i love you

i love you in ways that could tear the heart asunder
that pull strings to painful stretches of tethering
that destabilize disciplined equilibrium

and

one that miraculously heals wounds
collected over decades
from beatings to a heart
that ratapans
a new sound of hope.

Love is..?

Originally published in Huffington Post (feel free to comment there or here):

Krishnamurti defines love as the intense will, resolve, and determination for liberation from samsara (the round of births and deaths), and for union with God. And Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition, defines love in one instance as "the expansion of the self to include others" in the viral YouTube video "The Revolution is Love" (which I highly recommend viewing in its 5 minute entirety below). Tying these two definitions is a love predicated on the dissolution of the self, the me, the I, a "perfect unselfishness" (as Krishnamurti called it)---whether it be in the service of and gifting to others or the will to be one with God. It is interesting then, when we look at the cultural manifestation of romantic love---in movies, music, poetry--- that we would be compelled to possess and own the other, or a depend on the other to provide that love one must build within to gift to others..."Baby I want you," "I can't quit you," "I need you," "Please come back to me, I NEED you. I am alone without you," etc...These "yous" that are NEEDED by "me" are usually humans, sometimes, as in the case of Rumi, Hafez, and others, they have been metaphors for that will to be one with God. And as one of my spiritual guides reminds us "Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love." So what is the appeal of associating love with possession and ownership? How have we come to be compelled with this application of "love"? Can this even be love?

There are no shortage of definitions of love, so why did I think to put the two in conversation with each other? For me, these two definitions do not just create a crossroads of meaning when intersected but more so, the saliency of the connection is that one is a mircocosm standing in for the macrocosm. How can we hope to perfect that consummate unselfishness to merge with One, if we can't first practice that with other humans? Why should we even be qualified to receive to the peace, love, mercy and grace of God, if we cannot even be that for the other? Krishnamutri closes his section on love (one of the four qualifications on the Pathway) by asserting, "For if you yearn to be one with God, it is not for your own sake; it is that you may be a channel through which his love may flow to reach your fellows."

TO YOUNG AMERICANS OF SYRIAN ORIGIN

A little known poem penned by one of the world's best selling poets, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, in the July 1926 issue of "Syrian World" (NYC's first Arab American English newspaper):

TO YOUNG AMERICANS OF SYRIAN ORIGIN
By Kahlil Gibran

I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny.
I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization.
I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America.
I believe that you can say to the founders of this great nation, "Here I am, a youth, a young tree whose roots were plucked from the hills of Lebanon, yet I am deeply rooted here, and I would be fruitful."
And I believe that you can say to Abraham Lincoln, the blessed, "Jesus of Nazareth touched your lips when you spoke, and guided your hand when you wrote; and I shall uphold all that you have said and all that you have written."
I believe that even as your fathers came to this land to produce riches, you were born to produce riches by intelligence and labor.
I believe that it is in you to be good citizens.
And what is it to be a good citizen?
It is to acknowledge the other person's rights before asserting your own, but always to be conscious of your own.
It is to be free in word and deed, but it is also to know that your freedom is subject to the other person's freedom.
It is to produce by labor and only by labor, and to spend less than you have produced that your children may not be dependent upon the state for support when you are no more.
It is to stand before the towers of New York and Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in your hearts, "I am the descendent of a people the builded Damascus and Byblos, and Tyre and Sidon and Antioch, and I am here to build with you, and with a will."
It is to be proud of being an American, but it is also to be proud that your fathers and mothers came from a land upon which God laid His gracious hand and raised His messengers.
Young Americans of Syrian origin, I believe in you.

"Me, we."

-Muhammad Ali