Eckhart Tolle suggests that Love, in fact has NO opposite at all, but since we are incarnate and existing in time and space, we have to apply a dualistic structure to everything we wish to think about and inevitably, and incorrectly, we decide that Love has an opposite and that we are certain we know what love is. But thinking, itself, is a dualistic process that cannot conceive the true nature of love. What we think when we think of love is usually not love at all, but the limited ability of our dualistic nature to understand or encompass the concept of love within our thought process. The moment you say something is one thing, it immediately has an opposite. In the act of identifying something, you have created a thought and thoughts can only exist in the world of duality. So no matter what I say love is, the fact that I said it means that's not love. So if you can ignore for a moment that I am "saying" this, we might say what love is by saying what it is not. And therefore, Love is not thought, or even, technically, non-thought. If we can stop thinking, and even stop thinking about not thinking, all that is left is presence (again, according to Tolle). In that instant, the pathway to love is opened and there is love. In a way, you can say love is nothing, or no thing, it's not a thing because if it were it would have an opposite and would therefore not be love. In other words, the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. Well, that was interesting. Not quite what I intended to say when I started typing, but there you go. . . ya never know what will happen when you start down a path . . :) Here's a quote from Tolle that states it much better: " . . . Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form. In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love. . . ." --Eckhart Tolle Sincerely, Zack

God has given us a dark wine so potent that, drinking it, we leave the two worlds. God has put into the form of hashish a power to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. God has made sleep so that it erases every thought. God made Majnun love Layla so much that just her dog would cause confusion in him. There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don’t think all ecstacies are the same! Jesus was lost in his love for God. His donkey was drunk with barley. Drink from the presence of saints, not from those other jars. Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution. Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about "what’s needed". Drink the wine that moves you as a camel moves when it’s been untied, and is just ambling about. –Rumi

I'm experiencing some pain recently—spiritual, emotional and physical—and have been reminded by my mentors and friends (as recently as this morning—thanks Asha!) that all pain is a sign that you're resisting something. And so now the question is, what? What am I resisting and how can I stop resisting and surrender to reality? The key, it seems, is sensitivity to the pain and a willingness to dive deep into the center of that pain once you've found it and then "sit" there basking in it until it is transformed and you no longer "have to" resist it. When you finally accept the pain, you are then able to perceive the cause of it—specifically, how and what you are resisting, and finally release your attachment. So we're not so attached to the pain it seems so much as we're attached to the resistance. And it's an invisible resistance! I don't even know I'm resisting something most of the time and I have accepted as normal the chronic tension in some part of my body, or the way I maintain an unnatural body position even though it taxes me terribly to do it. So I am cultivating a sensitivity these days to pain in all my bodies (physical, emotional, spiritual) as well as other sensations previously ignored. I continue to realize as I go that I was unaware of many forms of pain. And when I say pain, I might just as easily be saying awareness. Pain is really an invitation to awareness, an opportunity to wake up and face reality. It amazes me that I have so frequently chosen to maintain my resistance to awareness and therefore, maintain my level of pain thinking on some level that it was easier to just keep sleeping through it, hoping that it would eventually go away if I avoided it long enough. But, in fact, I find now that the opposite is true. When we avoid, we deny and suppress and end up storing the pain for a later (and usually much unhappier and more intensely painful) release—if we're lucky. Additionally, stored pain (resistance to reality) can also be transformed into chronic disease and inexplicable suffering. My goal now is to welcome pain when it comes and better learn to read and understand the message that's being sent. I see that the pain is bearing gifts of awareness and I want to accept those gifts when I can. At the same time, I am also realizing that I can only accept so much pain (awareness) at any one time before I need to shut down and process it. So, I am also giving myself permission to shut down and deal with what I can before accepting any more. It's a cycle of open, close-and-process, open, close-and-process and maybe, eventually, I won't have to shut down completely each time. Maybe it's even possible to actually stay open and process as I go. Won't that be a treat! Sincerely, -Zack

"I have estimated the influence of Reason upon Love and found that it is like that of a raindrop upon the ocean, which makes one little mark upon the water's face and disappears." —Hafiz