“Love that moves the sun and the other stars…”
This line from Dante’s Divine Comedy speaks to us of a primordial force that envelops everything, the universe, and all beings. This love is perfect and eternal, flowing like a luminous current that allows for an inner transformation, enabling us to connect with the deepest and truest part of ourselves, that of other human beings, and with all of creation.
The word love is undoubtedly one of the most used, sung, put into poetry, and spoken.
In life, it surely happens to everyone to fall in love with an ideal, a person, or a job. This passion, often called love, is an emotion that responds to a deep human need to fill a void perceived within oneself and to reach what is felt as lacking.
Falling in love, initially driven by great enthusiasm, often becomes partial, fragmented, divided, incomplete, imperfect, and can transform into a desire for possession and control, thus revealing itself as a mirage.
We then wonder if it has ever truly been love.
How could what was meant to be eternal and inexhaustible become something partial? Was all this love nothing more than well-masked sentimentalism? But then, what is love?
It seems that every experience in this world leads to a harsh reality: we do not know love.
Yet… there must have been a moment in life when something touched our hearts, making us get in touch with this force; something that made our entire being vibrate, giving such a vivid impulse that our whole existence became nothing but a feverish search driven by this deep longing…
What drives us to seek love or attempt to manifest it?
Plato in the Symposium said that the mysterious force of Love is the search for the other half of ourselves since we perceive ourselves as incomplete, seeking to recreate the original being by giving ourselves.
As human beings, we are divided, lacking a part we deeply feel the need for, and also separated from that condition of wholeness in which all beings were “complete.”
It is of this reality that we constantly feel a deep longing, a pre-remembrance that drives us on a quest.
Driven by such restlessness and unable to experience truly lasting and complete satisfaction for this deep need, we allow ourselves to be seduced by a thousand illusions. Nothing and no one will ever truly fill that void which we must eventually have the courage to face.
Only when we stop avoiding the pain of nostalgia like moths frantically seeking light can we observe what we perceive as emptiness and finally bring forth that part (the Other within us) connected with the Whole. It is from there that a journey towards a new direction can begin, both outside and inside us.
The experiences of falling in love and love between human beings are absolutely essential for experiencing limits and partiality and for attempting to rise above illusions.
It is thus possible to become increasingly aware of self-centeredness and open oneself up to give oneself to the Other, abandoning fear.
Reflected in the eyes of the beloved, we feel like better beings—unknown even to ourselves—understood and accepted; we discover parts of ourselves that reveal our essence. This sensation, even if temporary, still allows us to savor a transcendent condition.
Love is that condition: an active force that pervades, envelops, and permeates everything—life itself—every cell of ours.
At present, we perceive only its pale reflection while sometimes receiving flashes of awareness illuminating our lives. Our consciousness can thus elevate itself to perceive the existence of a higher world and its eternal laws. To truly know it perhaps requires merging into it. To abandon oneself completely in order to return to being one with this inexhaustible source.
Then we will discover that by its nature Love must propagate itself, as a force acting centrifugally and not centripetally, that is, by its inherent peculiarity it necessarily turns toward the other.
But who is this other?
With the well-known evangelical motto: “Love your neighbor,” it refers both to the world around us and to that Essential part of ourselves which is “closer than our feet and hands.” However, it is often forgotten that the phrase continues with “as yourself,” meaning “with those characteristics and abilities which are ours.”
How well do we truly know who we are?
The conditioning from parents, school, and society—as well as awareness of our talents, possibilities, and value—affects what we think about ourselves; dissatisfied or exalted by our physical or character traits. This judgment keeps us imprisoned in illusion within a fictitious idea of our identity.
If we could stop and allow space for silence to make deep contact with our hearts—where that forgotten part connected to Unique Love dwells—we would be assured that there exists no imperfection there for this center within us; no judgment, no fear exists.
We could understand that in this unity with the heart we are perfect just as we are—that there is not a single error within us but only judgments and conditioning which we can abandon in order to leave the helm to a higher Wisdom.
Before the gaze of Love there exists no judgment; there is no separation; Love Loves; it emanates itself: in its force it includes everything—even the shadows of human existence. Love embraces everything in its immensity.
Thanks to its pure fire, everything can be transformed to free what is densest and still holds us back so as to allow us absolute Freedom—to become an integral part of this perfection, this totality.
A purification is necessary for human beings and their egocentric resistances. Just as chaff must be burned away to liberate what is essential so must one embark on an inner journey dissolving their bonds—indispensable for truly understanding Love and its laws.
Thus occurs in alchemy “solve et coagula”: the process consisting of dissolving a substance only to reunify it into a new form. This is necessary for creating the philosopher’s stone so that the lead of earthly existence may be transformed into the gold of immortality.
Love is the greatest creative process—transformative and generative—in which everything in the universe is immersed; solicited and pushed into action so that the intended plan may be realized.
Love is a law which “all the universe obeys.”
Discovering who we really are is part of the transformation journey necessary for learning how to love ourselves—the deep part within us that accepts our imperfections and shadows—knowing that, as Jesus said: “No one here is good.”
Thus we can only embrace the Other—all others—as fragments of a single humanity seeking Love just as much as we are; let’s not forget—we are here to learn how to do it.
Losing oneself along with all presumption about knowing who we are—allowing ourselves to be transformed by this Force of Love while gradually abandoning our resistances—is no longer frightening.
In this surrender, we receive in return Love which encompasses all; forgives all; freeing us from every attachment.
Everything gains new value; new vision becomes possible.
Love exists where fear no longer exists; where there is no fear there exists freedom.
