Love
Ah, love, let us be true
to one another! For the
world, which seems
To lie before us like a
land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful,
so new,
Hath really neither joy,
nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace,
nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a
darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms
of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash
by night
Extract
from Matthew Arnold’s ‘
Love serves Knowledge, not the other way
around.
Laura Knight Jadczyk,
The Wave, Part 12c
The
worth of love does not consist of high feelings, but in detachment, in patience
under all trials for the sake of God whom we love.
Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require
that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the
child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher the
acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the
certain.
Leo Buscaglia
I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that
there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
Vincent van Gogh
In practical terms, how do
we “grow stronger “ in our polarity? If it is to be of the Service to Others
alignment, isn’t it just necessary to give? Isn’t that only the key? And don’t
the Service to Self polarized beings just take? Well, it IS that simple and it
is more complex.
From one perspective it
would seem that the most accepting and loving thing to do would be to love ALL
– to surround all those of the Service to Self alignment with Love and Light so
that they would be enclosed and permeated with this love which would then
transform them to the Service to Others alignment.
But note immediately that,
in these terms, the sending of love is intended to CHANGE, to TRANSFORM, to
DENY FREE WILL. And this by simply doing this one is aligning with the very
orientation that seeks to deny free-will, i.e. STS. The result is that the very
love energy being sent IS Service to Self Forced Oscillation!
And What will it then do?
IT will AMPLIFY the STS frequency in the person or situation it is being sent
to transform. It will do the opposite of what is wanted, but exactly what is
INTENDED.
Service to self seeks to
dominate and to take all to stuff in its black hole of fear. To send love (or
to give anything) with the intention of changing, transforming, or to make
anything different to what it is, is to seek DOMINATION.
Laura
Knight Jadczyk The Wave part 12e1
Every time we choose, based
on knowledge/love rather than chemical/ emotional love or assumption/wishful
thinking love, we are giving a push to the swing of amplifying our Frequency Resonance Vibration.
And such amplification increases our polarization and we “grow.”
Laura
Knight Jadczyk, The Wave Part 12e1
I understood that it was
NOT love to do anything that prevents another from learning
a lesson that they are here to learn, no matter how hard it is to watch
when someone you love is suffering. You must love another as they ARE in order
to be able to allow them to learn their own lessons, and this is the most
bitter lesson of all for the human part of one who chooses to serve others in
the cosmic sense.
LKJ The Wave, Part 12e1
…which is TRUE Love and
Giving? To support and sustain a person in illusion with all the attendant “food” that is implicit in the marriage relationship, to
continue to amplify their STS frequency, or to RELEASE them to lessons – the
giving of what is truly appropriate to their actions/asking – that may
eventually facilitate their own growth and/or initiation, if not in this life –
in the next?
LKJ The
Wave, Part 12e1
If I speak in the tongues
of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic
powers – that is the gift of interpreting the divine gift and purpose; and
understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and
if I have faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing
– a useless nobody.
Even if I dole out all that
I have to give food to the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned but
have not love, I gain nothing.
Love endures long and is
patient and kind; love is never envious nor boils over with jealousy; is not
boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
It is not conceited –
arrogant and inflated with pride; it is not rude and does not act unbecomingly.
Love does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not
self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of
the evil done to it – pays no attention to a suffered wrong.
It does not rejoice at
injustice or unrightousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
Love bears up under
anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every
person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstance and it endures everything
without weakening.
Love never fails – never
fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end. As for prophecy, it will be
fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as
for knowledge, it will be superseded by truth.
For our knowledge is
fragmentary and our prophecy is fragmentary.
But when the complete and
perfect comes, the incomplete and imperfect will vanish away. – become antiquated,
void and superseded.
When I was a child, I
talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that
I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside.
For now we are looking in a
mirror that gives only a dim reflection of reality as in a riddle or an enigma,
but then, when perfection comes, we shall see in reality and face to face! Now
I know in part; but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in
the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood by God.
And so faith, hope, love
abide; these three, but the greatest of these is love.
Paul,
Corinthians, Chapter 13,
I
want to love and be loved.... I don’t want a world without love or grief or
beauty. I’d rather die.
