LOVE
The love we are talking
about is far more, incredibly more, than that which we normally call love. Love
is the most positive of human experiences. It is the deepest, most profound, of
human relationships. It is the giving of all you have to give to someone else.
What is love? Love is
beyond definition, it cannot be described in words. No effort to describe love
can in any way answer what love is. Love is beyond human ability to analyze and
evaluate. Yet each of us has, as a part of our very being, an understanding of love.
The love we are talking about is basic, profound, a fundamental part of our
existence. In each and every one of our hearts and minds, and I believe souls,
we know and understand what love is.
Love is so deeply a
part of human beings, so far beyond definition and description, so elusive to
those who halfheartedly seek it, that you will know and understand love only if
you engage in a very personal search of heart and mind and soul which leads to
the very essence of your being. To understand life it is necessary to
understand love. No one can make you understand love,
you alone must be willing to take the inward journey. I will repeatedly urge
you to do so, for nothing can take the place of that understanding.
Most of us think we
already know what love is, when in fact few of us do. Sometime during our lives
the majority of us will believe we have found true love, even though we have
not. Many of us will go to our graves believing we have loved, when we never
loved at all.
For most people, their
understanding of love is hidden deep within. Each time they glimpse love and
feel it trying to surface, they push it back to its resting place. Few are
willing to search for the love that may be found inside them, few are willing
to let their knowledge of love surface. I believe each and every person who
truly wants to know and understand love, and who is willing to search and
search and search their heart, mind, and soul, will know and understand love.
The search is difficult, it is perhaps the most difficult task you will
ever face. If you search your heart, mind, and soul you will find yourself
surrounded by multitudes of conflicting feelings, questions, doubts, etc. These
will draw your attention away from your search, and may make it seem futile and
worthless. If you try to deal with each distraction as it appears, you will end
up floundering from side to side, without direction, your goal appearing on the
horizon yet never getting closer.
Before answering the
many questions love poses, before satisfying your doubts, you should complete
your search. Search your heart, mind, and soul, your being, to know and
understand love. Set aside all questions, doubts, and fears, put all your
energy and thought into your search. First understand love, then ask and answer
questions about it.
It is very hard to
stay on track. Your search will take you through and among daily experiences
and deep memories filled with the emptiness, cruelty, and physical pleasures of
a world where love is seldom seen. The cold glance of strangers on the street,
the reality of poverty in the shadow of enormous wealth, watching people get
sick and die a seemingly final death. Thoughts of food, drink, luxury, sex, all the physical pleasures you could be enjoying. All these
pull at your attention and cause your mind to drift. Your focus is blurred as
first one thing and then another interrupts your search.
Even when you think
you have broken through the fog and are running toward your goal, a tiny
diversion, a moments pause, and you are flung back
into that strange and cloudy state of doubts, not knowing where, if anywhere,
you are. Back in the haze, you may find yourself believing you reached your
goal when you did not. This feeling of success can be strong, and the rush of
living may make it seem even more real since little time is available to stop
and think about who you are, where you have been, and where you are going. What
can happen is that you can make yourself believe you understand love, when in
fact all you have seen is false illusions of love. You may wrongly conclude
that love is really not that special at all.
To allow yourself to
stop short of your goal, to allow yourself to believe you understand love when
you do not, is to condemn yourself to the deep darkness shared by all who live
without love. A darkness few recognize, a blackness the depth of which can be
appreciated only by those who find love. Only those who finish their search
will know and understand love.
Completing the search
requires a willingness to start. It is far easier to live your life following
whatever sort of daily routine you have, over the years, consciously and
subconsciously constructed for yourself, a routine designed to make you feel
good about your life. For most of us this means mixing with our daily
activities that bring us self-satisfaction and physical pleasure, just enough
"good" deeds to give us the illusory feeling that we are "good" people. For better or worse you nurture an image of yourself you
have been developing since childhood. An image that dictates what is expected
of you and rules how you act, making your life a repeating cycle of yesterdays.
Even if you do not
feel good about your life, you are usually more comfortable not straying too
far from the familiar. It is easier to live a "normal" life than to
question and search and change. Yet if you want to know and understand love you
must give the search your all, without fear of, or resistance to, the changes
it may bring in your life. You need to search and search until you know what it
means to love, what it would be like to live in a world where each and every
person loves every other person.
This is more than a
mental exercise. If after your search you believe love is what all people should
give each other, then you have perhaps not only found what gives life meaning
and purpose right now, but also found that which makes it worth having faith in
life beyond the grave. At this point I am not suggesting that you embrace
without question the ideas of eternity and the goodness of love. I am saying
you will find it virtually, or perhaps totally, impossible to decide whether or
not to believe that love is worth living for, if you do not know and understand
what love is. Only when you are willing to search your heart, mind, soul, your
very being, to know love, will you understand the decision to love or not to
love. Only then can you make your choice.
In the remaining pages
of this book we will give some examples of love, discuss what those who love
do, and talk in general about love. Yet nothing we say will bring you an
understanding of love, only your search can do that. Your search will begin
whenever you want it to, and will end whenever you want it to. This book is
useful only if you take the hours, days, months, or years, whatever it takes,
to complete your search. If you stop when you find that half-hearted, fleeting,
shallow thing most people call "love", your efforts will have been
futile and worthless. You will have failed to find what love really is.
