Pure love is matchless in majesty.
It has no parallel in power and there is no darkness it cannot dispel.

(Meher Baba)

Where is that Love? The One birthing in the hands of Francis, that healed wolves and lambs. The One spilling into the pots and pans of Teresa, peeking through in the words of Rumi and Hafiz. That ever present, recurrent, absent Love of hands that caress souls. The Love that maddens and calms at once. That fiery water.

It is not to be found in words, nor in rituals of the faithful. It is in burning eyes, muted tongues, and lips burnt with kisses. In the longings of longing, sleepless. It is not in book interpretations, knowledgeable conversations, passionate affairs or vows of chastity. It is a sudden insanity that drowns the mind. I know it exists, for I heard its footfall, and detected its scent on a long night. And oh, I have made efforts, with extremely limited capacity to reach out for it. But it evades me. And to live without what one does not know, but feels occasionally that it is everything that there is, is not really living.

‘Child’, he said, with a voice so silent, that it was heard in all my cells. Transparent music traversed through my body, in all manners of touch and warmth, as I sensed the vibrations of her voice, crisscrossing me, like spices of unknown aromas, marinating me in a presence so certain that I could not even remember it never being there.

I was embraced so many times, by the live replica of this embrace, I waited in line for them; and I lost myself in regressions and elevations, whenever I was held so intimately unmasked. What a relief it was, to stop playing and pretending, as those embraces watered the hot arid places that I was so proud to accumulate. Then, rivulets of water would percolate them, so that they would become fragrant beds, for gardens yet to bloom at an appropriate time.

I accumulated those treasured embraces on my skin and chest. They are eager to reverberate now, I want to share them; besides, it seems that now you are becoming so much more evident in millions of faces. Is it because I am learning to recognize you, or because you are shining closer? Please answer these things that out of curiosity I invent, when I try to remember you, in the many ways I do.

Of course, I immediately forget you. I empower my own imaginings, and cast them out in your texture; then I say to others that they are yours, and you smile at my baby steps and my pretensions, and hide away in another room till I erupt in weeping and desperation, feeling abandoned in the marketplace.

Then you come back; you take my hand and kiss me again, you embrace me, and my feet dance with joy as we walk together, until I notice the million eyes looking at us enviously when we stroll in those little dancing steps of joy. My mind is overawed with the feeling of being so special! And at the end of my thoughts, I am alone again, weeping.

I have walked up that hill of surrender back and forth many times now, seeking the trail, the scent, that will guide me back to you; you, who have never gone. Ah, this mischief of yours is so constant and all-encompassing; it plays tricks on me all the time. And this gift you gave me, this little analyzer, interpreter, integrator toy, the ego-mind, which has helped me so much to define, she goes out of control and wants to pretend that it is me. And let me tell you, her ways are tricky, for she can confuse me; and no matter how hard I try, the ego-mind pull the wool over my eyes all the time.

Your hidden presence turns me on, in so many ways; and I have so many questions, so many things to tell you, so many things in need of explanation, so many new happenings to be integrated in your previous lessons that I just cannot stop talking about them.

‘Child’, you said for an answer, while looking into my eyes, with a depth of a thousand ancient oceans. Everything stopped then, except the Silence, and it embraced me so intimately.