Embracing Love: the spirit of aliveness (edited)

By Neiman Marcus
“Give me my heart. Let it pump again life’s power in me, infuse my hands and feet with spirit. Give me my heart. Let me rise and walk.”
Awakening Osiris, Normandi Ellis
Love: a Regenerative Power
Love, some say is dead or near it. Modernity has meddled with our capacity to fully express our love. Technology has seriously compromised tactility; we touch and swipe screens, not each other. Persisting wars, marking most of our lifetimes is antithetical to love and a vital sign of an overlying disconnection with love’s regenerative power. Daily images of destruction (degenerative power) are paraded before us; of bloodied or blown apart bodies, distressed peoples, particularly children, abstractedly clinging to some strand of humanity to stop the violence and madness; bombs explode like fireworks at a festival and the media reports on it are orgiastic. As a sign of how advanced we are in warfare, unmanned fighter planes with unmemorable names bounce through Syrian skies like models on their catwalk. Confrontations and struggles against enemies are fangled commodities of terrorisation. Terror, not love is en vogue. Something of the heart becomes desensitised by these images, and our tears remain coiled in their ducts. Yet against the emotional tyranny of destruction the heart yearns to be reacquainted with its purpose; tears crave the slow journey from their ducts down the contours of the face, slipping into our mouth for us to taste the salt, sweetness and pain of genuine love. What follows here is a gentle whisper drifting towards those hearts in search of deepest love as the regenerative power of their aliveness.

Queen and her King

In the transience of death Ausar (Asar) pleads for the rekindling of his heart. The heart fires life, infusing the body with spirit. Those words – ‘rekindling’ and ‘fires’ are not whimsical but are effectual in the awakening of Ausar. This is how he will ‘rise’ and ‘walk.’ Shaman Patrice Somé of the Dagara (in Burkino Faso) says that fire is both regenerative and thus constructive and degenerative and therefore destructive (1998, 205-7). In other words fire is both positive and negative. Modernity, technology and persisting wars are symbols of fire in the Western world – relating to rapid progress (of a kind), ‘restlessness,’ ‘radical consumption’ and ultimately ‘death’ (literal and metaphoric). Fire in this context is expressed negatively. When expressed positively, according to Somé, ‘fire is the element that keeps people connected to their purpose and to the world of spirit.’ Fire in this sense ‘emerges as vision, dream, and intimacy with the ancestors.’ It is in this context – the exploration of fire as the ‘warmth of being, creativity and life’ – that I present an interpretation of Ausar's’ plea for the return of his heart. Ausar, being symbolic of Divine Consciousness, of transcendence, of elevation, of the risen, the crown chakra - in short the GOD WITHIN PRINCIPLE, which is the source of the regenerative power of love. The expanded consciousness embodies LOVE; for it KNOWS itself. It HONOURS its power, its creativity, its purpose. It does not hide or refracts from the responsibility to PROGRESS through love. To love is to live, to embrace and perpetuate the boundless beauty of our universe.

Blackartdepot

The (Ether)real thing
The heart houses the ethereality of love – love of course is not tangible. The eye would strain to see it physically; hands would eternally ache attempting to touch it. Yet love emanates. We know of love because its power electrifies when fully expressed or ignited. The light of love can be blindingly manifested in some people. They radiate it with ease and serenity it’s impossible to walk past them without absorbing its force. If modernity has not restricted one's capacity to be still you will be still and pause there, basking in love’s manifesting radiance. And how sweet, how beautiful that moment. And how painful too because a distant memory now pervades your being; you ache to relive some mythic height that once was part of you. The breath of life stirs within you. You feel newness manifesting. You feel pristine – as though you have just emerged from some dreadfully long sleep, or from the depth of the ocean onto an untouched island. You have arrived as if you’re the first to make impressions on its beauty, marvelling at the whitest, cleanest sand, the bluest water. Palm trees shimmer gently against azure sky as if to realign your heart to a slower beat; “the struggle against the tide is over; you have emerged; take it easy; breathe; let go,” those palms are whispering. Thus Ausar knows his need of the heart as the pump that will ‘quicken’ his rebirth, releasing him from sleep, dream and death. His desperate plea then is to feel, to experience creativity; it is to splendidly live again.

