In search for Love

I spent my entire life looking for love.

I don’t mean romantic love, companionate love, or any kind of love that one can talk about. Rather, its the kind of love what Christians might call “God’s Love.” Any parent will know this type of love well, and they will know it right on the moment they hold their baby for the first time. Its like holding perfection in your hands.

To embody this love towards a young infant, is remain non-judgmental towards them even though they cry, poop, and demand tremendous amounts of effort, time and energy. What sense is there in judging a baby for being a baby, or to be angry and frustrated towards at them, and yet, we feel those emotions because we have to sacrifice ourselves to an extent, for the sake of our child. In that sacrifice comes grief, anger and rage, all natural emotions that could accompany an act of sacrifice.

I prefer to call this type of love Emptiness; a capacity to be so empty within oneself, empty of desires, expectations, agendas, and prejudices, that whomever is the recipient of this empty space, is the receiver of this love. A person inside of it gets to be themselves just the way they are, and there is nothing that the recipient can do to disturb the loving space in which they are able to expand. The space holder has nothing within themselves that can get triggered. There are no prejudices inside that can disturb the capacity to love.

Trauma is the North Star

I was born the middle child of 3 kids reared one year apart from each other. Since a young age, the amount of attention and time received by my parents felt limited. Moreover, my parents were workaholics. They both left for work before I woke up, and they came home after I had already fallen asleep. On weekends my parents were catching up on chores, so they never really rested well. I always felt thtat their patience was very limited when I did get time with them. I don't think I got the quality time I needed.

They made many poor decisions for us kids, and they did so unknowingly. Ironically, they always thought they were making good choices for themselves and our family given our circumstances.

As a result of what was essentially emotional neglect, parental absence, and loads of trauma on their part, I grew up believing that I wasn’t important, that only work was important, and that other people were more important than me.

For most of my life, a cloud of loneliness loomed over me. I have had trouble since, and although I wasn't totally unsuccessful, at making and sustaining long-term friends. I was hungry for something missing in my life, and I couldn’t seem to find it anywhere.

What started all of this was a simple desire to live with peace with myself; to fill in a void made in childhood once and for all.

The Traditional Vision Quest

One day not to long ago I’ve had enough. I started working on myself by digging at my personal traumas day by day, month by month and year by year. I reached a point where I thought I needed a something with a little more potency; something that will touch the deepest possible hurts.

I signed up for an ancient undertaking known as The Vision Quest. It is a Rite of passage in many indigenous traditions across the globe and it marks an especially important undertaking in a person’s life. In modern times, we might call graduating high school a rite of passage. It marks a certain transition into a more mature person, into the next phase of their life. In Christianity, a rite of passage can be getting Baptized, getting Confirmed, and in some traditions, getting married.

There are different types of Vision quest, and the one I undertook for my healing journey predates any known religion. Who knows how ancient it is; perhaps many thousands of years old. Jesus himself did the same Rite of passage I did, by venturing out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. There, he fasted and he fought with his demons against temptation. He returned a changed person.

I only made the connection after-the-fact, that I was following in his footsteps without realizing it. My mind was no where near scriptures, or spirituality. I was only thinking about my own trauma and my past. I simply showed up for health-keeping purposes, formed a strong intention, and then went up into the mountain. Like Jesus, I fasted for four days and four nights, and I did not come down until it was over. Within that liminal space, I fought with my own demons.

Emptying Out

For whatever reason, I was convinced that I had to empty myself out of immediate desires in order to reach the depth of my childhood self. These desires, to me, seemed like distractions which shifted my focus away from my healing intention.

Moreover, I just didn’t know what to do. A vision quest is a very personal undertaking, and you’re not actually given specific instructions. Its your time to use it in whatever manner you wish.

I took inspiration from the local squirrels. I mostly walked around in circles, collected cones, and set them into a pile nearby. Then, I waited days for some sort of direction.

On the verge of defeat, I began to feel a sense of awe and wonder for one particular cone sitting at the top of the pile. I held it up to the light and I thought, “Wow, what a beautiful looking cone”.

Then, a mysterious impulse said “Its time to let it go.”

Immediately I said out loud as though I'd figure something out, “Ah, so this will represent all the beauty in the world. Including the beautiful people I meet, physically and personally, as well as beautiful objects and scenes. I suppose I better let beauty go.”