Daniel Mainwaring U.S. screenwriter, from Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
a woman is trapped in the office, while her replacement ““pod”” grows in the
next room,1955.
Love,
in relation to our life, is a Deity, now stern, now benevolent, but ever submitting
to us, never consenting to serve our aims. Men strive to subjugate love to
themselves, to force it to serve their aims, both spiritual and material. But
love cannot be subjugated to anything and it wreaks merciless vengeance on the
puny mortals who strive to subjugate God to serve their own ends. It confuses
all their calculations and makes them do what they have never expected. It
forces them to serve it, to do what it wants.
Mistaken
about the origin of love, men are mistaken about its result. Both material and
spiritually morality admit only one possible
result
of love - children, the propagation of species. But this objective result,
which may or may not happen, is in any case only the result of the external,
objective side of love, or the material fact of impregnation.
For
science... the purpose of love consists in the continuation of life... and the
force which mutually attracts the two sexes acts in the interests of the
propagation of species.
But
if we regard love from this standpoint, we shall have to admit that there is
more of this force than is necessary, infinitely more! In reality, for the
purposes of the propagation of species only a small fraction of one per cent of
this force of love inherent in humanity is utilized.
Where
then, does the main part of the force go?
Let
us take an ordinary candle. It should give light. But it gives much more heat
than light. Light is the direct function of the candle, heat is the indirect
function, but there is more heat than light. In order to give light, the candle
must burn. Burning is the necessary condition for obtaining light from a
candle; burning cannot be done away with. But this same burning produces heat.
It seems, at the first glance, that the heat produced by a candle is
wasted
unproductively and is, at times, even superfluous, unpleasant and hindering: if
a room is lighted by candles, it becomes too hot. But the fact of the matter is
that light is obtained from a candle only owing to its burning - the evolution
of heat and the incandescence of the gases evolved.
The
same applies to love. We say that only an insiginificant part of the energy of
love goes to create progeny; the greater part seems to be spent by fathers and
mothers on their personal emotions.
In
springtime, with the first awakening of the emotions of love, birds begin to
sing and to build nests. Naturally, a materialist will say that the singing is
to attract the females or the males and so on. But even a materialist will not
be able to deny that there is much more of this singing than is necessary for
the propagation of the species. For the materialist, the 'singing' is only
'accidental,' only a 'by-product.' But, in reality, the singing may be the main
function of the given species, the meaning of its existence, the purpose which
nature had in view in creating this species. And this singing is needed not to
attract the females, but for some general harmony of nature we only sometimes
vaguely feel.
Thus
we see that what appears to be a collateral function of love, from the point of
view of the individual, may serve as a principal function of the species.
The
young birds are not there yet, there is not even a hint of them. Yet 'houses'
are already being prepared for them. Love has evoked a thirst for activity.
Instinct governs this thirst for activity... at the first awakening of love -
work starts.
We
see the same thing in men. Love is a creative force. And the creative force of
love manifests itself not in one but in many varied directions. Perhaps it is
precisely by this force of love, Eros, that mankind is incited to fulfil its
main function, which we do not know and only sometimes dimly feel.
But,
even without touching upon the purpose of mankind's existence, within the
limits of what we can know, we must admit that all the creative activity of
mankind is the outcome of love.
Love
opens up in man sides he was not aware of in himself. ...Many men cannot be
pushed by anything but love to crime, to treason; only love can bring forth in
them deeply hidden feelings which they considered long extinct in themselves.
In love there is concealed a tremendous amount of egotism, vanity and
self-pride. Love is a great force that tears off all masks. And people who run
away from love, run away in order to keep their masks.
If
creation, the birth of ideas, is the light which comes from love, then this
light comes from a great flame. In this everlasting flame, in which all mankind
and the whole of the world are burning, all the forces of the human spirit and
genius are developed and refined; and perhaps it is precisely from this flame,
or with the help of it, that a new force will spring into being which will lead
those who follow it away from the shackles of matter.
I
have dwelt so long on the question of the understanding of love because it is
of the most vital importance; for the majority of people approaching the
threshold of the mystery, it is precisely from this side that much becomes
opened or closed and because for many precisely this question constitutes the
greatest obstacle.
