~ a drop of true love becomes us the ocean that soul love is ~
The simplest of ways to speak of the difference between true love and all that which isn’t true, is that if you were to become kinder, more compassionate, more sensitive, more generous, more selfless and more giving, then it is true love and you are living in true love. Because true love expands you and will allow you to see all beauty that is in other people and all things; suddenly the flowers will be more beautiful, you will be a better person, better friend, better child and better parent, and see your own light and spark shine through, feeling more joyful, aliveness, loving and in harmony.
True love is the space within us, where the beloved lives; and while we may enter this space because of an outside person, it is actually a place within us. And when we enter this space, from this space and horizon all else looks more beautiful and we are in that loving space and as thus, become more loving. The external beloved too enters their own space within themselves, and while we share a love through hands and skins, the love space is inside of us. There, the beloveds meet and are in each other all along. There, in the in love.
On the other hand, if we become more judgmental, critical, separating, arrogant, selfish, it is not true love; it may the path to it, but it isn’t yet the it. While we may think we are in deep love with someone, if we ourselves become less of who we truly are and not as attentive and compassionate with others, it is not true love – it is merely some obsession towards one person.
This is why when people are with the wrong partner, they may be more selfish friends, more restrictive and slow but steadily they may become unstable, unwilling, less open and more linear. The person you knew who was loving and giving to you begins to be arrogant and judgmental; and in time, the more they are with the wrong partner, the more they begin to look unhealthy physically as well, and their own mentality and ways of seeing the world becomes more restrictive, linear and contractive. It’s because they’ve entered this space within themselves – not the space of the love and true beloved, but another space, singular and skewed in vision.
And yet, all these experiences too are necessary sometimes on our path, because all of our relationships are purposeful, and in one way or another serve our deepening. When we are made better, more generous, more sensitive, it is sacred. When we feel more alive, more joyful, more fulfilled, it is sacred. When we feel more conscious of love, and more living in love, and more giving of love, it is sacred. And as such, sometimes to expand in love a person may first need to know what it feels to contract; as the tension rises, as the layers off the bark peel, we eventually release our true fragrance, our true essence, we rise in this aroma, in our knowing, seeing our truth.
When in true soul love, we begin to realize that love isn’t located outside, where the beloved seems to be, but within. If you and I are truly in love, then you go to the place within you that is love, and I go to the place within me that is love, and there, we are “in love” together. This is why we see so much beautiful spiritual texts and poetry speaking of how true lovers are in each other all along, how they have the same songs they loved, how even childhood diaries sound like twins.
This is why when we are truly living in love, regardless of whether we have a partner or not, everything seems beautiful and we can be in love with everything. There is no such thing as being “single” – we are in a continuous relationship with all and everything and with ourselves. We have to move away from these teenager-like linear mentalities and realize that even if someone isn’t in a romantic relationship, they are actually still in relationships and may be living in love. Many people are in romantic relationships but lack relationship skills and are not truly in love; they are not in that space within them. There’s no such thing as being “single”, but there is a thing called unhealthy relationships.
Today, inspired by our beautiful blossoms, I’ll share with you a beautiful love story – about a monk and a nun; and while this story may not seem like a traditional romance, it shows us how through the drop of true love with another, we enter the oceans that soul love is and becomes us.
In his book “Cultivating the Mind of Love”, the Zen Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhất Hạnh shared of his time when as a young monk in Vietnam he surprisingly fell in love with a nun.
“As a monk, you are not supposed to fall in love,” he writes, “but sometimes love is stronger than your determination.”
The first thirty or so pages of the book sound like a romance novel, about a star crossed love that happened over forty years ago; tender and honest, and brave as he approaches a topic so taboo in Buddhist orders. And then the story transitions into the next eighty or so pages, which read about more the dharmic paths and the Eastern religions. However, let that not be a disappointment – because I believe the treasured wisdom of his book, and his beautiful heart teachings, is that through the scriptures he teaches us how romance may never need to end – it just transforms.
On the love story, Nhất Hạnh writes,
“She represented everything I loved—my ideal of compassion, loving kindness, bringing Buddhism into society, and realizing peace and reconciliation. That desire in me was so strong and sacred that anything like holding her hand or kissing her on the forehead would have been a violation. She represented all that was important in my life, and I could not afford to shatter it.”
His feelings and desire and love felt overwhelming; so he sat with his emotions of love, read poetry, and wrote poetry, trying to come to an awareness about love.
