The Source of Love [words & sonnet]
It’s a life-changing epiphany to realise that when we love someone, that love is not a thing that started when they came into our life. The other person merely made manifest what is already within us constantly (though mostly we don’t see it with our hearts). For in everyone there is a golden box of love which can be opened wide, or closed, kept locked and in the dark, if we so choose. Various experiences that we have in life cause us to make defensive choices about that golden box which leave us feeling loveless and longing for a love which we falsely think can only come through someone else. Thus, when some other guy or girl turns up in our “love life”, we’re riding on a high and become dependent on them to experience love and are fearful of being abandoned (again, a feeling which goes back to bad early life experiences). If they desert us or go off with someone else, we then believe that love has left us too and we feel heartbroken, utterly bereft and alone. But this is a terrible illusion! For there is already a powerhouse of love within us which is available to be experienced constantly.
When we think we’re “falling in love”, what is happening is that the other person is bringing out what is already in us continually but we don’t recognise it most of the time because — being full of fucked-up defences — it is too raw and painful a state for us to hold onto. Thus, when the person we think we are “in love with” deserts us, we shut down and start longing for another love experience, believing that it can only come through someone else. (Of course, we can still wish for our loved one’s presence or look forward to seeing them again; but their absence does not need to consume us or cast us down!). For this reason, it is so important to remove the impediments to love — to cleanse ourselves of inappropriate fears and defences — and let it flow freely 24/7. Only then can two people truly love each other in fullness and joy. This is why I say it is a life-changing epiphany to look inside ourselves honestly and see the truth about our love lives. In fact, it is the key to living fully; for then we will find with joy that we fall in love with EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE and walk around singing with gusto on a cushion of air! (Of course, this doesn’t mean we live in a fluffy bubble and never call a spade a spade or never see the darkness shades of life in all their dirtness. But we will have a solid matrix of love through which to view the world and thus it cannot shatter us or tear us down). Anything before our eyes then becomes a feast to make our hearts soar with delight, whether it is a planet in the sky, a body moving by, a copper water main, a speck of dust on a window-pane, a rucksack on a moving train, wet paint on an old park bench, a rat caked in a sewer’s stench, a candle flame by night, anything which ordinarily we might consider to be just mundane becomes a blaze of energy when seen with loveness burning bright and sane. Once we see the dance of energy in all things, we can only view them through the light of love. With eyes anew and inward turned, we’ll find that we will soon have learned the constancy of love — a gift from angels working high above this frozen earth, unfreezing hearts — the greatest thing of worth.
So when we “fall in love” with boy or girl,
we think (in all our ignorance) the force
of what we have experienced (the whirl)
comes from the other person’s power-source.
We put them on a pedestal with pride,
believing they’re the fountain of our dreams.
Thus, when they’ve gone, or we’ve been cast aside,
we’ve no love left within, or so it seems.
But yet, the other one can merely stoke
the flaming blaze already in our hearts;
believing falsely (thus that blaze we choke)
that only when you meet the fire starts.
So when our box of love’s always unlocked
it never can by anything be blocked.
© Alan Morrison, 2016
The Naked Troubadour 