The Fall of Love

Over the last few days, relationship seems to be the recurring dream. It might be all the relationship-centered phone calls I've received lately, which remind me of my own. Ah, the bliss, the irritation, the hope, the betrayal! All that fabulous detail, which arises with the notion "MINE".Once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, I was explaining to someone my passionate belief that there is no way I could allow an "open" relationship. "I know myself well enough," I said, "to understand that I'm just not personally secure enough to deal with something like that." Truth. I wanted to be number one...no, number ONLY. I figured that if my partner couldn't give me that, he didn't really love me the way I needed to be loved.Besides, it was so complicated! Truer still. Simple is best for me, when it comes to the layer of world involving family. I still prefer monogamy. Jealousy can still happen, or not. I might believe that I'm somehow special to the one I'm so attached to, or not.And so forth.What I was trying to say, actually, was that I wanted a relationship I could believe in, that I could have faith in, that I could feel safe and loved in. Meaning that my expectations were met, my partner behaved and understood, so that I would not feel threatened. So that I could trust. So that I could be happy. So that I could REALLY love, not just love with reservations, just in case.I wanted to be totally, blissfully attached, without the possibility of abandonment. Secure ever after.Deep down, isn't this how most of us feel?I really was convinced of my own insecurity, immaturity and neediness...but, silly woman that I am, I forgot to look deeper. Too damn scared of ghosts, of rejection, of the unknown. Still, there were clues, all along.For instance, the first time I held my brand-new twins, there was an epiphany...I fell immediately and deeply in love, knowing that I would put my life on the line for these babies (and any future children). I saw that I would do my absolute best in their care, that they were simply the most beautiful beings alive, and that I would protect them. My children. And while I was having all these new-mother thoughts and feelings, there was another, simultaneous knowing. I have to let them go. They will grow up and develop their own lives and thoughts and loves, and I have to let them go.With each birth came the same bitter-sweetness. The same joy-pain. It was a taste of reality, just a taste.I saw this, I knew it, but I reasoned that maternal love and "coupled" love were two different things. After all, I didn't expect the same things from my children that I expected in an adult partnership...right? Right. Well. Kids grow up, mostly, and reporting from the front, I find that I have been positively awash and aglow in their approval and unconditional acceptance and complete willingness to bow to my superior wisdom and knowledge. I have been delighted with their spontaneous gifts, humbled by their beauty, puffed-up with pride at their intelligence (that's right...that's MY kid!!).Oh, and dismayed by their sudden and seemingly vicious betrayal, irritated by their thoughtlessness, confused by their absolute blindness and lack of understanding. Completely scared by their recklessness and embarrassed by their awful behavior. Hurt terribly by their rejection, jealous at their attachment to someone else.Yeah. Really different.Now an understanding has arisen. Care to step into the rabbit-hole of love? This is a tough one.(C'mon, jump! I'll hold your hand on the way down...it won't hurt THAT badly!)(If you don't want to jump, you don't have to. Feel free to wrap yourself in the solidity of your life.)Okay. Now we're falling. I confess, this isn't really the rabbit-hole of love (quit snickering!). This IS love. We're falling, in love. Did I mention that I haven't found the bottom yet? I am happy, though, to draw your attention to some points of interest on the way down.Forget trying to grab something to save yourself, by the way. All roots, branches and apparent hand-or-footholds are temporary and coated with impermanence (really greasy stuff). Of course, you can try, try to stop this fall...it hurts, though everybody tries. Maybe it's instinct, maybe it's what we learned. Maybe it's just fun.Anyway, take a deep breath and notice the strata--the layers that we happen to be falling through. They have different names, but they all begin with "I want" or "I want to avoid"...True Love, Sex, Respect, Recognition, Attention, Security, Sensation, Power...as many as you want to see, that's how many there are. Sure, you can explore any one of these things, as long as you understand that, though you may imagine you have stopped at one level or another, you are actually still falling. To believe that your fulfillment and destination is where you think you've landed is to be lost in the rabbit-warren of dreams.Done with that? Okay. Now it gets more subtle. It seems as though the fall is slowing, or that we can see more clearly...you watch your arms reach out to hold on to your lover, your child, your parent, your friend...you watch your heart trying to capture a beautiful