A story about a great Love. The kind of Love that you might have felt before you were ever hurt.
The innocence and blossoming of Love: the newness, the vitality, the inspiration.
Have you ever had Love engulf you?
A Love that you feel in every part of your body?
The butterflies in the stomach… magnetic energy racing through your body… the feeling of invincibility, strength, and belonging.
Oh, it was such a beautiful time…
Filled with Love, I was suddenly motivated to do great things, and was in awe over the possibilities of life.
I felt like my eyes had been opened and I could see beauty where there used to be only mediocrity.
Music touched my heart, as the lyrics finally became meaningful. I began to understand the driving force behind great art and poetry. Love is the ultimate muse.
Everything was a little brighter. I found joy in the smallest things and wanted to share the elation with everyone I encountered.
My smile was radiant; my glow, evident. Everyone could see a change and wanted to know my secret.
It was as if two worlds had collided, and I was finally complete; a yin and a yang.
At that point, I could almost relate to Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch. Almost…
I understood his rapture because I also felt that overwhelming joy. Like I could leap mountains (or couches) because of what Love bestowed in me. I was in ecstasy and felt more powerful because I was open and vulnerable; yet safe, in this amazing Love.
And then, some time passed…
The feeling of vitality began to turn into the weakness of attachment.
Those bright days became overshadowed with the clouds of insecurity and fear. I began to doubt, becoming jealous and possessive. I started to close my heart.
What used to motivate me, began only to consume me with strife. Could my Love ever care for someone more than me? The possibility of this happy union coming to an end became my only focus. The insecurities caused me to be controlling and mean: weakening me to frailty.
Fear began to reside, where only Love used to abide.
I put pieces together from different puzzles, creating a picture that only I could see. I sold my insecurities to everyone who would listen, creating an alliance of hurt people, all perpetuating their own fears.
My allies were my allies in pain, and only fueled my feeling of righteousness martyrdom. I thought, “How could Love do this to me?” as I anguished in my fear, pain, and isolation.
All the while, I never realized that Love never went away, I did. My insecurities and fears replaced Love. My unchecked ego strangled that Love. Love became silent because my fears were too loud.
It wasn’t Love that created the dysfunction; it was my own perceptions and expectations.
The start of the demise…
I once gave my whole self, but then started only asking what I was going to receive.
The Love that once made me feel special became a paralyzing fear that I wasn’t the only one.
My focus used to be only Love, but somehow that turned into blinders of only me.
I once did good deeds to emphasize my Love, but then I started claiming that saying “I Love you” was good enough.
Love once filled my entire being, but I began to only focus on my inadequacies.
I stopped asking how I could make their day brighter and only cared how much better they made mine.
I became selfish; it was no longer about Love.
For the rest of this story about Love to continue, it must be set right.
We must change the way we see Love.
This story is an analogy of the relationship between Religion and God. The ultimate, and original, dysfunctional relationship.
If you go back to the beginning of this piece and replace the word “Love” with “God” and change the narrator of this story to Religion, you will witness the demise of religion and how it became the dysfunction that we see today.
This technique can also be used in the Bible…
If you take any name equivalent to “God” and replace it with “Love” you can quickly decipher what is truly divine and what is man-made. If the passage still makes sense, then it’s of God. If it no longer makes sense, then it’s man’s intervention, not God’s.
God and Love should always be interchangeable.
“Man Has Ruined God”