Water Goddess, Graphicsbeam.com

How resonant is this plea in our lives? How conscious are we of any dream to feel the quickening of spirit? I’d venture that many of us are unaware that this really isn’t it; that the stuff in our lives is not the substance of life. Such a reflection remains at the level of the unconscious and is a silent ritual. Our preoccupation with contrivances (the stuff in our lives) is a kind of mantra or meditation – our focus is misaligned. That negative fire-the rush toward some apparent need to satisfy some apparent lack – (which is overconsumption and distraction) allows us little, if any, time for Self reflection. But reflection is necessary if we are to be alerted to the deadness of our spirit. Consequently we exhibit creative dormancy and the debilitation of Self. Put another way how conscious are we that we are spiritually asleep or dead? What time do we give to understanding the matters of the heart? And if we attend, even briefly to such matters are we properly freed from the burdens of our present and past? Because a superficial study of the heart cannot reacquaint it with its purpose – that is as giver and sustainer of life and the aspect through which we experience the beauty and abundance of genuine love.

Ausar and Auset
Create it, then live the dream

And it is this – to embrace the regenerative power of love again that Ausar makes his plea for the return of his heart. To desire life without love is to exert degenerative power since it is possible to live without love in our lives. But that would vex the soul, would be a devilish deviancy within community and ultimately a pernicious disregard for humanity. Love is greater than those burnt-out relationships we cling to as though life was still there. Love is not fear but freedom. Love cannot express under the weight of our bitterest experiences. Those have to be cast aside or out like the demons they are; though you naturally accept that they have vitally shaped your life and contributed to where you are now. Love is not demanding; it is not control of another’s will to love, nor is it CONTROL of any kind. It is not a heavy chain by which our emotions are unwittingly dragged through extremes. Love is the power that unlocks that chain. Love is light. It does not hide for fear of discovery. It is creative power, a bareface dream - or leap. And like a flower unfolding from its enclosed posture during the night, love awakens the woman/man in you. You must be ready for this, and yield. And once love has freed you thus it requires you to make some hard choices. For love has led you to a crossroad. This is necessary for the perfecting of our journey. Here we might wish we were apportioned two lives but that would never do because love has a rhythm that is natural and precise. No matter how painful the decisions love has brought before us we must attune ourselves to that rhythm rather than force the recreation of another, which would be an offbeat. With back arching and poised like a ballet dancer ready to make an exhilarating leap, our breathing steadied we must dare to dance down either side of that crossroad. And that without looking back or returning there to the unforgiving past, worn out experiences - and lest like Lot’s wife we freeze in that posture for eternity.

Rhythms of aliveness
Love’s rhythm is the spirit of our aliveness variously expressed as: an intensity of physical attraction/connection; electricity hotting an impromptu embrace; a sudden readiness to expose the soul; an extreme, almost irrational urge to protect and nurture; the meddling memories of teenage affairs and adult indiscretions; a sense of falling into something unknown but being unable to stop it or flying fearlessly through different worlds or swimming in deep waters; crippling vulnerability; memories of past hurt, either as instigator or receiver; an emotional pendulum of bitter sweetness; haunting melodies from your subconscious captivating current mood; a desire to start a new life; beginning a new life in reality in some entirely new place; surges of passion opening the sacral chakra; acute awareness of the delicateness of the heart; dialectics of spirituality for signs that connections are precise – that what is happening, how it’s happening, the force with which it is happening was written; standing at the top of stairs suspended in the air with a voice you know is ancestral whispering - ‘hold tight’ and ‘don’t be afraid’ - 'go for it! Trust'; the simultaneity of assurance and uncertainty; happiness then fear - that way round – and then fear then happiness as the emphasis alternates confusingly; combustibility, rather the possibility of imploding from the intense energies surging through your body. The rhythm fades, the chemistry dies through our lack of will to good - which is eternal. Love is after all not a wasteful, idle thing, but a powerful alchemical pursuit. It is the becoming, the knowing of self; the consistent flow of regenerative energy.

Asar Mikael

From Peakblackness, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis

And finally, in its expression of aliveness love enables the release of trapped tears from the confines of their ducts. A thumb gently rubs them away - rather smoothes them into your face – ritualistically as though they want you to bathe in your tears and be cleansed thus; they rest their soft hands under your chin, tilting your head ever so slightly. Their eyes meet your eyes, each soul reaching for its reflection, lips touch lips. The tenderness of the heart is exposed. Your breath stops momentarily, then you gasp as you emerge once more from spiritual death. Your heart has been reacquainted with its purpose. Love pervades your being. The fire of life ignited. Someone is there beside you. “How did I get here?” They ask. And you say in the softest, sweetest voice as though whispering some mythic secret: “I summoned you from the depth of my imagination. The key to my life, the perfecting of our journey is there in the ignition. You put it there. But are you prepared to share the ride. Are you ready to dance with me down the road of enchanted love which some say is dead or dying? Because although I cannot say for sure where that road will lead my feet now refuse to be still when the spirit of aliveness is the sweetest melody my heart has ever known. And I want to feel it again and again as the breath of life now stirs ecstatically within me, colouring my being with the ethereality of genuine love.”