After talking many hours together one day, he spent a sleepless night,
“I was still awake and I felt a strong desire to be with her—to sit with her, to look at her, to listen to her…. During many moments that night, I felt the desire to go and knock on her door and invite her to the sitting hall to continue our discussion.”
He didn’t knock, but their connection deepened the following days,
“I didn’t sleep much that night. The next morning after sitting and chanting, I proposed that we go to the kitchen and build a fire. It was cold and she agreed. We had a cup of tea together, and I tried my best to tell her that I loved her. I said many things, but I couldn’t say that. I spoke about other things, hoping she would understand. She listened intently, with compassion, and then she whispered, ‘I don’t understand a word you’ve said.’
But the next day she told me she understood.
It was difficult for me, but much more difficult for her. My love was like a storm, and she was being caught and carried away by the energy of the storm. She had tried to resist, but couldn’t, and she finally accepted. We both needed compassion.
We were young, and we were being swept away.
We had the deepest desire to be a monk and a nun—to carry forward what we had been cherishing for a long time—yet we were caught by love.”
They touched only once, a hand, a touch on face, knowing how much they each were devoted to and passionate about their individual spiritual paths. Eventually hey departed – she continued on her path for a nun, and him a monk.
But as true love stories go, Nhất Hạnh’s ending wasn’t really an end, but a beginning. He tenderly writes,
“I remembered the moment we parted.
We sat across from each other. She, too, seemed overwhelmed by despair. She stood up, came close to me, took my head in her arms, and drew me close to her in a very natural way. I allowed myself to be embraced. It was the first and last time we had any physical contact.
Then we bowed and separated.”
Nhất Hạnh found that through his love for her, he was able to transmute his feeling for love for all beings, for all existence.
“I began to see her everywhere,” he writes. “Over time, my love for her did not diminish, but it was no longer confined to one person.”
Appropriate to his Zen tradition, Nhất Hạnh is as much a poet as a philosopher, and speaks of the nature of self, the nature of the world, our relationship to our environment, our way of seeing the world, and the way of seeing that comes with enlightenment. He endeavors to teach us that love for another is a fragment of universal love, that any love we have experienced—like our powerful first love—”has no beginning and no end. It is always in transformation.”
He reminds us, in his own unique way, of this place of love within us that I spoke of in our beginning today – for this is where the beloved is and we are too; and from there, we see it all eternally, beyond time and space. We see there we are together anyway; and yet we see it is an ocean that soul love is, not just confined to the borders of a drop or skins or flesh.
There, in this space, I believe is where we realize that love is that which is from a time before time beyond time. There, in this space, we come into intimacy beyond what hands and minds know of.
In esotericism, as well as both spiritual and shamanic astrology, we see what is known as the inner beloved and the sacred marriage – because it isn’t the external beloved, it is an inner one you must open up to first and enter its temple. In the church of your heart is where he resides. Once awakened, once you meet his eyes, you will also, in its right timing and divine order as it needs you to, will come to you in the way it needs you to experience it.
Most of us enter this temple through another person, whether a simple ordinary interaction, moment, or something longer as relationship – but nonetheless, in a unique way for you, when it is a soul lover, it will show you the path and key for the space within you which you are destined to enter. Because love’s destiny is to fulfill itself.
The soulmate is the remembering, the knowing, of who we truly are.
We are often unaware of our own breath, because it comes so naturally; so the only way we may be aware of it is when we see our beloved – the body within which our own breath moves. And when we truly love someone, whether a romantic partner, our child, our parents, we’d give anything for them, we live through them and we see this awakened love in tangible ways.
Through such true love, we awaken to our own selves also – we come into deeper self respect, in appreciation, in reverence, in beauty, in compassion. Because love expands us, and makes us better people, more loving and more kind, to both ourselves and others. We see the preciousness of being alive, and awaken ourselves into the remembering of our true essence and how we should be in love to self and all of our parts also.
Soul love allows us an opportunity for a deepening. Learning to love is our greatest purpose, because when we don’t know how to love we can’t love and we hurt others. It’s a skill to learn the art of love and art of loving. When loving self we can love others; and when we love others truly this shows we love ourselves truly also. How we love others shows how we love ourselves.
Learning to love others truly and honestly and fully and selflessly, is how we learn to love ourselves. The beloved is a gift of god, a seed that grows within us, within the home of our heart, church of our heart; so may we all be in deep gratitude when we meet someone who opens us in such a way, to help us enter into our inner love space, no matter if only for a moment or lifetime, because there, horizons are beautiful, purposeful, needed.
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Cover photograph by me.
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