Can we define the experience of love? Sure love is an emotional state but how would you explain to another how love makes you feel? Is all loving the same? In this week’s blog I thought I would share one of my favourite poems by Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, and provide my thoughts on love.

Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi was his birth name but most know him as Rumi, named after the city in which he lived. Rumi wrote poetry about his spiritual journey and experience in the 13th century. The following poem is his work on love:

Both light and shadow are the dance of love
Love has no cause; it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets
Lover and loving are inseparable and timeless
Although I may try to describe love when I experience it I am speechless
Although I may try to write about Love I am rendered helpless
My pen breaks and the paper slips away at the ineffable place where lover, loving and loved are one
Every moment is made glorious by the light of love

In reading this poem, I always experience increased bliss and euphoria. Somehow Rumi’s words elevate me to a higher level of consciousness and I am enriched. He has the ability to put into words not so much the experience of love but the experiences of being in love. I should add that “being in love” in this situation is not about being in love with another but rather being in a state of love.
The poem obviously speaks for itself but there are lines for which I will share my thoughts. “Lover and loving are inseparable and timeless” – This line speaks about the true experience of love where one cannot separate lover and loving. They are the same. In the experience of pure love one cannot be loving in a state of duality. You may recall from previous blogs that I have written that duality is the view of separateness from everyone and everything. The experience we have of love comes from within us. It is not something separate from us. Nor is it something that we can get. When we are in love with another, we are being reminded of the love that is within us. It is our natural state to be in the awareness of ourselves as love. When we die, we become aware that we are, and have always been, love. Our journey in life is to reconnect with this state of being, which is hidden by the veil of dualistic living.

“My pen breaks and the paper slips away at the ineffable place where lover, loving and loved are one” – This line in Rumi’s poem speaks to me of the inability and ineffectiveness of trying to articulate the point in which the lover, loving and the beloved are experienced as one. In this moment, as in a moment between inhaling and exhaling, there is the experience of total bliss. Everything stops, the world disappears, the breath ceases and one experiences true awakening. Writing about this experience is ineffable. One cannot put into words the experience. Where the veil of separation between self and other drops one is left with pure conscious awareness. In this moment of all consuming euphoria words do not exist. They are dualistic in nature.

“Every moment is made glorious by the light of love” – The last line in Rumi’s poem sums up the whole experience of love. Every moment is made glorious because of the eternity of the experience. The light of love, the awareness and truth of love is beyond mere physical light and speaks to the omnipotent presence of conscious awareness just beyond the veil of dualistic living. We are all a part of this state of being. We have forgotten it through the rebirthing into a dualistic state but it is our true nature that calls to us. When we rise in love we have glimpses of our pure selves. This is the reason we want to hold on so tightly to the beloved. Why we seek to possess another. Our separation and searching for ourselves is momentarily met in our lovers.

I am hoping that my words have reminded you of the experience of love. That you recognize that it comes from within you and is not something you get from someone. Love is within you here and now, moment-to-moment whether you are aware of it or not. It is this searching, this desire to return to the light of love that motivates all human beings. At the core of our being we are all looking to lift the veil of separation to once again experience LOVE.

May you be aware of the love that lies within in
May you live in a state of loving awareness
May the veil of darkness life and the light of love fill you
May you remember yourself, as loving

Namaste

Wayne