Here, journalist and organizer Cincinnatus Hibbard offers the second of two sneak peeks at elements of his forthcoming book, ‘Love is The Answer.’
Part one of the previously published piece (headlined, ‘The Word We Need,’ and available on our website) ends with a choice between love and fear, in this life, and in the present political moment. In the past, as Hibbard suggests, love was not considered a viable choice—perhaps because it was ill defined—vague, misty, numinous. Here, he defines what love is, and why it is the answer. —Editor
I will now undrape for you a defined definition of love (in its mystical aspect).
It flashes out. In its form, this definition is a list—a list of qualities and traits bound in complex (a red cut jewel beyond price).
Attend, lovers—just as “love is the answer,” love is the answers. Each quality of love is a direct answer to a different problem (in these challenging times). As you read each of these traits, think of their binary opposites—they are the qualities of fear, and “the system” itself is defined.
Love is Otherworldly.
Love is a realm and a world apart. Recall being in bed with your lover and young love, and feeling that the screaming world was so far away. This new world is uncanny, strange and new. Not because it is upside down, but because it is right side up.
Love is Gentle and Tender.
Love is Peaceful.
Let me define this aspect of love through its antithesis, fear. Power (really, fear) is in competition with everyone. And absolute power is at war with everyone, and indeed at war with everything—all of creation. Everything is a threat because power is afraid of everything. In a state of love, we are, if transiently, at harmony with everything.
Love is Slow.
Love is Timeless.
In this world defined by fear, we are ruled by the ticking clock, by calendars, by schedules filling with appointments and deadlines until the staccato pace of life is taken at a run. When love is embodied, time is suspended. The power of clocks is broken. You step into a realm that is timeless and eternal.
Love is a True Destination.
When you chase status and ambition, there is no destination, no rest. You are forever running (scared). Attend. Love is the only thing in the universe that has the quality of arriving at a true destination—it is the place of rest and repose. Which is why we call love “home.”
Love is Magic.
Real magic is wonder—wonder for the real, everyday miracles of life. Love brings you into a child-like state of awe.
Love is Euphoric.
In this corrupt world, damaging drugs are used to approximate euphoria. But unlike drugs, love does not degenerate mind, body and soul. Love can be used for euphoria every day, and it makes you healthier.
Love is Healing.
If you want to undo the bodily ravages of cortisol (the stress hormone), try oxytocin (the love hormone). Love restores the tissues.
Love is Healed.
Transient love allows you to experience what it is to be whole and complete in yourself, previewing the end (the destination) of your trauma healing journey.
Love is Connection and Omni-Connectiveness.
Love is Union and Unity.
Love is Abundant.
Love is Satiated.
Nothing to do, nowhere to go—love satisfies and fulfills as nothing else can. Power (fear) is a hungry ghost whose yearnings and appetites can never be appeased.
Love is Grateful.
Love is Accepting.
Love is Ego Death.
In all ages, a willingness to die (for a child or a lover or a sacred cause) has been the greatest test and expression of love. The ultimate sacrifice is made and made without hesitation because, in love the lover has experienced “ego death.” In love, there is a detaching from ego, and a willing shedding of property and land and personal titles, jobs, roles, reputation, one’s story and one’s name—and even one’s body—one’s life.
In love, they fall away like a mask and draping disguise, leaving all that remains—spirit, soul or just a pure loving essence…
Love is Liberation and True Freedom.
Love is Fearless.
Love is Safe.
Again, we chase wealth and status because power appears to be the place of safety in this unsafe world. But that is illusory—there is no safety in this world. Only in a state of love can we feel truly safe—perhaps because we are at peace with losing all our wealth and status.
Love is Sacred.
I once attempted to define what is sacred to me. Ask yourself, what is sacred in this profane world? To me, it is the moments of deep vulnerable connection (love) and things charged with the associations of love (family photos, hand-made gifts, love letters and wedding rings).
Love is Perfect and Perfection.
That closes the open list. In summary, love is otherworldly, peaceful, tender, slow, timeless, a true destination, euphoric, magic, healing, healed (whole), connected, abundant, satiated, grateful, accepting, egoless, liberated, fearless, safe, sacred and perfection. And in contrast—the contrast of opposed antitheses, power (fear) is worldly, violent, harsh, fast, timed, without destination or rest, hurt, disenchanted, sickening, incomplete, isolated, in a state of scarcity, ungrateful, rejected and rejecting, egotistical, scared, imprisoned, unsafe, corrupt and imperfect.
Love is the Answer
On a narrative note, the last section is the note I sent to those two operators (in part one) the day after our meeting—the morning after my late night revelation (intellectual orgasm).
Recall those two interlocking social problems that those players brought me—those of over-consumption and over-work. Recollect that we had been at an impasse—we had no solution that didn’t seem to make things worse. Now take those two issues, and make a longer list of all the intractable problems of the world. With our fears and anxieties, we can extend that list almost without limit.
