“If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and If I have have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor. 13:2)
Do you ever wonder what it would take to heal the problems and suffering in our world?
Do you even dare to ask the question out loud? I ask this because we live in a world where asking and sincerely seeking answers to this question may cause others to label you as unsophisticated or naive.
If you say the answer is love, you risk being challenged with a version of “You just don’t know how the world works.”
It’s acceptable to talk about love in our private lives, in love songs, or in romance novels. But when it comes to workplace issues, politics, race, poverty and other weighty subjects, love virtually does not exist. We may talk about kindness, compromise, and tolerance, but not love.
In the end, love is thought to have almost no practical value when it comes to solving real worldly challenges.
Love is all we’ve got
What if we’ve got this all wrong? What if love was much bigger than our widely held notions of strong feelings of attachment, affection or attraction? What if love is our only option? What if love is all there is?
Motivated by my desire to understand a world that seems to be growing ever more fractured and divided, I’ve asked myself, “What is the essence of love?”
Then I ran into these words from Marianne Williamson:
“Love is the only ultimate; all else is a hallucination of the mortal mind.”
It was then that I realized that the question I was asking was too small. Love doesn’t have essence — love is essence itself.
When we push love to the margins, what we have left is a world of illusion. All the things we count as important are literally nothing.
Practical love
If we accept this as true, then all of a sudden, love goes from being a fringe subject to being the most practical and pressing thing that we must all grapple with in all areas of life.
The reality of love, first and foremost, shows us that we are all intimately connected to each other. All of the categories we use to divide and separate ourselves are pure illusion. In her newest book, Tears to Triumph, Williamson writes:
“An idea doesn’t leave its source. Therefore, whatever I think about you, I am thinking about myself. In attacking you, I am attacking myself. And in forgiving you, I am forgiving myself.”
Love understands the power of incentives. If you desire peace and happiness, you must work to bring peace and happiness to others. This is not mere selfish motivation, but a willingness to participate in reality.
And reality will not allow us to stand idly by, indifferent to the stark choice presented by love. Either we’re participating in reality or in illusion, there’s nothing in between.
Seeing things as they truly are
The late Jesuit Fr. Anthony De Mello contended that we love only when we’re able to see things as they truly are. He said:
“What does it mean to love? It means to see a person, a situation, a thing as it really is, not as you imagine it to be. And to give it the response it deserves. You can hardly be said to love what you do not even see. And what prevents from seeing? Our conditioning. Our concepts, our categories, our prejudices, our projections, the labels that we have drawn from our cultures and our past experiences. Seeing is the most arduous thing that a human can undertake, for it calls for a disciplined, alert mind. But most people would much rather lapse into mental laziness than take the trouble to see each person, each thing in its present moment of freshness.” (Awareness, p. 161-162)
I think this is the real reason why we shy away from love. Because deep inside we know it’s the most arduous thing we can ever undertake. But what choice do we have?
Make your love visible
We love when we are willing to fully participate in the all encompassing reality of love.
This is our sole purpose. Anything we think, say, or do, that affirms this reality is
ultimately life-giving.
May we have the courage to extend love to family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, and our enemies.
May we extend warm smiles to each other, listen to each other, understand each other, and forgive each other.
May we see more clearly the eternal truth that we are one, bound tightly together by the cords of love.
Hello Cylon,
Thank you for tackling (or rather unfolding) this deceptively straightforward topic – guaranteed to tie most of us in knots most of the time!
Tricky to separate love from attachment, or from ‘personalities’ or from dependence. But we all have to start somewhere – if I can’t at least like someone, I do try to detach myself from dwelling on their deficiencies, or my perception of their deficiencies, thus cutting off some of the fuel that feeds my ‘fire’. It’s a start.
Thank you Cylon. Time for me to withdraw, particularly from myself, and contemplate the wider and more generous context.
Hi Zarayna, you’re spot on. The trouble we often run into is that we confuse love with attachment – two very different things. But, as you say, we have to start somewhere. We all must go through the pain of attachment to come to awareness – which is when we begin our journey to a true and mature love. Of course, the work of a lifetime. I’m just starting the journey myself.
Good to read again, Cylon.
One of the most profound experiences to ponder and to practice.
Thanks again.
I’ll add another “May we” to your list… May we become selfless, for only in loving with no expectation can we truly learn what it is to really love.