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The Blessing The garden of love is
green Jelaluddin Rumi In Corrogue this Anamcara is tending the garden of love. It is Valentines Day. This is an annual celebration that allows us to remember the importance of love. Too often, however, this day heightens the sense of separateness from love. Too often this day tends to deepen the illusion of love as our connection to the other. There is ‘my love’ and there is the ‘my beloved.’ There are two egos supporting or transcending each other’s sense of separate existence. We are limited in our understanding of love. Eskimos have over twenty words for snow. We have too few words to describe the nuances of love. We engage in what the mystical poet Hafiz refers to as, “our teacup talk of love.” We are unknowing of love. To know love is to be love. There is no duality in love. There is no other to be in love with. This is not what our ego wants to hear let alone know. To know the beauty of love is the death of the ego. Our ego wants to be more loving. It thinks that this will give it an advantage. It sees that there might be more happiness in this. It is a bargain hunter. Its premise is give a little love and get a bit of love. Maybe even go a bit further and give more than you get if you are slightly desperate. The ego cannot imagine what it is to be love incarnate.
To be is to be love. Your ego will accept the possibility of loving
but not the reality that you are love. Your ego might be prepared
to accept intellectually that you are made in the image of God.
What it will not do is to know this statement as a living truth.
It will not accept that you are love, which is what it means to
be made You cannot imagine God. Neither can you imagine what it is to be love. You can only be it. You can only know what it feels like to jump off a cliff edge by jumping. Entering a state of non-separateness from love can be known but it cannot be described. One has to jump into the unknown to enter the all knowing. As Rumi tells us love is beyond condition. It is beyond time. No spring, no autumn. It is always fresh. It is always new and always now.
The true lover is detached from any sense of ‘little me.’ The true lover does not claim love as his or her own. This experience perfumes the life of little me. This is what we call charisma. The word charisma originally meant, “Grace bestowed by love.” It is the shining through the personality of ones essential being. You do not learn to do charisma. You unlearn how not to be. The light that then shines through the personality is the light of love but you do not claim it as yours. To be is to be charismatic. Love is the only true security. Only this is not the love that the ego calls its own. Ego clings to the idea of separateness from the other. Real love is beyond clinging. Real love is everlasting. In real love there is no fear. This is because there is no fear of the ultimate illusion we call death. In real love there is no fear of separateness because love is all one. You may be alone but you feel all one. There is no fear because there is no one to be afraid. How can love be afraid of love? How can everlasting life ever be afraid of death? All religious teachings can take you to the garden of Love. Only within too many religious institutions the institutional mind keeps the garden gate shut. You are told that you can only come to the garden by being good. You are told you can only come to the garden of Love if you follow the true way. You are told you will come to the garden only when you are dead and if you happen to be one of the chosen. All the mystics and all the lovers of life tell us that the garden is here and now and the only thing we need to do is to die before we die. This is the death of the illusory self with all its fears and insecurities. This is the death of the illusory self who thinks it knows anything about love and refuses to be that which the heart longs for. Each day can be a Valentines Day. Let each new day be a new opportunity for love. Make it your intention to serve love. Make it your intention to create from the only foundation that is real. Make it your intention to be a mystic and to enter the mystery of love. Gift yourself the knowing of love this Valentines Day. Gift yourself this knowing on any day and in every moment. Then you will not need to know what to do with your life. You will know that the only way to do anything real is to be. When William Shakespeare wrote, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” he was asking a question only a lover can ask. This is a real question. This is a question that invites the ultimate quest. This is the grail quest and the real quest. To find the grail is to find the real. To find the real is to know you are love. To find the grail is to be love. To find yourself is to come home to the garden of love that you have never left and can never leave. You can only ever lose the illusion of separateness from love and this is no real loss. Why not lose yourself now? This is the only time you have and will ever have. This is the only time when you can cross the threshold to the timeless knowing of love. When you enter the garden of love that is green without limit you know the Blessing is already here and you are it. © Tony Cuckson 2006
Tony Cuckson who runs these groups is a storyteller, writer, workshop leader and Anam cara (Soul Friend) .
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