Surrendering to Love (More on the inclusive heart)
by Tom Baker
Lesson: Chapter 16, The Forgiveness of Illusions, VII. The End of Illusions
Date: July 12, 2009
The talk entitled Surrendering to Love was written as a reflection on the following passage from the Course:
"It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing the special relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to re-enact the past and change it. Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices and deprivations all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded self- esteem. What basis would have for choosing a special partner without the past? Every such choice is made because of something ‘evil' in the past to which you cling, and for which someone else must atone.
The special relationship takes vengeance on the past. By seeking to remove suffering in the past, it overlooks the present in its preoccupation with the past and its total commitment to it. No special relationship is experienced in the present. Shades of the past envelope it, and make it what it is. It has no meaning in the present, and if it means nothing now, it cannot have any real meaning at all. How can you change the past except in fantasy?
And who can give you what you think the past deprived you of? The past is nothing. Do not seek to lay the blame for deprivation on it, for the past is gone. You cannot really not let go what has already gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion that it is not gone because you think it serves some purpose that you want fulfilled. And it must also be that this purpose could not be fulfilled in the present, but only in the past." (Chap. 16, VII., pp. 347-348.)
I am sure that you believe in love. We all believe in love. Love is affirmed constantly: All you need is love, Love is the answer, Love works! But, face it, love often does not work. I read recently about a single woman who had tried everything to find love, she internet dated, speed dated, office dated, even dated the man next door; and while the flower of love bloomed initially, her love affairs failed to thrive. She claimed to be wiser but still unhappy. Too often, the flower of love wilts and becomes the fertilizer for the cultivation of character. We bravely decide that our sweetheart was really a secret spiritual teacher and it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. We croak out a thin prayer of thanks. Love is an inspiring idea, it is a vital idea: God is love, we are love, our destiny is love. All spirituality is finally about love. Love is the experience we crave. The first time someone outside of our family says I love you, is sometimes our first taste of true ecstasy. It certainly was for me. I was 16 years old and riding with my girlfriend. She was at the wheel of her Chevy Supersport. She said I love you. I looked at the speedometer and we were doing 80. I said I love you too Moreen, more than I've ever loved anybody. I looked at the speedometer again and we were doing 110. I thought to myself, "If I die now I go out on top." I didn't die but the love did. We were too different, we were too young, we couldn't make the great idea of love work. But you and I have never stopped trying. Thank God.
When I left the priesthood I was full of adolescent energy. I was an expert in divine love and now I would bring all that expertise to earth. I would make the idea of love work for me and the perfect woman. I found the perfect woman: she looked familiar. She was everything I wanted, at least for a few weeks. Then I started noticing things that weren't quite right. Kathy didn't wear make-up; women were supposed to wear make up and besides she was a little pale so make up would bring her color out, so I suggested she get some make-up and she said, "No."
She didn't like it, so she wouldn't wear it. How would I like to wear waxy stuff on my lips and gooey stuff in my eyes. "No." So final. "No." And then she turned around and talked frankly about sex, about how she liked it. For me sex wasn't something you talked about; it was good and everything, but it was an assumption. You did it but you did not directly admit to it. In the Catholic church the most controversial issues were abortion, premarital sex, and birth control: the pelvic issues. Sex itself was never discussed; only the rules surrounding sex. Kathy was suddenly getting kind of wild for me. After she told me she liked sex she admitted that as a teenager she wouldn't go out with a boy unless he owned a motorcycle. Sister Kathy was now looking like Jane Fonda in boots and a leotard astride a Harley. I told her that I didn't have a motorcycle and would never get one. She assured me I had a motorcycle within me and it was a big one.
But what began to throw me was that Kathy talked frankly, or rather directly and positively, about me. She'd say: "I like you, I like being here with you, you're just right, you're amazing." No one had ever said things like this about me unless I had done something constructive: made good grades, done good deeds, produced good words. With Kathy there were no prerequisites. She just spoke directly and positively and kind of twinkled. I would get irritated; it sort of scared me. I had always been loved for solving problems, correcting mistakes, doing the right thing, that's how love made sense to me. Kathy's love was love without a price and without a reason. It made me nervous but it also disarmed me. I had heard of this love when I studied the mystics. It was, they said, how God loves; it cannot be understood only surrendered to. People rejected Jesus because he was not what people expected out of a Messiah. They wanted a tough guy who had read and believed the Old Testament, a bit like George Bush, but they were confronted with someone who they didn't immediately recognize, who was hard to categorize and even harder to relate to unless you allowed him to really engage you, unless you let him in. "Come unto me," Jesus would say. Close the distance between us. Jesus did not operate from a distance. He was close up, cheek to jowl, heart to heart, across the table, gently in your face. Even when Judas betrayed him Judas didn't point, he kissed Jesus. It was natural to do that. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, Love abhors a distance.
To surrender to Kathy was to allow very little distance. As a priest I had operated with everyone from a holy and, for me, a safe distance. A safe distance from people and a safe distance from God. I was on the altar they were in the pew, I was on the pedestal they were, well, not on the pedestal. It is safe at a distance, but it is lonely. Now here was a person, Kathy, who was herself without apology, loving me without a good reason, and for the first time in my adult life I wasn't lonely. Gradually I began to feel safe with love, love without distance. What I found myself having to let go of was control: directing her life, being right about her ideas, making her wrong, telling her how to dress, how to eat, how to think, how to be successful. All control is an attempt to distance. You can control fear, yes, and it's a good idea to control fear. But control love? I can ask myself truly now, "Why would I want to control love?" It would be like directing the sun when to shine or lecturing my cat on how to be a cat or advising God on how to make a star. You might object and say that Kathy is one in a million. But for all her wonder, she is not that unusual. She would tell you so herself. She did for me what most people's children do for them, they love them, what people's pets do, they love them. Our friend's do it, they love us. They challenge our control. The distance begins to collapse. God says, Love says, "I'm here again in another disguise. Let me go and let me in....and once again we can begin."
© Copyright Tom Baker 2009