Читать книгу A Lifetime of Love - Daphne Rose Kingma - Страница 7

A SOULFUL CONNECTION

Since time immemorial, men and women have loved one another—desperately, madly, sweetly, with unbridled, dangerous passion, with the compassion of their kind hearts, to the depth of their souls. Love knows no bounds. There is no country, province, or people to which it has ever been irrelevant; and, whenever you fall in love, you join the company of lovers of all times in living out one of life's greatest themes.

What you feel when you fall in love is universal. However ordinary or simple your own love may appear to be, to your heart and soul it is a grand love. Like David and Bathsheba, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Abelard and Heloise, your love, too, is an experience of wonder and ecstatic belonging that will draw you into life's most tragic and beautiful moments. Through love you become part of a sacred tradition, that great lineage of all those who have plighted their troth, promised their hearts to one another, chosen to live and die for love, and known that love was the only thing worth living for.

We need love.

We seek love because in every cell of our being we know that love is the only thing we cannot live without. In each breath, with each beat of our hearts, we know this. This is why no matter what else we may do or pursue in our lives, love is always our highest goal, our farthest reach, our most passionate quest.

That is because in our hearts we know that in this world of sorrow and betrayal, love is what we have to hold on to. Only love can make our hearts sing in even the deepest of darkness, can let our souls come to peace in the midst of even the most tremendous travail. Love is the only thing we will take with us when we walk out of this life.

Everything that we are—personality, body, emotions, achievements, reputation, bank accounts, friendships, trophies, Academy Awards, gold medals, houses, furniture, parents and children, even memories and great expectations—will all pass away. Only love, the beautiful light, will remain. For love is the light that calls us into being and awaits us when we have stepped our last curtsy across life's stage. Love is the mystical, unconditionally all-affirming Yes. Love is being itself, consciousness itself, the energy which itself is the substance and essence of life.

We love in the midst of Love.

The love we feel, the love we need, the love we give is surrounded by the great Love that is the matrix and cradle and blessing and essence of our being. This Love is the vessel, recipe, and map for all the words, gifts, and happenings, beautiful moments and touching exchanges which in this life we call loving, being loved, or feeling love. It is the limitless sea in which all our human experiences of love—the love of lovers and sweethearts, of husbands and wives, of parents for their children, brothers and sisters for one another, of dearest friends and compassionate strangers—swim like the vast and variegated multitude of fish in the infinite ocean.

Love as we know it and live it—the love of duty, as a man to his country; of pleasure, as in the flower of friendship; of passion and ecstasy, as in romance; of commitment, as in all the changing vicissitudes of our intimate relationships—all these are faces, miniature and particular embodiments, of the faceless, infinitely graceful, endlessly tenderhearted Love that is the medium in which we all live and breathe.

All the love we need and know and seek and make is but the corner of a postcard from this infinite and beautiful landscape. We can discover our connection to that great, that infinite love through particular exalted moments of love in our own lives. For, if we are willing to throw our hearts wide open at such moments, we suddenly comprehend that we ourselves are participants in that love. It is then that our human relationships become radiant and illumined, the sacred chalice from which we can sip of the love that is truly divine.