Ludus Amoris - The Game of Love

[Nikolai1]

I can wake up in the morning, a normal day, no dreams to report and yet for some reason - I don't know why - there's a weight weighing me down.  I try and work it out, but I went to bed cheerful and here it is descended upon me as if from nowhere.  I know the day will be a write off. I know that I can expect nothing from it, that it is a day that must be tolerated patiently. The kind of day that I'll be pleased to end by going to bed early.

 

But then in the afternoon, still six hours to go, I'm out walking and the puddle at the bottom of my drive is suddenly not a puddle but the boundless sky itself, flecked with pink clouds, an expansive abyss at my feet. Seeing the puddle is the sudden end to the gloom. Suddenly my soul is filled with the deepest most profound peace. I can barely think, the beauty inside me is so strong that the very idea of gloom is an impossibility in this world.  But in a secret recess of my mind I wonder where this beauty and peace came from...

 

I am a puppet.  The most intimate motions of my soul come and go with a force and rapidity that has absolutely nothing to do with me. I cannot help but stand and watch, a mere observer. A few hours of this, a few hours of that...somebody is playing some kind of game.

 

So this is surely what the old Christian mystics called the Ludus Amoris.  God must invade us at our most intimate depths.  There is nothing at all for us to control. Very humbling. Very hard to take.

[Songtsan]

What goes up must come down and vice versa. Is this killing yin energy? Is this the part where you withdraw from sensations, to return when the heavenly energy returns?

[Nikolai1]

In some ways it makes you bored of the whole process.