Unconditional Love?

“You would see a flash in his eyes when people used terms like “Love” to describe their favourite meal. To him the word “Love” had been misused so often it was now corrupted beyond any practical use. To the Visitor, Love was a word reserved for the sacred, such as the spirit
of another person - not for chocolate or wine.”

— The Visitor, pg 3

If you have read the blogs up until today, and struggled with the concept that The Visitor is not just a Love story, but rather a story of Love, then today's blog should help you in gaining a deeper understanding.

In this blog, we tie together the concepts of the Visitor's extreme dualistic viewpoint, his views of things either being sacred or mundane, and his frustration with the inadequacy of language.  You will also get insights into the reason why Truth and Love are central themes, occurring over and over again.  It is the essence of The Visitor.  

Within the first three pages we get a glimpse of the Visitor's perspective on Love.  As discussed in previous blogs, the word Love throughout The Visitor is always capitalized.  Love is not used as an adjective, or a verb, but rather as a proper (or even personal) noun denoting something more than an emotional feeling.  As explained earlier, to the Visitor - Love is a sacred word, not to be used lightly, and as such should only be spoken from the soul.

Even for people who might be able to relate to the idea of how easily and often the word Love has been misused,  the Visitor is deeply concerned with the watering down the true meaning of a sacred notion (in this case the notion of Love) that it becomes meaningless.   

There is no such thing as unconditional Love or true Love, as that would imply that there is the potential existence of conditional Love or false Love.  There is only Love. 

One of the more popular, "innocent" uses of the word Love is found within the frequent and flippant quip of "Unconditional Love".  People use it so often, to assert a "strong" Love, that they don't stop to realize that in doing so, they give credence to a notion that Love can be conditional.   I myself literally cringe whenever I hear someone use the phrase, "Unconditional Love".   To acknowledge the existence of one extreme, is to acknowledge the existence of the other. Can you really have anything such as "conditional Love"?  If the answer is no, if it is conditional than its not truly Love; then it is also true that it is impossible to have it's antithesis - "unconditional Love".  This is an intrinsic example of the dualistic world view of the Visitor.   There are no shades of grey.  You cannot have "unconditional Love" without promoting through your assertion that there also exists a "conditional Love".  The fact is, the dualistic polar opposite of Love is hate...and any limits, conditions or anything else you may try to place on Love takes you away from Love.

This concept is really no different than when someone pleads they are telling "the honest truth".  Is there any other type of truth?  Is there a dishonest truth?  When did it become necessary to defend the truth?  As the Visitor makes it clear, defending the truth dilutes it.  

Notions such as "unconditional Love or honest Truth" pollute the purity of the concepts and notions behind Love and Truth.  You can't dilute either without it becoming something else.  A little white lie is a lie - not the truth.  And a diluted Love may be affection, or strong liking, or kinship, but it is not Love.  Love is pure, as is truth. There are no shades of Truth or Love.  They are absolutes.

Combine both of these bastardizations of Love and Truth and you end up with another popular quip that waters down and diminishes both concepts, the cute phrase of "True Love".  Really?  Is there any other kind?  Is there a false Love?  If there is then by it's very definition, it wouldn't be Love, no more than a false Truth would be Truth.

If you are able to say that you have unconditional Love for someone, than you are recognizing by that assertion the existence of Love at times being "conditional" - else why make the distinction?  And if you think you are capable of recognizing, endorsing or enacting a Love that is not unconditional, then simply put, I have to question if you really know what Love is.

Harsh? - Perhaps...

I understand that people don't really think about what they say, or really understand the deeper meaning of what they say, or even the implications or what they say.  They hear something, it sounds good, they repeat it. Innocent enough.

But when you give life or recognition to the idea that there is such a think as "conditional Love" by stressing at anytime for anyone that you have an "unconditional Love" then you are actually part of the problem of supporting the watering down of what is a sacred word.  Love.

This is the point of the Visitor when he is upset by people misusing the word Love to describe mundane things like chocolate or wine.  When you misuse the word, you make the word meaningless.

Besides the notion of Love being sacred, the Visitor recognizes how things may try to "pass for Love which are not, and tells the crowd to be on guard against such things.  In the poetic parable on Love (pg 33) we get a sampling of this notion.  Although the words you hear may be tempting, and may be what you want to hear - do not be fooled.

Do not settle for less than Love.
Such leaves you incomplete.
Do not be tempted by false Love,
Although it may seem sweet.

