The Drunkenness of Love.
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I admit that I am drunk. No, not booze. Not drugs. Not sex. Not nature. Not music. Just drunk. The drunkenness of love, pure and simple.
My mind has gone where minds go when we are drunk. I don’t know who or what is writing; certainly there is no thinking. I can barely see. Thankfully, my fingers have been trained to find the right keys, on their own. Maybe my fingers are behind this. I don’t know. Someone wants to say something.
Love is never absent from our lives. We do not have to find it; we are it. The problem is not that we don’t know how to love, or whom to love and in what way. The problem is that we are afraid of love, because love consumes us. We dissolve into love like salt dissolves in water. We disappear into love. We are overcome by love.
Love does not disappoint us. We disappoint ourselves because we resist love; we are afraid of disappearing into love. And so we are confused about love. It eludes us. We can’t quite grab hold of it. We try to love. We want to. But we don’t.
We don’t mind having an experience we call love, but we don’t want to lose ourselves. We want love to be like our sterling silverware or our best shoes. We use them when we want to, on special occasions. But we don’t want the forks and knives or the shoes to take us over. We want to be the judicious owners of these things. We want them to enhance our lives on our terms.
We only want to stand at the shore of love and dip our feet in, get a bit wet, scream our heads off and then run for our lives. But love wants more. Love wants us in all the way. Nothing short of drowning will be enough for love.
To experience love, we have to lose ourselves. But if we disappear into love, our reasoning brain will protest. What will become of us, how will we manage? Don’t get carried away, we could get hurt. And what if you don’t get love back? What if you are betrayed?
We don’t find the love we are looking for because we are afraid of losing ourselves to love. We sit safely behind our emotional seawall where the ocean of love can’t touch us, dreaming and imagining things, pretending that we feel love. This is fantasy love, thinking that love is an experience we have sometimes, under certain conditions.
And the stress of trying to create the conditions we think will produce love is the very thing that defeats us, time and time again.
Love is not infatuation, excitement, or hopeful anticipation. It is not wish or desire-fulfillment. It isn’t anything that arises out of conditions or circumstances. Love is an inner ecstasy, an intoxication, a drunkenness. Love is the soft music that flows from life herself, like blood through invisible veins, throughout all of existence. Love is friendly to everyone.
Love joins us together and connects us with everything. Love knows no fear or hurt. Love wants nothing because it is in itself full and complete. In this love there is no seeking love. In this love we know we are love. We feel this love flow from our veins to the farthest galaxies and back again. We are so drunk we cannot speak. We are silent. In this silence, we know that we are love: our core is love. Love is within us.
We do not love; we do not receive love. Love does not come and go. It is. Here. There. Everywhere. That and that and there and there.
We have to serve love, not use love, and stop trying to find love, to get love, to own love. When we realize that we are love, we become human. We go on living our lives, sipping from the cup of love, stumbling with drunkenness. Love is never absent from our lives.
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Robert Rabbin began his professional journey in 1985, after spending 10 years living and working with meditation master Swami Muktananda. Since then, he has developed an international reputation as a radically brilliant speaker and public speaking guru, as well as a distinguished self-awareness facilitator, leadership adviser, and personal mentor. Robert is the creative source and director of Speaking Truthfully, through which he offers masterclasses and private mentoring in authentic self-expression and public speaking. He has published eight books and more than 200 articles on authentic living and public speaking, leadership, self-inquiry, spiritual activism, and meditation. In January 2012, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, and was told he had a few months to live. However, in keeping with his contrarian nature, he continues to thrive past the predicted use-by date. He lives in Los Angeles, and can be contacted via his website.
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