I like to imagine that there are infinite portals that call us to walk through to learn the lessons of life we have been born to learn.
One portal, of course, is falling in love. When we fall in love, we literally fall into an altered state of consciousness that some might call psychotic, but only because it does not follow the rules of rational behavior. When we fall in love, we see our Beloved as the God or a Goddess that we truly are, not as a mortal shaped by the limitations of this dimension. Necessarily, there comes a time when the divinity falls away, and we have to choose whether we can love the mortal as she or he is or keep chasing a perfection unattainable in this world of duality. But we have a choice.
Can we remember that feeling of expansion into the One where our love for the Beloved allowed us to fall in love and be connected with everything? Can we trust in the truth of knowing that in that surrendered state of falling in love, we are not just being in love but being love? Can we see our life with the Beloved as a pathway back to that state which is real, even though it is much too much for our small bodies to hold and even though we keep forgetting? This is the Path of Lover and Beloved.
A second portal is the path of Death. One of the requirements of this embodiment is that we are born, and then we die. This is true of our mortal bodies, but when the Lover loses the Beloved, she faces many questions, “What does it mean to die?” When I have been interpenetrated so profoundly with the love of my Beloved, how can that love disappear? Where could it go? How is it that my Beloved continues to live in me even though his body is gone? As the Lover who has been left by her Beloved walks the Earth without her Beloved in physical form, she begins to know in her own body that love does not die. Love overcomes Death even when the Beloved is no longer in the physical. This is the Path of the One who Goes into the Underworld and then Returns.
A third portal is pain and loss. Humans are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain, yet, pain and suffering are a part of our lives and cannot be avoided. It is strange to think that suffering can be a gift. Yet that can happen in challenging times, when everything is stripped away, and we are forced to stand naked in the present moment. It is terrifying and awesome to stay awake in such times. Still, when we dare to face ourselves, surrendering everything we know, we are gifted with realizing what is truly important. This is the Path of Letting Go.
Another portal is beauty. When we are in the presence of beauty, the mind can only stand in awe and wonder. Whether we gaze up at the Milky Way and are flooded with its infinite light, or see a work of art that captures something beyond words, when we see the smile of a child or the majesty of the mountains, beauty stretches us into realms that boggle the mind, stretching us into longing at the same time as it offers us peace. This is the Path of Beauty.
And finally, there is the portal that we enter through the holy. In our times, the sacred is often forgotten. The Western mind wants to keep the holy within the cathedral’s walls, so there, it has begun to dry up and die. The sacred is not about Gods and Goddesses. It is not about commandments and Thou Shalt Nots. It is not about Us and Them. It is remembering that everything is holy. Everything and anything can be the path that beckons us back to the One.
You can meet the holy in the smell of spring or fresh bread baking, in the memory of the caress of a beloved or the sound of a child’s laughter, in the cycles of the Moon or the risings and settings of the Sun. These are all pathways back to the One, trails we can walk back and forth, remembering and then forgetting and remembering once again. This is the Path of the Sacred.
May you be awake to these portals when they call your name, and may you enter with love and gratitude as you meet the mystery.