Unconditional Love A spectrum of states With commentary by Blue Dog, Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Albert Einstein, Job, Alex Grey, and Barney - the purple dinosaur. Played by: Played by: Robert C. Cohen
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[ Before reading the HIGHLIGHT of my experience with Unconditional Love, please read the HIGHLIGHT QUOTES from "Blue Dog" at left. They are from the book "Blue Dog" which tells the story of how the artist searched for meaning and unconditional love as the image of his recently departed dog kept coming through into painting after painting. ] In 1993, I managed to spend six weeks (40 days and 40 nights) in isolation in the Arizona desert. I brought no books, magazines, radio or other media. Just some pens and paper and natural foods. The trip could be defined as a classic search for myself. My parents, advertising, tv, books, radio, my culture, they all seemed to be bombarding me with messages as to who I was. I wanted to separate myself from those messages so I could weed through them and determine which ones I wanted to own and which I wanted to discard. On a deeper level though I think now the trip was also part of my quest for truth and what is referred to variously as higher consciousness, cosmic consciousness, God Consciousness, etc. About four weeks into the trip I had a strong premonition that my girlfriend, partner, and the woman I loved would leave me. I cried and asked for an answer until my voice of God answered, "If you love her, then you will let her go. You must love her unconditionally and you must let her go." I wrote this in my journal which she read upon my return. Funny when she left suddenly, I was surprised. In the years since that time, I maintained my commitment to Unconditional Love and letting go, which has taken me back and forth from the depths of hurt and despair to flights of joy and exultation, and ultimately onward toward a steady and powerful peace.
On that journey I had to re- learn everything I knew. My mind had brought me to this point but it was a point that it could not pass on its own. Einstein once said that a problem cannot be solved on the same level on which it was created. This time I would have to feel my way through.
As time passed, my feelings continued to swing farther up and down to higher highs and lower lows, becoming almost unbearable. And still I continued to search with my mind for clues.
Ram Dass once said, "Relationships are the yoga of the west." I'm confident that what he meant was that everything we need to work on in ourselves can be found in our relationships.
Dr. Andrew Weil speaks of how romantic love differs from love in its highest form. To love is to experience connection with the source of love in yourself and to love another is to experience connection, to experience another person as he or she is. Romantic love is a projection of ourselves onto the other. We transfer the credit for our own experience to an outside source. Weil notes that like any drug, if we see a person as the source of our internal state instead of as a trigger, we can become addicted. The high of romantic love is pure pleasure, but when we discover the other person is a human being beyond our projection, the crash back to reality will be as painfully deep as the pleasure was high. . The book of Job in the bible has been described as a template for God Consciousness. Job goes through the pain of loosing everything (and especially the people he loves) but sees the truth and beauty of the universe beyond his loss. Mystics teach that we must see beyond individual people or things and instead see the process of life - seed, tree, fruit, seed, tree, fruit, seed.... These seemed intellectually like the right answers but emotionally I was still a wreck and the littlest thing could make me sob uncontrollably. Finally I think I began to drive myself a little bit mad. My original trip to be alone seemed to expand and I found myself more and more alone, with more and more spiraling thoughts of loneliness, and the growing fear that I somehow pushed everyone I loved away. I knew these thoughts were irrational but alone inside my head the thoughts had nothing to feed on but themselves. I felt like I was going to explode.
"In the first panel we see the self trapped in a dizzying vortex of evolutionary descent paralleling the hallucinatory descent of the initiate shaman into the underworld or realm of the dead. The prisoner yearns for freedom and becomes sick with the materialistic limitations of his genetic chains represented by entrapment in the spiraling DNA molecule.
In the central panel, the self explodes and dismembers itself in the mysterium tremendum, a powerful confrontation with forces on all levels of reality: Subatomic and cellular, planetary, galactic, psychical, spiritual. The energy which animates the all, the force of God, erupts through the embodied self and destroys identification with a sickly contracted ego, opening the self to a marriage with new powers. An alchemical serpent power with three heads (representing body, mind, and spirit) weaves an integrating transmuting energy which binds together the new self.
In the final panel the re- integrated man ascends into the middle and upper worlds, released from the psychic bonds of materialistic entrapment and taps into the light which beams from the mind and heart. As a healer, he wields a crystalline hermetic caduceus with the balanced serpent powers of the unconscious and winged vision of the super conscious. The healer / scientist / artist ascends the crystal mountain of the higher self, a self empowered the responsibility for healing the future." ] All along, once I understood everything, I thought that loving someone and letting them go should be easy. I could not figure out why it was so constantly and relentlessly painful. Maintaining the love wasn't the problem. I was trying to let go of the wrong person. "Letting go" and "Unconditional Love" were important ideas. I was committed to them and equally attached to them. They gave me a role to play and a role to project for my absent lover. But I was fooling myself because I had figured things out. I understood. I had the right ideas. But understanding is not doing. And the doing required letting go of .......... The person I had to let go of was myself. I had to let go of my role. I had to let go of my projections. I had to let go of ideas. And that kind of letting go is a risk. It is emotional. It requires faith. It is a massive physical and emotional action. That is why "Unconditional Love" is scary. You let go of one trapeze and you don't know if you'll catch another. Or what the other will be like. Will you still be you? Something snapped and I reached out. What I found was other people. I found people as they were. I found caring, and then again myself.
-- Robert C. Cohen
Deeper Jung wrote that when we look at others what we see is more ourself than the other. Herman Hesse made a similar observation about projection when he wrote: "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." With regard to the relationship of intellect and faith, I think they are meant to work hand in hand. Everything on some level requires faith. Our minds and reason allow us to choose where to make these leaps, hopefully avoiding jagged cliffs. Remember Hamlet. He was brilliant and understood every aspect of life. He even went a little mad, but his tragic flaw was that he could never take action. Reason alone can't move. Faith alone can't choose. Unconditional love isn't blind, nor is faith or reason when they are balanced. Note the imperative / mantra on the randomizer page: "Have Faith / Question Everything." PS. My theory: Fear of unconditional love is why adults get so uncomfortable and squirmy around Barney the purple dinasour. Barney does know how to lay it on thick. Go Barney.
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