The Divine Aphrodisiac

What is it about life that takes us, to the heights of our minds, to the breadth of our hearts, to the depths of our souls, to heaven—to the Divine?

There’s something untouchable about life, a thoroughly mysterious force that seduces us, but to the things of spirituality, not sexuality. We cannot help be reconciled to these forces for virtue. They rule us. And all we can do is comply and go their way. If we don’t, life becomes horrendous, yet many are those that choose such insanity. Still again, many more are trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy of their own undoing. This affects all of us to a greater or lesser extent. This begins and ends in acceptance and rejection.

Nothing makes us feel better than being accepted; nothing makes us feel worse than being rejected. This Divine aphrodisiac is love, which underpins both acceptance and rejection.

Analysing Acceptance And Rejection

We simply cannot help pining—especially inwardly—for acceptance and denying, even running from, rejection. It’s intrinsic to our human make-up. The centre of our acceptance/rejection universe is our family of origin: our mothers and fathers; to a lesser extent our siblings. Our teachers and our peers also played major roles. Everyone we come into contact with influences us regarding acceptance and rejection.

Acceptance generates cathartic emotions of joy, hope and tranquillity. Rejection, on the other hand, however it comes about, redeems fear and other secondary emotions, like anger toward rebuttal or cringing in submission. The mature know how to cope, in humility, with both acceptance and rejection; they choose for the middle-ground truth.

Neither acceptance nor rejection are conditions we can do anything about. They occur to us indiscriminately; but our reactions are never indiscriminate. We feel loved or hurt.

And why is this all so uncontrollable? It’s the blueprint of life: the inescapable God is Love, and the hands of time and the material of experience have been designed around this blueprint.

God Is Love

Perhaps there was never an earlier word: God is Love. Upon the entire construct of creation subsists this: Love. The reason for and the reason why: Love. Any analysis in the search for proof of God misses the point entirely when it doesn’t start, endure and finish in love. Life without love is nothing.

If God didn’t exist there would be no love, no meaning, no hope—no pining for acceptance; no denial or rebuttal for rejection. There might be no emotion. Nothing would matter.

The whole basis of acceptance and rejection is Love.

***

The workings of life enfold unto Love,

Revealing in faith fortune from above,

Divine mystery so alluring we hasten to see,

Just how God has destined us to be free.

Love is freeing and the Divine aphrodisiac is about claiming our freedom. We can only do that when we accept love for what it is: a thing producing emotion, positive and negative, good and bad. To be adequately captivated to love is to live courageously.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.