Stronger yet is the poetic parable on Truth and Honesty, where the Visitor expands on this idea.  In this parable, the Visitor describes how the word Love should stir from your soul (not from your mind), and never be used for describing mundane or carnal notions.  Even more to the point, the Visitor tells those present to take care of careless use of such sacred words, as it is the way of those who would trick you to diminish truths.  As such, using terms like "unconditional Love, honest Truth, and even True Love" simply confuse people.  

Never say “Love” as a word with no weight
Sacred words should stir from your soul
Nor should you ever speak dark words of hate
As dark words of hate take their toll.

When you claim “Love” in describing possessions
You diminish the meaning of your word
So when you say, “I Love” it may lead to questions
And your true passion may never be heard.

Such is the way of the tricksters
To diminish the truths you would speak
To confuse all your brothers and sisters
And to hide the truth you would seek.

Perhaps a simple notion.  Perhaps one you have never really even put you mind too; and your misuse of such words is no more than innocent ignorance.  But when you understand Love, and Truth, you will realize that there is no such thing as half measures.  You can't Love 99% any more than you can claim Truth to be less than 100%.

Love absolute and complete is not a novel concept.  The idea that Love cannot be conditional is easily understood by Luke 6:27 where we are told to "Love our enemies", no strings attached, no conditions;

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“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,  bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them."

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If you can relate to this concept, then you are well on your way to understanding The Visitor as not just a Love story, but a story of Love.  In closing, and to drive the essence of The Visitor home, I leave you with 1 John 4:8 to emphasize why the word Love is viewed by the Visitor as a sacred notion.

 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Until next time,

Journey in Love

Michael Paul

Duality and The Singularity

I was going to release the blog on "Willful Blindness" (3rd stanza of Silence is Broken, pg., 12 of The Visitor) but instead have been moved to release the first interpretive "senior level deep dive".  This blog is a little harder than previous blogs, and I believe it takes some effort and openness to understand.  At least it did for me.

To me, and for me, The Visitor is a challenging read, which might still unsettle some people when you consider I wrote it.  As my wife would attest, The Visitor (and The Corvus Chronicles) has been a struggle for me to write. Although The Visitor is only about 90 pages; it may has well have been one page or a thousand pages as the story itself is too large for words.  (As the Visitor would have said - language and words are inadequate).

As I shared many times with my wife (my Beloved) the story itself is bigger than I am.  I would go into my office, light my three foot high candelabra, clear my mind and start writing.  Sometimes the words would flow.  Sometimes they would stop.  Some nights I would get up from my sleep and simply delete everything I had put down.  Constantly I worried, and still do.  The Visitor is literally a work of Love. I do not believe it will ever be or is meant to be a commercial success.  I don't believe that I will in my lifetime ever meet anyone who truly can interpret it entirely successfully.  I do believe however, that it is meant to be, and that sometime someone will look upon this and achieve what I was never able to...  Understanding.

So today's blog is the first "senior level" deep dive - an attempt to interpret an important theme that runs long past the limits of 90 pages.  It is what I would call "the first golden key to understanding".  To those who can suffer through this blog, it will make sense why it needed to come now before the blog on "Willful Blindness".  In fact, anyone who can even slightly understand this current blog will no doubt see through the surface love story, and will start to get a larger understanding of The Visitor as a story of Love.

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“The concept of a singularity runs through The Visitor in many instances, including references to the themes of “silence”, “universal language” and “we are one”.”

Duality and The Singularity are important concepts throughout The Visitor.  The reader will no doubt pick up some of the concepts on "duality"; but the unspoken larger part is in "the singularity".  The singularity is obvious once pointed out, but until the reader becomes intrinsically aware of it, the concept of "the singularity" probably remains unnoticed.

Duality

There are many instances where the dualistic nature of The Visitor (as a book) and the Visitor (as a character) occur.  An obvious example is found in the first paragraph of Chapter II The Needs of Many pg 17.

The conversation, like the Visitor himself, was almost dualistic, moving from one extreme to the other, yet meeting in the
middle like a circle where the end and the beginning can be anywhere and everywhere at once.