The
most important thing in love is that which is not, which is completely
non-existent from an ordinary, everyday, materialistic point of view. In this
sensing of that which is not, in the contact thus reached with the world of the
miraculous, i.e. the truly real, lies the principal meaning of love in human
life.
P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous 1949
…one
must firmly grasp the fundamental idea that Faith, Hope and Knowledge/Gnosis
are consecutive stages in the progressive Revelation of Love, and that a lack
of revelation at the preceding stage prevents access to the revelation of the
following stage.
This
means that without Faith in one's heart it is impossible to attain Hope in the
esoteric sense of the word. And without one or the other one can never attain
Gnosis, the living knowledge that makes Love accessible.
Boris Mouravieff,
Gnosis,Vol.I, 1961/1989 Praxis Press
The
minute I heard my first love story,
I
started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers
don't finally meet somewhere,
They're
in each other all along.
This
is to love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils
to
fall each moment.
First,
to let go of life.
Finally,
to take a step without feet.
Love
comes sailing through and I scream.
Love
sits beside me like a private supply of itself.
Love
puts away the instruments, and takes off the silk robes.
Our
nakedness together changes me completely.
No
better love than love with no object.
No
more satisfying work than work with no purpose.
If
I could give up tricks and cleverness
That
would be the cleverest trick!
Oh
love, deep love, be here, be now,
Be
all; worlds dissolve into your stainless, endless radiance,
Frail
living leaves burn with you brighter than cold stars.
Make
me your servant, your breath, your core.
Rumi
…we
come to the realisation that has an enormous implications for those tackling
the Work that: "The energy of ALL emotions - even negative ones - is
drawn from the sexual centre which in its pure expression,
is LOVE."
Laura Knight-Jadczyk on Emotions
Exterior
man does not know and cannot have even an approximate idea of Love in its
Divine purity. Even advanced seekers who are already on the staircase are
far from knowing this emotion in all its fullness, for the *I* of the personality, with its three lower centers, does not possess
the organ which will enable them to feel it. To be able to feel this emotion
is the attribute of the Soul, which expresses itself through the individuality
formed at the Second Birth.
Boris Mouravieff, Gnosis,Vol.I, 1961/1989 Praxis Press
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you."
Mature love says: "I need
you because I love you."
Erich
Fromm.
The
ROOT of the Breath is the property of Love. Love has a movement within the
lover, and breath is a movement of yearning toward the Beloved. Through that
breathing enjoyment is experienced. God has said: "I was a Treasure but
was not known, so I loved to be known. Through this love breathing takes place,
so
the
Breath becomes manifest and the Cloud comes into being.
The
Shaykh compares the Breath of God to the human breath. Each characteristic of
breath becomes the starting point for the explanation of a dimension of the
relationship between God and creation. Thus breath is a vapor, relieves
constriction in the breast, and is the vehicle for words. In the same way, the
Breath of God is a Cloud, relieves the constriction of the immutable entities
which desire to see the outward manifestation of their properties - and the
breath is the vehicle for God's words, which are the creatures. Each creature
is a word of God.
In
one passage the Shaykh explains the mutual love that exists between God and the
Creature. God's love fro the creature stems from His vision of them within
Himself as identical with Himself. Seeing them as the "Hidden Treasure,
" He loved to be known." The creature's love for God derives from
hearing the word "BE!" which brings them into existence. They are
identical with this word;
each
is the word "Be!" in a specific form.
One
of the characteristics of the Lover - is to breathe... The origin of the love
of the Beloved is the word "Be!" and through this Divine command, we
are given existence...
Thus,
our only "speech" to that which we love should be "BE!"
The
Breath of God made the cosmos manifest in order to release the property of love
and relieve what the Lover found in Himself.
God
is qualified by love for us, and love is a property that demands that he who is
described by it be merciful toward himself. Hence the breather finds ease in
his breathing, for the breather's exhalation of breath is the same as mercy
toward himself.
William
Chittick. Quoting Ibn al-'Arabi: The Sufi Path of Knowledge,
Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no
fruit; it is it's own fruit, It's own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love
in order that I love. Of all the emotions and affections of the soul, love is
the only one by means of which the creature, (though not in equal terms) is
able to treat with the creator and to give back something resembling what has
been given to it. When God loves, He only desires to be loved, knowing that
love will render all those who love Him happy.
