|
|
|
Love
The most impressive means to man's positive
function
Its qualities and goals
Love is a value; a feeling; a unique, basic, vital positive energy, of
great intensity, instilled within us by the Creator. It is a
creative energy, which creates, develops and motivates our every
positive activity. It is our spiritual spring. It is the most
impressive gift, granted us by our Creator.
According to the philosophers of ancient Greece, love is the
energy that created and moves the universe and all that it
contains.
According to God's words in "Kriat Shema" (which
will be elucidated further on) love will extend man's days on
Earth for eternity.
I allow myself to add that love is the
means that brings us to properly express Good and in doing so,
to realize our purpose.
God's special emphasis on love and His numerous attempts to
convince us to realize it, point to its great significance, but
also to our basic problem in expressing it.
Love is also a unique, and necessary, spiritual nourishment. It
is the 'glue' that stabilizes our spirituality, in order to
function in a wise and truthful manner. It could be said
that most people hunger for this food.
Love also neutralizes many of our negative phenomena and
induces happiness, peace, harmony, confidence, trust,
encouragement, unity and so forth. Love is also the means, which
leads us to find Good everywhere.
It is the most efficient tool
for bringing people closer; bringing with it a daring to
approach the other to grant him assistance, protection and
primarily, the most sought-after and precious thing – love. It
is also the most efficient means of approaching God.
True love stands behind acts of love,
such as: assistance, mercy, forgiveness, recognition, esteem,
protection, care, sympathy and consideration. It is the tool
which transforms a defenseless baby into a wise emotionally mature
adult, capable of dealing with most of life's challenges. Human
beings are attracted to each other, primarily because of their
giving and receiving that unique energy called love.
When you turn to someone with genuine love, you cannot
simultaneously act against him. You can only act to benefit him.
I presume some of you have experienced this wonderful
phenomenon.
God's creation of the universe is an expression of Good, and is
therefore an expression of love. And, as we shall see later on,
it is an expression of love at infinite intensity, which is why
every detail of this creation, including man, is essentially
positive and was created to express Good. It can therefore be
said that His "Word" is an inseparable part of that creation,
and hence, is also an expression of love.
Every positive act is more perfectly performed when it is
accompanied with love. Most of us recognize the importance of
love between a man and a woman in building their future, in the
success of the sexual act and the degree of its fertility.
The root cause of a man's impotence and of a woman's frigidity
lies, among other things, in a difficulty in the expression of
mutual love. This phenomenon is not unique to man. A connection
of love can be recognized in other animals' fertility and
survival, even much more dramatically than in mankind. It is so
marvelous to discover love in birds, in the cooperation between
the male and the female in building their nest and raising their
chicks.
It can therefore be said that love is amongst the most
important of our spiritual means and perhaps the most important
one of all.
Man's expressions of love
We have a need to express love, but also inhibitions in
expressing it. I will not be exaggerating by saying that one of
the principle aims of God's revealing Himself before us, is to
bring us to properly express genuine love.
Expressing love is a condition for our development, function
and long term positive progress. This is also the condition for
man and humanity's existence on Earth and perhaps also on any
other planet, on which life similar to ours exists.
The need to receive love appears already at early infancy,
possibly even from the inception of pregnancy. The need to
bestow love appears after our initial spiritual maturity. We
call the one who provides love, as "lover" and the one who
receives it, as "beloved". Inside each of us are both, at a
certain level of activity.
The mature personality is more on the providing side and the
childish one is primarily on the receiving end. A proper
expression of love is when we provide and receive it. Giving and
receiving love are one of our Creator's most precious gifts,
perhaps even the most precious gift of all.
The object of love has to be esteemed in order to be loved
You cannot love an object you consider worthless. The same is
true as regards an object, an animal, a person and a collective.
Each creation in and of itself and all of them together are of
value, since they were created by the infinite intelligence
called God. His Grace did not create anything without value. The
capacity of seeing value in a creation of God, creates the
ability to love this creation, thereby enabling one to see its
beauty and genuine good, as eloquently expressed by the
philosophers of ancient Greece.
The awareness that every person was created in God's own image,
transforms each person into someone of great value, and thereby
builds the foundation for loving the other. On the other hand, a
person's low self-esteem transforms every person into someone of
little value, which is why such a person finds it hard to
express love towards the other.