This concept may be symbolized in many ways, but one of the more recognized ways is the "yin and yang" symbol.  This symbol is typically represented by contrasting elements (black and white) arranged in a circle yet intersecting in the middle through their curve.  It is a contrast and balance of "black and white", "negative and positive", "good and bad", "wrong and right", "spiritual and carnal (mundane)", "earth and heaven", "night and day", "on and off", "in and out", "positive and negative", etc.,

Such extremes and dualistic opposing forces are encountered throughout The Visitor.  From Joy and Sorrow, to Pleasure and Pain, to Life and Death.  But there is even more beyond the subject matter and the defined dualistic personality of the Visitor.  

There is "...the beck of the crow and the call of the stars..."  In that case the crow is black, the stars white, the crow is earth (fleshy) the stars heavenly, the crow symbolizes death, the stars heaven and life.  It is also not a coincidence that the black "earthly" crow transforms to a white "heavenly" crow from the reflection of the lightening at the moment of the Visitor's death/birth.  The symbolic crow is confined to earthly dimensions no matter it's ability of flight, the stars heavenly, although they may "fall" from time to time.  It is no coincidence that in writing The Visitor and The Corvus Chronicles I became obsessed with crows and stars, and this obsession is still persistent as I try to interpret.  The scene of the crow and the magpie, the ever present crow, and failing health are all from true events.  The moving out of the city to the country and the gift of a telescope to see the stars,...all real life.  This is another example of where the story crosses at times from fiction to non-fiction without notice or apology.  However, it must be noted that the character The Visitor, is not me.  But there are real life elements used in helping to portray who he is.  The fact that I found a meteorite on our home out of the city below where the crows constantly soar over-head only makes the writing a bit more esoteric. 

“The Corvus Chronicles follow the struggles between the desires of the flesh and the pull of the spirit while balancing the discord between
our external and internal selves. Together they form one story on a journey of Love.”

— The Visitor, Page 87 "About the Author

On page 87 in the About the Author section this personal view is shared openly with the reader in describing the dualistic nature of the story.  

Singularity

At the same time we find examples of dualism throughout the novel we find the concept of "singularity".  

Perhaps one of the most instructive examples are stanzas 3 and 4 in the poetic parable on Joy and Sorrow (Pg 56).  Although the topic, Joy and Sorrow may appear dualistic, the parable shows the balance where they come together...(the singularity).   In this parable the Visitor describes how laughter (joy) and tears (sorrow) are born of the same place (Spirit).  The parable then goes on to talk about "universally shared state" of these "spiritual expressions - prayers".  Here we find both the dualistic and singularity together.

Within yourself where your laughter is born,
Is the place that gives birth to your tears.
Whether you smile or whether you mourn
‘Tis your spirit simply talking in prayer.

Your joy and sorrow are not yours alone
They are both universally shared states
Unless your heart is carved out of stone
Such feelings are our shared human fate

There are more examples of this throughout the book, but one more obvious example is in the poetic parable on Good and Evil (page 48).  Again, the subject Good and Evil are two extremes or dualities, yet we witness the Visitor describe that they are not only two different sides of the same coin, but "they are one though can never be joined"!

Good and evil are like joy and sorrow,
They are two different sides of one coin.
While one sleeps today, one wakes tomorrow.
And though they be one, they can never be joined.

This is the concept of "dialetical monism".  

This concept I was first attracted to in 1983 when I came across the concept at University.  It was around the same time I discovered some of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and "the golden mean".   While the eastern influence of yin and yang and the western influence of St Aquinas may appear totally different, I was almost in awe of the similarity.  It is no surprise looking backwards why I connected with the writings of Thomas Merton, a trappist monk who felt there was a lot to be gained in inter-faith understanding.  As such, it should be no surprise to readers of The Visitor the influence of connectedness, universal language, and "we are one" comments throughout the novel.

But back to the idea of "dialectical monism".  The term itself can be roughly translated into the unity between "duality" (dialectical) and "singularity" (monism).  It describes the indescribable; the connection between the paradox of simultaneous unity and duality.  How the extremes can exist together.  This is the basic nature of the Visitor.  As the narrator shares in page 3 of The Visitor " He [the Visitor] felt there was something beautiful in the concept of unpredictable chaos within an intentional master design: a duality, like body and spirit.

From here we can start to understand both the nature of the Visitor, and why he felt he was destined to find his Beloved to become complete.  The Visitor is "dualistic" to the point of only being able tor recognize the extremes - for example from Pg 3  of The Visitor:

He was not the easiest person to suffer at times. He was black or white, hot or cold, in or out. As such, it was not surprising that he viewed most things (if not all things) as being either sacred or mundane. By all accounts, he lived within dualities and extremes.  The Visitor was aware of his shortcomings in not being able to see the middle between extremes; however, he would not have changed his understandings for anything. He believed it was this shortcoming of being black or white that had brought his Beloved into his life. She was his rainbow, his connection to the parts of life he could not grasp…

What is important to understand, that without the influence of the Beloved, he was incomplete.  The Beloved is never described as "grey"...the intermediate between "black and white", but rather as his "rainbow".  

