The premise of this blog and of my work is quite simple really. It is this. There is love. It is everywhere, all around us, in us, through us, connecting us, aside from us, outside of us, everything that is and is not occurs in the context of this love.
That’s really it. So love. Each other. One another. Yourself. Experience it.
That’s also where it gets complicated. The first complication is that love is a word and like all words it is a symbol for something, though it is not that something. So love (even with a capital L) does not capture the something. It doesn’t properly explain it or identify it. As a word it’s open to interpretation, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, understanding. Due to this complication I call it Truth/Love/Aletheia. Aletheia may be the best word I’ve found for the phenomenon, at least as Heidegger uses it in the context of the rest of his Being and Time.
Mostly the phenomenon is concealed from our experience. This is the second complication. This causes a whole host of additional complications which I won’t attempt to go over.
Given these two basic complications, my work has been challenged to take root. My work is to have love be present and experienced. That’s it. Mostly I get in the way. Since I’ve really only experienced the phenomenon a dozen or so times with people outside of my “close circle” and even mostly have difficulty with my work with those inside my “close circle” it’s been a challenge to really put a finger on the components of having the love that is always there sort of “arise” in the space of experience.
One year ago today I, for the first time, intentionally caused love to be present and experienced with people that were, only a few days before, complete strangers. Something shifted in the space of myself and these two guys that I was having the conversation with, creating together the phenomenon and clearing the space for love to be present. In the end I was left different and known. They were left known, or something, as well. Honestly, we still haven’t fully made sense of what happened, what occurred. But we did all agree, many months later that something happened. There was a presence of being known or loved or connected or something unlike anything we’d experienced before, at least with random people that we’d only just met.
And I should point out that we’d been drinking Belgian beer all night. Then, after we experienced love as a presence Sinterclause showed up. And then I got really drunk so I could get inside the head of this incredible guy I know who jumps off of stuff, to get a better understanding of what that is for him. The night ended with me drunken facebooking. The morning began with severe pain.
Since that day, really the day after, when I found myself “barfing more” I’ve not made a lot of sense out of it all. Much of the experience has concealed itself again and I’ve found myself trying to recapture or recreate the event. Which I of course know is about the best way to not have it occur again. So, today I guess I’m just reminiscing about Truth/Love/Aletheia.
With Love,
Ed