Introduction to love

I am not writing this message alone. As I am writing this, I can very strongly feel the presence of Cernunnos within my body. I am writing this post because this is something he has asked me to write about. As with all channeled posts on this blog, this is not intended as preaching, nor as an argument supported by a divine source. It still passed through the filter of my consciousness, and so I will take full responsibility for its content. But the message came from an Other, and the perspective offered is a different one than what you will usually hear.

The word love is both overused and underused. It has become an empty term to many, after the way it has been commercialized and reduced to the buying of preferably expensive gifts, or is not taken seriously when it is used by a religious preacher who speaks of a loving god that will still let you burn in hell for all eternity because you do not follow his petty rules.

So let us take a step back and start over, and try to remember what the word really means, and why it is so extremely important, as it is the essential glue that holds the world together. Without is, nothing could exist. It is that central and that important.

I would like to begin this exploration at the very beginning of time, at the moment that we in the western world usually call the big bang, and compare our understanding of that moment with the interpretations found on mythology. For that purpose my focus will be on the stories that speak of a primeval giant, who died and whose body was then used to give our world the shape is has had ever since. What these two stories, the scientific one and the mythical one have in common is that they give an explanation of how matter first came into existence, and what are the principles that first caused the universe to exist.

What happened was that something happened that caused the world to come into being. It could come into being because suddenly matter became available. In the giant story, someone had to die to make that happen. Someone made the ultimate sacrifice, giving up their own existence so that other life could be given a chance to develop. It is what I would call an act of love. Current versions of the tale never spend much time on how this being came to die, and whether or not it happened with its consent, but I like to see it as an act of voluntary sacrifice, an act of selfless giving, understanding that nothing else would have the opportunity to thrive as long as it was taking up all matter within a single body.

And so the sacrifice was that the one decided to give up control over his destiny and become the many. By dying he allowed others to make the decisions on how best to tear up his body and use it to create something new. He could probably just as easily have decided to do it all himself, to shift shape and create a world that was still very much his own, where the beings would live in the illusion of freedom, but instead being really just figments of the imagination of the one creating them. By dying he gave full confidence to the world that they would know best how to use the gift of life he was giving them.

And you can think of ‘what really happened’ in a similar way: matter was injected into reality, and then that matter was given the freedom to create a world from scratch. It is very much like what happens at the beginning of every life: the egg will receive the sperm, after which the seed-carrier will die and in full confidence allow that which he has helped to create to find its own path towards birth.

It is the opposite of greed. It is giving all of what you are and requiring nothing in return, because your basic confidence in the goodwill of the other is strong enough.

And there is so much to learn from that in this day and age. None of us could have existed, be born, let alone make it all the way to adulthood without receiving a myriad selfless gifts from others, every day of our life. And we very rarely stop to say thank you or even be aware of just how blessed we are to be alive.

And yet when it is our turn to give, many of us will hold back, at least when the gift is not given within the small circles of our most intimate loved ones. We will put up strong boundaries and limitations, claiming that we cannot afford to give more, because giving more would put us in trouble, and that would not help anyone. Or we dare not trust that the other would be sufficiently grateful, or has no other ways of getting help, and so we draw back or put impossible conditions on our generosity.

And that is how we have co-created the world we live in today. A world where love is no longer a basic human right, but one that we first need to be proven worthy of. A world where we would rather live in misery than paying it forward and sharing our riches with others in our moments of abundance.

And so this is the question I would like you to ponder this winter: will you live your life in love or in fear? And how much of that fear is the fear of not receiving love when you are in need of it? Would not the best way to solve that problem be if we would all start to emulate the trust the First Being had in us, that its gift would be in good hands?