Text embedded in my digital
paintings:
For human beings throughout history,
love has been considered a mystery, for it is an emotional experience that is
both transcendent and personal at the same time. Love is perhaps the most
familiar yet most unknowable of our emotions. It can transport us beyond our
ego and fill us with bliss and compassion, but it can also be a crucible of
rawness, pain, and illusion.
Particularly in an intimate relationship
be it romantic or everyday love's power can magically expand our humanity. At
its very best, passion is spacious, open, compassionate, and even joyful. Yet
how ironic that, as imperfect human beings, we yearn for "perfect
love," for it will always elude us—the experience of love, whether painful
or joyful, is always perfectly imperfect; this is love's paradox
"If you cannot fall in love, you cannot
get enlightened." For it is this state of leaping into the chaos of
love—of being open, uncertain, and vulnerable---that becomes a stepping-stone
to our highest self. When we truly love another person, we "lose
ourselves," or our self is somehow transcended—even in a moment of wild
carnal desire, some tenderness for our beloved arises and it cracks our heart
open and changes us forever.
If we can remember the fragility of love
and see our beloved through the lens of impermanence, appreciation naturally
arises; in Japanese this is known as mono no aware, the beauty of the
transitory, be it a flower or love itself. As with all of life, within the seed
of love is the seed of sorrow and death, which heightens its poignancy. Through
loving one other person with this "broken heart," we have the rare
opportunity to learn to focus less on our self and more on others—and that is
the beginning of "true" love.
(Based on my research
into the poetry of Love)
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