Earthly Love versus Universal Love

A story of AMPLIFICATION

Perhaps the most difficult concept for all of us to understand is that the big Love is ‘eternal’ and it exists in spite of us. 

Here is a story of all people in this amazing place called Earth from the perspective of a single nameless female character.

This is fiction for entertainment value, but it is also truth.

There once was a girl, who had a big heart. She was a philosopher. And like many women, although she was very empathetic and emotional, she was also very logical, thoughtful and serious. She lived a simple life, and found the Earth, its beings and repetition to be not only important, but sacred. She lived most of her life like most humans do, and defined most everything quite logically using Earthly words and Earthly concepts.

What else would an Earthling do?

She defined Love using Earthly words and Earthly concepts. But with Love - that elusive subject matter that simultaneously permeates all of us - she knew somehow that the way she was defining it was… incomplete. There was something bigger - the so-called Universal or big Love, as some would call it - but she didn’t know how to feel it. Perhaps a better way to describe her feeling would be to say that she couldn’t see it. Perhaps an even better way to describe her feeling would be to say that she knew of its existence, but didn’t know how to live this Love in the Earthly realm. When she tried to imagine it with all her Earthly materialness, it almost felt to her as bizarre a concept as trying to walk through a wall. This was not unique to her: all humans face this dilemma, as she well knew. In her case, as she would come to see more and more things, her inability to see it temporarily held her back - and ironically, away from, the big Love.

She was not unusual at all in her being held back, from the point of view of the big Love. The big Love is hard to even describe using Earthly words and meanings, and likely would be more appropriately described using Universal words and Universal concepts. Universal words like unconditional and Universal concepts like eternal: these are words that not all are lucky enough to truly understand in this Earthly place. It requires… faith, I believe. To a logical person such as her, suspension of the material: the things that literally hold everything together, for the sake of … a feeling, would never be an easy task.

Surrender.

She liked to get Tarot card readings done by her able friends, and they would tend to consistently reveal the same message over and over again: Surrender. But she didn’t understand the concept behind the word, so she therefore didn’t understand the word. She would leave each of those readings screaming in her own mind: “What the hell does it mean to Surrender? How do I do something I need to do if I don’t know how to do it?”, she would think.

The concept of unconditional was very elusive to her in the Earthly realm. She found it very difficult to truly understand - by way of acting - what Loving unconditionally really meant. She knew that it meant without ANY conditions, which seemed obnoxiously obvious and easy? But it was not. It is not. Suspension of the sacred Earthly concepts like Mind? (if not equated to consciousness), Body, linear Time and 3-D Space in this realm, is an undertaking and requires practice, and a willingness and ability to experience a constant ebb and flow of growth and destruction. This is why she never feared the Death card when it was pulled in her Tarot readings: to her, it only meant change and the allowance of destruction to invite construction.

She assumed that Mind, Body, Time and Space couldn’t exist in the Universal realm: the realm of the big Love, as they do in our Earthly realm.

We are all like wonderful, dear, innocent beings - each one unique - wandering around a magical sensory tactical playground. Bumping into each other, sometimes bumping into some, more often than others. She would often find herself wondering: "Are these random bumpings?"  

So although she knew the words that hid behind the concept of Universal Love, she had no idea how, or even if, it could ever be merged into the Earthly realm. She wanted it to.

She was well aware that we all live in a place - this Earthly realm - where time is linear, and therefore the experiences she had were inevitably sequential. She also knew that even thinking is linear: one thought follows the other. If this, then that. Consequence. Cause → Effect. This is a ‘reality’ of this realm. She faced a constant struggle with her attachment to the material aspects of Earth and more specifically, Earthly Love. The material aspects of Earthly Love are inherent, and for lack of a better word, lurk in the Earthly realm. They include such familiar things as jealousy, fear and hatred, and as we all well know, these things can be incredibly difficult to manage, and can run very, very deep. She posited that the depth might be related to the burden of the soul carrying the weight of a bad deed; over and over again in an endless cycle of closed-eyeness loops through the Earthly realm. It was conceivable to her that this might be what people refer to as “Hell”: that nowhereland where one is somewhat willingly not opening their eyes to see things for what they actually are, no matter how many times they are given a chance to.

