Mother Love

Maternal love represents the finest expression of selfless devotion. As the earth bestows abundance to all, so does the mother serve the child and those in her care, replicating the impersonal love inherent in all the species. At every level of existence, maternal love bonds the baby with the mother, often at a profound level of intimacy and affection. Even the ferocious looking crocodile lovingly cradles her young in jaws that can crush bone. To observe such tenderness often invokes compassion with the intrinsic goodness and integrity of life.

The mother bears the pain of childbirth, which she endures as an action of impersonal love on behalf of another. In this intense physical and emotional process, a woman experiences the trauma of creation as a body of life struggles to enter existence. At birth the baby is reassured by the lunar elixir that is the sustenance of the mother’s milk. The ‘moo’ of the cow, as all dairy farmers know, is an instinctual utterance of the creature’s lunar nature. The space of the solar system symbolises the universal womb, which is forever pregnant with the idea of life. Birth and death, the beginning and end of earth existence, is a passage in time between the abstract and physical polarities of reality.  

Within the physical womb there’s a far more profound interaction between mother and foetus than is commonly known. The womb is a highly sensitised space, charged with the active life force generated within the fresh infant body. From conception the developing embryo is sustained, not only by the surge of life but from the consciousness impressed within inner space. The embryonic life form registers everything that is being experienced through the mother’s awareness; the normal exchange of words being unnecessary due to the unity within the flesh of the two bodies. This immediacy of being between mother and child begins to make her flesh glow with a golden radiance. Some women become so attached to this exalted state of pregnancy that they’re willing to undergo all of the pain and trauma of childbirth to experience it again. The magnetic pull for sexual union between partners is the endeavour to reach this divine union in the physically mature bodies.

In many cultures, the mother is venerated as the matriarch of the family. In the great myth of man and woman the inner light of the mother reflects a different glow to that of the father. Just as the external moon is a reflector of the rays of the sun, the mother’s light is softer and infuses the space of the home and environment with feminine passive power. The maternal love creates an ambience of purified space in which to nurture her children and protect them from any hostile forces of the world. Children raised in love and truth ensures that any emotional attachment between mother and child is minimal and that neither suffers as a consequence of being separated, either physically or in death. In ancient cultures this honouring of life united each member of the family in the consciousness of love, which was the immortal state of the original family unit. But in our western culture today, the original power of the one family that is the human spirit in matter has been profaned and is now a shadow of its former glory.

Every woman symbolises the mother principle, regardless of whether they have children of their own. For the mother is symbolic of the earth from which all life forms arise in matter. The matter is the mater which supports and fructifies the innumerable forms of life expressed through the myriad species and organisms of the earth. Woman’s deepest desire while alive in a body is to be able to enter her womb at will. Until she can do this she will never find peace as an uninterrupted state of being. Man’s deepest desire while alive is to enter woman’s womb and to accompany his beloved in conscious union back to this place of original love. The impulse to make love conscious is what keeps the world moving and is replicated instinctively through the life and death cyclic process of all living things. Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of the modern era is the absence of any real knowledge of death that not even the most brilliant scientific mind can address with any reality. The dead, although no longer visible, retain a presence which can be reached where love endures or, conversely, any unresolved issues still linger at the subconscious level of mind.

If, as sometimes happens, there have been things left unsaid or when emotional negativity prevails, it’s to connect with the love of that being and inwardly say what is most significant and real. Whatever the relationship anyone has, or has had, with the mother (or perhaps the father), there is always something to be acknowledged and for which to be grateful. For example, in bearing the pain at childbirth she served, even if shortly afterwards as sometimes happens she had to abandon the child. Be simple and forthright and declare that you are no longer holding on to any of the pain or confusion from the past. Death when approached in the absence of emotional grief or remorse affords the opportunity to put right with another that which was not necessarily possible while alive. Such a conscious action is cathartic and self-healing, and has the power to dissolve any impediment that would prevent that being from going on into the deeper reality of life beyond existence.