Novalis

“We are alone with everything we love.”

I thought about this quote in a few different ways. Considering Emerson referred to Novalis as a “pure romantic,” one way I interpreted this quote was how it feels to be completely and utterly head over heels in love. When you’re in that mode, you and your significant other can be in a room with a thousand people and yet it feels like the only two people in the room are just you and the one you love. Another way I interpreted this quote is how it feels to lose someone or something that you love. You really are alone with the pain or disappointment you can feel from love. Whether it is that you broke up with someone or that someone you loved has passed away, even when friends and family are trying to support you or cheer you up, you are the one who feels that love and the pain from losing that love. You can only cheer yourself up. Another way I thought about this quote was that we are the only ones who truly know how we feel. Another person can have an idea of what we’re feeling, but nobody can know your heart but you.

“There is only one temple in the world and that is the human body.”

I felt like this was saying what many of our previous readings have stated-that it is not a temple, church, or another person that creates our relationship with God. God’s grace, heaven, or enlightenment will not be given to us through outside sources, but will be discovered within ourselves. You don’t have to go somewhere else to worship. You just have to look inside yourself to see the truth and know the truth. Buddha said,”Be a lamp to yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold to the truth within yourself, as to the only truth..You are all Buddhas. There is nothing that you need to achieve. Just open your eyes". I think that is the message here. We are all capable of understanding truth and God. Simply showing up at a church every week isn’t guaranteeing anything or necessarily bringing you any closer to anything. Like my grandmother always told me,”It’s on the inside that counts.” So if the “kingdom of heaven is within you” as Jesus has said, then it doesn’t matter what you’re doing in the outside world in front of other people; it only matters what is in your own heart and what you are doing when you think that no one is watching. The outside temple isn’t going to help you anyway if the inside temple is in disarray.

“When you understand how to love one thing-then you understand how best to love everything.”

I think the one thing he’s referring to is ourselves. You can’t truly be happy with anything around you unless you are first happy with yourself. Once you figure out how to love yourself and feel content with who you are, you can love other people and allow other people to really know and love you. This quote reminded me of the quote in the Ramana Maharshi reading that said,”If the mind is happy, not only the body but the whole world will be happy. So one must find out how to become happy oneself. Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.” I think that loving yourself is like wearing shoes. If you’re trying to love other things and other people when you don’t even love yourself, it’s like walking barefoot over thorns-you’re not going to get very far.