One of the Earthly emotions that she previously struggled a lot with was jealousy. She saw herself in jealousy as it happened - that maddening rage of being ‘chosen over’. “It that was it is?”, she would ask herself. The ego-driven insanity that always came with a feeling of being “second to another”. What nonsense! But for a long time, she could not see it for what it was: just jealousy. It was simply not necessary, and it was based on a false vision of self.

She lived in a lot of anger as well. But the anger she felt was due to a feeling of injustice in the world. It wasn’t her anger. To her, anger was a very potent and useful emotion that walked very comfortably beside her desire for justice. I am not sure that anyone would argue that when things are not just - for example, when one hurts another with intention - anger is not far behind. She used her anger to act - to try to achieve justice, but it was at far too often at her own expense. She was a girl not quite ready to make justice by invoking Love, which is a far more constructive way to obtain it. For self. For others. She knew somewhere in her being, that people generally hurt others because they themselves are hurting, but it seemed to be simply a matter of habit with her for most of her life, to react with anger and succumb to something other than Love. It might still have been action she was taking, but she felt that perhaps that action was not leading to a good conclusion.

For example, one day, her co-worker yelled at her for something trivial. Her knee-jerk reaction was to yell back, but on this day, she refrained because she knew this person was yelling because they did not feel heard. She knew that yelling back would simply mean that two people would not be heard, instead of just one. On this day, even though the last thing she felt like doing was to pull that person close, look into their eyes with compassion, let them yell, wait for them to quiet themselves, and let them come full circle with the understanding that she saw them, and heard them, she did it anyway. Her co-worker started to cry, and then she hugged her until she was able to talk about what was truly bothering her. It was not trivial at all.

After this particular experience, she would constantly imagine a day, and even a world, where she and everyone else could just stop, and see, what was really there in each other, and what really laid behind the veil of emotions we all wear. This is not to say that it is not sometimes appropriate to yell or to get emotional, we are emotional beings, but to be present and patient with each other from moment to moment is so important for us as social beings. One of the more romantic thoughts she would let linger, was the one where she imagined how long it would take for the big Love to be felt by all if everyone just let go of their egos and … saw. Is this also a moment in time?

She ascribed her physical experiences with others with great meaning. Perhaps the meaning was meaningful. Perhaps it wasn’t. She believed that pair-bonding was related to individual depth of connection to the big Love that incidentally, she was only vaguely aware of. It was kind of like that feeling of intuition that we all have but that most of us rarely follow. It was there, always, but in peripheral vision. Sort of.

Somewhere deep inside of her, she was driven toward an idea that one of the most incredible experiences a human being could ever have in the Earth realm was to explore the big Love with another, in the Earth realm. She somehow knew it was possible. What she didn’t know was how to merge the potentially non-overlapping peripheral big Love with the Earthly Love. She didn’t know if this was something that could be done, or if so, that she could do. Was she too infused with the material?

She believed that there was a reason why specific people came together in time. She believed it was related to the phase or, maybe, level of breakthrough ability → sight-ability, of each person and how “equivalent” their abilities to see were. She thought about the plausibility of this idea when thinking about how long people connect for, as well. She saw sometimes that two people could connect for a few days in a lifetime, and have it be the most potent teaching and learning experience of their lives. She saw sometimes that two people could connect for decades and likewise, have it be the most potent teaching and learning experience of their lives. She saw sometimes people end a togetherness after many years, for reasons unknown. She wondered whether it had to do with one person’s eyes being open wider, enabling them to see more than the other, perhaps causing a rift. “Perhaps in this Earthly realm it is considered impossible to remain with another whose eyes are not as wide?”, she would wonder. Isn’t it also possible, since anything is, that one could finally open their eyes, even after decades, to the once invisible? How much does this ability affect our individual abilities to stay get connected, and stay connected to each other? We are each others teachers and students.

