Love is one of our greatest aspirations. We can talk a lot about it and march it around our various modes of cultural expression. Yet it is also something that we can fight very shy of. We can easily project it in our outer worlds as a means of avoiding it. We often want it in our lives without really knowing what it is. We can often chase it without necessarily approaching it. What is love?
Love is not just an emotion. It very often finds expression through the medium of emotions and feelings. But such expression does not define the totality of love. It is much more than this. It is more an outflow of light from the highest level we can reach into the focus of our awareness in the present moment. The quality of our love is very much determined by where we are coming from. If we are coming from our emotional level only this colours the nature of the expression. We can truly love by coming from the highest levels of our being and pouring light from this level. Such love is not soppy nor sentimental. It carries all the power and force of creation behind it. It has the power to create, to transform, to heal, to make new. Love expressed from such levels is the essence of creativity and indeed of creation. Pure love is light from the source projected into manifestation. It draws all to its bosom and ultimately carries all back to the Source along the great waves and cycles of expression and abstraction, the in breath and out breath of creation.
Love is neither sentimental nor weak. At its higher expressions it has the power to create and integrate or re-absorb worlds, even whole universes. It has power to penetrate and transform even the hardest or toughest recipients. Love is strong. It requires a strong and whole person to love truly and to rely on or work from the power of love. It is easier in the short term but much less effective over the longer term to take the short cuts, to attain our ends by force or aggression.
Love can be tough. It works for our higher good rather than panders to our wishes or desires for the moment. It is not necessarily indulgent.
Love is free. It is not a limited resource. It is fundamentally creative. It creates and multiplies with every new expression. The more you give the more you have. It is a flow from the infinite resources of the Source. The only limits are those we place ourselves to contain it. However, the more we try to hold on to it the more it avoids us as it seeks freedom to flow along its full trajectory into expression and back to the source.
Love can find expression at many levels of reality. It finds very real and wholesome expression at the physical level, where it can help to integrate and to create new expressions of life at this level. It can find equally powerful and effective expression at intermediate and higher levels of reality.
Love can find expression at many levels of relationship from an abstract spiritual love for God to the intensity and sheer immediacy of a parent child relationship. All such relationships are the workshops, in which we forge our experience of and interaction with and through love in all its manifestations. We effectively learn on the job. Such relationships provide us with the immediate and practical experience, we need to implement the theory and idealism we nurture in our quieter moments.
Any outer expression of love does not truly nor adequately define it. It derives its essence and power from the deeper and higher inner levels of reality that Source it. By the time it attains gross or formal outer expression it will have undergone many levels of conditioning. It is expressed with greater power and purity at the subtler levels of reality. It is best experienced at such levels.
Love in its fullest expression is not focused on a particular objective or outcome. It is not exclusive in what it targets. In its higher and purer expressions, it is increasingly unconditional. It simply flows to embrace, animate and transform all that it encounters. The reaction to such love, its impact, is determined not by the source but more by the recipient. When we condition love, we restrict it. We reduce its impact, its power to transform. We cannot manipulate love. In attempting to do so we degrade and ultimately destroy it.
We can usefully regard love as a flow of essence or light from the highest level of reality, existence or being we can reach. So, the first requirement for love is to attain to the highest accessible level of our being. To the extent that we do so, love flows easily and naturally through and from us. It radiates spontaneously and effortlessly into our environment, just as sunshine falls on and warms all that lies in its path. When we attain to the higher levels of our being love flows trough us. There is no effort involved. It is the natural order and flow for that level of being.
When we cannot attain to such levels such love as we manifest is less than it could be. It may not manifest its full dynamism or glory, its power to exalt, its ability to attract and enliven. It may lack the power to animate people, to catalyse events. It may not rise to express its fullest potential in our world.
As we attain to ever higher levels in our being, we approach levels of divinity towards the Source of creation. Here we encounter the fullest expression of the outflow of light and energy into manifestation or creation. This is the apotheosis of the flow of light from on high, the love of God for creation. The outflow into creation is counter balanced by a similar return flow into the wholeness of being in divinity. At this level of integration there is little difference between these outflows and inflows. They are effectively synonymous. So, the flow of light or love that manifests and animates creation also carries all of creation back into integration in Source. It is the great force that ultimately draws all that has been scattered across the fields of separation back into wholeness, integrity, purity and unity in the Source reality of being.
From a vantage point in creation our experience of divinity is one of the love or energy flow that powers creation. It is also one of the complimentary role of love in integrating all that has been separated. From a perspective in divinity there is no difference between the two. The difference is attributable to our vantage point in creation. The ultimate expression of divinity relative to creation is love. Its ultimate or highest nature, insofar as an attribute can be associated with divinity, is love. Beyond this it is pure unqualified being or existence. Love is the ultimate force or influence that powers and integrates our universe.
In order to effectively express love we must first access it. We do so most effectively by going to the higher levels within our being, by tapping the flow of source energy within ourselves. To accomplish this, we need to integrate within ourselves. We need to truly love ourselves. This can be the hardest first step. We cannot give love effectively on an ongoing basis unless we are sourcing it within ourselves. Otherwise the well is bound to run dry.
We need to learn to love ourselves in all our manifestations. We need to face all aspects of our being including all we have run away or dissociated from, all we would rather leave buried in our subterranean depths. We need to embrace, heal, transform and integrate all our expression at every level of reality as a foundation to reach towards our source levels of being. We can then do justice to the love we would wish to have flowing through us. It is often easier to love another than ourselves. But we can only truly love another when we also love ourselves. Otherwise our love can be serving a need in ourselves more than benefiting another. It may not be as true or unconditional, as we might like it to be.
Love is the great healer. It is the essence of all deep and true healing. It is the sunlight that nourishes healthy growth, that penetrates the deepest and darkest corners with its cleansing radiance. It does not make judgements. It does not avoid unsavoury situations. It embraces all equally raising all towards the light. It is the solvent that penetrates to the depths of our being, to reveal and release what has been locked away. It creates a safe environment, in which to release such material and attempt to resolve it. It is balm to our wounds.
Love is what issues us forth into the worlds of creation. It is also what draws us back into our essence in being. It is the beginning and the ending of our journeying in expressed forms. In between we may enjoy the trip and even get lost. But it lights the way for our return home. Our true home is where our love is and where it resides eternally.