All You Are Is Love

August 9, 2013

“No! I will not look there, I can’t!” my mind screamed, I screamed in reaction. I pulled back, pulled back from the pain in my being, back into the pain in my body. The pain cut and clawed and tore. There was nowhere to run. I knew. I couldn’t, I shouldn’t try to avoid this. I knew that too. I touched the pain again, tentatively, only to collapse in a wave of dizziness and disorientation. The world melted into a liquid swirling mud, it made me nauseous, It made me dizzy, it drowned me, I could not get out! I had to get out! The panic rose, my hands shook, my head pounded. I must get out of this! Breathe, I thought to myself, breathe. There is no way out. You can not get out. You must calm down, you must open, you must … no! I will not face it! I can’t feel this! But I could not give up, not easily. Reactions I trained in, the drilled responses took over and run themselves even while I drove through the night in search of drugs. “Feel. Let it be, let it open, allow the pain, ride the pain” … my mind chanted as I drove to the hospital. I needed to get unconscious. I needed to feel the pain. I needed to kill the pain. I needed to heal the pain. I needed to let it open. I needed to make it go away. I could not stand it. I had to stand it. I knew I had to. The painkiller scrambled my thoughts, turned my mind into mush that drowned the vicious pounding in my head and I closed my eyes, willing the pain, the cutting, tearing pain, the agonizing, disgusting pain somewhere at the very bottom, at the very end, at the very beginning of me, to recede. To wait. To let me sleep. I woke up to it. It was right there, right under the surface. I sat up in my bed, propped against my pillows. I closed my eyes. I reached for it again. There was no panic this time, nothing in my body, nothing in my head. Only the pain. The dark, black pit with nothing to hang onto, disorienting, groundless, endless, cold. Empty. “Feel” I thought to myself “feel this to the very end” I thought, and I moved deeper into the blackness. There is no love here, I felt, there has never been any love here. I saw it now, I saw it clearly at the very beginning of this life, at the very beginning of my being human. No one has ever loved me simply because I was. Tears flew down my face. The thought cut through the blackness with a sharp, vicious slash. I doubled over, I run from the bed, into the bathroom. I crumpled on the floor. I wept hysterically. For a while. Silently. I opened my mouth and screamed. Silently. I did not want to wake anyone. This was mine. I came back to bed. I sat up, propped against my pillows. I closed my eyes. I reached for the pain. No one has ever loved me simply because I was. Now it was a statement not a complaint. Not an accusation. A fact. I moved deeper, the blackness brightened with an orange glow. Ah, I knew this place! I was here before. I remembered being here before. No one has ever loved me simply because I was. But then no one should. No one needs to. Only me. Just me. I am love.

The orange light flashed into a brilliant golden glow and then whiteness. A blazing whiteness. An endless all encompassing whiteness. I am love. This is love. All is love. This is what I am, this is where I came from when I decided to be born. When I chose to be a body. When I chose to be a human. When I was conceived – it was when the white love dimmed to an orange glow and then died in the darkness. The black, cold darkness. The darkness of pain and fear. Love was gone. And I was gone.
Tears flew down my face. My closed eyelids could not hold them. They squeezed between my lashes, slid down my chicks, fell from my chin, splashed against my chest. I opened my eyes. I looked at Christopher. He watched me. With concern? With fear? With interest? What did he see? Whom did he see? The white flashing love I once was? The layers and layers of fear and pain and trauma that covered me up, that trapped me, that squashed me? He looked intent. Serious. “I know why we don’t remember who we are, after we are born” I whispered to him. “I know why we don’t remember where we came from. I know why we don’t remember our past lives”. I spoke. He looked at me. He listened. “It is such a shock, you see. It is such a blow to come from love, from where there is nothing but love, from where love is what we are, to a place where there is pain. Where there is fear. Where there is trauma. The shock is so terrible, so hard and so sudden, that it knocks us unconscious. We black out. After that there is nothing left but survival”. But then, I thought to myself some moments later, we are what we are none the less, and what we are will respond when called, when invoked, when invited. It does not take wise words, I thought, to bring it up again. It does not take complicated computations, unshakable truths, sacred practices, subtle philosophies nor holly scriptures. It is enough to love to invite love to open. To invite who we are to open. To let us come back to ourselves, to what we are. Ha, it just might be that all we need is love, after all.
 

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