Free Fall « The Sacred Art of Language.
From Ben Neal at The Sacred Art of Language
Free Fall
Have you ever been in love? I mean really, deeply, head-over-heels in love – so absorbed and lost in your lover that you can’t sleep, you forget to eat, you can’t focus on work or have a conversation, you can’t even think about anything else?
If you have, then you have tasted one of the most awesome and profound experiences a human being can ever have. If you haven’t, then nothing I can say or write can convey to you even a fraction of that mystery…
A lover lost in love knows what it means to surrender – to be completely open, absolutely vulnerable, and totally abandoned to something greater than oneself. We call it “falling in love,” and rightly so… to abandon yourself to love can feel like flinging yourself off of a cliff!
The God experience is like that. The mystic falls in love with Nature, with the universe, with the whole of Creation and everything in it… so absorbed in the Beloved that all else is forgotten.
That experience is what we all crave! We long to fall in love with the Divine, and every love affair we have is just another way of reaching out to reconnect with the Infinite, to feel that eternal wholeness and completion. God is the lover that hides inside all of your lovers…
Intimacy with another can be a gateway to mystic union, to the Cosmic Love that annihilates all sense of self and other. If you are in a romantic relationship, don’t hold back! You cannot know the depths of love while playing it safe, being cool and detached. Give in and open up in total surrender. Be radically vulnerable and trusting. Abandon yourself to love! This is the only way to find out what life and love really have to offer.
And if you find that you cannot enter into this kind of surrender with your current partner, keep looking.
Sex (honest, consensual, responsible sex) can be one of the most profound experiences of Oneness. As you give and receive pleasure, as you and your partner are moaning and sweating, lost in the throes of ecstasy – that is the bliss of the Divine! That is the dance of Krishna and Radhe. That is love, loving! Look deep into the eyes of your beloved and you will see none other than your own Holy Self.
And if you do not have a lover, the chances are you have a friend, a parent, a brother or sister, a son or a daughter – even a pet – someone whom you love very dearly. This too is intimacy. This too can be a doorway to Divine Love. Whenever we care for another, we enter into the heart of God. And when we embrace that connection and give in to it completely, then we are surrendered in love, and we dissolve…
There are countless ways to enter the inner chamber. Maybe you feel the Presence when you are alone in Nature, hiking through the hills and forests… or when you are totally absorbed in chanting your mantra, your prayer beads sliding gracefully through your fingers… when you are out in your community, engaged in loving service and charitable work… when your paint brush is dancing over the canvas, your soul expressing itself in vibrant color… or when holding your most cherished instrument, and melting into the endless beauty of sound and music…
So many have tasted the Divine in all of these flavors and more. I encourage each of you, my dear friends and readers, to find your gateway, your passion, your path. All love is God’s love. So whatever it is you love – be it meditation, music, art, sex, nature, gardening, community service, raising a family – embrace it, explore it, abandon yourself to it!
Don’t hold back, don’t play it safe – surrender to your passion. Find the path that takes you beyond yourself, and follow it to the end and beyond!
Allow yourself to fall in love with God, with mystery, with Life itself. Let go into the endless free fall of existence… and dissolve.
~ Ben
via Free Fall « The Sacred Art of Language.
With thanks to Celeste at
