THE GLUE OF LOVE 

Love is the life of the soul.
Love is the greatest joy of creation.
Hafez

What a man loves a man is.
St. Augustine 354-430

This chapter presents some of the most non-linear content on Meditation.dk. Dreams often lack a conventional timeline, and upon awakening, we attempt to create a coherent narrative from these dreams, sometimes overlooking vital messages they convey. In a similar vein, when we experience love, we find ourselves in a reality comparable to a lucid dream. Therefore, I endeavor to write from within this dream-like state, striking a balance between practical language and the language of visions. Intriguingly, the dream of love is exceptionally lucid, occurring in a state of consciousness even more awake than our typical waking state. In this context, one must 'wake down' rather than 'wake up' to attempt to articulate it effectively.

Allow me to share a story. A close friend of mine was once filled with rage in his youth. Fearless and possessing an imposing athletic build, he was always prepared to confront any street fight, regardless of the odds. At 18, he left Denmark to join a war against jihadists in the Middle East. After two years and countless battle scars, he returned to Denmark and became the leader of a criminal gang. He eventually found himself in solitary confinement for almost two years. Shortly after being released from his (monk) cell, he stumbled upon a YouTube video featuring a kaleidoscopic tunnel accompanied by a deep voice proclaiming, You are that! You are the ultimate truth. He was so ripe for a shift in consciousness after these two years of solitude that even this simple video clip triggered an explosion of cosmic consciousness within him.
 
Completely unfamiliar with mystical experiences and thankfully free from New Age conceptualizations of enlightenment, he realized that he was one with the divine, omnipresent and that everything is love. Initially, this divine rapture was so intense that he for two years could do nothing but surrender to ecstasy, oblivious to the world and worldly affairs. As he gradually returned to a somewhat grounded state, he began to view the world around him as a manifestation of his own Self. The thought of fighting anyone now seemed impossible. He abandoned his previous life as effortlessly as changing clothes and transformed into the most loving, compassionate, and wise man one could imagine. Suddenly, all the energy within him could be channeled through intelligent and expanded conscious awareness.

Today he is one of the most enlightened beings I know, a fact that he tries his best to hide.

The Footprint of Love
Love, an ethereal adhesive formed through profound understanding, emerges from the expanded consciousness that perceives unity in all. Love is a glue created by insight. This insight in expanded consciousness realizes that all is one.  This realization intertwines everything, from cellular symbiosis to human relationships and societal constructs. Love is the force that unifies and sustains.
It is love that makes the mafia man protect his family; finally, it is love that makes us transcend all our denial of being the other. In the discourse on consciousness, as explored in "What Can be Said About Consciousness" its elusive nature is acknowledged. We cannot understand or verify consciousness in itself because it is a higher dimensional entity or even being. However, this in itself invisible guest in our dimension leaves footprints that we can observe.  Consciousness, a higher-dimensional presence, remains unfathomable and unverifiable. Yet, it leaves discernible traces in our realm, with love being its most prominent manifestation.
 
This primal love wave emerged from a pervasive, albeit faint, everpresent pan-consciousness predating humanity's ability to amplify it through the brain's intricate functions. This nascent, universal love, though subtle, was potent enough to bind simpler entities into intelligent, complex structures, paving the way for life's genesis. Darwinian evolution played a role in this journey, not through random mutations but within preordained frameworks. These frameworks, composed of intelligently designed elements akin to Lego blocks, guided evolutionary paths.
 
Consider the metaphor of a ping pong match. The ball's motion appears random, yet it is confined within a strategically designed structure. This setup permits certain trajectories while precluding others, just like the evolutionary process. The ball, representing life's evolution, cannot deviate unpredictably from the game's inherent design.
 

LOVE AS DEVINE RAPTURE

Don't be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth.
Rumi

I declare myself guilty in advance. What I am about to narrate now is crazy.
However, It's always best to tell the strange stories about yourself before others do. Five years ago, I would have shaken my head in disbelief at what I'm about to share. I simply wouldn't have been able to understand - just as many of my close friends over the past 40 years don't really understand me now.

Lovers and lunatics have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
William Shakespeare

It's so far from words, I can only laugh. Yet I use words. It's absurd. Words croak like frogs at the bottom of a well. What can they tell of the birds' life in the sky?

If you think truth can be known through words,
If you think the Sun and Sea can pass
Through the small opening called the mouth,
Then someone should start laughing loudly.
Hafez

Writing about it is impossible and somewhat arrogant. One must experience it at the screaming cellular level to resemble what I'm about to tell. If one doesn't resemble it, it makes no more sense than sounds carrying words.
And yet, maybe words... If I can experience this miracle, it means that all - now, before, or later - will be able to do the same. I can't possibly be the only son of eternity! ... Everyone is! - Oh, my dear Meister Eckhart! How right you are:

What is true of Jesus Christ
is true of every good and godly person.

