By Brig Feltus
At first, it feels like something akin to greed. But for that to be what it is, you’d have to be hungry when you’re full. You don’t need it at all. It’s just a bonus gift from God, like when a breeze suddenly meets your face carrying jasmine, or vanilla, or barbecue sauce–whatever smell pleases your appetite.
Sit here for a little while and love her. Be with the sensation; one with the desire. Let this moment draw an “ahhhhh” or an “mmmmm” from your lips. You know this feeling. When you experience beauty for which there could be no word worthy, these sounds rise up from the belly making an unintelligible noise of which everyone intuitively understands. It expresses the bliss of being present to something beautiful, awesome, and incredibly sensational. The recognition of God. Although they may disagree with associating the experience with a deity, even atheists are not immune to its power.
So you sit here.
The sensations feel like something akin to greed, because you know it’s all for you. And you’re full, already have so much. You have found ways through self-love and self-exploration to stay that full and overflowing. You can have everything you want. When you realize this truth, you’re much more careful about your wanting. Your priorities change from trying to fill holes to savoring, worshipping, and connecting with what’s before you.
You used to have holes that needed filling. You would search, all the time, everywhere you’d go. You’d set your Self on the quest to supplement your Self. At the beginning of that tragically futile process, you believed that if you could just get someone beautiful to give you their attention, you would forget the holes were there. You believed you could draw them to you, convince them to stay, suck up their love, fill your Self up and, for a little while, pretend that you could be normal.
When you have holes in your person that always need to be filled, you are always starving. There is nothing normal about starvation. There is plenty of everything. To starve is a symptom of something gone awry. It’s not normal at all, even as you learn to not expect to ever be full. And so, if by chance, you happen upon beauty, you scramble to put your flag in it. Claim it. Own it. Make sure that it is always available to fill your holes, which means you must make sure no one else can have it. So you would take God and hide God away, to keep all to yourself. One day, you realize that what you’ve done defies all of the laws of metaphysics and what looked like the infinite wonder of God before, isn’t God at all.
God is infinite and, therefore, cannot be hoarded away within the limitations and confines of human being’s compensatory cravings toward monopoly.
I remember you back then. I tried to tell you that you weren’t broken. I tried to tell you that you were whole. But you couldn’t or wouldn’t listen. But it doesn’t matter. We are all inevitably headed towards the same place, which is Love. You got here, in your own time. And now life is beautiful, even when it’s not, right? So you can sit in this moment and just allow your focus to center on the experience of the Desire. Not starving, not desperation, not needing to fill holes, not grasping, nor chasing, nor seeking relief, no stake in worrying about what’s next.
You can have this incredible wave of Love course through you, an exquisitely fine pleasure–untethered to any expectation or agenda. Just for the sake of the having. Every degree your temperature rises. Each tingling goose bump on your skin. Each tear that’s inspired to fall. And Love. Love instantaneously. Love in the instance. And tomorrow is another day for Love.
