A WAY OF LOVE

“Love your neighbor,
as yourself...”
The words of Jesus
From the New Testament.

"Who is my neighbor? Perhaps all are my neighbors? - So I thought many years. - If all are my neighbors whom should I love. But any way I can't meet with all of them. Means, neighbor - is the one who I met on my course of life? But how I will be able to love him, if I don't know him? It is only possible to love something that you know. If I am told about taste of sugar, and I never tried it, how I can love it?"

Of course it is possible to love someone or something according to stories of other people, but it will be biased and unreal. So often I fell in love with some people according to stories, and then at the meeting had a pain of loss and disappointment. I was told about a person, and I made a mistake - I admired this person in advance and drew to myself his fine image.

A big love flashed in the heart. I started loving the person more than myself, more than own life. And here I am ready to throw everything and run after this person to the world's end. And I did such an act. I nearby, I am delighted, I am ready without reflecting to give for him my life, I am ready to serve him faithfully. But after a while I started to understand that the image created by me, my idea of this person and the person is miscellaneous. And a pain of disappointment - how is that so, I thought that he is honest, and he was dishonest, etc.

The years of mistakes, disappointments and failures are passed, and once I asked myself a question: "Whom did I love? These people, was they my neighbors? Whether I knew them?"

No, I didn't know them - I loved not the neighbors with all their merits and demerits, I loved the images which I myself molded and dressed on them, I loved in them own dream.

And what about neighbors? I loved nobody with such love. The conclusion so frightened that I began to analyze all the events of my life, meeting with each person, my love. And it turned out that so far I loved nobody with that love which is stored in my heart to a darling whom I don't know.

So how can I love a neighbor as myself if I have no neighbors? There is many and nobody. And how can I love myself if even myself I don't know?

And so a new way of realizing myself and the world began. If I will knew myself, I will be able to fall in love at first with myself, and then I will find one neighbor and will be able to fall in love with him as I feel.

I thought, but who on earth could fall in love, though with one person, as with himself? I began to sort out our history and I didn't find. Wow! Means, all of us stay in delusions?

And what happens on earth if someone would love his neighbor as himself? I think such happened - the one who loved could reach some very big tops to become a genius, a god's son. But thus: what happened to him as with person? What happened to that who loved another as himself?

I had an example in my life. I loved one person as myself, purely intuitively, without realizing who is me.

And what has turned out - the person wrote the brilliant songs. He created on paper, through music and voice an amazing strange world with depth and breadth, with pain and pleasure, but he couldn't live a day of real life in the created.

On the contrary, everything about what he wrot was only a parody to his own life. He wrote about freedom, and received slavery, he wrote about conscience, honor and truth - and lived in lies, he lost conscience and lost any honor. Why it happened? He loved a woman-dream, but lived... in absolutely different way.

What is the reason of such ridiculous and sad paradox? For long I couldn't find an answer to all these questions. And what happened to me at this time? I began to remember and analyze. He wrote, and I trusted, and started living according to his songs and verses. Once he told me: "Maria, I lie in dirt, and you go over my back". Where I go? And what for?

And I, according to his songs, through pain and torments went from person to person, from imperfect love to love perfect, love for the neighbor. The imperfect love was directed on dream, on dreams of his verses. He dreamed in a dream, and I lived in a dream.

Charm - disappointment - pain and again charm, and an actual deep work of the soul through take-offs and fallings, internal search of harmony of reason, soul and body. These three components as three not trained horses dragged me to the different directions. But I strove for a divine love, for something forgotten that I remembered having before.

But the poet reproaches me and insists: “Love me as I love myself - no more and no less!” And I execute his requirements, and in reply - sufferings. But I myself chose his verses, myself I began to embody them in my life. And results of the life - meetings and love for each person, and - unimportant who it is - woman, man, or child, it served as fertilizer to my soul, which as earth prepared for sowing of love for my God on it, love for the neighbor.

I, as earth, exhausted and torn to pieces, ruined by traces of boots and cars, didn't realize that in my bosom a seed of God's love will be put. I perceived my tears and my grief as a war with God, I stormed and revolted.

But an understanding came now, and the pain left, I was tired and ready to a seed, ready to accept and grow up this seed in myself.