Welcome to the senior level deep dive.

Two extremes (black and white) which together are made up of all the colours of the rainbow without any shades of grey.  These attributes exist at the exact same time.  All the various colours are contained within white light.  Whether we can see them or not, matters not, they are there, and for those who doubt this simply shine a white light through a prism.  The same when we look at the earthly black pigment when all colours are combined and light is not reflected, we see black.  Not grey.  The duality and the monism.  White and black are both created through the use of "all colour" and the difference is only seen if we are looking at "light" or if the light is absorbed by pigment and reflecting no colour, at which time we see black.

The Beloved is "the connection".  She is what unites the dualistic extremes of the Visitor. Page 6 of The Visitor:

Through her, and with her, he learned who he was. No easy task. Without her, he was not an easy person to get to know or want to know. He was aware of this, but still, he had little desire to change. He liked who he was and he loved the fact that she was in many ways his opposite. She was his missing “peaces”.

The Visitor is "incomplete" without the Beloved.  His dualistic view of the world robs him of peace.  He see's things as "black and white", "sacred or mundane", "earthly or spiritual".  It is a struggle he constantly balances.  This struggle is revealed on page 21 of The Visitor in the poetic parable "Hiding our Nakedness".  Here we see the narrator recalling an event prior to the eve of death where the story takes place.

For months I had heard the Visitor say, “We are one.” At first I thought he was speaking “spiritually”, but it was a little out of place for him to be overly evangelistic. In fact, he deliberately shied away from piousness to the point of being almost inappropriate. I confronted him once about the way he talked as it seemed to compromise his sincerity.  

To which the Visitor replies: 
There are many different ways to go;
Your journey is not mine.
Trust me, you don’t want to know
The path etched in my mind.

To the Visitor, the struggle is real.  The desires of the flesh and the pull of the spirit.  Both are in existence at the same time.  And it is not the "greyness" of right and wrong which are merely moral constructs.  The Visitor talks about the gift of everything from eating meat to having sex. There is no judgment on the needs of the fleshy shell which house a growing spirit.  This is the struggle between the needs of the flesh and the needs of the Spirit.  A duality and a paradox which are connected.

In the poetic parable on Self-Knowing, page 70 these concepts get deeper.  He in speaking about death (for whom the bell tolls) the Visitor is talking about life (join life's procession).  A deeper duality is again seen in the "no one knows" and "nothing is left to chance".  This is where the concepts of "UNKNOWN" and "PREDETERMINED" are united, even though they are extreme opposites.  This fact probably again slides by the reader.

No one knows for whom the bell tolls
And nothing is left to chance
In time your body will shed your soul
To join life’s procession and dance.

On page 76 in the poetic parable on Death this concept is further developed.  Here the Visitor talks about earthly death in the first line being akin to birth, and in the last line how in death their is no death.  This is the procession of life.  Again, two dualities brought together.

Your soul, released from earthly ties
Like a babe from its mother’s womb,
Leaves comfort of darkness yet never dies
As in death there is no earthly tomb.

This concept is nothing new.  See the duality, the monism, and the procession altogether in Corinthians 1 : 15 :

40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. 42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body....

Another example to me is the concept of the Trinity.  There is "the Father" (monism, one God) from which derive and exist at the same time "The Son" (God made flesh through Jesus) and "The Holy Spirit" (Spirit derived from one God).  An earthly form, a heavenly form and a form above and beyond which made both the heavens and the earth from which both are derived.

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So that my friends ends the first "senior level deep dive" into interpreting The Visitor.  It is as I described "the first golden key" to understanding.  The dive could be deeper, as there is much more within the them of Duality and the Singularity.  I barely touched on St Aquinas' "Golden Mean", but for those really curious you can refer to that on your own and then read the poetic parable on Courage where the Visitor talks about the soldier and the coward.

Anyway, congrats if you made it this far.  If you did, and grasped any of this I am sure the next time you read "The Visitor" you will read a far different story than you did the first time around.

Until next time

Journey in Love

Michael Paul