Only Love
From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
Only love, with no thought of return,
can soften the point of suffering.
The quiet miracle of love is that without our interference, it, like water, accepts whatever is tossed or dropped or placed into it, embracing it completely.
We watched a movie today called My Name Is Khan. I'm sure it was meant to be a political kind of thing, what with one thing and another, but for me the focus of it was a deep abiding love that flowed through a person - through all people but is barely recognised. I don't want to say too much about the movie itself, except that I think that people should watch it, because I don't want to spoil the experience. Enough to say that Mir described it as a kind of equivalent to Forest Gump but with a certain religious slant.
Which brings me to the point I think I'm trying to make that it's no coincidence that most of the major religions have, at their heart, that love is the key to everything. Without love what do we have to guide us on a path of good - in the path of right?
In the movie, the main character's mother teaches her son that the only difference in life between one person and another is whether they are good or bad. That there is no difference between one creed and another, one religion or another, just that there are good people and bad people. What seems to distinguish between good and bad is the presence or absense of love in their heart and souls.
Love is what guides us to the selflessness that is the spark of divinity within us all. When we are lost from the knowledge of love it is all too easy to fall pray to the easier path - the one which shuts us away from others, the one where we can easily, inadvertently stray away from good. If we know love, it is hard to truly commit acts of bad or evil deeds... but, just as lighting a candle produces shadow... to know love can also make us vulnerable to the pain and hurt of the other side of love's coin... and if we act out of that emotion we may become lost to the darkness that is within each of us.
It's there, but we must love it all the same, for without love, the shadow self is free to grow and consume us with the antithesis of love, and we become that which we despise.
As truly 'human' beings, then we must embrace both sides of every thing, every body, every experience, with love, only then do we truly achieve our spiritual potential.
Only love, with no thought of return,
can soften the point of suffering.
The quiet miracle of love is that without our interference, it, like water, accepts whatever is tossed or dropped or placed into it, embracing it completely.
We watched a movie today called My Name Is Khan. I'm sure it was meant to be a political kind of thing, what with one thing and another, but for me the focus of it was a deep abiding love that flowed through a person - through all people but is barely recognised. I don't want to say too much about the movie itself, except that I think that people should watch it, because I don't want to spoil the experience. Enough to say that Mir described it as a kind of equivalent to Forest Gump but with a certain religious slant.
Which brings me to the point I think I'm trying to make that it's no coincidence that most of the major religions have, at their heart, that love is the key to everything. Without love what do we have to guide us on a path of good - in the path of right?
In the movie, the main character's mother teaches her son that the only difference in life between one person and another is whether they are good or bad. That there is no difference between one creed and another, one religion or another, just that there are good people and bad people. What seems to distinguish between good and bad is the presence or absense of love in their heart and souls.
Love is what guides us to the selflessness that is the spark of divinity within us all. When we are lost from the knowledge of love it is all too easy to fall pray to the easier path - the one which shuts us away from others, the one where we can easily, inadvertently stray away from good. If we know love, it is hard to truly commit acts of bad or evil deeds... but, just as lighting a candle produces shadow... to know love can also make us vulnerable to the pain and hurt of the other side of love's coin... and if we act out of that emotion we may become lost to the darkness that is within each of us.
It's there, but we must love it all the same, for without love, the shadow self is free to grow and consume us with the antithesis of love, and we become that which we despise.
As truly 'human' beings, then we must embrace both sides of every thing, every body, every experience, with love, only then do we truly achieve our spiritual potential.