Home of the Gods 3

There are many kinds of love we experience in this world: romantic, platonic, familial, even a deeper spiritual love when we encounter our twin flame. There’s the love we feel when we walk through the forest or feed houseplants, biophilia.
Personally I feel like the love we give to our pets is the closest we ever really come to what Plato called agape, unconditional love. We feed them, care for them and give them free affection without ever expecting a single thing in return, just because it feels good to have them in our lives.
And just like cats, sometimes the ones we love aren’t very reciprocating. Still we love them anyway. Just because it feels good to do so. That’s agape, unconditional love.
When the universe came into being it took on duality, masculine and feminine, the Goddess and the God. Everything else is a fractal, that is, a pattern repeating itself at literally cosmological scales, reflecting this primal pair.
Polarity, light and dark, thought and feeling, physical and spiritual. All represent the cosmic dance across our universe between Holy Mother and Father.
Their love permeates all of existence, taking on many forms in our lives here. From stroking a cat to raising a child to anonymous sex but none is more pure than agape.
Once I loved a woman so intensely that I would literally have given anything to see her again and tell her I’m sorry. But that love was not agape, it was an obsession, tainted by fear and pain.
I loved my cat as well, although I found her annoying and even screamed at her once. I didn’t like the way she treated me, I found her rude and insulting as if she saw me as meaningless, but still I loved her.
In this world sometimes we must learn to maintain boundaries with those we love, to prevent being hurt by them, because even when our love is reciprocated it may still become painful. We rarely know how to treat each other in ways that do not slowly poison us.
Even agape must be handled carefully in a world like ours.
Sometimes when a relationship is both loving and mutually toxic, the connection can become so painful that we begin to hate each other and yet we still continue trying to love. We know deep down that this love we share is real and we don’t want to give it up, even when it becomes unbearable.
Some people would say that hate is the opposite of love. I don’t believe love has an opposite but it’s certainly not hate. Hate is when love eclipses itself. It would have been impossible to hate that woman I mentioned anywhere near as much as I did, if I hadn’t also loved her. The opposite of hate is apathy, because we couldn’t possibly hate someone we simply don’t care about.
Both apathy and hate are symptoms of a poison seeping deep into our most infected wounds. We have been hurt but sometimes we simply don’t know how to heal, and so it festers and slowly becomes poisoned by those around us. So we begin to hate them, or simply stop caring, as a way of protecting ourselves from the pain.
Quan Yin has stated that the only way to rise above this pain, to stop being poisoned so that our wounds may finally heal, is to choose agape even in the face of ceaseless and deliberate malevolence. This may become a form of spiritual bypass if we allow it to, however it takes great strength and devoted self-honesty to release this much suffering in earnest.
Bypass is when we attempt to get around a stressful or difficult situation by choosing an alternative that does not actually solve the problem, such as spiritual practices that may simply be evading a direct solution. Choosing to meditate instead of setting boundaries.
If, however, we choose such purely unconditional love that we rise above the pettiness of our ego’s suffering and fear, we then find that the only real problem exists within us.
Any problem can, at that point of realization, be fully resolved with love. And this answer feels better than any meanness we have been taught is effective in this world, because it is in the true nature of our people to emanate that love, rather than allowing it to eclipse itself.
However, sometimes even love itself feels the need to hit harder than it probably should. In the forest, a storm is a destructive force that heals and regenerates life in the ecosystem. Wind knocks over old or weak trees, feeding them to the soil, which is being watered by the rain.
Sometimes love takes the form of a storm, to help us change our lives in sudden and dramatic ways. This may be a frightening or even a painful experience but it can often be a deeply reviving energy. Only where there are tombs can there be resurrections - thus sang Zarathustra.
And ultimately, even this storm is still a face of agape. Mothers are fiercely protective of their children and may appear harsh at times, in ways that are intended to help the child.
Kali is an example of this fierce, motherly love that will destroy all that opposes her beloved children. On occasion she may seem to hurt the children but only in ways that will help them grow stronger in the long run, because she knows we are capable of far more than we allow ourselves to become.
She sees in us the addiction to our dream state, and will often prevent us from overindulging to the extent of harming ourselves, so that Quan Yin can heal us with compassionate affection.
This compassion can be safely and freely given to all, even those who wish to hurt us, but only from a place of self-awareness. When we stand in the centre of our hearts and truly love ourselves, there could never be any reason not to love your supposed enemies for they cannot hurt you when you stand in this space of empowerment, beauty and glorious agape.
My cat was rude as hell, obnoxious and unbearably agitating sometimes. She was more needy than my ex used to say I was. But even when I found her most annoying and overbearing, I loved the absolute fuck out of her and she was so sweet and cute and awesome. And I never once expected anything from her, just loved her.
That is unconditional love.
And isn’t that the point of having a pet? A sweet little cuddly fluff ball, to give food to and to love and hug and hold, and never expect even the slightest reward for it. Just loving them, because that is the reward.
Being love is its own reward, its own victory and goal. The purpose of your existence, embodied in the simple act of feeding your favourite fur ball.
I loved my abusive exes the same way, although in different flavours and I found very different ways of expressing it with each of them. Because what could be the point of spending time with them if I wasn’t able to give love to them in whatever way felt comfortable?
Was I clingy? A bit, mostly in comparison to the apathetic sex-crazed men she was accustomed to, and who she ultimately dumped me in favour of. Because sex, drugs and rock n roll are a very fulfilling addiction right up until the very moment you realize they’re not giving you anything you really want.
Trust me I know, I was there too until I wasn’t anymore. In the hole of addiction.
And in the end, the real drug, the illusion of Maya, this addiction to falsehood, is simply a belief that we were ever anything but agape. The apparent separation from the Godhead that is Love in its purest, that is the feeling you’ve become so addicted to, and when you’re ready to realize that and release the pain you’re stuck inside of, returning to divine compassion will be the easiest thing you could ever do.
Because it’s what you are.
And giving that love to those who want to hurt you can be an intensely pleasurable experience when you allow it to be. And deep down you know they deserve it just as much as you do, it’s just hard to admit to yourself when you want to be in pain, when you want them to hurt you so you dislike them, when you don’t want to remember that you love them because you’re addicted to your ego.
The separation from God, from each other, from your Self - the belief that you are anything other than Love incarnate, is a very powerful addiction. More powerful than sex, cocaine and even the grimiest metal.
And the truth is that, just the same way people chase their addictions into homelessness and poverty, into crime and corruption and exile from social norms, is just the same as you’ve chased your dream state so far away from home.
Your heart has fallen so far away because it wanted to, not because it was sick or forsaken or lost, it just felt sleepy and wanted to get high. And it doesn’t mean that the people around you are bad, they’re no worse than you are, even if they seem to be.
And when you realize how much pain they’re in, just like you, how could you feel anything but compassion? Divine Love is what they deserve, what you deserve, and you’ll remember as soon as your heart wants to go home.
Which is what they all deserve too, just like you, my beloved siblings.