The waters of love (Part I)
To be in love is a privilege. To be in love is a right. Love does not come easy; for love, you have to strive. Love requires the jump and love demands the dive.
“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”
— Zora Neale Hurston
# The Fall Into The Abyss
As you set out on the journey of love, you first roam the plains of lust mistaking the charming, open grasslands to be the domain of love. Love, however, cannot be found on the plains of lust. Love lies beyond the periphery of lust, within the valley over which sit the plains.
To discover love, you must jump into this abyss and be swallowed by its inconceivable depths. You do not rise in love, after all. In love, you must fall. Love is that leap of faith that requires surrender and demands vulnerability. Love never asks you to, but requires you to, give up all of yourself. Love sits at the bottom of that bottomless hole.
As you gaze down at that endless pit, all that awaits you and greets you is nothing. All that you can see is nothing. There is darkness, darker than a moonless night in the desert. The edge looks like death itself; which is about right because love is born from death.
# The First Death
To be in love, you must first experience death; the death of a part of yourself. Love necessitates the death of your superficial self, the sacrifice of your ego. Love cannot exist alongside ego because the ego cannot look beyond; it can love nothing but itself.
From the perspective of the ego, the jump seems like a leap of despair and the pit looks like a void. But as you begin to understand love and hear its call, you shed your ego as easily as a snake sheds its skin. Then you can look beyond yourself; then the pit sings a beckoning melody and shines a blinding light.
Then you do not fall into the abyss, you jump. You jump against all logic and reason. You jump cognitively convinced that will die but intuitively certain that you will break through to the other side. Then as you hurtle through that endless fall…splash.
# The Pond
You plunged yourself into that white hole only to find yourself in the cerulean waters of the pond of love. It does not seem like much but looks bigger and wider than the grasslands of lust. It does not feel like much but it feels a lot like home.
You swim on the surface to explore the breadth of love. To experience its depths, however; to understand love’s true potential, you must take the plunge. After the jump, comes the dive.
A swim on the surface might make love seem a lot like lust but it is not. The surface reflects the physical dimensions of love and therein it mirrors lust, but it is not. The moon in a pond is not the moon in the sky.
Once you have explored the physical side of love. Once you have traversed the length of the pond and swam laps across the surface; you must dive within. Once you make love, you must experience it all the same.
“Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.”
— Barbara De Angelis
What awaits you is a whole new world; the mental realms of love. You begin to understand how love runs deeper (pun intended) as you paddle through the world hidden under you all along.
The longer you swim, the more you give yourself to love, the better your capacity and stamina for love. You can hold your breath longer and go deeper into the mind of the other. It takes more of you, mentally and physically, but enriches you in ways a surface swim never did.
Eventually, you come to cover the entire pond. Eventually, you grow weary and begin to lose interest in the pond and the other. Love is great, you tell yourself, but not spectacular.
Now and then you continue to dive but the familiarity disengages you; the intimacy, ironically enough, pulls you away. You begin to slow down and eventually cease roaming around. The spark vanishes; love becomes a distant memory and a forgotten feeling.
If you however persist. If you continue to swim and explore love out of belief and will, you will, one day, undoubtedly discover the hidden entrance. At the bottom of the pond and deep within the recesses of the mind of the other, you will find the passage that takes you to the other side.
# The Lake
Through that hidden aquatic passage you find another body of water. Grander than the first; you find yourself in the lake of love. The door from which you came disappears like a fleeting daydream and you are enveloped, once again, in the waters of love.
Finding yourself in settings familiar and yet anew, you swim the surface once again. With a renewed sense of enthusiasm and rediscovered fiery passion, you explore the physical aspects of love and lust for your partner all over again. You uncover aspects of their physicality of which you never knew and experience pleasures of love that never before felt true.
You cannot explain or understand the difference. In much the same way that you cannot communicate how swimming in a lake is different from splashing about in a pond. All you know, without any shred of doubt, is that you know nothing of love.
You childlike curiosity and a gallon of air within your lungs, you dive in once again, into the mind of your partner. You discover depths within them, the likes of which you could never fathom. You begin to grasp the chasmic extent of the inside of your other. You no longer understand them, you start to realize them.
“You call it madness, but I call it love.”
— Don Byas
You cannot and will not be able to explain it to anyone else who hasn’t been to the lake. One who has never swum will understand nothing of the water. With this newly found lust for love, you look for the door once again; not sure if you will find another but believing all the same. Surely, love cannot be bigger than this, a part of you whispers to yourself.
To truly explore the depths of the lake and the scope of love, however, you will need to extend your capacity of love. You will need to improve your stamina; hold your breath longer and push those limbs harder. You will need a bigger heart and a softer spirit.
With the lake floor within sight, you paddle faster towards the bottom but the gate is nowhere in sight. You do, however, notice something else. All the way down, near the bottom, the water changes.
It feels strange. It runs differently on your skin. It tastes different on your tongue. It has a hue that you cannot comprehend and a smell that you cannot decipher. It is here that you discover, for the first time, the spiritual side of your partner.
A side that defies all expectations and explanations. A side that perhaps you are not aware of even within yourself. You look further ahead, hoping to see more, and there it is that you spot another door.
