Love is, and always was, there

I have reached an age, it seems, of first marriages.

Many will detect a note of cynicism in that comment, to be sure, and I won’t deny that there’s some lurking in there. I’m working on that, though. But much of that statement comes from observation, and much of the motivation to bleed my brain on this topic comes – one might say ironically – from love. Love for the people in my life, and love for the things this world and the greater world that contains it has to offer.

First off, I don’t consider myself religious, although I suppose in some ways we are all religious. Atheists hold religiously to science. Agnostics hold religiously to skepticism and doubt. Buddhism is undoubtedly the closest you can come to describing my own set of beliefs, though I’m hesitant to slap a label on anything because that only sponsors what I view as an illusion of separateness.

It’s this illusion of separateness that appears responsible for so many folks my age (and most folks in general) suffering from a seeming loss of identity and an acute loneliness that has them fretting over age milestones and spending their time, energy and money on a discomforting dating odyssey, the discomfort of which has probably magnified in these days of online dating. Many of them receive the impression early on that happiness and success can only be achieved through a lucrative career, a marriage and a family, and so that notion hardens in them and becomes a fixed reality that must be realized as soon as the world gives them the 18-and-over permission slip.

A happy bum is more successful than a depressed CEO.

I see a lot of people sacrificing themselves for the sake of self-image, losing themselves at the same time they’re trying to validate themselves. But how can you ‘validate’ something that’s been banished to a shadowy corner? Too often people lose themselves in relationships, altering and mangling their behavior, and they end up drowning and splashing in dark, unfamiliar waters, seldom recognizing the exhausted, embittered person that eventually washes up on the shore.

We can all choose to have loving relationships, with anyone and everyone, anything and everything. Just choose to. The universe is actually loving in and of itself: it wants whatever we want, whether that’s violence or peace. It is the Cosmic Giving Tree, though it doesn’t actually lose anything. How can it? It’s everything.

The idea that the Universe is experiencing itself is not a New Age postulation, but an obvious fact. The cosmos is intelligent – after all, we’re intelligent, right? [Though maybe that’s debatable :-) ]. Labels do not exist. We are one body, seeing itself, knowing itself. The Universe craves experience (don’t we? We want Life!), and thus wants the highest experience of itself, which is the loving, sharing, giving peace that it is. But this peace can’t be known without having been drawn from what it is not – namely, the raw atavistic nature of, well, nature. We are the Universe seeing, breathing, thinking, and evolving, evolving towards the highest experience of union.

Now, many might think that marriage is the highest experience of union. It is for some people, and may be for you, but I personally believe there’s a greater union to strive for and that’s an experience of love and compassion for, once again, anyone and everyone, anything and everything. To not hold one person above the other, to not say “this person is better than that person”, or even to say “I love this person the most,” but to recognize the value of everyone, to bless ‘em all, dammit. Contrary to what religion might have people believe, I highly doubt God (or whatever you want to call Her/It/Him), plays favorites.

Sitting or walking alone, especially in places of natural splendor, I have experienced what I like to call “spiritual” (or emotional) orgasms, poignant tidal rushes of joy for pretty much everything around me, from the glittering constellations to the gum on my shoe. I am not with anyone, and though the experience would also be wonderful with another person, I don't need them, because I'm not alone. I am the stuff of everything. As are you. And you are the stuff of me. And mosquitoes. And tapeworms. And politicians.

Naturally, these joyous feelings don’t stick around at this magnitude, but for some who practice a lifetime and dedicate themselves, they do. There’s a great true story about a Buddhist monk who, when asked how he could go without sex for 30 years, replied, “When you feel like you’re coming all the time, it’s not something you really think about.”

For too many people, especially my age, marriage is a result of fear. Fear of solitude, fear of ‘dying alone’, fear of judgment from outside pressures, etc. Too often the decision to get married comes from a counterfeit call for the highest experience, from an ingrained need to follow an expected societal custom, to following the guidance of the hormonal narcotic running through the brain in streams of dopamine.

You are not separate. You are not alone. You are loved. You are love. And I believe that, in its purest form, love requires no expectations, propositions or deals. It is simply an endlessly giving and forgiving peace. I’m not as close as I’d like to be in realizing all of the above for myself, but every minute is another opportunity to evolve towards achieving it.