moment, your eyes a lovely sunset, your mind a choice you think you should make. You see yourself trying to keep everyone and everything. But it all goes away, and your heart breaks. There is such a struggle to understand why bad stuff shows up and good stuff leaves... why feelings and minds change. Maybe you rage at the way things are, blame god or someone or yourself for abandoning you. Maybe you believe you've given up, because you have hurt too much and you're numb. You think you will always be alone.Guess what? Still falling.Having fallen through so many things in so many ways, the alluring promises of a nice, safe ledge to cling to lose their sparkle, don't they? (Actually, you just come to see that the shine is your own light, reflecting off the greasy stuff). The vistas are gorgeous, still, but you understand that they don't belong to you, in the sense that you can't own them. Ever. One thing, feeling, situation, idea, time is followed by another. All stops are temporary. All goes are temporary.Except...this damn FALLING.Now we have dropped very, very far. It's dark, but we can see; the sensation of falling, of the inability to grasp safety feels...clean. We look at the passing walls with genuine interest instead of what we might get or what we might lose. In freefall, what is there to gain? What is there to let go of? So we just look. There is nothing left to do but surrender to this endless drop. What can you do? Where do you go when each refuge is found to have no floor?Look, here are the last layers, ancient and deep. These are the imaginary supports for the lasagna of life, the mine of mind, the ex of experience!One says, I don't know what love is. I need to find it.And below it--All there is, is falling. All I am is watching events go by. Can't catch a thing...I dream, it's beautiful, scary, interesting...it never stops...The only thing I can keep is falling...Because I AM falling.In love. Into myself.Ohhh.It's brighter all the way down here, in our freefall. I say "we", because together, we compose this sensation of living, this fact of falling. We are the fall. Only one more layer, the mother-lode, veins of which run through every single thing in your life. Even "we".It's called "I"."I" wants, "I" avoids, "I" arises and creates "mine" or "not mine". No big deal. It's just one more layer, that's all. It's quite beautiful, a perfect tool of division. But you are not that. You are the fall THROUGH that, the motion, the space for it. The "I" is what you imagine you need to relate to anything, and an "advanced I" can have advanced relationships. As a matter of fact, an "advanced I" sees that ALL things are myself in relation with and to the world, and ALL of these relationships are "open".They are so open, in reality, that there are no real boundaries. What is a boundary? That thing called "I". What are you without this "I"?Not falling anymore. Not falling in love, or rejection, or rabbit holes...Just being your own love, not having to relate, because everything you encounter is already you. Now, life falls through your stillness.***Considering love and relating from here, now, I mentally isolate the relationship between myself and my husband from the rest of the world/life. The first thing I'm aware of is the fact that I've just turned a living, breathing, changing, mysterious "no-thing" into a thought, into an idea that is the merest sketch of the soup that Richard and I are dwelling in. It is a hard idea, called "our relationship", and I can imagine myself stubbing my cosmic toe on it. So I have to laugh. Because the idea is falling through me. I am the no-thing, as he is, and I will never, ever be able to nail us down. There is absolutely zero security, if I believe the thought that says we are separate things trying to "make" a relationship.In my direct and unvarnished experience, he is an eternally-changing event that arises. Now I see him, now I don't. We get closer and exchange words, sensations, imaginations. Closer still, and he gets blurry, I have difficulty defining anything except pure sensual information; closer still, and the convention of separation is gone. Then, it isn't. Sometimes he is my own right hand (lefty or not), and sometimes he is the current burr under my saddle. In fact, there isn't any way to describe him, really, without describing myself.Yet, there is no way I can really know him, the same way there is no way he can really know me. Our perspectives are absolutely unique. We are each absolutely alone in that sense, and always will be. But also, there is no way we can be truly separate. There is no way to stop the fall. Because he/I is/am the same being, in the verbal sense. We are being life.I guess this sort of takes the romance out of the idea--but it doesn't take the romance out of us, should we be so inclined. :) We seem to roam the spectrum between "don't I know you from someplace?" to "you are the reason I live" in relative comfort, with little--if any--regret.I love that I still love him even though I don't need to. I love that I still fall even though it's completely pointless from the mind's point of view. I love that I love.I love.I.Love.:)