Religious Ecstasy
The
highest kind of spiritual love may have no sexual element but can be
extremely intense; ecstasy even. That’s the kind of love those deeply
engaged in the pursuit of Being and deeper knowledge are likely to encounter
or manifest. It shows as love of God, love of The Buddha, love of The One
True God, Yahweh, Aphrodite, the love of Christ, or love of the truth.
These
are the religious adepts and mystics; Their kind of love is at the ultimate
upper end of Being: serene contemplation, thrill, ecstasy and self death.
St.
Teresa de Avila, Hildegard of Bingen and St. Francis lived many years in
close contact with this level of enlightenment.
13th
Century poet and mystic, Rumi, wrote of it in his ecstatic love poems (written
for a man, Shams of Tabriz.) John Donne (pronounced Dunn), the Elizabethan
poet, hovers over it without actually pressing the GO button!
Artists
can manifest it. Michelangelo’s terribilità (driven force, almost
madness) was clearly of that order of ecstasy and engagement.
Dance:
If you’ve ever seen the “whirling dervishes” (Mevlevi Dervishes), a Muslim
sufi sect, you’ll not doubt that a person can pass into ecstasy, simply by
prolonged, rhythmical whirling. The Mevlevi, by the way, owe a lot to Rumi.
Let’s
come back to earth and consider love for the ‘Everyman.’
As
I said, need and desire point to a different phenomenon, most typically the
“love” that arises from sexual attachment. It has a place, but it can hurt
like hell, as we all know. The pain of love is built into a language and
proverbs: “You always hurt the one you love,” or “Love is the most
beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares,” or “Where there is love,
there is pain.” [Spanish Proverb]
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