The Last Metamorphosis
Love does not conquer all. We surrender to love because it is all.
Love does not conquer all. We surrender to love because it is all. Peace is the realization that the need to get somewhere, be something, is all based on ignorance of our true nature. It does not mean that all activity ceases, it means you re-orient yourself to the realization that “you” are both the ground of the activity and the activity itself, you are both the witness and what is being witnessed.
We are already there. All of us. There is no us. That is the mind-boggling step, what the mind can’t grasp but the heart can feel. To realize there is no “you”, “us”, “others”, there is no “there” or “now”.
Whatever needs conquering presupposes an opposition, whereas love is what is beyond oppositions and rejoices in their dance. The reason why love is unconditional is because it is beyond duality. The last step of Eros is to be Love beyond the opposition (negative/positive or masculine/feminine or any polarities) that motivated its ascent.
We all experience glimpses of it, but then forget. To be awake is to live in a state of αλήθεια (the word for truth in Greek, etymologically related to that which is not forgotten or hidden), to follow Eros all the way to Cosmic Love (the Neo-Platonic “One”) and once you do, all is love, for love is all there is.
No humans, no aliens, no spirits, no gods. But an ecstatic dance of love giving birth and death, to all forms, to gods, spirits, aliens, humans, animals and the whole circus of existence, in equal measure, like a child playing.
This is why the Child is the last metamorphosis in Nietzsche. This is why Jesus said that unless we change and become like little children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is love, and you cannot conquer it, you can only surrender to it. You cannot “get there” because it is not “somewhere”, it is a state of being. Once you realize it with your whole soul, all karma is extinguished, nirvana = samsara, everything is redeemed, and you laugh like a child at the cosmic joke you were not getting even though it was everywhere, all the time, staring at you, playing with you, teasing you.
The kingdom of heaven is within us. This world will change as we dwell and act from love1. All those “serious” people in suits and positions of power, are traumatized children, building kingdoms to protect themselves from the absence of love and to conquer the only place you need to surrender to get to.
This insight crystallized powerfully inside me towards the end of the film Mary Magdalene, especially during the scene Mary Magdalene faces her fellow Apostles one last time.