In the end, she equated increased eye-wideness with an even greater ability to love, especially if another simply needs a little… Earthly visine. To love, is to be infinitely patient as a teacher and a student.

She recognized that we perfectly imperfect human beings make many mistakes. All the time. She felt it was her responsibility to others to really go out of her way not to hurt others intentionally. Even though all human beings are constantly plagued with temptation and desires, she saw it as a solid-gold move to recognize these things for what they are, and to avoid them. This came with practice. She believed that oftentimes dark temptations were disguised as light beings - like angler fish, or wraiths wearing white robes with twisted dark motives underneath. She would often think about the nature of temptation itself and if it even needs to exist. Why would there be so many bad temptations?”, she would think to herself. “Because they are necessary as goal posts, to guide us, in fact, away from them.”

She would eventually come to think of even the dark temptation of smoking as a friend. An annoying, pesky gross ever-lurker, waiting to wag its benzene-rich tail in her face with any sign of vulnerability. She saw around her that everyone had their own particular powerful temptation. Alcohol, drugs, sex: everyone has their own thing that lures them into places in themselves that don’t truly allow for sight. She saw the sight as clarity: when one was clean. Clear. She was very keen on the idea of optimization of the body temple since it was with optimal body temple that she was at her clearest.

Ultimately, she saw that the wraiths themselves need love. To love a wraith, to love temptation, is to see them for exactly what they are, and to look back at them with loving eyes and dissolve them back into the big Love. The Universal Love.

She knew that Earthly Love was very special, but because it was on Earth, it came with a whole bunch of other things like jealousy, spite, and other baser feelings that are very real. She wondered where these emotions came from, just like she wondered about temptation. “Do these baser emotions serve some purpose? Do these baser emotions help to maintain pair-bonding duration?”, she would wonder.

She imagined that these baser emotions didn’t exist in the realm of Universal Love because, well, they could not. She thought that the realm of Universal Love must be devoid of condition. “You cannot make mistakes in that realm”, she would think. “There would be no such thing as a mistake. There isn’t even really a concept of forgiveness in the realm of the Universal - because there doesn’t have to be one: nothing is wrong in this realm and there is nothing to forgive. You are perfect exactly as you are.” Or perhaps, forgiveness is a concept, but is a given. She found herself believing that there probably wasn’t a potential usefulness for an emotion like jealousy, and that it certainly couldn’t co-exist in the realm of Universal Love. She often wondered what an evolutionary biologist would say about this.

As opposed to her imagined Universal realm where no baser emotions can be found, she found the Earthly realm very difficult to navigate. She had never read the Bible, but she thought that much of what was written about God and the Devil must have come into play in an attempt to understand both Earthly or ‘off-Earthly’ Love. She always felt that Earthly Love was confusing: a strange somewhat out-of-body in-body experience, that came with all sorts of ‘things’ that, for most people, also came with a sense of responsibility to the body temple.

The physical body is amazing. It is symmetric. It is flexible. It is powerful. It is long-lasting. It is finite. It can reproduce. It is beautiful. It is what allows us to move through time and space in this realm. It is worth keeping strong and healthy.

Aside: What an irony it is that we don’t need the body to be in the prototypical form: 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes, etc. to not only exist, but to thrive and be the most powerful and beautiful, in this Earthly realm.

On yet another foundational day in her life, she found herself starting to go through a transformation that was like having an extended non-DMT DMT-like experience. She had never had an experience with DMT, but she had read a lot about what it was like for others. Many described it as de- and reconnecting with some source and in some cases, inducing a shift in consciousness. Her experience was more specific to the connection with the big Love in the Universal realm, that manifested as a light-shedding on darknesses that had been hiding in her for years. As she went through the experience, she realized the irony of requiring an in-tact and clear brain/mind in order to be having the experience itself. The experience, after-all, was enabled by her brain. It occurred to her that without the massively forceful and materialistic connection that she had to her ‘body temple’, she mightn’t have even been able to have the experience itself because her brain mightn’t have been fully functional such that she could have the experience.

