|
"No I haven't. Why should there be even the faintest trace of poverty in the realm of love? Indeed, why should there be any poverty in any other realm? Poverty is invalid. Love is the universal principle. There is no reason why it shouldn't unfold to the full and be complete in your experience. Love is universal, Peter. It cannot exist in isolation. It unfolds through all of us, embracing all of our humanity. It flows through all human relationships. It urges us to cooperate with one-another for the common good, to build each other up, to nourish and protect one-another. Love is the divine element that makes us human, that emanates from all of us. We often block it. But why should we block it? Let's not block it tonight."
We continued to embrace each other. The concept of "inside" our "outside" as related to love appeared totally invalid. Oh, God, why wasn't I surprised that I fell so deeply in love with this beautiful woman who was evidently quite a bit older than I? The age barrier, that might have existed, simply wasn't there. The very thought of an age barrier seemed out of place. Such a barrier would have seemed unjustified by the reality of our free and open affection.
One thing puzzled me, though. If love is a fundamental principle, and its manifestation is necessarily universal and illimitable, doesn't ones yielding to the universality of love cause problems in the conventional world where these principles are not recognized or are even rejected? We live in a world where our customs and reactions are centered on far reaching divisions and deep isolation? As beautiful as the concept of the universality of love is, I could think of countless problems with marriage boundaries, ownership rights, age-old axioms, and so forth. I asked Helen how she has dealt with all that. "Have you experienced any of these types of problems in the past?" I asked.
She nodded, and sighed. "You have no idea. I have faced problems that you can't imagine: jealousy, stupidity, obstinacy, and sheer insanity at times. People squabble over whose friend another is, or more correctly, whose trophy a person is. Yes, people treat each other like that, like cattle that they utilize, like property that they own, and like a trophy that they love. It is surprising they don't use branding irons to stake their claim. The possessiveness is often worse among friends. You open the door a little to give love a chance. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose. People don't treat each other as human beings anymore. They treat each other as if their world is falling apart whenever their notion about their world is challenged. You probably have noticed some of this by now. So, how does one react to that?"
"There is an old saying," I said to her, "if one can't stand the heat, one should stay out of the kitchen."
"Except if one does this, one starves to death," she said and laughed. "This means, I must fight on," she added. "I must fight on for the simple reason that none of those problems have any relevance to the universality of love. After all, what do the problems have to do with anything? Do they change the principle involved, the Principle of Universal Love?"
"That's a courageous stand to take," I said.
"No Peter, that's an easy stand to take when you know you're right. When your stand is rooted in the Principle of Universal Love, then you are right, Peter, and you are empowered by it to move forward."
"But how do you knew, Helen,..."
She interrupted me before I finished the sentence. "Let me tell you a story," she said. "I happened a long time ago in distant history. It is the story of a man named Jacob who had cheated his brother badly and consequently had to flee as his brother aimed to kill him for it. He escaped to a distant place, the home of his mother's brother who had two daughters. He fell in love with the younger of the two, a beautiful girl, and offered to work for his brother-in-law for seven years in order to obtain her to be his wife. On the day of his wedding he found however that he had married the older daughter instead, which had to be married first according to custom. Since the younger one was the girl of his dreams he offered to work for another seven years to obtain her also. Here a problem arose in that the younger girl, Rachel by name, turned out to be barren, while the older one, named Leah, bore him children. With this a great rivalry began between the two wives, each struggling for Jacob's love, and much of that was focused on having children. In early tribal society having lots of children was an economic necessity. Jacob was given twelve children altogether. Their names were chosen to reflect the respective mother's mentality in her struggling for Jacob's affection. An American woman that I count among my friends gave definitions to these names.
Next Page
|| - page index -
|| - chapter index -
|| - Exit -
||
|
