On Love Poem by Richard Bogartz

Love is the feeling
of the reality of unity
Made possible by
the illusion of duality.
The pretense of lover and beloved
gives rise to the feeling of love
Because the truth
of unity,
Which cannot be totally concealed,
arises and reveals itself
In the attraction that the apparent part
feels for the illusory other part.
While the lover pretends
that the beloved is other,
The ground of their being,
which is one,
Insists at the level of the heart,
and the thought arises that
We are one.

Fear is the temporary condition
in which the illusion of separation
Becomes so strong that
the feeling of unity
Is completely suppressed.
Other seems to threaten self and
The realization of the truth lies submerged.
Self appears to behold not-self and
the risk that not-self will annihilate self looms,
Blocking the light of reality.

Ego is our vulnerability.
The threat that other appears to present is
The struggle of ego to maintain its
illusion of separate existence.
The reality is that
we are fundamentally invulnerable
While at the same time
we constantly die again and again,
Arising anew as another.
From moment to moment
The ground of our being is
unchanged and outside those moments:
Eternal; the apparent separate self is
continually subject to modification

While pretending to remain unchanged behind the name 'I.'

We are love because
love is the self-realization of our fundamental unity and
That self-realization is what we are,
consciousness aware of itself.
Love is like peekaboo.
The parent hides behind the hands,
But the hiding is
a public display that says
'I am here' while
it pretends to conceal.
Love pretends that
unity is not here and
Then parts its hands to
reveal that unity was
Hiding here all along.
The self plays peekaboo with itself.

What is fear of love?
Fear of love is the memory of
The temporary ascendance of
the sense of separation and
An accompanying pain
that ego suffered.
But love removes
the fear of love.
Love reveals
the truth and
Self is the innocent victim that
dies the death of purification.
Fear burns in love.
but love cannot be
Burned by fear because
love is the truth and
Fear is an error.
Fear can conceal love
For a time but
love remains the
Fundament of our existence.
We are love.
We are one.

Trust is the hand
extended toward the truth
Before the truth
is in hand.
Trust is the germ of the truth
that makes itself known in secret.
Trust is John the Baptist preceding Jesus.
Trust points to the truth
before the truth has arrived.
Trust knows
before knowing can be.
Simply trust.
Trust in yourself.
Trust in life.
Trust in the reality that is our life and being.