Love Flowering Of The Mystic
There is another type of love growing inside me
. This is the love flowering of the shaman or of the magician. I planted this garden by pledging to find my reason here in this incarnation. At the time I didn't realize at the time that I was planting! These fresh, buds laden with dew have come up from the depth of my heart out of the blue. My body and my heart area in particular sense so much happiness in return, as if I am made for this weird loving.Pleasure and boundless gratitude and unqualified patience: these terms provide clues only as to the mood of this unfamiliar flower of love. Calm meditation of Being-ecstasy. I turn to another and identify my Self, but in a completely different mode. I sit with a friend, in touch with that divine being. The recognition is non-intellectual. It is physical-electrical, magnetic. It is from the heart. And when the light of being shines through and not just behind that person, the act of loving one another in this strange way becomes even wilder. It appears as if our body/minds are particle accelerators. Physicality and consciousness seem to act like a species of mirror, folding and twisting and redirecting the pure light of being--slowing it down, creating color and pattern and planes of physical objects that can feel and interact and dance. This love is ecstasy, ecstasy!
This love path of the mystic has not been easy for me. When I became an adolescent and the oppressive world of known things began to get hold of me, I began my descent. I was determined to be original. However, my hunt for truth and meaning seemed to expose only falsehood and hypocrisy, especially in myself. I continued to look for the real me, taking off the layers, found nothing. If I wore one set of clothing, I transformed into that sort of person for the world. Internally too, though I favored rebellious characters over conforming ones, I could discover nothing of factual value that made me one thing rather than another. I seemed to be just my clothes.
If I dressed in rebellious clothing, people treated me ill. If I dressed conventionally, they treated me well. It seemed that people responded to programmed responses to externals. I was dismayed and disillusioned by this result. Others did not appear to mind the total lack of reality in social relations. I felt so alien from other people that, in an attempt to defend my decreasing sense of sanity, I began to despise humanity.
And so I came to be paranoid and lonely, frenzied and unkind, utterly miserable. Deep inside me, I knew myself to be a monster, something that never should have existed, something that no one can know about. But a seed remained alive. Even in my darkest hours in hell, when I longed to kill myself hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute--even then the naked, mischievous daughter of my dreamer self grinned and laughed with glee at knowing the joy of existence.
During that dark period of my life, no matter how much despair and agony I generated, a bit of me knew this life as a beautiful game. That flicker, that mischievous daughter, is developing now, coming out into the world through me, taking over this body and walking this planet again for the first time since my youngest childhood. She is the one who knows how to love in freedom. The daughter-spirit is aware of how to love without extricating any one thing from any other thing. She knows how to love without force. She knows how to love with every part of her, audaciously, boldly, joyfully. She knows how to be without holding back. She knows how to be in harmony with others, with all that is.
This is all wonderful for me. I witness this transformation in myself and-feel grateful!--I witness it in my fellow travelers. I do not know if you have the knowledge of the fact that the Tequihua volunteers are mainly people who have dedicated to understanding themselves and that we accept this work of transmitting the Toltec arts and teachings with the intent of changing ourselves into our Selves. Over a period of time I have seen many of my friends become increasingly themselves, increasingly authentic, increasingly powerful and free. To look at the light starting to shine brighter through some of the faces of these, my dearest friends--how much joy?
Love and gratitude to you, my friend who are reading this, without whom there would be no teaching. The Tequihua Foundation:
by: Eric N. Peterson