With that I chucked the beautiful pinecone out into the sea of the forest.

I began to cry. My mind was now contemplating what I had just committed to.

“What about the beautiful mountains?” I asked out loud. Something in me knew I would have to give up the mountains, sceneries; to give up climbing, give up hiking, give up mountaineering. To give up absolutely everything that was beautiful to me.

I wept some more as I realized that beauty was everywhere.

I picked up another cone, “Ah, this looks like career. I suppose I better let this go too”. With that, the cone flew across the trees, and all of my future endeavors as a working person went with it. Honestly, the thought of not having to prove myself in the working world felt like huge relief.

Again, an inner demon chimed in: “but what about money and surviving?” I asked again out loud. “I don’t want to be to be poor and homeless!” I felt a strange reassurance in my belly. A part of me knew that it was going to sort itself out. In hindsight, I have always carried that attitude: just show up, and automatically and promptly I would know how to confront the challenge.

I picked up another cone, “Ah, this one looks like Joy!!” I said gleefully. She was my crush, perhaps the only person in the entire world I could see myself having a romance with. With a smile on my face, I said out loud: “It would bring me great joy to let her be as free as a bird. I will never shackle someone to myself.” With that, I let go of my romantic crush, and wished her well.

I kept picking up cones for about 30minutes, projecting a particular desire into each one, and then letting go of each one by tossing them out into the forest.

Then came the three hardest things to let go. (In hindsight, it was actually just differently qualities of the same thing, but back then it felt like different things.)

Letting go of Spirituality

I picked up a cone, and thought “Wow, this was made by God?” Then it dawned on me that I was a deeply identified as a spiritual person.

Surprisingly, I had little trouble letting go of Christianity, and of meditation, which was a daily ritual for me. I said, “Good bye Jesus, it was nice knowing you and I appreciate your wisdom, but it looks like God is telling me to let you go. You’re just a messenger, after all.” I cast Jesus off into the woods.

Then came an interesting thought: “Goodbye God, I know you’ll be with me, even if I stop thinking about you. I will let you go in great faith.” With that, I chucked the cone, and I felt surprisingly at ease and at peace doing so. No more straining to figure out any of this spiritual mumbo jumbo. No more reading dry material in hopes of finally figuring something out. The wind blew, and it seemed to carry in the air a remarkable sense of simplicity. A strange weight had been lifted off.

Letting go of Love

I picked up the next cone and this one I did very slowly. The intention came to me, but I gulped with a sense of futility, as to what I was about to do.

“This one represents… love…” I pondered, somewhat surprised.

I churned the cone with my fingers and began projecting any idea of Love into the cone. My demon began with a few intrusive thoughts:

“Don’t give up chasing love, you’ll abandon yourself!”

“You’re going to die a lonely life. Your friends will never love you anymore if you do this.”

“Come on now, family is important. Are you going to become independent from them?”

“You love your hobbies. You’re going to become a boring old monk in the desert.”

“You will never heal your self if you do this.”

I sat with those thoughts for a long time. At times, getting my hand ready to toss the cone, and then hesitating back down again.

Finally, I saw them for what they were: stories which held absolutely no foundation to them. I took a deep breath, tears welled up in my eyes, and said somewhat dismayed “I give up chasing after love.” With that, I clumsily tossed Love into the abyss.

In that moment, that which I feared most, which was the absence of parental love, I finally let it in. I finally stopped fighting it. “If I grow old and lonely and never encounter another loving human being, then that will be God’s will. I will try my best to love them regardless.”

I felt a sense of alleviation from the abandonment wounds left by my parents. I no longer needed the fill in the void.

Upon doing so, it dawned on me just how precious every encounter with a friend, family or stranger really was. Since the future was indeterminate, there really was no guarantee of ever seeing any of my loved ones ever again. They could be taken in one swift motion by absolutely anything.

I suddenly began to weep for my parents, for they too were abandoned by their parents for the sake of work. “Grandpa!” I yelled into the sky, “what the fuck!? How could you treat my parents like that?” I felt rage at both my parents and my grandparents for not having resolved their traumas before deciding to have kids.