There’s environmental degradation and mass extinction, political polarization, immigration and human trafficking, congressional deadlock, inequality and fascism, international rearmament (etc., etc., etc). They are all impasse issues, and for now, they are all getting worse—as trends you can follow them, like fuses, to a general explosion, and a future where all is night.
Tranquilo, lovers. Have another look at the 21 bound qualities of love. While not a direct solution, I ask you—can you think of a single social issue or conflict that would not be eased, loosened, soothed, smoothed and remedied, if not outright cured, by a visitation by these 21 loving qualities? Consider the effects of (re)connection and egolessness on our politics alone…
As here defined, definitively, love reveals itself as the all-medicine. Love is the panacea to cure all of what ails this sick—and dying world.
Here and now—at long last, we can declare that Love is The Answer. That night, I shouted it into the darkness—eureka. I have found it.
…And yet, somehow, the changes worked by love are more than a cure … they amount to a total transformation. Enclose the list of love in the shell of conceptual totality by drawing a round circle from its last quality, “perfection,” back to its first quality, “otherworldliness,” taking them all in. Break that first word into bits—it becomes “other world,” and “another world.” …Love is not simply de-escalation or reform capitalism—love contains within it the seed of a new world…
…But out of fear, the old world and its powers will stand up to defend the status quo—with fearsome tooth and claw (and a lot of guns). So which will win out, love or fear?
Love vs. Fear
At the climax of part one, I posed a choice—the choice between love and fear.
Cut through the noise to the bone. It is the choice that stands before us in this moment
in time—in history—in society—in the rooms and places of countless confrontations—will we choose to love or to fear—and submit or attempt to overpower?
A choice is a conflict within ourselves. And in this, it is a conflict between two. So let us match them. Imagine this choice as two people opposed over any intractable issue.
One embodies the 21 qualities of love, and is unarmed. The other embodies the 21 qualities of fear, but has all of the armaments of power. One has been made saint-like by love, and one has been made monstrous by fear.
Which will win?
Power wins, right? Power is, after all, power—it has the guns and the police and the prisons…
Think again.
In a mystical state of love, a person is made fearless. You can hurt them, but they cannot be harmed—emotionally, they feel true safety. Egoless and unattached, love is quite ready to give its life. Whereas for all its ferocity, power is mortally afraid. Moreover, love has everything power (fear) wants and cannot have (satiety, rest, repose, healing, connection, bliss, etc., etc.). Love is all we want. Power cannot seize these things—they disappear as it closes its heavy fist. But it need not do so, because true love offers these things to “the enemy” freely and compassionately.
Love is unarmed and it is vulnerable, but love has a power—a power that is not power, and a force that is not force. Love overcomes, not by destruction but by defection, by conversion—by embracing “enemies” to unify all.
Love wins. In inner choice and outer conflict, love prevails—so choose love. I have.
There is a quote without attribution that hangs in my home, over my workspace. On a red and pink piece of foam core, it reads, “Love is the revolution everyone is waiting for. And when it truly arrives, it will be unresisted.” …Love will be a revolution without guns.
The Problem With the Solution
Definitively, Love is The Answer. …But is there a problem with the solution?
In this fearful world, love is thought to be rare—and perhaps the scarcest and most expensive commodity of all. Whereas fear is seemingly limitless. Perhaps, psychologically speaking, fear is the true product and consumable of the world-capitalist machinery. So… Is love too rare to be the answer?
…I agree that people are afraid. And while I agree that most things (controlled property) are charged with a certain anxiety, I posit the posture that “love is scarce” is actually part of the self-breeding and self-protecting ideology of Power. That is to say, “that’s just what they want you to think.”
In my new dedicated (consecrated) pursuit of love, I have come to believe that love is infinite—and free. To the satisfaction of my own skepticism, I have proven it by accessing love and love’s 21 qualities from little things and unlikely things everywhere—and even from challenging things (like sadness, judgement, heartbreak, litter, childhood trauma, political conflict, contentious issues and even the end of the world—hint, hint; it is only the end of the system of fear and oppression). Though morally complex, aspects of love can be seen in these bad and horrible things with the right lens.
And each time we do so, love becomes more and more abundant. And fear more scarce. And a new world draws closer to its dawning.
Across the chapters of this book, I will show you. And you will see. Follow me. I am not a leader; I am led—in pursuit of love and the mystical experience.
If you and I are ever parted, remember these words:
These are truly scary times. And there is worse to come. There will be disasters and paroxysms of fear as the old world thrashes through its death spirals. Come what may, choose love. Let love be your oracle and guide. Ask love; follow love; be love—it knows the way.
Learn more: Join Cincinnatus Hibbard in his pursuit of love into the next world at loveistheanswerbook.substack.com. There, his book, ‘Love is The Answer,’ is being published as a serial. Subscribers can expect chapters that inspire love, along with audiobook recordings set to ambient electronica, original art, films, tips and tricks, as well as performance dates and workshops leading into his book release and beyond.