Are you the one on the net, reading this and nodding instead of shaking your head? Your recognizing smile makes it all worthwhile. Is it you I'm talking about? All I can give you are words, carrying sounds from my heart's tuning fork. If they wake the tuning fork in your chest, then you will see it, feel it, and then sing it. For perhaps words from the heart resemble light. Light can be seen. Words can be understood. Light can warm. So can words.

Only from heart to heart can the mystic's ecstasy be transmitted.
Hafez

The Lightning Strike
In recent years, I've experienced 'something' that surpasses even my wildest youthful imaginations of what a life in Meditation could bring! Lightning struck my heart. How can I describe this strike?
Of all words, I find the most worn-out.

That word is love.
 
"Holy cow, this is insane," I mutter to myself again and again. How the hell is this even possible!?

Let me explain in passing on the meta-level why I feel like using swear words here. We consist of at least 100 personalities of all ages, some of whom don't even really know each other. When the sacred lightning struck from a clear sky, it knocked down my entire inner third-world parliament of disagreeing personalities. The lightning even hit my inner sluggish and greedy caveman, and now I let him, like a revived Frankenstein, hurl excited oaths in the name of love's unfathomable miracle.

For life has taught me: Without the inner Frankenstein on my side, I get nowhere. He has never thought of God, simply because he rarely thinks, but now he feels and bursts out laughing: Is this a joke or what!
 
I add: We are truly like the Indian beggar who sat on a treasure all his life without knowing it.

We laugh loudly and can't stop. Never have we been better friends.
What is this precious love and laughter in our hearts?
It is the glorious sound of a soul awakening.
Hafez

It's so wild that 'I', the caveman, and the remaining 98 personalities in chorus mutter to themselves: Even if the party were shut down right here and now, we have received more than we could ever ask for!

"Child of Humanity"
The refrain of the Christian rock song I'm listening to goes, 'You are so beautiful!' ... Yes, of course, I am, says the little child within me.

Words are indescribably indescribable. I'm talking about extreme states of love. This love curls all-encompassingly into and out of itself like a tennis ball suddenly turned inside out. Love explodes like a rocket battery in the chest, ripping open the ribcage to reveal the bleeding heart.

Light will one day split you open
Hafez

My nerves stand like a tree, stripped from roots to crown of flesh and glowing in colors full of emotion. Simultaneously, the universe implodes into 'me'. Neurons reach out to the furthest stars, caressing them. The ecstasy is so close to pain that the joy is almost unbearable. The billions of cells I called 'me' just moments ago now make love with God. This lovemaking again spawns cascades of other emotions, so far from words they are impossible to name. This is pure eroticism, and far, far more intense than anything I've experienced before. The heart is the largest and most fantastic sex organ in the human body.

The heart is an instrument with 1000 strings,
that can only be tuned by love.
Hafez

The Heart's Chernobyl
At the peak of this divine rapture I found myself in Chernobyl at the moment of meltdown. The intense radiation from the melting uranium sticks burned away the flesh from my body, until only inner core of me in the form of a four year old golden child stood back recieving gods radiating love.
Only the purest innocence and trust could enter this holiest of spaces, where uranium rods of concentrated pure love at the melting point burnt my imperfect adult body to atoms.

What remains alone in this radiant cathedral was the innocent heart-child of God. The child says: I am the one You waited for.

Love is the pyre where the heart lays its body
Hafez

Never has destruction and death been so beautiful and meaningful.
And now, life after the resurrection. The wild and mystical love seemingly won't go away. It stays with me as light peeking through cracks in my now perforated self-perception. Wow! I am far more than my little comical life drama! I am connected to everything! Love encompasses everything from the smallest to the largest. From the joy of seeing a peeing dog to the unfathomable feelings at recognizing my own face in the sky even on a rainy day. This love is in every stone I step on.
And between grains of sand and clouds is what I love most: the people close to me. In their eyes, I see myself. In their eyes, I see, in concentrated form, the light that connects everything. This light bestows not just recognition, but also warmth. In this encounter, God sees Himself.

A life without love is worthless.
Don't ask yourself what kind of love you should seek,
spiritual or material, divine or ordinary,
Eastern or Western... separation only leads to more separation.
Love has no labels, no definitions.
It is what it is, pure and simple.