The higher you estimate an object's worth to be, the more love
will you express towards it. It follows, that our grandest and
purest love could only be directed towards that which possesses
infinite value, which is God Himself. We call it 'love of God'.
But we ourselves are also a very valuable creation, since we
were created in God's own image, and therefore we too can be
loved with similar intensity and purity, namely, in the pattern
of the love for God. The more we internalize this wonderful
truth, the more complete will our realization of this love be.
"State of love" – The suitable consciousness for receiving
and granting love
In order to receive and transmit true love, we must be in a
suitable consciousness; one in which conditions like unity and
inner harmony with ourselves and our surroundings are fulfilled,
and primarily with the subject to whom we beam our love. This is
the consciousness in which only Good is performed. We shall
refer to it as "love consciousness" or as the "love state".
It is remarkably similar to the Alpha state, with which we are
familiar. It could be said that the love state is a more
elevated one due to its high capacity for expressing love.
One of the special methods of entering the love state is in
giving genuine love to the other. If you can express love
towards the other every time you encounter him, whether in
reality or in your imagination, you will have created an
efficient method of quickly entering this special consciousness.
Due to the inability to perform anything negative while being in
the state of love, it inherently represents a suitable soil for
the creation and development of the most exalted capabilities.
Already some 2500 years ago, the Greek philosophers defined a
lover's wondrous quality, according to which the true lover is
the one who enables Good to rule him, something that can only
occur in a state of love, since it is only in that state that
these conditions exist.
Being in a state of exuding and receiving love most of our time,
means being in the natural state, God created and designed us to
be in. This consciousness is also among the most important and
marvelous gifts bestowed on us.
Love - an important factor in healing man
Intelligent powers of healing are also created, developed and
activated in the state of love. You can direct these exalted
forces towards the other by using your imagination, while you
express sincere love towards him. Therefore, it is recommended
that also the healer or doctor adopt this approach with their
patients. If this approach would be the norm in modern medicine,
the world's health would be at a much higher level. In order to
create and make the most use of these forces, a suitable process
of development has to be implemented.
I won't be far from the truth if I claim that in the love
state, we are far more resistant to disease, whether brought on
by germs or by ourselves. The recovery from illness or painful
injury is also accelerated in a state of love. A reasonable
chance exists that many more very special powers would be
created and employed to our benefit, if we maintain our stay in
the love state most of the time and experience what this
wondrous state has to offer.
The other's influence on our love's
expression
Since we are an imperfect creation, human society influences our
capabilities of expressing love. We often long for the other's
encouragement in order to express it. We express love towards
one person and not to another, since he provides us with
"encouragement", enabling its flow. When we refer to attraction
or chemistry between two people, what is actually referred to,
is the encouragement and actual flow of love between them.
Often, the lover's attitude is that which encourages the beloved
to receive his love.
These expressions between people have turned, in one way or
another, to accepted norms of behavior in human society.
Just as the other and society help encourage the expression of
love, they also inhibit and even arrest its flow, with all its
implications. We cannot express sincere love in a human society,
in which we are treated with hostility and hatred.
The ideal society for the development of love between a person
and his friend is a society that elevates man's self-worth. In
this society, unity, good will, appreciation, consideration and
assistance to the other, are all prominent. It is also a
society, which due to its values, is suitable for democratic
life. In such a society, a democratic regime would be run
properly.
Identifying true love
Due to the difficulty in expressing genuine love, man has
developed many substitutes, like pretences and hypocrisy, which
grew into social habits. What follows, are some important
indicative signs of genuine expressions of love: positive acts
for the other's benefit and in parallel, an inability of
expressing hatred or performing negative actions.
Displaying estimation, respect
and coming close to the other; as well as the emission of
positive energy, alluded to above
|
|
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do
that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the
final word in reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The
good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
What is demanded of genius is love of truth.
Wolfgang
von Goethe
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
Wolfgang von Goethe
Those
who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from
themselves.
James M. Barrie:
"Whoever is kind to the creatures of God is kind to
himself."
Mohammed
Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly
endless.
Mother Teresa
The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts
of a person's life.
William Wordsworth
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the
thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
Wolfgang
von Goethe
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens
Where love is, there God is also.
Mohandas Gandhi
Where there is love there is life.
Mohandas Gandhi
People need
your hearts to love them.
So, spread your love everywhere you go
Mother Teresa
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which
rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such
a method is love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes
others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop
inner happiness and peace
the Dalai Lama
|