Ironic. Ironic because she was believed it was possible to have the experience of entering the realm of Universal Love without an in-tact frontal lobe. But what about merging Earthly Love with Universal Love in the Earth realm?

She had thoughts fly through her mind like: “One cannot truly unconditionally love a drug addict. There must be conditions put in place - and enforced - out of Earthly Love for the addict. Is this just one example of how unconditional love cannot exist in the Earthly realm?”, she would wonder. And on the flip-side, one could argue that unconditional Love of the Universal realm would envelop that drug addict in any case.

She would often think about the state of Earth affairs when it came to this particular subject matter. She saw so much enabled drug addiction in our societies these days. To be lost in that world, must be akin to being disconnected from all love. The idea of even having cogent thoughts, let alone the ability to understand and translate these into experience or action, must also be lost, in the world of the addict in the Earthly realm. But it must not be so in the Universal realm where all are unconditionally loved. This was the thing that made her the most sad - the severing of the invisible cord that linked each of them to Love. It was their fault, but it wasn’t their fault at all. Temptation can be a foul wraith.

She came to know with great depth of understanding that we Earthly realm humans are physical and material beings. We cannot escape this and trying would not only be defeatist but in a way, a mockery of the experience. It is difficult, but it is also beautiful.

In her experience, understanding that it was possible to feel or see Universal Love - which is ever-present - in the Earthly world was itself, a royal gift. It also seemed to her that this would be almost impossible to achieve if one was not clear.

She actively practices not succumbing to fear, such as the fear of losing the ‘memory of feeling illuminated down here’, because of time. Most people would call this death. She feels that the ‘elation’ she feels when she overcomes baser emotions must be the manifestation of new neural connections and pathways being formed. She would often wonder if even bad memories, that have the power to bury us have a useful purpose, and how and if these are tied to neural connections, and which ones. Sometimes bad memories would come to her like dark shadows to cover her eyes with veils of deceit. But she came to know that the darkness is necessary, so mind-drivingly necessary, in order for us to be bathed in light. Or at least to see the light, in this Earth place. “Can’t cast a shadow with both light and dark.”, she would think.

Something she took great comfort in knowing is that once certain neural connections were made, there would be no reversion. She thought of it like this: “I ‘can’t go back’ to not understanding anymore.”, which technically meant that she was equating neural connections to understanding. She said it almost felt like once the connections had been made, the other ones that used to be, were severed.

There was a point in time - like all points before and all points after - where she understood the richness of the experience she was having - in and of itself. There was a rich tapestry of events, mistakes and decisions that she had made up to that point in order to enable the point. She does not know what had previously prevented her from understanding, or seeing, certain things as she does now. She believes that she might simply have been buried by the experiences of her life up to that point, and not ready to dig herself out. Her understanding means that the richness of the experiences she will have from that point on will be great and infinitely powerful, and she will be aware of it all. She feels it is akin to bringing a piece of Universal Love down to this realm to experience it here, if only for moments.

She was bound to the material world and did not understand what it meant to Surrender - as all had told her in the past she would benefit from doing. She has Surrendered.

One cannot see before one is ready to see.

Her thoughts still come in sequences - like the pages of a book being turned - but somehow, now it seems that the previous pages are written to respond to the message provided in the following page. Time became somewhat of an enigma.

---

I wrote this story to invoke deep thinking and perhaps even some healing. I hope I did.

There are so many things in this life that are not understood. The relationships between us are so mysterious. We cannot know why we ‘happen’ into each others worlds when we do, or why we leave when we do. It could drive one mad thinking about it, but none of it really matters because it comes down to meaning and meaning exists in spite of us. Since everyone’s always asking what the meaning of life is, I will take a crack at it.

It is Love. That’s it.

And Love has no boundaries.