After the rage and the resentment was burnt up, what followed was a sense of defeat, and then grief, and then relief. I began to see a cycle of suffering that was passed down from generation to generation within my bloodline. Then, I also wept for the common folk, as it dawned in me, the world was suffering from a sort of cultural hand-me-down. “Alas, it is what it is,” I surrendered some more, and then I stopped thinking about it.

Letting go of the Quest

I picked up another cone once I had calmed myself down. The intention I cultivated throughout the year was to heal from trauma; to reach deep down and touch the wound with healing love. I’ve been after love my entire life, and now at 33 years old, I just let it go moments ago.

This experience was so far 1000x more therapeutic and cathartic than anything I had tried in the past. There was an intuition also, that I had to let go of this too.

“I should just give this up”, I said and that’s exactly what I did.

“But I came here to nurture myself… to love my younger childhood self, to give them the love that my parents weren’t able to. I don’t want to abandon myself anymore...” I said shyly.

I let go of any intention to heal myself, and I resolved to enjoy myself whatever the outcome came to be. “If I never heal myself, then that is God’s will. I will walk around a broken human being for the rest of my life is that’s what I must do.”

I actually almost left my camp in order to head home. Thankfully, I had enough curiosity in me to find out what would happen if I finished the 110hr fast.

A Conversation

Night fell and it was raining.

I was more in the unknown than ever before. I didn’t have a trajectory anymore. No ambitions, agendas or hope for the future. No identity whatsoever. My hopes and dreams slowly faded. The only thing left to look at was at my own dark projections which were visible in the trees; my shadow self.

I could see large devil’s eyes looking down on me through the patterns in the trees. I kept thinking that an animal would jump out from the darkness and kill me.

I didn’t really know what to do anymore. It was raining and I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d sing a song to the rain.

“Dear Rain,

Thank you for your nourishment.

Thank you for your love.

Thank you for your nourishment.

Thank you very much.“

I repeated that chorus for a while, until a sense of awe and reverence for the rain overcame me. I marveled at the rain’s enormous capacity to nurture the whole of the land.

Eventually I asked the rain in chorus manner:

”Rain, what is love?

Show me how love.

Thank your your nourishment.”

There was a tiny part of me still seeking to be loved, still seeking some sort of reward, although it was hiding in the form of an attempt to find something to do. I figured I would just love what was outside of me.

I chanted for hours, when suddenly I felt sleepy. I said, “Rain, If I give up on you and if I give up learning how to love, will you still love me?”

The rain replied: “Of course I’ll still I love you, go to sleep then.”

I brushed off any idea of failing, and then I fell asleep for a short while.

“This is how you will love the world”

I woke up in panic! How much time flew by? It was still dark. I was supposed to stay up all night and sing a prayer! Damnit!

I felt the most intense feeling of defeat I had ever felt in my entire life. I wasted thousands of dollars getting here, I lost meaning in all of my intentions to be here, I destroyed my futures, and I couldn’t even complete this task properly. “What's the point of living?” I began to wonder.

I wept for a while in silence while the rain poured.

“Try again” said the rain.

I perked up slightly confused. With a little bit of determination, I told myself that I would try to have a loving attitude towards whatever was happening in my immediate experience. “Forget trying to find love for “ME”, I said with a sense resolute confidence. It was as though I had forgotten what happened minutes ago. “I'm simply going to love whatever is in front me, in whatever is showing up, the way I know how.”

Except, I had no idea how to do that. So then I tried asking the rain again.

“Rain? What is love?

Show me how to love!!!” I demanded, yelling ae dark abyss with a slight sense of frustration.

To my right, something caught my eye. I could see a circle that was prepared by the person that was here before me. The Quest tradition was that a person make a circle only as a big as it would allow a person to sit inside of it for the entire night. The problem, as I saw it, was that it was raining. I wanted to sit in the circle, be exposed to the naked wilderness, and do the ritual correctly. I held a strong belief that if I didn’t do it correctly, then I wouldn’t get my vision, and basically, that God would abandon me, that it wouldn’t work for some reason. A part of me still wanted to please the Rain, I still believed I could be abandoned. There was another part of me that feared the cold and feared becoming wet and hypothermic. Moreover, before we all left to isolate ourselves, we made a promise to each other that we would not jeopardize our safety, create an emergency situation, and spoil the Quest for the rest of questers.

