Real love is spiritual experience that connects me to the cosmos

By David McElroy · February 14, 2019

All my life, I’ve heard people react to transcendent beauty in similar ways. Whether it’s a sunset that fills the sky with color and electricity or a dark night sky filled with a million majestic stars, the typical reaction is similar.

“This makes me feel so small and insignificant,” they say in awe.

I understand the feeling of awe, but I don’t understand feeling small. No transcendent experience has ever made me feel insignificant. For me, the feeling is just the opposite. It makes me feel as though I’m a part of something majestic and universal — something which has no beginning or end.

Experiencing something this huge and significant makes me feel that I’m an inseparable part of this Universe — that every part of me is connected to every other part of Creation, that every person and star and blade of grass is one living thing — with power and life force flowing through all of us.

And there’s no time when I feel this intoxicating experience quite like the times when I’m in love with someone who’s also in love with me.

I don’t know how to define love and I don’t know anybody else who does an adequate job of defining it, either. It’s a living force that’s invisible but obvious to everyone who experiences it. It’s the spiritual equivalent of the wind. I can see and feel and hear the effects of the wind, but I can’t quite tell you what the wind is.

Modern culture is badly confused about love. Maybe every culture has always been confused about it. Those who think seriously about romantic love tend to think of it as a fairly modern thing — driven by popular movies and music. I know that cultures have put pragmatic things — such as money and land and family ties — above love in making marriage partners, but love has been around for at least thousands of years.

Those ancient people were more like us in some respects than we might realize.

In the ancient Hebrew book of Genesis, there’s the story of Jacob’s love for Rachel. Parts of the story make no sense to those of our culture, but we still understand his love for her.

When Jacob first met Rachel, he was instantly smitten by her. He encountered her with a flock of sheep and he helped her water her flock. Right after that, we read, “Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud.” Jacob felt something so powerfully emotional that it filled his heart and brought him to tears. I’ve experienced that. You probably have, too.

Rachel’s father was named Laban. He wanted Jacob to work for him, but he was willing to compensate him. The Genesis account says, “Jacob loved Rachel. And he said [to Laban], ‘I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.'”

Jacob must have wanted Rachel pretty badly to agree to wait seven years for her, but this was the deal he and Laban struck. But Laban cheated Jacob. After the seven years had passed, Laban gave him his daughter in marriage — but when morning came, Jacob discovered that Laban had actually given him Rachel’s older sister, Leah, who he didn’t love.

Laban made up a lame excuse for his trick, but Jacob still loved Rachel and wanted her, even though he was stuck with Leah now. He agreed to work an additional seven years for Laban to bless the marriage that he had already agreed to seven years previously. So Jacob worked for Laban for another seven years — and he finally took Rachel as his wife.

Do you love someone enough that you would work seven years to have him or her? And even if you agreed to such a crazy plan, would you work an additional seven years — 14 years in all — to have the person you love?

I’ve asked myself this crazy question and I know the answer, but you might feel entirely different. If I were a young man and if I could be certain of actually getting the object of my love, yes, I would wait seven years. I think I would even wait 14 years. I also realize that makes no sense, but it seems that love rarely makes sense to the rational mind.

Our path to love isn’t as simple as what it was in the cultures of the day. Back then, it was a matter of a father promising his daughter to a man and then keeping his promise. (Obviously, we’re horrified today at the woman having no say in the matter.) Today, it’s more complicated. Two people have to fall in love with each other at the same time and have to overcome all the other objections or complications that can keep two people apart.

But what if the seed of love was laid and circumstances never make things work for two people? What if one of them — or both of them — fall in love with each other along the way? Can love stay alive through years of going separate paths? Can love survive both people making choices along the way that continue to keep them apart?

Does real love survive — even when we make bad choices and end up on very different life paths? Does something conspire to bring such people back together? I honestly don’t know for sure. I think so. I hope so. My gut tells me this is how things work for those who listen to their instincts and obey intuition. But I’m aware that it’s an irrational gamble.

The only thing I can be sure about is that being in love brings me to that same place of transcendental holiness that I experience when I feel connected to all the Universe.

Loving alone — or missing someone — can be a selfish experience. It can be a miserable experience. But when two people love one another and express that love openly to one another, it’s a spiritual experience.

This sort of loving unity makes me feel connected to God and to all of Creation. I think this is the real reason that the book of Genesis tells us that a man and woman can become “one flesh.”

In the deeper sense of oneness, real love can allow two people to unify into something bigger than what the two could ever be working on their own.

I miss this experience of feeling loved by a woman to whom I’ve completely given my heart and soul. There’s no substitute in this world for that.

On this Valentine’s Day, I don’t have that love. A lot of people go out and grab any partner they can find — just so they won’t be alone — but I can’t do that. I have a hunger for real love that’s just as real as the need for food or water. But we can’t always control when — or whether — we can finally have what we so desperately need.

I crave the transcendental experience of oneness born of real love — and I won’t accept the common counterfeits that the world around me is so eager to provide.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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