The experience of love is the most fulfilling and important experience we can have, the highest of all values. Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our complacency and indifference to know the reality, the centrality, of love. Without becoming passive, we can stop resisting and submit to Love. We begin to see the ínfinite power of Love as the greatest cause in the universe, and little by little we begin to serve it. Eventually, we begin to see that even a bitter drink is sweet when it is from the Beloved.
In THE SNOW LEOPARD, Peter Matthiesen describes his son, Alex:
In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for near an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying, birdsong and sweet smell of privet and rose. The child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginnings, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through.
