Lover on a Moth Wing


Just listen. Feel the silence. The love you seek already hugs you, even before you breathe.

When the sparkling light of Grace begins to dance in the space of the heart, a gentle power ignites your backbone. Every nerve in your body catches fire, with a cool and healing flame that does not burn. The spinal cord is the tree of life. Lit ablaze, it is the burning bush that Moses saw on Mount Sinai. He was immolated in the formless brilliant electric bliss of divine Love. He asked Love, “What is your name?” And Love answered, "I Am... I Am is my name forever.” (Exodus 3)

Why did the Lord put no noun after the verb, "to be"? Because God is a person. God is infinite subjectivity, the formless all-pervading subject who takes the whole cosmos for a noun, a body. Divine Love is formless, but never not a person.

Many mystics arrive at the Oneness, yet their hearts remain dry and unfilled. Entering formless samadhi, they presume that this is all there is: pure consciousness, universal energy. A thin veil of pride prevents them from the last letting go: to drown in the heart’s abyss, relinquishing even Oneness. As Augustine wrote, "Our hearts are ever restless till they find their rest in Thee." Do not mistake the formless for the impersonal. Strip off even non-duality, and dive into the mystery of Love.

“One” dissolves into Thou. “It” dissolves into Thou. Every impersonal pronoun dissolves into Thou. Let Love fall in love with Love. Then the ocean of stillness stirs in waves of adoration. One becomes two. Love becomes Lover and Beloved.

This is lila, the playfulness of God. This is the sport of Yaweh and his paramour, the Shekinah, creating the heavens and the earth. This is the courtship of Rahman i’Raheem, when the Ruuh of Allah’s breath ignites soul sparks in coals of cosmic night. This is the breathless dalliance of
Shiva and Shakti in your solar plexus, between exhale and inhale, where worlds are born. Ameen, this is the dance of Jesus and Magdalene, Christ and the Spirit, in the radiant darkness of the Godhead, spawning each of us in their image and likeness.

The play of the formless is always personal. That is why even the humblest creature catches fire, and becomes the face of the Almighty - a leaf, a raindrop, a moth wing. How much more then will you find the love I Am in your own face, and in the gaze of every human child?

Just listen. Feel the silence. The love you seek already hugs you, even before you breathe.


Image by aceoni on DeviantArt

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