In a relationship...with God
an excerpt from
Mystical Love
by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
A relationship with God is in many ways is simpler and yet more confusing than a human relationship. It is simpler because there are not the drama and psychological dynamics that happen between two people. Human love evokes a complex mesh of projections as deep psychological patterns are activated within each person. We project onto our lover ...images, shadow-dynamics and other patterns that all become bonded together.
Loving God has a purity and simplicity that are sadly denied in the complexity of a human relationship.
Loving God, we can give ourself entirely without the danger of being caught in projections or the drama of another's unresolved problems. We are free of the entanglements that belong to two people. And yet there is the primal difficulty of having an invisible, intangible beloved. Where are the arms to hold us, the kiss to intoxicate us? Without any physical presence, how do we know it is real, and not just a fantasy? We live in a culture that only values the tangible, external world. We are bombarded by images that associate a love affair with physical sex. Sufi poetry may use images of physical beauty...but these are metaphors, and we long to touch with our own hands, to taste with our own lips. We long to run our fingers through our lover's hair, to smell a fragrance that is not ethereal.
Yet an inner love affair has a potency that is denied any human lover. We are awakened to this love by a kiss that is on the inside of our heart. A kiss on the lips may taste like wine and draw us into our lover's arms, but He kisses us in the most intimate part of our own being, a place so secret that no human lover has access. He kisses us without the limitations of duality and with a touch that is love itself. From within our own heart He comes to us, opens us, embraces us. Here there are no barriers of protection, but a vulnerability and softness that belong to the inwardness of our own heart. With tenderness and intoxicating sweetness He is present, unexpected and yet longed for, and His kiss is more than one could believe is possible.
Yet there are days, even months, when the Beloved withdraws and does not show His face, when you are left with the desolation of your own aloneness. It seems that there is not even a trace of this sweetest fragrance. Then it is easy to doubt this inner love affair and project our longing onto another. With a human lover there is a moment's taste of bliss, a physical knowledge of union. We want what we can hold with our own hands, feel with our body. With the heart's Beloved there is a promise of so much more, and yet it is so intangible, and we are always the victim, always the one who's waiting.
In this love affair all of our patterns of seduction, the games we play to keep our lover, are useless. We become so vulnerable. We are love's prey.
In human relationships we have been taught to look after ourself, to draw boundaries and not to be victimized. We know that we shouldn't be taken advantage of, that we shouldn't be violated. This is very important, learning to keep our human integrity and sense of self, not to sell ourself for what appears as love or the promise of security. But the ways of mystical love are very different. In the relationship with our soul's Beloved we have to give ourself without restrictions, and we are violated, abused, and loved beyond compare. We are taken by force, abducted and transformed, and we give ourself willingly to this self-destruction through love.
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
~John Donne~
We are purified through love's violation, we taste our own union through love's destruction.
Love takes us by force beyond every limit, beyond what we think is possible; we are tortured and made whole by love--time and time again we lose and resdiscover ourself, only to fall deeper and deeper into love's endless abyss. Rumi, who through Shams came to know the intoxicating intensity of this real love, describes how it is given freely and yet takes us into a vastness that can seem like death:
Subtle degrees of domination and servitude
are what you know as love.
But love is different it arrives complete
just there like the moon in the window.
Desire only that of which you have no hope
seek only that of which you have no clue.
Love is the sea of not-being
and there intellect drowns.
This is not the Oxus river
or some little creek.
This is the shoreless sea; here swimming ends always in drowning.
A million galaxies are a little scum on that shoreless sea.
The mystic is someone who gambles on this love, who gives his/her life to love's longing. There is no safety net for disappointed lovers, no self-help group for those caught in this fire. The path of love is described by Saint Gregory of Nyssa as "a bridge of hair across a chasm of fire," and what happens when you come to the middle of this bridge? The fire burns the bridge and you fall into the depths, into the flames. This is why the Sufis call the lane of love a one-way street. Once this primal passion has been awakened the lover cannot return to the rational world, to the world of the ego. You can only give yourself, and give yourself, and give yourself.
The sensible man never goes near this fire, but remains within the safety of the known.
This love is an addiction as potent as poison. It destroys everything we once held precious; everything that seemed important is burnt in its flames; we hunger for just another taste of this love which is destructive and so sweet--nothing else matters. The values of the world fall away as this inner love affair takes hold of us, a passion a thousand times more powerful than any human love. In a human love affair there is always the safety of our self: we are separate from our lover and can withdraw. But our soul's Beloved does not belong to duality, as Rumi writes: "He is closer to you than yourself to yourself." Can we hide from our own heart, can run away from our own life's blood? We can try, but if we just turn inward He is waiting for us, offering us the sweetest torture, the softest death.
Love's death is real, and yet we remain alive, sometimes limping through the days. We are addicted to an inner lover who demands everything and yet so often leaves us devastated and alone. He awakens in us a hunger that is real, and then seemingly abandons us. The inner deserts through which lovers travel are desolate beyond belief, just as the moments of intoxication are bliss upon bliss. Once you give yourself to this poison there is no going back, because the world has lost its attraction. You are like Majnun, the madman, the lover.
Sometimes an external relationship can open our heart--maybe a hopeless love affair pierces through our defenses. But once we are gripped by the heart's true passion then the real sorrow of the soul comes to the surface, the soul's longing for its only Beloved.
