Credit: Kathleen Mary Willis

Love is everything.

Hmmm, that doesn’t seem to apply to the spoon I’m holding in my hands. It looks like stainless steel.

What’s wrong with this picture? Why do the two statements seem worlds apart?

Well, perhaps because they are.

Most of our confusion around statements such as “love is everything” lies in our failing to distinguish the level of reality from which it’s being seen and described.

That love is everything applies to all levels, but can only be seen from a higher level than ours (except in visions).

For instance, I’m sure that “love is everything” is very clearly seen from the Absolute level – where everything is clear.

It’s not as clearly seen from the physical.

***

In the first place, we cannot begin to understand how love can be everything until, first, we let go of at least one inadequate paradigm – empirical-materialism – the paradigm that ruled science and religion for centuries and still holds true for many people today.

It held that only what could be sensed was real.  Dust-to-dust fatalism was as high a perspective as it was capable of. You live, you die. Seize the moment.

Views into other dimensions and higher realities – even transcendent love – didn’t exist for the followers of this paradigm.

If we use its tools to analyze how love can be everything, we get nowhere. We must approach the question from a spiritual perspective.

***

In the second place, we cannot collapse or reduce domains or we end up with nonsense.

There are twelve physical dimensions and the Transcendental, which I’m now beginning to suspect also has dimensions.

Above all is the Absolute. At the Absolute level, love is indeed everything, just as water makes up the ocean.

But Absolute Love would be impossible for me to know at the physical level. I’m sure my body wouldn’t withstand the shock, if it were even possible. I’m led to believe that that’s what’s behind the Biblical stories of averting one’s gaze from the Lord.

I cannot linguistically reduce the experience of love even one level up from us – in what the Mother has called sacred love – to terms that we can understand. It’s too big for words.

I cannot even find terms to describe how sacred love fills up the whole space and doesn’t allow negative emotions to approach. I can only speak metaphorically about it, as if it’s a person, (2) and a guard or protector at that. That’s the best I can do.

***

Love may be everything, but if our life is situated at this everyday level, then the everyday level is for most people as much as we know.  (1)

In everyday life, our love falls on a polarized spectrum running from love to hate. It’s impacted by every thought and feeling.  It isn’t a very deep form of love, compared to what we’ll be experiencing as the energies rise.

Talking about Absolute Love using our everyday language would simply yield empty words. Our statements about it would be so small in context and scope that they’d undoubtedly say little or nothing about Absolute Love itself. Or simply be a caricature of it

We’re in a standoff. We can neither reduce the Absolute to language nor expect our statements about it to say much that’s meaningful.

What’s the resolution?

The resolution is to accept both statements as true on their particular level of existence. (3)  “Love is everything” is true and comprehensible when viewed from the Absolute level of consciousness. Material objects seems true and comprehensible when viewed from our everyday level of consciousness. Both circumstances are accurate reflections of their level of organization and comprehension.

***

We didn’t solve the dilemma of how to discuss the indescribable, how to squeeze the limitless into a small conceptual can.  Undoubtedly we never will.

But like Ramakrishna, we come to the mango grove to eat mangoes, not to learn how to grow them.  I’ve come here to drink in love, to be love, to live love, not to find out how to talk about it.

Love is everything that is. This shows up for me as hearsay that I’ve heard from travellers from a distant land, whose testimony I nonetheless heartily accept.

Footnotes

(1) We face the same dilemma of not knowing as the empirical-materialist, but we know a little more. And that little more is on vitally-important matters.

(2) This is known as anthropomorphizing God; describing God as if God is a person.

(3) I realize that it’s inaccurate to describe the Absolute as a “level of existence.” That just shows the difficulty of discussing something like the Absolute from our level of reality.