“Rain, I have an issue,“ I started, “I wish to love you, but I don’t want to go near you. I can’t touch you right now. I wish that I could be out there chanting underneath you. I wish to know how to love you under these circumstances. And yet, you are cold, unpleasant, and you will hurt me.”

There was a long pause and silence.

“How can I love you, if I am currently pulling back from you? Will you still love me even if I give up on you?” I asked the rain.

“I will always love you.” replied the rain.

“Who are you?” I finally asked.

“I am the rain. I shower my love across the land.”

“But how!? How do you love others so indiscriminately? How do you spread yourself across the land and into the horizon, loving every creature? How can you love me even if I give up on you?”

With a chuckle, the rain replied, ”If someone doesn’t want to receive me, why should I let that bother me?”

I asked back in disbelief: “Don’t you want my praise? My servitude? How can I know that you will always love me?”

”My only job is to shower my love across the land. Why should I disturb myself, cease loving, and stop pouring my support across the land, if someone else over there doesn’t want to accept my love? I love the land and all living things no matter what. There are no conditions for my existence. I rain no matter how anyone presents themselves. My love is simply letting you be exactly as you are, and from my showering love, you get to grow perfectly.”

I wept for a long time.

When I calmed down I understood at an experiential level, as opposed to at an intellectual level, what God’s love really was. “Thank you father, and Grandfather” I said, both to my parents, my grandparents, and to the father simultaneously. At once I understood that which was always with me.

Love is letting everything be just the way that it is. It is not having any desire for anything to be different, and it is also having desires. It is not having any intent for someone else to be different, and also it is also having intent. It is to not have a wish for the circumstances to be different, and also striving for change. It is not wishing that I were any different, and also having aspirations. The paradoxical nature of Love is that it is a definite “Yes” to absolutely anything that arises within the present moment. All things are expression of God’s Love, which is itself empty and undefinable. Yet, things arise out of that emptiness.

I will receive love whether I am asking for it or not. From this point on, why waste energy asking for it?

There was no need to please God anymore. No need to find Love either. So long as I continued to please him, I would reinforce an idea that love was earned. God does not need to be pleased, for if love demanded that we please him, that is not unconditional love. Simultaneously, and paradoxically, if one wished to please him, that is not wrong either. Love is always there, and the questions now became, “Why did I choose otherwise? Why do we all choose to be unloving?” and “How did I come to believe that I wasn’t already loved by God?”

I pondered these question for some time. I could only guess that I, like my parents, their parents, and even their parents, were conditioned by our culture to believe that Love was earned. In a lot of ways, this belief is implicit in our relationships today. First I learnt from my parents when they rewarded me for behaving good, and for punishing me when I behaved badly. Then, through many years of schooling by the reward of earning good grades, and then through the acquiring of money and survival means. Once I saw through that condition, it was then I truly surrendered with my entire body to the moment at hand. I stopped looking for love under a innocently misguided belief that I needed more of it, and that I needed to find it. Actually, in trying to find love for myself in God, in other people, and to prove it to myself in my activities, I was reinforcing the opposite the belief: that I was an unlovable person, and that I needed to earn it.

Just like that. My worldview changed like night and day in an instant. I became love. The heart cracked open, and my hardened shell was now compromised. It was the beginning of the end of striving.

Coming down the Mountain

When I came down from the mountain, it felt as though I had descended down upon a new earth.

Not that I had entered a new setting with different people or a different location, but rather, the worldview was not tainted by the perceptions of an identity.

For the next few hours, I seemed to have no identity at all.

When I let go of all of my futures, I had let go of all my identities. While I had desires in me, I was seeing through them, not quite believing in their capacity to fulfill me. I had no agendas floating around in my head. I had no future-oriented intentions. I was like a child, completely curious at everything that was unfolding before me.

There was a strange lightness coming on, and it just kept getting more and more pronounced as the hours fly by.

The Kingdom of Heaven

It was only months later, after having read from the works of Meister Eckhart, a German Christian Mystic in the 13th century, that I understood what was about to transpire:

As our group walked back to the kitchen area after a lengthy discussion, my body was suddenly jerked towards the left and away from the group all by itself. It felt as though someone grabbed my left arm, and yanked me that way really hard. It was very jarring and unexpected, and therefor frightening. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach that kept getting deeper and more pronounced, like I had just received gut-wrenching news. Except, there was no news. It was the feeling of it, all by itself without any context.

