness of universality, with all the intimate focus of personal attention. The love itself expresses the truth of life -- that of underlying universality in a very personal world.
When you personally receive Universal Love, let it wash through you personally as you will naturally do, then let it flow from you to all creation. To receive the love this way allows your own heart to flow personally and universally. You respond in personal love toward the one loving you, and you flow in Universal Love by allowing it to spread from you to all creation.
In this way, you get a glimpse of life in permanent Universal Love yourself. This is your daily experience in Sexual Enlightenment.
To cling to Universal Love as though it were personal love alone not only denies you this glimpse, it sets you up for the biggest heartbreak of your life. Universal Love flowing onto you opens your heart in ways you may barely imagine. If you take it as personal love alone, directed solely at you and reciprocated by you in that way, you may feel that you've met the man or woman of your dreams. All your defenses that protect your heart from ill will come down, and you leave yourself fully vulnerable. And when that Universal Love flows to others as it inevitably will, or moves out of your life, you are devastated.
This is why Universal Love always carries the unspoken advice, "I love you, but don't take it personally."
THE PATH TO UNIVERSAL LOVE While personal love is very different from Universal Love, there is a way to see it that makes Universal Love easier to comprehend. It also points to the path to Universal Love because, while its possible to instantly awaken to it, it's more common to awaken gradually, and it makes for a better practical path.
The path to Universal Love starts where you are and leads you along to your destination. So let's start where you are, in the realm of personal love. Everyone, whether they've experienced it or not, can at least conceive of personal love. You may have enjoyed it with a particular person, a place, a thing such as your favorite keepsake or possession, or some sport, hobby, or activity that consumes your time. You feel a deep connection with whoever or whatever it is, that feeds your soul and keeps you together in a love relationship.
Whatever it is, the object of your love is specifically defined. It may be a particular person, a specific object like a diamond ring or your home theatre system, a certain subject like science or history, or some activity like hiking or biking.
In each case, take your love to the next level by expanding your boundaries just a bit. If you're in love with a particular person, note that you also have love for others too -- family, friends, etc. If you love that diamond ring on your finger, you probably have a general love of diamonds and jewelry. If you're into your home entertainment system, you may love all sorts of hi-tech gadgets. History buffs might have a general love of knowledge, just as hikers love the whole outdoors.
This shows that love is more fluid and universal than we commonly think. As we expand our boundaries of personal love, it becomes more all-encompassing and abstract. Limitations fall away.
Let's follow one stream all the way to the ocean. It's the most familiar stream of love -- toward some person. Beyond our love for the 'love of our life', we have love for our immediate family. We also love our extended family. Beyond that, we love our friends. Beyond that, we may love some with whom we share some other bond -- our church, club, college, sports team, etc. In a general sense, we also love our neighbors and perhaps the city in which we live. We may love our region in the country; in America, maybe the South, Midwest, or East or West Coasts. Broader still, we love our country and our countrymen. And beyond that we have a general love for humanity and life on earth. From there, it is not so hard to conceive of a universal love for all creation. When that is felt in a fully open and loving heart, it is true Universal Love.
In that sense, personal love is like a rose. Your immediate love is like the first petal. Pull it off and you discover a deeper level of love. Beneath that are more petals that reveal still deeper love levels. In time, you reach the inmost delicate petal, behind which is the floral nectar that is its essence. So it is with love. Beneath the deepest, most tender layer lies Love Essence - Universal Love - from which, all personal love draws its strength and inspiration.
Now you know your path. Start wherever you are in the field of personal love. Take your love to the next level and experience a heightened, deeper, value of love. Keep diving deeper into your own love experience until you reach your inmost core. There you will drown in an Ocean of Love infinitely vast, absolutely pure, and all-embracing. You become Universal Love.
This is the path of sacred sex.
SACRED SEX & THE PATH OF LOVE There is a simple reason why sacred sex is the ideal way to uncover your inner Universal Love. Universal Love, we have seen, is perfect Unity. It is the underlying unified source of all creation. What better way to discover this in yourself than through a lovemaking practice that leads to Sacred Union.
Indeed, the very definition of Sacred Union is the merging of personal love into the field of Universal Love.
In sacred sex, you begin with your strongest personal loves: sex & intimacy with a lover. From there, sacred sex arouses and builds your energy, leading to an even stronger love -- for the ecstasy of orgasm. Throughout the practice, your bond with your lover becomes deeper. Boundaries fall away from your mind -- you forget divisions of people, places, and things, as you are consumed by the ecstasy of love itself. Sacred sex then takes you beyond even this conventional love consummation. You ride your sexual energy like a wave, surfing in and out of extended orgasmic ecstasy. You touch the eternity of Universal Love, then fall back into a wave of personal love, then are washed over again in Unconditional Love. Like that, you swing back and forth between the heights of personal love and that perfect Universal Love, weaving the two together so they learn to live in tandem in daily life. You weave your Sacred Union.
