~ We can only meet another as deeply as we’ve met ourselves. ~
There was once a beautiful bright full moon, seen by all in awe and wonder from around the world. A man stood by a lake, seeing the reflection of the moon across the stillness of the waters. “I must be the moon,” the lake believed, and the man believed.
Beside him, a woman; holding a bowl of water, and in it, the reflection of the beautiful moon. “I must be the moon,” the bowl believed, and the woman believed.
As the lake saw the bowl with the same moon, each believing the other was the moon also through their own reflections, they believed they must be destined to be together. And so too, the man saw the reflection of the moon in the woman’s bowl – the same reflection he saw seeing in the lake, and thought she must be his destined beloved. The woman too saw what the man was seeing – how it was the same as hers, and thought the same.
“He is my moon as I am his,” she thought and believed; and he too saw his moon in hers.
And so they sat together, bowl with lake, and man with woman, sitting beside one another believing in their destined union.
Wind came. It caused ripples across the waters of the lake and distorted the image of the moon; and the bowl cried as the image was no longer reflected – their beloved lake was changing. And the man too cried how his partner is now changing, and the woman too cried how her partner was changing.
A sage sat beside them, took the bowl from the woman’s hands, poured out the water and broke it.
“Look above you beloveds,” he gently told them, “The moon is still there as she were, untouched in the sky. What you called your moon was only a reflection.”
He gave them each a mirror, and guided the man to raise his mirror and point it to the woman, and the woman too raised her own pointing it to the man. Each saw reflections within reflections within reflection for as far as their eyes were able to see and perceive; and yet the reflection were only merely held within the boundaries of the mirrors.
Relationships too serve as reflections, in various ways for various purposes – yet each one is essentially an allowing, an opportunity for a deepening, a learning.
All forms of union are ripples across a surface – ripples across lakes, rivers, oceans and skins. But they serve not to bind, they serve to free – for love too is about freedom from our own inner boundaries, beliefs and conditioning. It’s not about binding the soul and spirit, it’s a freedom within the temple of God as more light enters us with self knowledge and illumination, nurturing our inner sacred flame, and of that, nurturing the flame within our sacred union.
If you believe you are a bowl, or a lake, and that this is all you are, you will believe that it is a binding to enter into a relationship, but also, you will only go as far as your own reflections. When the wind comes and causes the ripples you may no longer see what you were expecting to see and seek it elsewhere only for another wind to come again and cause ripples again. You can only meet another as deeply as you’ve met yourself.
If you don’t know who you are, if you can’t see yourself clearly, you will also not be able to see another clearly; and you may not be making conscious decisions and entering into the relationships you say you seek. If you say you seek a soulmate, you must first meet your soul. Otherwise you will just be walking along your path and mistaking bowls, lakes, and mirrors for words like destiny or soulmates.
Love is a knowing and of being known, a seeing and of being seen, not of flesh but through the flesh. It is based on truth and inner essence, and not on skin and projections. To love truly is to see truly. Intimacy means into-me-see; and in deep love, deep intimacy, boundaries dissolve, so the merging may happen. Intimacy seeks the inner essence, the true self. Love allows us to peel the layers of ourselves, take off the old identities, images, judgments, limitations, projections and beliefs and refine our ego.
If you know that you are the space within the pot that is untouched, and the space within the lake that is untouched, then there is nothing to bind you thinking it must be written in stone. You then approach another with freedom, with acceptance, holding the space for them too to be who they are in their true essence.
True union isn’t on the surface, it isn’t in the mirror – it is in the stillness that holds the mirrors. You are the one witnessing the winds, witnessing the reflections and ripples, but you are not them. If you think you are the lake or the bowl, or your name, marriage will feel fated for you, and eventually feel like a chained bind.
But if you act of awareness you become a conscious movement. This is the free will – our divine gift and grace to have the ability to consciously choose to make life more conscious. If that clear and conscious decision to try to act of self awareness, you will respond and move in better ways of harmony, love and grace.
For two people to meet there will an iron necessity, a hand, bringing them together to meet. These are karmic impulses from past lives, as there will be something to learn, to support, or balance out. But once you two meet, it is now a different path where the more conscious you are the better paths you may pave for your relationship lands and inner lands. There will be decisions to be made always. Each day. Movements.
And if you walk more consciously, as best as you can each day, gardens of roses will bloom, which you will nourish, nurture, take care of together. The beloved, or even love itself, is a seed of God, and to love is to create that garden within the temple of ourselves until we become love itself.
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Cover photograph by me of our beautiful roses.
For more of my writings, browse through my Art of Love.
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