Love Is...

Song Recommedation: Love

Artist: The Cure

Album: Instant Karma

"Love is actually a state of being, and a divine state at that, the state to which we all yearn to return."

-Ram Dass, Be Love Now

Just before savasana ends, I open my eyes. Orange light, sunlight through orange curtains, fills the room. Ambient 6th avenue honking outside. I have my own rectangle of space though I am gloriously not alone- forty others lay on their personal rectangles- and the room itself seems to embrace us all, maternally, with arms made out of the warm air.

Truly, I would be happy to lay here forever.

What is this feeling? Though it's just me, laying there on a mat, I feel as though I'm with someone- a friend- those arms made of light. This someone is fearless, and to them, I am the most precious thing. This feeling is so ridiculously/addictively/sickeningly good that upon returning to it, I cry a few over the tragedy of having been apart.

I think this is what I will call Love. I've come to know this feeling recently, and in two ways: one, from work done on the yoga mat. Two, from being around other people who have cultivated this mysterious companionship within themselves.

Chewing on the idea of Love, today told my friends how I have a hard time being alone with myself- how it's often not a loving space. They looked mystified. "I love myself, I have no problem being alone," said one. "Me too," added the other. "Oh." I said, a little shocked.

Is it just me? When I'm alone, something goes rotten. There is no warm embrace like in the orange-light room. Instead, there is a feeling of sharp separateness, fear, darkness, and meanness. It's difficult to describe, but I can safely say that the "Friend" ain't there.

Maybe I didn't properly explain to my friends that I'm not talking about your ordinary, 'we're-related' or 'today I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw' kind of love. I'm talking about the deepest Love- one I have no reference for but I smell, I can sense is possible.

Or maybe I do have a reference- personal experience. For a few weeks, I was attending a Breathwork circle- some of us getting together to do a long, difficult pranayama (breath practice) followed by a long savasana. Though I can be stoic, every single Breathwork session I shocked myself by crying. After struggling through that breath I would arrive in savasana at this place of incredible tenderness, so powerful it was almost as though there was another presence being tender towards me. Yet it was only me there.

Rumi and Hafiz talk about "the Friend" and Ram Dass writes that Love is a state of being. Is this what they mean?

I can't help but ask- what would life feel like if this sweetness or Love was a continual reality?

For some people, it is the reality! I have the great karma of knowing a few beings, who, largely, have ended all MEANNESS towards themselves- I mean, ALL meanness ("why did I just do that?"). And their eyes have this unwavering gaze, a fearlessness. Simply being in the presence of these folks is a radiation therapy. I seem to learn from them without words.

So I've been playing with it on my own. I feel like Curious George, asking "what would happen....if I added some love here?" and I draw upon my experiences and observations of Love as guidance. Or sometimes I think of the mantra "I'm with Love" (an improvement upon the T-shirt slogan "I'm with Stupid"). While yoga classes are meant to feed you, but they are also meant to teach you how to feed yourself. We get together to manufacture Love, then hopefully after class when we go our separate ways, we are still singular factories of Love for those around us: on the train, on the street, in the market.

It's in, it's out, it's up and down. Some days I am Being Love, and other days begin with a vacuous "Huh?"

But as Ram Dass says "There's no going back. The lingering taste of that ultimate sweetness remains and won't be denied."