Bhakta, Bhakta, Burning Bright, in Kali Yuga's Dark Night

Email from Steve who attended our October Retreat:

My Dearest,  I AM IN LOVE.  I am truly in Love. 

With what I do not know but it is coursing through me this very minute. Every atom of my being is deeply in Love. This is so overwhelming and deep and meaningful-never have I felt this much encompassed and surrounded in such an elixir of Divine Grace.

This is not a personal love it is impersonal and a thousand times deeper than the deepest waterfall. 

My dear Love Edji, you and Deeya placed a piece of coal in my soul and it is turning into a untouchable Diamond that lies so deep within this soul, its brilliance is drawing me directly to it, its radiance is pulling me to it (I AM coming Home). Finally I am on that footpath of Light.

Just your compassionate thought produced a whole new reality.

How can I ever thank you, its impossible to repay the Divine but only by your example can others know of the true brilliance that exists before them.

I bow my head to the Lord.

God took me today.

Everyday you breathe through me

The Kindness of you Heart

I bow to You both.

Oh! what a wonderful thing to be so DEEPLY in LOVE

It burns....and a fire has started.

OH! I LOVE YOU.  steve

MY  REPLY:

Fantastic Steve!

But I need to caution you.  Such fantastic love usually is accompanied by a flip-side of negative emotions often called the Shadow Side.

The Shadow manifests when the Beloved fails the expectations of the Lover for one reason or another.  The Lover feels rejected, despised, ignored, jealous or hurt, whereupon the darkside needs to be worked through in what is often called "shadow-work."

This is when most relationships break up, and the former Lover becomes a hater and a hurter.  There is a 180 degree turn from projecting positive elements onto the Beloved, to projecting negative elements.

At this point, the former Lover must understand this is where the deepest spiritual work occurs--working through the shadow.

Usually it is not all positive then all negative, but a cycling between the two.  It is very, very important not to run away at this time.

This has happened to other students, though not so dramatically as is the case with Lila.

Think back into your own life.  Remember when you were overwhelmingly in love with someone then something happened, an affair, a breakup of some sort, and then how much you hated that person for a long time and perhaps broke off the relationship yourself.

Or perhaps someone loved you totally, madly, but you also felt love for someone else, or maybe you left the first relationship for love of someone else, and the first Lover went nuts and became your primary hater.

It is very, very important not to leave the relationship if the other leaves it open despite hate going one or both ways.  You owe it to yourself to work through the shadow, the negativity.