THE BELOVED

A week or so ago my sister asked me a profound question.

And I answered it perhaps a bit too quickly.

A bit too tritely.

 

So I have been contemplating it ever since.

She asked me

 

“Gen – who is the beloved?”

 

I can’t even remember my answer which is how I know now it was not true.

 

Who is the beloved?

 

Have you ever asked that question before?

 

Perhaps those of you like me who has a strong lover archetype may have done but for most it’s not something that we would gift ourselves the time to consider.

 

I however, spent two years of a master’s degree researching this very topic.

In some ways I have spent my whole life seeking this answer.

And seeing it everywhere outside of myself.

 

In the arms of a human lover.

In the embrace of a landscape.

In the sparkle of sunshine on water.

In the infectious laughter of my nephews.

 

The beloved is the animating force of life and love in our world.

The essence and intelligence of creation itself.

 

Certainly the Sufi’s see it that way.

 

Yet for me the beloved starts within.

With oneself.

In the heart of our soul.

 

In all the long years of my seeking, despite temporary fulfilment, ecstasy and excitement in the outer beloveds embrace, these emotions have been fleeting and soon they pass.

 

The outer beloved is a shapeshifter of extremes.

A mirage of faces and promises.

None of which satisfy the deep inner longing to be whole, to be filled, to be complete.

 

The inner beloved is the one that emerges when we stop drinking from the addictive cup of the outer world. No matter how medicinal or poisonous the elixir may be.

 

The inner beloved comes as a sense of contentment and absolute safety that emerges like a homeopathic osmosis when we let go of seeking completion in the outer world.

 

When we allow ourselves to just be as we are and embrace that self without judgement or story.

 

The last year has taught many of us to stop listening to the noise of the outer world and retreat within our own sense of integrity to find the answers we seek.

 

It has encouraged us to move beyond fear and into resilience.

In the last year many of us have started an inner search for the source of our own truth, our own light, our own love.

 

This is the realm of our soul.

The terrain of the beloved.

 

The beloved is our very own soulful self that knows how to negotiate troubled times and tumultuous transformations.

 

So can it be true that we spend a lifetime seeking the very thing that lays within us all along?

 

That the purpose of our lives is to fall deeply and madly in love with ourselves?

 

Our own sense of beloving and belonging inside?

 

The beloved is us.

The beloved is me.

The beloved is home.

Within.

The source of our being.