It is very easy to
stop short of understanding love. The idea of pure, real love,
is so alien to our experiences, so foreign to the world we live in, we
subconsciously, and even consciously, reject it as a non-existent fantasy. Yet
it does exist. Because we seldom, if ever, witness such love does not mean it
is less than real. Because the experiences of our past and the realities of our
daily existence attack love does not mean it is a fantasy. Our
doubts and fears, desires and temptations, weaknesses and longing to
"live", cannot change the fact that pure, true, real, love exists,
and that people can love one another.
If you love someone
who is hungry, you will give them food; someone who is thirsty, you will give
them water; someone who is cold, you will give them your coat. If you love
someone who is sick, you will care for them until they are well; someone who is
in prison, you will visit them; someone without a home, you will take them home
with you. These are all acts and deeds those who love do for the people they
love. Yet love is far more than the doing of any particular act or deed. While
those who love people will do the things we just mentioned, simply doing
"good deeds" is not the same as loving. Many who do not love do
"good deeds". Many who say they love, and
perhaps even believe they love, if they love at all, do so only halfheartedly
and from moment to moment.
It is hard to say that
someone who feeds a person when they are hungry and then leaves them to find
their own shelter, really loves that person. It is
hard to call love the giving of money to an orphanage, when children's cries
for attention and companionship go unanswered. It is difficult to understand
how someone can say they love a person when they make that person feel they
must applaud their donor for every gift they receive. Love is far more than
acts, deeds, words, or feelings. To love someone, really love someone, is to
give them true, deep, pure, indefinable, indescribable love. It is giving to
others the love that you will find and understand if you complete your search
of heart, mind, and soul.
We said we seldom, maybe never, see true love. You may have
witnessed, or been part of, one of those rare occasions when people truly love
other people. When a mother gently hugs her baby and love flows between them,
when two people’s eyes meet and they exchange soft smiles that flow from the
love in their hearts, when someone gives all they have to help someone in need.
These are moments of true love, moments we choose to give one another. What we
are talking about is love - true, pure, real, love.
If you love, you will
help a stranger who needs help, even if it puts you in danger. If you love, you
will think first about the needs of those you love, and only then think about
your own needs. If you love, you will do what you can, all you can, for
everyone you meet.
Those who really
understand love know in their heart, mind, and soul that love is the greatest
thing in life one human being can give another. If you truly love someone you
are giving them your very best. We have reached an awkward point in trying to
use language to describe a state of being which affects the totality of human
existence. How can we adequately describe how a person who truly loves thinks,
feels, and acts? We can't. Only you can search within yourself to know and
understand love. Unless you have completed your search of your heart, mind, and
soul and know and understand love, you will not understand what I am saying, or
what anyone else is saying, when we tell you about the love we find in our
heart, mind, and soul. So how can you understand what we are saying when we say
love is the best part of human life?
Regardless of human
inability to describe love, you and I and everyone else can look inward to know
and understand love. And when you, or I, or anyone else, completes their search
and knows and understands love, we know and understand that love is indeed the
most positive element of human existence. We know that the very best each of us
can do is to love. We may find it difficult to talk about love with someone who
has not yet finished their search, however once a person understands love they
join all others who have completed their search in a communion of knowledge
which makes communication of ideas about love easy, and makes what is said
clear.
If you have trouble
visualizing love, it may be helpful for you to travel in your mind to a world
where pure love is freely given by every human being to every other human
being. Do not let the fact that such a world does not exist around you
discourage you. We may never choose to fill our world with pure love. Yet
because each of us can choose love, such a world is possible! Let yourself feel
in your heart, mind, and soul the love such a world would be filled with.
Visualize in your
heart, mind, and soul a place where you love every person, and where every
person loves you. Feel the joy of love flowing from you to every person, and
from every person to you. No war, or even anger, no prisons. No loneliness, no
hunger, no poverty. Instead that world would be an incredible place filled with
peaceful joys of love not only shared by, but in fact chosen by, all who live
there.
It may take minutes,
or it may take years, for you to enter that world in your imagination and feel
the glowing warmth and peace. Now is the time to start your trip. If visions of
a place filled with love do not come to you today, try again tomorrow, or next
week. Keep letting your heart, mind, and soul drift off to a world of pure
love. Love every person you meet in that world and let them love you in return.
At this point you
should sit back and think about what is being said, for in these few pages we
have jumped from looking for something worth living for, to the suggestion that
you search yourself for an understanding of love, to the idea that all people
should love one another. If you have not searched your heart, mind, soul, your
very being, and do not yet understood love, what we are saying may seem interesting
but not profound. I wish I could think of words and logical arguments that
would make true, pure, real, love, crystal clear to you, but I can't. We are
simply not talking about the kind of understanding that comes from reasoned
analysis. I could fill these pages with elegant prose and poetry describing
love, yet not one word would have the power or effect that even a fleeting
inward glimpse of love has.