St Bernard of Clairveaux
Historically,
at least three kinds of love (between adults) have existed in Western
countries:
1) Romantic love
among the aristocracy during the middle ages.
This was
usually an intense devotion between a knight and a married noblewoman. Being
adulterous, it was secretive and confined to sporadic encounters. It was
asexual to a great extent and consisted of yearning for one's lover whom one
rarely met. Neither intimacy nor fulfillment were part of this love.
Unfulfilled yearning intensified it. Love was an attraction to idealized
stereotypes of a knight or noblewoman. It was elicited by displays of good
character such as modesty, humility, respectfulness, loyalty, generosity, and
honesty. Personal idiosyncrasies were not cultivated during feudalism and they
played no part in evoking romantic love. Courtly love was a spiritual, almost
religious, sentiment that sublimated the base instincts and elevated the soul
through dedication to one"s loved one. One was a better person through
caring for (serving) another. Love was thus a moral act. (Capellanus, 1957).
2) Love that
was felt by many Americans who engaged in limited, local production of
commodities between the decline of feudalism and the rise of industrial
capitalism. This period includes the North American colonial period (17th
and 18th centuries).
This love
was primarily a spiritual closeness -- a rational friendship -- that developed
gradually with knowledge of a person's character and deeds. It had a rational,
reserved quality and was deemed far more genuine and enduring than passionate
romantic love. It's concern for individual character made it a more personal
attraction than courtly love was. Like courtly love, colonial love was moral
and ennobling through dedicated caring for another person (Illouz, 1997, pp.
46-47; Ratner, 1991, 80-81).
3) Modern
romantic love that emerged out of colonial love in18th century
Europe and 19th century North America and evolved into its current
form around 1910 with the solidification of capitalist economy.
This love is
a passionate/sensuous, visceral, spontaneous, irresistible, disorienting
feeling that is quickly aroused by personal attributes and physical appearance
of another individual. Idiosyncratic traits such as sense of humor, being
dynamic or patient, and recreational interests supercede moral criteria as the
basis of attraction. Modern romantic love is a euphoric feeling of intimate
psychological bonding with another person to complete oneself. Lovers enter
each other's psychological worlds and relish knowing and being known by each
other. Love is a giddy personal happiness rather than a spiritual uplifting or
improvement in one's character.
These
different forms of love reflected different cultural concepts and activities.
Space does not permit analysis of all three forms but it will be instructive to
at least discuss the cultural basis of two forms of romantic love.
Feudal
romantic love was elicited by concepts regarding appropriate personal
attributes and social relationships. These cultural concepts led members of the
nobility to seek tragic, unfulfilling, risky love in illicit, adulterous,
clandestine relationships. Furtive, sporadic relationships do not naturally
stimulate love; their capacity to do so depends upon cultural beliefs that love
should be unfulfilling, that love is most intense if unfulfilling, and that
unfulfilling, tragic love should be found in adulterous relationships between
men and women of particular social ranks. If furtive, sporadic social
relationships were differently conceived as impediments to love then
individuals who were attracted to each other in these circumstances would
renounce their interest and look for a different kind of partner with whom they
could have a different kind of love.
The
distinctive quality of modern romantic love is generated by beliefs that:
_ A person is incomplete and insecure and needs
a love-mate to become whole.
_ Love can transcend worldly problems and make
people happy.
_ Love involves sharing intimate thoughts and
feelings. Inability to do this interferes with love.
_ Intimate, constant contact is necessary to
sustain love. Too much separation diminishes love.
_ One person is naturally suited to very few
others in the world.
_ Romantic love is stimulated by idiosyncratic
personal traits, not moral character.
_ Romantic love is a complete compatibility of
idiosyncratic personal traits.
_ Romantic love is a special, unusual feeling
towards a unique individual.
_ The natural compatibility of lovers is
obvious and generates immediate feelings of love.
_ Romantic love is a sensual feeling.
_ Attraction is intensely personal and subjective.
It is not based on, or understood through, objective, rational reasons.
Carl Ratner, taken from his paper: A Cultural-Psychological
Analysis of Emotions.2000
"Becoming ONE" is
the greatest secret of Nature.
