Love is all (you need) ~ pt 2

To begin our exploration, we have to embrace our creative potential. The journey out of emptiness is the creation of love. In order to approach love, we must start with our common context, the emerging universe in which we find ourselves. Most amazing is the realization that everything that exists in universe came from a common origin. The material of our bodies are intrinsically related because they emerged from and are caught up in a single energetic event. Our ancestry stretches back through the life forms and into the stars, back to the beginnings of the primeval fireball. Universe is a single multiform energetic unfolding of matter, mind, intelligence, and life.

Universe has unfolded to the present point. It has poured into us the creative powers necessary for its further development. The journey of the cosmos depends on those beings and elements existing now, us among them. For the unfolding of universe, our creativity is as essential as the creativity inherent in the primordial fireball.

Love begins as allurement - as attraction. Think of the entire cosmos, all one hundred billion galaxies rushing through space: At this cosmic scale, the basic dynamism of universe is the attraction each galaxy has for every other galaxy. Gravity is the word we use to point to this primary attraction, but no matter how intelligently we theorize about the consequences of this attraction, the actual attracting activity remains a mystery.

When we look at love from a cosmic perspective, we see attraction operating at every level. And everywhere, this attraction is as mysterious, as basic, as the allurement that we call gravitation. The great mystery is that we, as human beings, are interested in and attracted to anything whatsoever. Love begins there. We awake to our own unique set of attractions. So do oxygen atoms. So do protons. The proton is attracted only to certain particles. On an infinitely more complex level, the same holds true for humans: Each person discovers a field of allurements, the totality of which bears the unique stamp of that person's personality. Destiny unfolds in this great mystery.

For the first time in history, we can agree on the basic story of the galaxies, the stars, the planets, minerals, life forms, and human cultures. This story does not diminish the spiritual traditions of the classical or tribal periods of human history. Rather, the story provides the proper setting for the teaching of all traditions, showing the true magnitude of their central truths.

We have a vast new empirically, as well as spiritually grounded story of universe, one that explodes beyond any previous telling of reality, one that encompasses all peoples because it is rooted in concrete experience. Within this emerging story, each tradition will flower beyond telling in fruitful interaction with the rest, and together we can continue our journey to our fullest destiny.

- taken from “The Universe is a Green Dragon” by Brian Swimme