Category: cosmic love

Sitting in the Dark with No Control

The above photo is a picture of a black hole I got from the NASA website. I figured it was apropos for this post because I am going to get a bit esoteric, which makes me grossly uncomfortable. This may seem a bit counterintuitive, for a person like me, given my chosen path and all that is presented here. I am, however, a pragmatist at heart and never would have continued to devote myself to this journey, if along the way I found no empirical evidence for what I am proposing here: my continued belief that cosmic love can and will save us all. I have recorded, throughout the years, exploits of challenging constructs as well as facing my own challenges to the ideals and axioms that have become the foundation to me moving forward. While pretty comfortable after all this time with the belief that I am on the right track…it appears that another break through was in order regarding the fundamentals of my/our present reality. Mind you, this is exactly what I am praying for all the time, to be a spiritual explorer, ready to face the unknown and soar to greater heights and yeah, I know, after all this time I should know better that what I think I am praying for may turn me on my head…and it did.

After a particularly daunting day, where up is down and down is up…and nothing made sense, especially the new concepts that I am working to wrap my head around, a functioning Noosphere, and its applicable and empirical relationship to the physical world, I was completely spent. It’s still a bit too theoretical for me and I was really getting confused about what was illusory, and what was real leaving me to wonder, then, how I was supposed to apply uniting the “within” to the “without” of the physical world in a pragmatic way. What followed was the reminder that I spent an inordinate amount of time along this journey releasing ideas, rules, permissions that no longer served the information I was uncovering and discovering right now, and yet I got the distinct impression I was still holding onto to some of those antiquated ideas and behaviors. And perhaps because I needed a crash course, I believe I was intentionally plunged into a darkness so deep, that I have never felt, like ever, along with the clear message that I had absolutely no control in this situation except to utilize “the Noosphere” and reach out to love there who would have all the control. Usually the colors and interactions I experience in my mind’s eye are amazing, but instantaneously that was turned into silence and blackness. It was terrifying and my first thought was that I was doomed…which was devastating, especially perhaps, because I was afraid that my gut reaction was a truer reflection of what little faith I had in my own hypotheses, which just added to the awfulness of the situation. In the deep dark, I did try to breath and remember that I was exploring unknown territory here, a road never travelled (at least by me, anyway), so I said these words I remembered when studying world religions: “from the mud the lotus grows”. So, as much as possible in my mind/heart/soul I sunk into the mud and let love take control.

With all my senses closed off, The only solace I got in this immovable darkness was a whisper from my spirit guide to remember that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things…love never fails, so reach out with your heart to the love which you cannot see, but can feel, for until you relinquish control to the love that exists on this higher plane, you cannot move forward. The next 24 hours were, well, a new experience for me…and slowly the darkness dissipated into greyness then to whiteness. While I’m still not sure what it all means because the movement from dark to light didn’t present a picture of anything…I did feel and was moved forward by love. I know it wasn’t a figment of my imagination either because afterwards, I could tell that I functionally began to interact with the world differently because the change had come from the outside in. The details are personal, but I guess I was surprised to learn how much control I thought I needed in my life and the idea of losing it was terrifying but was also what kept me from moving forward. At this point I do believe that “control” is the biggest illusion of all. While it is true we do control how we respond to our own personal set of circumstances, the belief that we have control over them and the particulars of our future is folly…there are just too many initial and continuing conditions we face that obliterate that idea. I am reminded that God answers all prayers asked in goodness, and to trust that in every situation, even those where it appears that our prayers are falling on deaf ears, Love has all the information that we do not, and requires us to have faith our prayers are being answered, especially in these moments. Releasing my control and trusting in cosmic love has opened a new door to unknown territory and I take up the challenge to explore where it takes me even if that road looks completely unexpected and unfamiliar. I am equipped with everything I need and it is my job to trust and believe in cosmic love that moves me forward.