I made my way down a path to where I could be by myself, and then I did absolutely everything I could to try and make it better or get rid of it. I threw a fit of rage, I screamed, I panicked, and chucked heavy logs into the air hoping I could get it out of my system. Nothing worked!

After kicking and screaming for a few minutes, I dropped to my knees with the feeling of defeat. I laid on my back, and closed my eyes.

I can’t even say that I waited for anything to happen. I just gave up. That’s what it felt like. I just gave up trying to make or do anything with it. I just stopped dead cold.

After some minutes, I heard my name called from a distance.

“Guillermo!”

I got up and went to see my friends.

For the next few hours, in everything I did and said, I did not do with any kind of intention. My body moved on its own, and said things on its own. God had literally taken the wheel. I had absolutely zero agency in my movements. I could not anticipate my motions at all, or what I was going to say next, or where I was going to go. I initially thought it was some form of dissociation, except I did not feel disconnected, rather I felt even more connected, more sensitive, and extraordinarily alive to everything around me. I felt an unusual sense of wellbeing flowing within me, like I had just woken up from good night’s sleep. No medical textbook could pinpoint my experience accurately and it was after reading Meister Eckhart’s Sermon 22, that I discoverer that I had fallen into what he had called “The Godhead.” Other Christian mystics had called it “Christ Consciousness;” an ability to be so empty inside that compassion and love sprung forth like an endless well.

”Is this God’s Will flowing through me?” I remember pondering. The state felt oddly familiar. I was here before, but many years ago when I was little kid. “When did I come out of this?” I wondered. It felt so natural. At times, I was so into what I was doing, that I lost awareness of the blissfulness of it all, and instead I was completely mesmerized by what was in front of me.

I felt as though I had taken off a heavy backpack which I didn’t even know I was carrying around. That backpack was my identity as “Guillermo.” It contained all the stories which made “Guillermo” what he was. No backpack, No identity, no Self-Consciousness. No weight on my personality. No self-image to protect or defend. I had resolute confidence, completely free to express myself without a second thought, and with nothing to loose. There was zero fear in my body for the first time in decades. Gosh, I didn’t even realize I was walking around in fear for 30 years. Even my posture was different. God knew how to pilot my body better than I did.

As the night fell upon us, and as I returned to my bed, a gloomy cloud began to swallow my entire experience. I didn’t fight it. I just watched in amazement at what was transpiring in the field of my awareness. When I woke up the next day, I understood somehow, that I was once again stuck in an egoic mentality. The gate to the Kingdom of Heaven was closed to me once again, albeit this time, there was a tiny gap in the door way. It was not closed all the way.

Deepening Realizations

Nearly a year later, my world has been anything but normal. Insights on Love just kept on deepening.

When I returned to the Table again in late September I was happy to see friends. While listening to the sermon, it felt like firecrackers were lighting up inside my head. Everything that was being spoken about made sense to me now. There was no a trace of doubt as to what was being transmitted. Somehow the words resonated with my personal experience in the mountains.

I picked up the bible in front of me and began perusing through the book of Genesis. What was once a strange mystical tale now too made sense to me. And yet, when I opened my mouth and tried to derive meaningful words, nothing sensical could be said. I tried writing down my thoughts, and they made perfect sense to me, but alas I eventually realized what was happening.

I saw that trying to share Truth was like trying to explain to someone what an apple tastes like. I could write endless novels on the taste of an apple, however, until another person actually ate an apple, they would never know its taste. It's a reason why anybody could read the Bible a hundred times and not come into contact with truth, and yet someone that has lived a simple and selfless life, could not have read a single word, and they yet may be deeply in contact with truth. I would never be able to share this truth with anyone. I could only say to them “You should try eating an apple.”

Secondly, if I presumed to know truth and that I could proclaim that truth out into the world, I would be in a state of delusion. The truth I stumbled upon, I did so by abiding in the unknown. I had to put aside all agendas, even the agenda to get closer to God and the agenda to know truth. Every single drop of my personal will had to be left aside. In my personal journey, though not a requisite for anybody else in particular, I had to feel through a sort of devastation of the loss of my life to touch upon truth for an afternoon.

If I wanted to live it on a more permanent basis, I quickly realized, I would have to give up my life completely.

-Guillermo

2024