In this day and age, it seems the word “love” is over used and sometimes just another tawdry claim, but its bonds can be found in the smallest ways and simplest expressions of intent.
I’m always amazed to hear what parents do for their children. My friend recently had a baby for the first time, and the baby suffers from sleep apnea. My buddy has that dazed look in his eyes as he tries to get his work done; that exhausted no sleep look with the red eyes, droopy lids and faraway look remembering what it was like sleeping through the day after a rough night out with the boys.
He told me he and his wife have to take turns with being awake for the baby to watch his breathing. They stay awake with him on their chest. One parent gets some sleep then passes the baby off to the other for a few hours.
What an inspiration they are to me. Selfless and caring souls like this define what it means to be a parent and give of yourself for the love of other. Those first-time parents who hold their child close, something deeper is happening there they may not even realize. Sure, a bond is forming but more than that a literal heart to heart act of symbiosis and close-knit kindred tie to knowing the heartbeat of another is forming. A rhythm of life is being syncopated.
The selfless act of my friend and his wife prompts me to consider what happens when this devotion is absent. There’s a show called Paternity Court with Lauren Lake. Judge Lake helps couples work through their problems on television and sorts through the paternity suit messes created each week, as she listens to stories and points out to each couple where they are walking down a treacherous path in life.
Some who live hand to mouth, make no bones about what it takes to survive. Sex is for pleasure and that’s about it. It doesn’t matter who you are sleeping with as long as your needs are met. I heard a father who was in court say, “When you don’t respect yourself, you don’t deserve my respect.” There it is. Conditional love on full display in plain view for all to see and hear. The judge chastised the mother for allowing him to treat her like that. “Your children are going to grow up thinking this kind of treatment is all right. That is not all right.” She added that a child knows when it is not loved. Instincts of survival are strong in humans.
My sense is that love is expressed in the tiniest of actions that almost go unnoticed. A being also senses the omission of actions in life. That’s why the paternity court is full of parents denying children. The lack of love in relationships carries over into the bedroom and bumping bodies prompts the animal instinct within us. Unequally yoked people may make good bedfellows but their temptations produce unsettling situations that snowball and become larger affairs that impact others.
The sexual act cannot be underestimated. It is an experience that links hearts, minds and souls in ways people may never consider. When taken as a sacred act, sex can be an awe-inspiring connection to another and point to profound meaning.
In an interview with Andrew Huberman, author Robert Greene states: “The desire to couple is biologically wired into us — a biological energy to love. It’s not just about power and hierarchies…. There’s something in the universe that’s trying to connect things to each other, so there’s a kind of energy that exists in the world where we have a deep need to connect to somebody outside of power dynamics; where there’s a degree of equality and we’re drawn together. We let go of the ego games, we let go of the playing, and surmount our physiology, our own hypothalamus, and we engage in this “love sublime.” And the physical part, the sexual part, is the trigger for it. When we have sex with someone your body is permeable and your mind becomes permeable to the other person. This is an overpowering act.”
Greene notes that this ideal is hard to achieve and likens it with the soulful attainment of God through a peak experience. From an eastern perspective, the bad karmic ties we make in this life are there to be untied through awareness, presence and mindful/intentional self-awareness. This inside work is about attuning to the breath of the universe in each being. Listen to the tides of the ocean and meeting the souls placed on our paths who attune to the vibratory patterns set forth by your heart.
Those who are fully committed to love are working toward being lost in full union with it. St. Teresa of Avila writes: “The will must be occupied completely in loving, but it does not understand how it loves. The understanding, if it does understand, does not understand how it understands. Or at least it cannot comprehend anything of what it understands. It doesn’t seem to me that it does understand, because, as I say, it does not understand itself. Nor can I understand this myself!”
Spoken like a true mystic in love with being love.
spirit beat 