A final thought…I had a dream last night where I picked pomegranate seeds, currants, grapes and shredded pink carrots out of a bowl at a banquet and placed them into a bowl of thick cream for a wonderful treat…

Cosmic Love and Utility

Here is a new painting I’m working on of a young east Indian girl selling balloons. The balloons are the only thing that will be painted in color, the rest is in grey scale…which is a perfect representation of today’s post, the colors of which are still unclear to me.

When Teilhard speaks of “cosmic love”, he is speaking of a real, physical energy of attraction that is binding the universe together. It is the driving force that is pulling all creation toward a unified divine state called the Omega Point. He also personalizes it by saying that love is not just a human emotion, but is a basic and foundational property of the universe. Just as gravity draws physical bodies together, cosmic love is the internal “within” or expression that draws human beings into a deeper connection. As separate parts of the universe feel an affinity for one another, it draws them into deeper connection. It ensures that creation does not fall apart into chaos, but instead grows more conscious and personal and creates higher levels of complexity and awareness. From my standpoint on this journey, I do see this happening all around me. Cosmic love is being manifested in powerful ways, of which I am a willing participant, and it is from this viewpoint that my journey is directed forward…until I was stopped dead in my tracks (and I shouldn’t be surprised, since just when I think I have a handle on “things” I am stopped and presented with another perspective).

The perspective I received is this: walking on a higher plane, with the clear understanding that we are all connected, also means extending ourselves both physically and spiritually as a utility, i.e. acting as a source of keeping extra power in reserve to extend or use when needed, especially when demand is high. While it is my understanding and deep belief that the power of love is an all encompassing, inexhaustible, and inextinguishable source of power and renewable energy, humans who act as a utility are not, our power and physicality is finite. There is this great line from “the Lord of the Rings”, where an aged Bilbo Baggins explains this concept clearly: “Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread”. It is such a simple and yet apt expression of how I am feeling at the moment: simultaneously enthused with all I’m learning, proud of risks I’m taking, and the happiness that comes with who I am taking this journey with, and yet at the same time I feel like a battery whose utility is spent. I think it is because in order to utilize cosmic love it must include both extending and receiving it like an electrical charge does that transforms the energy in quartz making it vibrate inside a watch to keep accurate time. Giving and receiving are inherent qualities of cosmic love, one cannot exist without the other and I forget about the receiving part a lot. While giving cosmic love is an unequivocal unlimited endeavor, receiving it is not, and while I’m not sure quite how yet, I did learn a few things yesterday that clarify what kind of energy transforms the receiving end of cosmic love and what does not.

Yesterday was my artist’s meet and greet. I wasn’t afraid or uncomfortable, which surprised me a bit…but I didn’t like it either, The interaction of explaining how I started over and over seemed a waste of time…it was already in the bio I provided that was on the wall with the drawings/paintings for everyone to read. While I genuinely appreciated kind words about my talent, I wanted my art to speak for itself and find out what they saw when they looked at each piece, and perhaps inspire them to appreciate the beauty in people from all walks of life in the future and also tap into their own undiscovered gifts. What made me uncomfortable, nervous even, is that putting the focus on “me” as a utility, somehow changed the energy of the cosmic love I put into the art, that somehow I was different from them, and that is what felt draining. There is a difference in receiving adulation from someone who doesn’t even know me and appreciating the illumination that comes from what I produced…and there were both kinds of people that day. The latter felt like a kinship, the former, well, it just felt draining. I do get nervous about what is to come in the future, and I wish I could put into words what I mean by that, but right now I just can’t articulate it.

Kinship and connection restores my utility, adulation drains it. I’m not happy with the word choice here because it sounds so worshippy, (and I am aware that I am but a drop in this cosmic bucket) but as I explained to someone recently how much I needed love to survive this, I was just as ill-equipped in the moment, to ask for and receive it. The giving of love unequivocally has never been the problem for me because I have such strong faith in the inherent gifts of those who I send love to, but in order to recharge and renew this inexhaustible source of cosmic love, receiving real love, and not the kind offered in a sycophantic, manipulative, or self deprecating kind of way is an absolute necessity. While it may still may appear in my line of sight as greyscale, I am hoping this is simply what comes when moving into unknown territory…and the color will come to me eventually as my understanding grows.