Avocado Love

The impatience of youth propels us in and out of Love at rocket speed, sometimes at the rate of one or more girlfriends or boyfriends a week. We’re indiscriminate in youth. Our puppy loves are actually likes, but we call them Love. Parents try to guard the hearts of children when the temporary glow of the week’s infatuation begins to wane. Parents know the milieu children face as hormones fly, curiosity rages, and self-doubt looms around each corner in the school hallways. We also know we can’t really protect them, but we hope to soften the blow.

Eventually these temporary whims give way to real Love. Not every Love works out, however. Sometimes uppercase Love turns out to be lowercase love, and we begin our search anew. Each time we search, however, we search with the advantage of having learned something from the failed love. When circumstances send us back to the marketplace, we know better what we’re looking for. We learn to discriminate, and we know with greater accuracy when we find the right mate. We’re no longer interested in the revolving door. We search a foundation upon which to build life anew with another. Is there passion in mature Love? Of course! Is there laughter? Of course! Is mature Love thrilling? Of course! What has changed then from our teenage years?

What has changed is the certainty. We know more of what we want in Love, and we know what we don’t want. When Love resonates within us, we know it’s not mere puppy infatuation. We know we’re responding instead to a deeply resonating energy, a corresponding chord emanating from another. We know the difference between a tickle, a fancy, a whim, and a vibrant, harmonic rhythm.

“How do you know for sure,” my sister once asked me. “How do you know she’s the one?”

I replied that there was no way I could satisfy her with an explanation of my certainty. “Many feel certainty and faith in religious convictions,” I said. “I am certain of, and place my faith in Love.”

“But you’ve been wrong before,” she said. “How do you know you’re right this time?”

I am certain as the Buddhist is certain, as the Christian is certain, as the Hindu is certain, as the Jew is certain, as the Muslim is certain, and on and on and on. None of them is wrong. Each is certain. Each has a deep conviction, an unshakable knowing. I too have a deep conviction and unshakable knowing. “This Love is not a product of impatient youth,” I said.

My Lover swims in me and I in her. How else can she, out of town at the moment, think of avocados and ask me if we needed any at home—at precisely the same instant I placed an avocado in my shopping cart? We hadn’t spoken of avocados; she couldn’t know what I was planning for dinner. But she knew I was placing an avocado in my cart.

Deepak Chopra talks about the unified concept of “mindbody” instead of two separate entities. He explains how there must be intelligence wrapped within every cell of our body. This intelligence helps the mind and body react to the incessant and almost infinite number of interactions between and among the cells in our body every second.

There’s a spiritual concept of pervasive, infinite intelligence we are all bathed in. Some label the concept “God.” and then shape the intelligence to their liking. I rather like the idea of a boundless, shapeless intelligence; an omnipresent, ever-pervasive intelligent energy. This intelligence secrets the oak inside the acorn, hides the adult human in the zygote, and directs trillions of molecules inside our bodies to enable us to think, breathe, and Love.

We used to think the heart is what drove the magnificent bodies we occupy. Then we thought it was the soul, and then we thought the brain. Now, we’re beginning to see intelligence within us but outside the brain. We see that cells have receptors to facilitate interaction with chosen chemicals. And we see that the cells can change their receptors to attract different chemicals.

Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and other spiritual thinker-writers talk of the infinite intelligence, about how we are made of energy and that we only perceive ourselves as the body we see reflected in the mirror. We tap a finger on the table and think both the table and the finger are solid. But in reality, we know we’re made of atoms and we know that down on the subatomic level, there are spaces between the atoms. These spaces are large enough for the infinite intelligence to swirl and dance around us and pass right through us. What’s this got to do with Love?

Well, I think that when we are in Love, Love energy acts in the same manner as the ever-pervasive intelligent energy. The mindbody of Love is the Ourself. When we are in Love, our cells are bathed in Love. We breathe it in and we breathe it out. We drink it in with every glass of water. Love swims around inside us and bathes our trillions of cells; it fires chemical reactions. It fuels us, warms us, and heals us.

I believe that when we are in Love, we experience a synchronicity with our Lover that mimics the infinite intelligence. A simple molecule sets off a chemical reaction in a male moth that allows him to find, court, and mate with the female who released the pheromone. His receptors identify the particular molecule despite all the dust, pollen, water, and other non-moth pheromones floating about in the air.

If he can do that, then obviously my Lover can sense an avocado in my hand despite our distance, and despite all the “noise” and interference between us. We communicate instantly and without wires because my thought energy radiates out and is picked up by her receptors fine-tuned to receive my signals. My receptors likewise scan for her presence. Her thought energy surrounds me, and mine her; we are quite literally “in” Love because Love surrounds us.