Nature of Love, oil on canvas w/acrylic, 36"x 36", 2013

I've experienced both sides of the coin… i've manipulated another, i've been manipulated. I controlled another, I've been controlled. I've been the abuser, I've been the abused. Jealous, insecure, and conditional. I've been the one with power, I've been powerless. I've been loved by another while not loving myself, and I've loved another while she didn't love herself. I've given. I've taken. I've hurt another deeply. I've been hurt by another deeply. I've made threats with ultimatum's. I've been threatened by ultimatum's… All in the name of love. The emptiness of these experiences as a whole, has led me to the question… "This is Love?". Like so much of what we as a collective define as reality, love is another example that i am concluding as being far from thereof…
    I've grown up in a world that has conditioned me in the various aspects of life that as a society we hold of high value, thru societal constructs such as schooling and media. There are the peers, and the family even that tending to be influenced by these constructs as well, become simply part of it in shaping the blank slate of any individual growing up in it's environment. There is always that potential however, for one to take responsibility for themselves in the way of questioning it all. Going behind all the learned knowledge and re-defining how one see's the world. This re-defining comes from not only direct experience with anything, but with awareness. Awareness is what exists behind the stored collection of all that has been gained in memory. Behind the ego. This art piece is an expression of this re-defining. It is from the realization of what love wasn't/isn't  thru the direct experience of intimate relationships, that has me arriving at a realization of what love perhaps is. From the learned idea of "love", to the realization of 'The Nature of Love".  Though the realization is perhaps bottomless, this is where I have arrived at it at this point in time. A surprising realization for myself is how in the words to the piece i write "love is like the sun and it's rays illuminating all things, unselectively." I once viewed love as something with strict boundaries, now Im experiencing it as completely boundless. And it is with the heart as the indicator with it's uplifting fullfillment, that has me devoted, defining love as the latter… The following are the words in the piece…   
    Love is formless. It is boundless. It is experienced. Ineffable. And when we begin to give it shape, we begin to take ourselves away from it. For love shapes us. And it is in trust that we allow it to do so. And from this trust, we find ourselves uplifted. Above it all. In our ignorance we hide our love underneath layers of mental thoughts and emotions. And we confuse love with these thoughts and emotions. And our love becomes conditional in this manner. As long as the world outside ourselves feeds these thoughts, these emotions, we love. And when it doesn't, we take our love away. But this is not in the nature of love. For love is not conditional. Love is not outside one's self. Love is a body whose heart is contentment. Love is like the sun and it's rays illuminating all things, unselectively. Love is energy. It is the blood that pumps the heart giving the body motion. It is the passion that has one fearlessly opening up to the world. Love is not lip service. It is not an "I love you". It is unspoken. It is felt. It is in the moment. It is an internal smile. Love is surrender. Surrender to the hearts will to experience directly, openly the nowness of the world's constancy. Love is non-dualistic. It doesn't flee at the moment of loss. It yields to loss willingly and experiences the pain with love just as intensely as it did so in the beginning with gain. Love is wholesome in this way. It is the complete experience. Experienced it is the complete human. Love is not fear. And fearing the pain experienced at loss, and denying it, one will never feel complete. And in this denial, one may try to find this completeness outside one's self, but one will only suffer in doing so. For love is harmony in the interdependence of all things working together. Love is not manipulating the universe to work for it. This is the illusion that we mistake as the world we live in. This is our illusion of love when experience the emotions in the attainment of all that we work so technically towards. But it's when these illusions fall, as does that heartfelt enthusiasm that was attached to it, is our love tested. And how it often fails in this way, where the face our 'love' reveals itself in was a revelation of fear. Love is a gift. Given and received. Given, it is making one's self vulnerable to the world. Raw, open, exposed in complete tenderness without skin. Received, it is allowing another to be genuinely human. Fully embracing another wholly, in this spotlight of nudity, beyond acceptance, transparent to the shadows of shame. Love is honesty in this way, love is simple in this way… seeing the world as it truly is and and fearlessly wrapping one's arms around it like a mother holding it's newborn bringing it's fragile body to one's heart. Love is a warm kiss that expresses it's indescribable nature. It is a first kiss, like taking a leap into a body of water from up high, one know not how one will land, one not know if one will make it back to shore. Love is the leap, not the thought of leaping. Love is empathy. It is the transcendence of self, experiencing the world from another. Love is at the center of it all. Holding it all in place. It is like the infinite black space of the universe , empty in nature, but filled with the planets, suns, moons, and stars. Love is unity. Man, woman, child. Love is spaciousness. It is the floor of the earth that has a space for all, beyond age, gender, creed, and title. It is the sky above that the clouds pass in, that the sun rises and sets in. Love is the answer that we desperately search for in all our actions. Wether going to the pub or going to the temple. It is the communion of mind, body, spirit uplifted to it's climatic peak that has us like an out of body experience where one is soaring in the sky. It is like a spasm where one is jerked intensely into the moment, void of any suffering, void of the self. Like at the moment of orgasm. Love is the foreplay that leads one to this peak as well. Love is the restfulness that follows as well that has one glowing in an exhaustion of bliss. When love is expressed physically, know that it is love if one is glowing. Love is the glow, whose light is the hidden god inherit to us all, whose universal sacred being when we pay heed to, devote our existence to,  worship, illuminates all aspects of our lives, internally then externally liberating us from our individual suffering and healing the world of it's neglect giving the roots of life nourishment with every passing step, flourishing the planet with rich nature, tending to it's garden and leaving it more beautiful than it was when one was first delivered into it.