Highest Love - Sacred Relationships Begin Within

Beyond our day-to-day concerns is a possibility that calls to us... that all our relationships can be sacred and loving. Many of us long to transcend fear and open our hearts. Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway offers inspiration on sacred relationships, soulful love and matters of the heart and spirit in her new column, "Highest Love."

By Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway
Editor, Wedlok.com

Love is the most mystifying, complex, powerful, extraordinary, amazing force in the universe.

Krishna poster.gif

Mystics have tried to capture its essence. Poets have attempted to explain it. And lovers through the ages have gotten lost in its sacred presence and its sometimes-terrifying grip.

Love is the very essence of who we are. It is where we come from, and where we return to when our time on this planet is through. How interesting it is that, although it is within us always, we spend most of our adult lives in love’s pursuit!

We often seek its innocence and purity outside of ourselves, forgetting that it is virtually impossible to know the fullness of love if we can’t first feel and know it for ourselves. Our first task, really, is to love ourselves. If we don’t, we must find a way there.

In wedding ceremonies, I will often ask Bride and Groom to speak this vow to one another: “I promise to do all I can to love myself so that I can receive fully the love you offer me.”

Without the foundation of self-love, we are like baskets with no bottoms, with no foundation to uphold or contain love. Someone can love you with more heart than you ever imagined, but where will it go if you have no internal mechanism for recognizing pure love?

Love is a vital part of our self-expression -- and it finds expression, whether consciously or not. We tend to notice it most when it is missing, Yet we are, technically, beings of light and love who are capable of expressing it fully and unconditionally at any time.

The soul, once it reawakens to love, is capable of extraordinary feats of unconditional loving. Of the kind of love in which giving and receiving are truly one and the same energy.

But alas, even though the human heart is vast, the human mind keeps records and looks for the “return.”

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, I Corinthians, is biblical inspiration on Love that for ages has offered one of the most profound descriptions of love. At its heart is a basic truth about love that many of us really want to embrace.

We use Paul’s words in the context of romantic love as a wedding reading, and yet, he is really speaking of love for God. And in the purest essence, the love between humans is sourced from the Divine.

When we can recognize that we are love because God is love and we all come from the same source… then we will know true love.

If I speak in the tongues of men
and of angels,
but have not love,
I am nothing more than a noisy gong
or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries,
and have all knowledge,
and a faith that can move mountains,
but have not love,
I am nothing ...
Love is patient; love is kind.
It is never jealous,
nor boastful, proud or rude.
It’s is never selfish, resentful, or quick-tempered.
It keeps no records of wrongs.

Love rejoices with truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
And love never ends.
Faith, Hope and Love ... abide in these three.
But the greatest of these ... is love.

It may take a lifetime to truly embody the heavenly message in those words. Certainly, our earthly relationships provide a pathway for knowing at least a glimmer of its truth.

It is our human habit to search for that profound love in “the other;” but it is the soul that leads us to the person we can most trust to be a mirror of love, reflecting our own love back to us in bright, sacred light.

Sometime we can better see our own loving nature as it is reflected in the eyes of the beloved who stands before us, arms open.

Sometimes in relationship with someone we love, respect and admire we can identify our own ability to love, and see it more clearly than when left to our own devices.

As spiritual beings we start out with a notion and an intellectual understanding of divine love, still, we search for it with our hearts and souls. Perhaps that search is the very reason we are on this planet.

When we begin the journey toward love – the search for the beloved – we are really searching for ourselves. And in searching for ourselves, we are seeking to know God, Goddess, All there is. All we seek “out there” is already “in here!”

Sacred lovers do not fill us with their love and make us whole. They help us remember who we are. Their presence helps ignite the flame of love that lives within. When we open our hearts to recall the love so pure and true that is already in us, sacred lovers can add their love to ours.

Partnership means partners in love, each bringing a willingness to open to the depth of love that dwells within. It also means supporting one another in opening as fully as humanly possible to the power of sacred love and the sacred nature of relationships.

Krishna and Radha image above and more available at KrishnaCulture.com.

Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, editor of www.Wedlok.com and facilitator of The Soulmate Project group, is a leading interfaith and non-denominational wedding officiant. She creates unique ceremonies for couples of all backgrounds and faiths, and is author of Wedding Goddess and Your Perfect Wedding Vows. She is creator of the e-course Find Your Spiritual Soulmate.