Love is the water of life.
And a lover is a soul of fire!
The universe changes course when fire loves water.
Shams Tabrizi

Without hesitation, I feel the best words ever:

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

For you, dear reader, are also the way, the truth, and the life. I see, beyond layers of trauma and tired survival masks, the smile on my face as it passes by in numerous fractal repetitions all around me.

Since this experience and those that followed, I am no longer who I was. The meltdown caused such severe 'radiation damage' to my ego that it can no longer mount an effective defense against the eternally glowing primordial light of love.

"You are self-centered," says one of my old friends when I try to tell him about it. He's somewhat right, but at the same time, he doesn't understand because he hasn't experienced it. A skeptical habit-thinking mind, like a psychiatrist's, might assume that my next stop should be hospitalization. However, I've become much physically healthier, have far more energy, sleep much better than I have in years, and have more creative success in my work life than ever before. I can no longer hide my laughter over the beggar's treasure that I unknowingly sat on for so many years. Sometimes when I call my god-friend Michell, neither of us can get a word in because we are choking with laughter and can't stop until we hang up.

I am sure there are many others out there who have experienced something similar. In fact, I gradually know a handful. We've never been on Sigmund Freud's famous couch, so we don't exist in the literature. The only place I've 'found' us is among the wise men of India. Also in Christian Mysticism, but above all in the wonderful poems of Hafez, Shams, and Rumi!

That said, there are no roses without thorns. The next section will tell more about that.

WHEN I DISAPPEARED IN WAKEFULNESS
It all started when I was 23 years old and studying on the university.

I disappeared when I closed my eyes.

In my very first attempt at meditation 46 years ago, I encountered an utterly unfathomable 'nothing'. I was wide awake but saw nothing other than what saw. Nothing I had experienced until then had developed words to describe it.

I had recently borrowed a book on meditation from the library out of curiosity. The book said to repeat a sound, a mantra. I made up a meaningless word and turned inward purposefully. When I opened my eyes again, to my great surprise, ecstatic light came out of everything I looked at. I lived at the Skjoldhøjkollegiet in Aarhus. I went out to the common room. It was much larger than usual and full of light. I went out into the rain. The college consisted of gray concrete, but now a wonderful living light came out of the rain-gray walls. I looked up at the dark clouds in the sky, and light came out of the clouds like on a cloudless summer day. I walked around in amazement and joy in this landscape, which just an hour before had been the frame of my all-too-familiar everyday life.

There is no Road without Bumps
This first spiritual feast, however, ended with serious hangovers in the form of an existential crisis maybe on the borderline to a psychosis. Isolated, unable to share my profound experiences, they starkly contradicted the beliefs I held as a progressive, young student. Although texts on Indian sages and medieval mystics shed some light, I was unprepared for managing the turbulent, yet intimidating, inner transformations.
 
Decades later, 46 years to be precise, my perspective has transformed. Surviving a period of decline, I regained my stride. The most vital lesson from my journey, possibly inspiring for others, is this:

Don't shun fear. Fear is not an adversary but a sage guide when venturing into the unknown. Embrace it not as a foe, but as a valued companion. Do not fear fear itself.

Love is incompatible with fear and pain,
for the waxing of love is the waning of fear,
and when love is perfect all fear is gone.
But at the beginning of the virtuous life fear is of
use to man, providing him a thoroughfare for love.
Meister Eckhart

Another key insight: Cherish the company of virtuous people. Immerse yourself in a community of similar spirits. Let these individuals be your friends, allies and confidants, enriching your journey.
 
Finally, an essential realization: Whenever you sense even the faintest glimmer of love in your heart, embrace it with gratitude. This feeling, however small, is a precious gift to be cherished and acknowledged with a thankful spirit.
 
Ultimately, it is not the grand, life-altering events that shape us most profoundly. While these experiences may open windows of opportunity, offering a glimpse into new paths and directions, their transformative power is fleeting. It is in the aftermath, through the open window of these experiences, that we come to realize that true change often lies in the minutiae of our daily lives. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
 
It's not about altering the core of who we are; rather, it's about cultivating vigilance and the ability to recognize the myriad of small things in our everyday existence that hinder self-love. Life is composed of millions of small repetitions. If even the slightest touch of love were to reach these repetitive moments, they could transform into evolving spirals, making each day subtly but significantly better than the last, no matter how trivial the change may seem.
 
From this perspective, the object of our love becomes secondary. Whether it's love for God, a cat, or anything else, what truly matters is the act of loving itself. It is love, in all its forms and expressions, that drives the subtle yet profound changes in our lives.
 

If the only prayer you ever say is thank you, that will suffice.
Eckhart