Saturday, October 27, 2012

the ego fears, but the spirit burns


the word 'love' has been cheapened for many years through its ubiquitous use in advertising and hyperbole.  i recall a wonderful scene in the movie, Roxanne, that has stuck with me through the years, in which the idea is presented:  how can we use the word love for a person, when people use it every day to describe their favorite detergent, a candy bar,  a new dress?


still from Roxanne.  Steve Martin ponders his words



at the same time as its use has become frivolous, the word still feels loaded like a gun -- with implications, complications, expiations, permutations, expectations.  how can i use this heavy word to describe my feelings when what i really feel is that i am graced by love in the same way as if a hummingbird would alight on my outstretched hand?  it is a live thing, untamed, beautiful, not mine to keep.  it might choose to leave at any time in search of brighter flowers or wider vistas.  i love people as i love that hummingbird, with a grateful and open heart; humbled and ecstatic at the same time.




this word, this love thing, usually to be taken as a sign of a contract, a commitment to conformity or steadiness -- now feels to me as elusive as that bird, or a wild deer.  only by keeping very still might that beauty approach me, and only with caution may it stay with me a while.

this is why i do not use that most overused phrase very often.  i dare not risk scaring off what is most precious to me.  love is that iridescent bird, the stag in the woods, and i the privileged one who waits for its approach, who is is grateful to be allowed  near its free spirit.

and on the other hand, consider passion:

the strange coexistence of the tender and tentative heart with the enthusiastically carnal body is an enigmatic puzzle.  something mysterious occurs as we grapple in bed, as if another force beyond us awakens and roars to life;  a voracious energy that wants to consume and be consumed simultaneously.  perhaps the goal is to merge, to abandon all division of male and female, giving and receiving, and simply to exist for precious moments in a glorious riot of pleasure.

Tantra, by Alex Grey