Last night my husband said, the message Jesus brought says love – love each other is the main thing he taught – yet the churches seem to say: but only within prescribed limits. Only within your marriage.
To elaborate on that, it is supposed that there is one kind of strong love that should occur only within the confines of the marriage bed, another kind of strong love for family and some close friends, and then a sort of a weak, diffused love for everyone else.
He and I are working out a different paradigm. We have identified two planes in which the thought of love plays out. One of them is the plane of pure energy exchange. The other is the plane of temporal negotiation. Both planes are valid in their own right. The shift from one plane to another can happen quickly and without being noticed. Confusion about what plane one is operating on causes all kinds of problems.
The plane of pure energy exchange is the one in which one life form recognizes another, sees the deep and shining soul within, and rejoices. This is the plane of the brilliant smile of a stranger on the street, and it is the plane of “namaste” – the divine in me salutes the divine in you. When such an exchange occurs freely, both participants go away enriched. They are affirmed in two ways: one, by sending out a shining signal, and two, by being recognized as shining. This kind of exchange can be a deep blessing, sending out ripples of joy through succeeding interactions. And I believe it’s fair to call such an exchange an act of love – of loving and being loved.
The plane of temporal negotiation is the one in which people ask, what am I to you? Will you be there for me? It is the one in which they seek to define what the relationship is in time, in the course of lives as they play out. This kind of understanding is important. It takes many loops of feedback to come to clear communication, to find the common language and an agreement of expectations. It can only happen successfully when both people are committed to making it happen.
Here are some examples of how these planes get confused: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she wonders, is he coming on to me? Would I be leading him on to smile back, would I be sending the wrong signal? Because she’s confusing the pure energy exchange with a temporal negotiation, she feels the need to mask her natural response of joy towards another life form. Thus the exchange doesn’t happen, and the world gets a little colder. Another example: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she thinks, he has no right to smile at me. He can’t follow through with a relationship, and I wouldn’t want him to do so. Men are so arrogant, thinking they have the right to have any relationship they want to. So she gives him a dirty look back, to make sure he knows that she will not be entering into relationship with him. Again, the energy exchange doesn’t happen, and life is not as delightful as it could have been. I use these examples because, as a woman, I have experienced both these states. I expect the examples told from a male perspective would sound a little different, but I’m not so intimately in tune with them to pull them up.
The planes can also get confused in the other direction, where someone thinks that, because there has been an energy exchange between the two of them, something is owed, obligation is incurred, an agreement for temporal relationship has been made. Or it can be confused when someone thinks they can do things that have consequences in the temporal plane without entering into relationship.
It has consequences in the temporal plane to say you’ll be there for someone. It has consequences in the temporal plane to make a baby with someone. It can have consequences in the temporal plane to get to a certain level of intimacy with someone, and that level may vary from person to person. This is why very deliberate communication is important in the negotiation of temporal relationships. An energy exchange does not signal a temporal relationship. It also doesn’t preclude one. Temporal relationships are built on the communication that explores these issues.
Meanwhile, I think it’s of crucial importance in the world that we not confine our love to temporal relationships. We must love in every way – in the way that treasures and holds up each life form, in the way that offers quick aid without obligation, in the way that allows us to be graceful and loving in our dealings with others.
It has been supposed that such exchanges should only be from the neck up – share a nice smile, but don’t get too involved. Feel it down to your heart maybe, but don’t feel it in your gut, don’t feel it to the core of your being. Don’t feel turned inside out, turned on, transformed. Save those deep feelings for your temporal relationships. But I believe that is not so. If it were, the love that Jesus tells us to do would be a dull duty, a tiresome obligation.
What distinguishes an energy exchange from a temporal relationship is not its depth, but simply its continuity through the plane of time. An energy exchange can be rockingly deep. It just incurs no obligations. It can be reciprocal, but the love is given unilaterally, with no expectation of a temporal relationship. It is given from the nature of who we are, because it’s what we are made of.
An energy exchange can also be practical and kind. It can help and bless someone (and when it does, it blesses both, by the law of balance.) It can be the stranger who changes your flat tire, the man who walks a mile with you to show you the way.
Does that sound familiar? Love one another, say yes to the core of each other, be rocked, transformed by each other. That’s how you’ll know that you’re his disciples, he says. I don’t think there are two kinds of love. There’s one kind of love, and if you do it, you’re going to feel it, and it’s going to feel fine. No temporal obligations, but deep aliveness and satisfaction. I don’t think it’s sacrilegious. Christ says yes.
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