The pain of lovebecame the medicine
for every heart,
The difficulty could never be solved
without love.
- Attâr
Love is the most powerful force in the universe, and for centuries mystics have understood the transformative potential of divine love. Love draws us back to love, love uncovers love, love makes us whole and love takes us Home. In the depths of the soul we are loved by God. This is the deepest secret of being human, the bond of love that is at the core of our being. And yet we have forgotten this essential nature of our being; we are hidden from our own deepest love. The mystical path is an uncovering of this love, an awakening to our own capacity to love and be loved.
Like everything that is created, love has a dual nature, positive and negative, masculine and feminine. The masculine side of love is "I love you." Love’s feminine quality is "I am waiting for you; I am longing for you." For the mystic, it is the feminine side of love, the longing, the cup waiting be filled, that takes us back to God. Longing is a highly dynamic state and yet at the same time it is a state of receptivity. Because our culture has for so long rejected the feminine, we have lost touch with the potency of longing. Many people feel this pain of the heart and do not know its value; they do not know it is their innermost connection to love.
Longing is the sweet pain of belonging to God. Once longing is awakened within the heart, it is the most direct way Home. Like the magnet, it draws us deep within our own heart where we are made whole and transformed. This is why the Sufi mystics have always stressed the importance of longing. The great Sufi Ibn ‘Arabî prayed, "Oh Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire for love," while Rû mî expressed the same truth in simple terms, "Do not seek for water, be thirsty."
The feminine mystery of longing belongs to the nature of the soul, which is always feminine before God. In the innermost chamber of the heart we look toward God, receptive and attentive, needing God’s nourishment.
>> excerpt only, read the full article here from personal transformation website
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., is a Sufi teacher and the author of several books on Sufism, including "Sufism, The Transformation of the Heart," "The Face Before I was Born," "Catching the Thread: Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology". He was born in London in 1953 and has followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path since he was nineteen.
Like everything that is created, love has a dual nature, positive and negative, masculine and feminine. The masculine side of love is "I love you." Love’s feminine quality is "I am waiting for you; I am longing for you." For the mystic, it is the feminine side of love, the longing, the cup waiting be filled, that takes us back to God. Longing is a highly dynamic state and yet at the same time it is a state of receptivity. Because our culture has for so long rejected the feminine, we have lost touch with the potency of longing. Many people feel this pain of the heart and do not know its value; they do not know it is their innermost connection to love.
Longing is the sweet pain of belonging to God. Once longing is awakened within the heart, it is the most direct way Home. Like the magnet, it draws us deep within our own heart where we are made whole and transformed. This is why the Sufi mystics have always stressed the importance of longing. The great Sufi Ibn ‘Arabî prayed, "Oh Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire for love," while Rû mî expressed the same truth in simple terms, "Do not seek for water, be thirsty."
The feminine mystery of longing belongs to the nature of the soul, which is always feminine before God. In the innermost chamber of the heart we look toward God, receptive and attentive, needing God’s nourishment.
>> excerpt only, read the full article here from personal transformation website
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., is a Sufi teacher and the author of several books on Sufism, including "Sufism, The Transformation of the Heart," "The Face Before I was Born," "Catching the Thread: Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology". He was born in London in 1953 and has followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path since he was nineteen.
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