The Flame Without Smoke

The purpose of our lives is revealed in our relationships with family, friends, lovers, enemies, and everyone we chance to meet.  Everyone plays a part in everyone else’s life experience.  Great or small roles, people appear on the stage of our lives in different costumes, in different lifetimes.  Their true character or importance may not be recognized except in hindsight.

The mystics report that kindred spirits, like birds of a feather, group together for each migration through the material world. These soul support groups encompass all types of people from all walks of life, because, help or hindrance, friend or foe, all polarities are necessary for all-weather navigation and course corrections.   

The circles of family, friends, work mates, acquaintances and strangers, occupy different orbits of intimacy.  In friendships we often find our true “family” of soul mates, those with whom we can be most intimate and vulnerable.  They can bring out the best and the worst in a person.  Both reflections of personality are needed to witness our strengths, and the weaknesses that need exercise.

Dinah Craik, a 19th century English novelist and poet wrote, “A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

The success of a relationship depends upon the degree you allow yourself to become vulnerable.  We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable selves to be known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering, with trust, respect, and affection.  When you are in love, you must be authentic without any pretense.  You must be a flame without any smoke.

Love is a feeling that defies description in every language.  Each experience of love is unique and different, combining wings that have never flown together before.  Each love passing through our lives leads to a greater understanding of ourselves and the beloved.  Love is a bridge that connects us to the wisdom of our hearts.  

Love is the Mirror that reflects who you really are, and where you are on the Path. The beloved sees you as you cannot see yourself. The imperfect person appears perfectly, beginning another education in navigating a relationship.  All the arguments and problems between two lovers are the tests. The lessons come afterwards.

Love, like happiness, is not perfected until it is shared. You cannot kiss your own lips. Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian novelist famous for The Alchemist, wrote, “Love is not found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it.  But in order to do that, we need the other person.  The universe only makes sense when we have someone else to share our feelings with.”

Love is the Alchemy, the magic Elixir of Life that transforms two into One. In Love, the different colors of your being become unified as one pure white light. Hindus call this state of being, Ananda, meaning, happiness, joy and bliss.  In every life Signs appear, pointing the same way as all Masters have pointed. The Path to Happiness and Joy follows Love wherever it goes.  

Raymond Moody, an American medical researcher of near death experiences and author of the best seller, Life After Life, wrote, “People who return from near death experiences tell us that in the seeming closing moments of their earthly lives, they learned that the most important thing we can do while we are here, is to learn to love.” Once you have learned to love, you will have learned to live.