Sacred sex accepts where you are now -- 'stuck' in personal love. It knows where you want to be -- basking in Universal Love. It also knows the vast difference between these two. So it begins where you are, and deepens your familiar personal love. In these inner depths, the distinction between personal love and Universal Love is less dramatic, more subtle. Boundaries are less, limitations are less. Energy and ecstasy are more. In this heightened state of personal love, you can easily slip into moments of Universal Love -- pure ecstasy, energy, and unboundedness. From conventional orgasm, you slip into sacred orgasm. You fall into Sacred Union. Then you fall out again, back to your familiar personal love.
But now the dynamic has changed. Not only do you yearn for Universal Love, you have tasted it. It is no longer a dream or fantasy, it is real. It may still be abstract by definition, but your experience of it is concrete and real. Like precisely describing the scent of a rose, words and ideas may fail, yet once you've smelled the rose, you know its exact scent. And it lures you back for more, in a way that no words or yearning previously could. You know exactly what it is and how to get it. And you do.
Once tasted, the lure of Absolute Love is seductive beyond compare. You want to bask and bathe in it. You want to surf and swim in it. No...you positively want to drown in its eternal essence, never to return to mere mortal life again.
Like this, Universal Love seduces you back for more and more, while your familiar personal love tugs you back into the mundane limited life you've been conditioned to believe is real. Back and forth you go, each time loosening the boundaries of personal love, and embracing all in Universal Love. In time, there is no more coming and going. Universal Love lives alongside personal love. You weave your permanent Sacred Union. This is Sexual Enlightenment.
This is the exalted path by which sacred sex leads you to Universal Love.
THE EVOLUTIONARY POWER OF LOVE It is not entirely true to say that sacred sex leads to Universal Love. That is like saying 'all roads lead to Rome' or 'all paths lead to God'. In truth, it is the attractive power of Universal Love that draws us all to it. Sacred sex is simply the means by which we are drawn. It is a road we can take that leads to Absolute Love. It is a stream that leads to the ocean.
This is not to short sell sacred sex. As explained above, sacred sex is not just any path. It is an ideal path to Universal Love. It uses love to find more and more love, and ultimately Pure Love. It traces love back to its Infinite Source.
Not only that, but once we have found Universal Love, sacred sex is a perfect way to express that love in the world. In the physical act of sexual union, we embody the spiritual ideal of Cosmic Union. In the merging of two opposites - male & female - we symbolize and express the unification of all opposites in spiritual life. Thus sacred sex is not just an ideal path to Universal Love, but also a perfect expression of it.
How did it get to be this way?
The answer is by the evolutionary power of Universal Love.
Universal Love is the very essence and source of life. In our scientific inquiry above, we saw how the unified source of creation can be seen as Pure Love. That unified Love bubbles up - hums with the power and energy of Love - and manifests into the myriad of love relationships we call creation. And then inexorably, by that same power of Love, it attracts creation back to itself, re-unifying what it diversified. Love starts full like an ocean, 'empties' itself into myriad streams, then returns to the ocean fullness. This proverbial Circle of Life fulfills the evolutionary purpose of Love.
On its own, Universal Love is absolute, perfect, and pure. It lacks nothing and needs nothing. But it is also unmanifest, uncreated. It is Pure Abstract Love. It is, for lack of a better description, an unfinished work. And so, like a fulfilled artist who creates art in order to fully self-express, Unmanifest Love manifests itself over & over in waves of personal love. The ocean of Universal Love creates streams of personal love to give itself ways & means to flow.
By this creative process however, the Ocean of Love reduces itself to a comparative trickle. Each stream therefore seeks to regain the lost ecstasy of Universal Love, and begins its flow back to the ocean. And when it is home, the stream of personal love is infused with the power of Universal Love, and flows in powerful, pure fulfillment. Love has fulfilled its evolutionary circle. It has self-created, and returned home to itself. It has come full circle.
Sacred sex, in revealing Sacred Union and embodying it in physical form, is a perfect reflection of the evolutionary circle of Universal Love. It is a mirror of the Circle of Life.
LIVING UNIVERSAL LOVE Living Universal Love is not a random fate. It is directly linked to your personal love life. Your stream of personal love must be free and clear so Universal Love can flow fully through.
Earlier, we explained that personal love flows differently through each person due to his or her personality. This expresses itself through natural desire. We naturally desire that which we personally love. Thus, in order to create a clear stream through which Universal Love can flow, we must follow our natural desire. This is why sacred sex accepts and honors all desire as sacred, and uses it as a means to Sacred Union. All desire is ultimately for the Ecstasy of Pure Love, and serves as a means to get there.
This is so important in sacred sex that several different Forums are devoted to the topic:Universal Love underlies all creation. It manifests itself in infinite love relationships. The underlying unity of love guarantees perfect harmony between all these relationships. This harmony gives divine order to creation -- if love is a thread, then each thread of personal love meshes with every other. Woven together, they make up the warp and woof of society, a social fabric that hums together in love. That, in turn, operates within the fabric of creation, in perfect cosmic harmony.
Thus, when you follow your innocent desire, you feel at one with the fabric of creation. Like thread in a cloth, your stream of love gains the strength of the Ocean of Love.
And through you, Universal Love floods out in your own personal way.
Copyright 2008, Society for Sacred Sexuality - all rights reserved.
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Sexual union is a mirror of Spiritual Union, and a gateway to direct experience of it. |
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