by Becca Tzigany

 

LOVE.  It is “a many-splendored thing” [1950’s film] that “makes the

world go round” [~ Perry Como]. 

 

 

As a thing, it is a commodity sought after,  given,  withheld,  justified [“Justify my Love” ~ Madonna],  and negotiated,  bought and sold in bars,  brothels,  chats, and marriages.  It becomes an object to be controlled,  manipulated,  and possessed.

 

 

As a feeling, Love has “launched 1000 ships”

[for Helen of Troy] and inspired millions of songs,  paintings,  sculptures,  dances,  poems,  and long-distance voyages. Almost universally, people yearn to fall into it,  to be swept away by it,  and to rise in it.

 

 

 

As a process, it seizes your heart to open it,  break it,  shatter it,  pierce it,  burn it up,  and grow it.  Oh, to be “Drunk in Love” [~ Beyonce], usually

followed by “Love Hurts” [~ Everly Brothers, et al].  Oh,  the tragic vagaries and excruciating dependencies when you’re “Addicted to Love” [~Robert Palmer].  These experiences, one might hope, will drive you out of the addiction thicket, seeking what in the world might be the real thing.

 

What is most certain is that in this realm, we are confused about Love.  Could our main purpose in 3D be to learn about Love by experiencing what it is not?  Romantically uttering, “I love you” as a whiney, desperate, covert, “Tell me that you love me, please!”  … no, that is something that love is not. 

 

In fact, it is absurd, given what I perceive to be the true nature of who we are.  What I see in people,  birds,  dolphins,  flowers, rainclouds,  entire ecosystems,  Mother Earth,  Father Sun, and the rest of Creation is Love Incarnate.  We get so weighed down by the heaviness of 3D reality, so blinded by the darkness of negation, so

 

confused by mental projections, that we scarcely perceive what is underneath it all.

So here is my definition:  Love is Self-awareness.  It is the without-a-doubt cognizance of our greater Self. I like the way David Hawkins describes it, in his book, Power vs. Force:

 

 

 

 

“Loving is a state of being.”  It is a level of consciousness that you attain.  He says it is “unconditional, unchanging, and permanent.” It is “not intellectual and does

 

 

 

not proceed from the

mind.  Love emanates from the heart. . .  As reason is bypassed, there arises the capacity for instantaneous recognition of the totality of a problem and a major expansion of context, especially regarding time and process.  Reason deals only with particulars, whereas Love deals with wholes.”

 

Exactly:  this major expansion of context means that I can define myself as Becca, as well as precious humanity, as well as Mother Earth, as well as Universe, as well as Creative Force.  The Self is a holarchy.  And who would be swept away by the passion of creation more than Love Itself?

 

Meanwhile, back as Becca, I can, as Hawkins describes, rise “above the separation of positionality.  It is then possible to be ‘one with another,’  as there are no longer any barriers.  Love is therefore inclusive, and expands the sense of self progressively.  Love focuses on the goodness of life in all its expressions…”

 

Yes.  This, for me, has been the ever-widening path of my Tantric journey.  It expands to the point where the path disappears entirely.

 

The process has ransacked any of my infantile notions of love. In my poem, “The Blessing”, I refer to the love that pries us open, so we become an ever more spacious container for our true natures. To the extent we resist our own evolution, it can be painful.  The ego puts up a fight for its own identity.  It may feel like sacrifice, in the same way I may miss some functions of an old operating system, but then get to navigate a bigger data base more easily with my new operating system.   I do not have to surrender to my lover, but I do need to surrender to the process of Love.

 

So when I say, “I love you,” the equation goes like this:

 

                  I = LOVE   (I am the embodiment of the Creative Power of Love)

                  LOVE = YOU   (You are the Creative Power of Love, too)

                  I = YOU      (We are but reflections of the One)

 

I can do the math.  Therefore, I = LOVE = YOU.

 

[Subtext, depending on the situation:  “Wanna play?  How about we get together and generate some creative sparks?”]

 

Once this warm-hearted awareness saturates my physical cells, reality becomes a luminous invitation to experience the “many-splendored” life I am living, nested within an illusion of everything that is trying to negate Love. 

 

 

 

“The Power of Love” –  Huey Lewis & the News

 

*** All photography (except historical characters) by Becca Tzigany