I considered as my enemies those who dispossessed me of material, who enticed and tore me from my house, after all they deprived me of the roots. How can I get it all anew now? I took an offense at God that he didn't give me a love of man, deprived me of a family happiness.

Many times I tried to construct a family as everyone, but God had for me another plans. Because once I chose according to songs of my poet, other way.

I thought that this way has no end and edge, but without it I couldn't live any more. It brought inspirations which gave at first a feeling of happiness and completeness of life, and then - loss and disappointments.

My life alternated by all this as day and night, as breath and exhalation. Once there came a most terrible moment - neither a breath, nor an exhalation. An emptiness and dark days. I died with the soul. The source of inspiration ran low. The life lost it's meaning.

And my poet warned me:

                           “Eunuchs of feelings, for you love is sacred,
                           And I stepped over its limits.
                           And farther there was an emptiness,
                           All lighting up with a white dead color.”

Yes, I really got into dead light. There nothing and nobody there.

That is true - love always was sacred for me, it was the only source and meaning of the life. And suddenly that! I didn't want to live further. I damned everything on earth and God who created such world. I wanted to burn and exterminate from the memory all verses, to bury everything in what believed. I hated the poet. He simply a scoundrel, I thought, he enticed me with his verses and brought into the abyss. I could live as other people - to grow rich, successful, to marry by calculation, give birth to children, to drown myself in cares and to forget about love. And he sings to me in the Sister of Mercy:

                           “We are men and women, We will stub against family,
                           Until won't crack it or we – one or the other.”

“But, I'm sorry, I don't want that! As we Russians say, I saw in coffin such a trite life. I will never like it. I don't want to deceive myself! My God, you are my monster!” I shouted like possessed and became so exhausted with myself that once spat on everything - on the poet, on life, and on love. THAT'S IT! ENOUGH!

The only one thing left - to wait for death. But death didn't want to come, she forgot about me. I never was in such rage. It was an apotheosis. I hated myself, a rage boiled inside and couldn't find the way out. There can't be worse then that!

At this moment words of the poet are coming to the mind:

                           “I claim that At Beginning there was not A Word,
                           But - was a Rage!”

Ah, so now all is turning this way, everything goes according to a plan, and I only a toy in someone's cruel and ruthless hands. No! No way. I won't give up.

                          And again a fight.
                          And again a fall.

The fight exhausted my body, soul and reason. The forces ran low, and ones a relaxation had come. I was given to a simple flow of life. And strange thing - the people that exasperated me with calls and requests disappeared. Disappeared without a trace. Rest began to grow in my heart, there was a confidence without any ground.

And some new people came - same but different. Not me, but they began to tell me of what I dreamed.

There came one person who spoke as I thought. An offense filled my heart - so, I was right all these years? But why I couldn't succeed anything? Why nobody heard me when I spoke?

That's late. I'm tired. I don't want to live like that anymore. I DON'T WISH to live as this poet writes anymore. Yes, he molded me according to his songs, or I molded myself, but now I want to be free and to live myself as I want.

Why this young man came? To hurt me? I have no strength to live as I lived. The impulses disappeared, I am not young, and all that. But something whispered to me from inside: "You lie, Maria. You waited for these words. It is your offense on life creeps out. It will pass, and everything about what you wrote an honest truth about you, and all of what you dreamed will happen soon. You are ready!"

But I felt sorry for myself and wanted to cry. And the poet threw me a new hopes:

                           “I will repay all terrestrial debts,
                           I will reveal to you secrets of heavens.
                           My last ones, my natives -
                           The chasm has burst. I revived!”

Well of course, I also wanted it! Always, as I remember myself I want only this! But how? How it happens?

“Marya, you know everything, you described it in your verses. Please, don't deceive yourself. You know who you are! You perfectly know why you came to earth! Marya, you deceived yourself so not to confuse others, you said that the verses came to you from above from God. But this is yours, a gained knowledge of yourself. Now you know who you are. And the one you recognized - you loved. Now you are ready to love someone else.” - So told me an internal voice of the soul.

And a pleasure of realizing of future new love filled my heart. And all the emptiness left. Long live to my new birth! Hello, my Lord! We met! I even know him, he always was with me!

                           “Leave me all - I didn't know you!
                           Return - I Love you.
                           My dream was blind
                           It is fated to light a dawn!”