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Love Is All Around

Love Is All Around

Nothing much has changed when it comes to the map of the human heart. Two dressed-for-success business women are engaged in serious conversation between nibbles of a warm mushroom and ricotta cheese salad. They lean towards each other over the restaurant table, talking not about the crisis over the euro, or the latest merger. They are talking about Love.

Much in the same way, I imagine, our ancestors sat around fires, in mossy caves, talking to each other about their children, their men. Much in the way women of the land  laugh from the depths of their bellies, as they pick tea, hoe the red earth, peel the leaves off maize, talking about the people they hold close to their hearts.

Just like the stars that shine even when we can’t see them, Love is all around. It’s the Field, the Matrix. And when you connect to Love, miracles happen.

Love is all around at airport arrivals, in the cancer ward.  Love is in the eyes of our lover, as we lie, limbs entwined. Love is all around when the parent we have been at war with for years, now lies, just like a little boy, breath rattling in his sunken chest. Love is the flowering of our heart when we hold our first grandchild. Love is the aged family dog, now deaf, almost blind, tail still wagging, warmly welcoming us home.  Love comes  softly sometimes. And there are times when Love strips us naked, flays us bare to the bone.  Love is boundless, arching over barriers that divide race, gender, age, or social status. We fall in love with the married man, the gardener, boss. We find the love we have been searching for all our lives in the soft arms of another woman.

Aphrodite, or Venus, as the Romans named her, is  goddess of love, beauty, and lust.  She  was once a creator-earth goddess, and like other feminine deities she delighted in lusty pleasures, found her Joy in the embrace of handsome young men. She is Woman, relishing the curves and fullness of her body, finding beauty and pleasure in all things sensuous and playful. Her gutsy call to pleasure and beauty is  enticing, and her siren call draws us, to the vortex of our desire.   Love brings lasting happiness and  soulful partnerships. Love  also detonates marriages, divides families, destroys kingdoms, ravages our bodies with venereal (Venus) disease.  Our quest for youth and sexual allure  disfigures our faces and bodies, depletes our bank balances.  “The course of true love never did run smooth,” Lysander laments in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Ask anyone who has tried to navigate the stormy seas of  long distance relationship, or who has loved someone who has committed to be with another. Yet if we honour her respectfully, and connect with the Aphrodite essence within, she always brings us just what we need at just the right time for our soul’s sorrow or joy.

Each one of us has a Venus in our birth chart. Unique by her position in sign, element, and aspect.  Our Venus longs for her own distinctly unique expression. Some of us deny our Aphrodite energy. Or allow our partners to carry it for us. We cage our primal sexuality, wage war against our bodies; bridle our lusts, disconnect  from what makes us feel sensual, feminine, and alive.  Aphrodite’s essence has become split in our Judaic-Christian world view, where femininity, sexuality, our bodies, have been smeared with morality and judgement. Yet, centuries on,  Aphrodite lives  in art, in advertising, literature, and in the characters of  soap operas. Modern Aphrodite’s appear in movies, on the pages of fashion magazines.  She is the diva of song. As distant as the Evening Star,  she is the  wet and wild porn star –  Aprhodite the insatiable  Harlot. As the chorus in Euripides’ play, Hippolytus sing, “neither fire nor stars have stronger bolts than those of Aphrodite.” When we are struck by Aphrodite’s  bolt of Love, we experience a profound stirring of the loins and the soul. Aphrodite initiates  by piercing the armour of our defences, dishevelling our lives. Challenging us to go within and connect with what we value, what feels lovely, delicious, what brings us pleasure. Love is all around, so dance today with Aphrodite!  Allow her to caress you, and delight you with her charms.  Love  and honour your body today.  Tune in. Listen to what it says to you, so you can listen to the call of your soul. Love yourself,  then be truly willing to receive Love – it is all around.

Carrie: Have you?

Mr. Big: Have I what?

Carrie: Ever been in love.

Mr Big: Absofuckinglutely.

Sex and the City

The Troggs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut5uC91FcbI

 

Ingrid Hoffman

ingrid@trueheartwork.com
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