Do you believe that love exists?

I do.

I observe it in the birth of every child, the awe of the parents at being participants in the opening of new eyes to the world, their immediate attachment to the latest blood coated scarlet emissary to the physical world.

I observe it in every transformation of death, where friends and relatives struggle to accept loss. How important each broken life is, and tears lubricate the path down a light filled tunnel towards acceptance of the only one we can truly experience, our own observant self.

I observe it in majesty and beauty, the connection that many feel to the distant shimmer of galaxies, the horizons of the sea, the transient delicacy of an opening bud, the doe licking the fawn.

But mostly our common experience, for those blessed, is to know deep within, that your existence is adored. You are valuable, precious, and exquisite to another.

Ah, falling in love may be our one experience of this joy, the blending of two hearts, where there is a desire to merge into one. That single kiss which defines our lives, the roiling turbulence of wanting nothing but the presence of another, encompassed with their being. Forgetting for the moment the uncertainties and pain, soaking in the feelings of acceptance. This is love.

Stephen Biddulph, in his book “Manhood” describes a form of sexual relationship which a man can have with a woman which glows with spirit, where the partnered souls dance together to a romantic melody which enriches both, and does not make objects of either.

“When I met my love, this overwhelming desire to give, to reach into and stroke tenderly the raw pain of my love’s being, to encourage, to flow into, and to have her see in herself her own potential, was a revolutionary transformation for me. It was as though my self was now extended to include another, and I wanted to equally protect that other, to love her, with the knowledge I was able to love myself.”

Khalil Gibran fell for Salma Karama in that way, and expresses this otherness beautifully:

“I felt an emotion I had never felt before, an unprecedented feeling that washed over my heart with a serenity that resembled the rustling of the spirit over the surface of the waters before the aeons began. “ (From “Broken Wings”)

But within a year Khalil was heart- broken, with his Salma married off to someone she didn’t love, for political and economic reasons.

Thus this experience of love is transitory, despite the deep sense of permanence in a love that goes beyond death, as Khalil explains to Salma “The life of a human being, Salma, does not begin in the womb, nor does it end before the grave. This unfathomed void that is filled with the rays of the moon and planets does not lack for spirits embracing in love, and souls entwined in understanding.”

So I believe that love, true love, is the “daughter of a spiritual understanding” and has an eternal past and an eternal future.

Love Exists ….  Imagine that!