It is the destiny of all
things. The closer a being is to
becoming One, the closer his being is to perfection.
Everything in Nature feels
this inner power. The most important law
which determines this is genuine LOVE.
Genuine, unconditional Love of another is
the active force - the means to assimilation, the most important link in the
chain of "becoming ONE."
If you cannot "become ONE" with
a single other human being, how then can you become ONE with God?
Von Eckartshausen, Higher Knowledge.
Love is life. All, everything that I
understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists,
only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die
means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal
source.
Leo Tolstoy, Prince
Andrew, in War and Peace,1868-1869.
Life is indeed darkness
save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save
when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain
save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when
there is love.
Kahlil
Gibran, The Prophet,1923.
Everything in our world has a certain
necessary relationship, and through this necessary relationship, the
circumstances we experience are what they are.
As soon as there are changes in the relationship of one thing to another, the
relationship ceases to be what it was, and the circumstances also change.
Take a flint and strike it with a piece of steel until you have ignited a
fire. Nothing could be simpler as far as the Nature of the flint and the
steel and proximity to something that will burn are concerned. However,
for those who do not know this, a flint and a piece of steel, and a bit of
kindling substance are useless for that purpose.
There are many such "principles" that are close to us, that exist in
the circumstances of our environment and relationships, about which we know
nothing. However, we COULD find them out if we really knew how to use our
organs and senses which consists in LOOKING and THINKING for yourself.
Most human beings do not do this. They allow themselves to be led by
hearsay, tradition, and the deceitful imaginations of others. The guides of
most human beings are: prejudice, partiality to authority, and self-conceit.
Books DO contain hidden knowledge for
those with "eyes." If you do not possess this ability, this
intuitive ability within your Spirit, then you can read and read and read and
never understand what is REAL even if you understand the words.
Words remain words, essence remains essence. Only the Essence conveys knowledge,
the understanding, not the words describing the essence. Words are the
expressions of a concept of what the writer understands about
that particular essence. Their understanding can be right, wrong, partly
right or wrong, in varying degrees. Even if the words are right, or
describing truth, they can become "wrong" if your understanding
cannot receive them. That is, if your concept of what the words are saying
is not the same concept that the writer of the words is conveying.
Therefore, even an object described with exactly the right words could, when
conceived by another person, be a completely different concept. To understand
what someone else understands is like making a copy of a copy. The
question that always has to be asked is "how close to the original is the
copy, and the copy of the copy?"
There is a language without words.
Thoughts originate through the impressions of our senses. To be receptive
to impressions of the senses you have to have an IDEA of them -a
CONCEPT...Then, in order to REMEMBER these ideas, these concepts, you have to
THINK. When you SPEAK about concepts/ideas of the SOUL, it is called
language.
Language is necessary to SHARE with another human being a CONCEPTION. We
attempt to express the picture our eye perceives, and we attempt to express all
the attendant feelings and sensations which are attached to this
picture by us. We convert these things into SOUND.
Sound is a COPY of our thoughts and FEELINGS.
Written language is a COPY of Sound.
Language operates in accordance with the perfection of the being.
No language can BE the "original." It is only a copy.
Again, language expresses our IMPRESSIONS.
A certain picture is created in my Soul by looking at a tree. Another
picture is created in my Soul by looking at a rose. That is how Human
beings differentiated their symbols or signs, because the language of symbols
or signs leads to the language of sounds.
Two people can look at the same object and yet receive a completely different
impression of the object. The difference in the impressions brings out the
difference in the movement of the soul. This movement of the Soul is more
or less "confined" by the sensual organism. Remember,
Falsehood, lies, fraud and deceit are the deeds of our senses.
Knowledge and Truth are part of the unchanging Spirit World. The more a Human
Being is subject to or influenced by his desires, cravings, or the domination
of his physical senses as "led" by prejudice, belief in authorities
who may be lying, or self-conceit, the less "accurate" his copy of
the essence of a thing will be.
Receiving impressions, forming ideas, communicating ideas are all parts of the
"copy of the copy of the copy of the original" process. Human beings
who are less obstructed by the "coarser" organization of they
physical bodies, are able to make better "copies" of the original
"essence" of a thing existing in the Spirit world.
The most important law which determines
this is genuine LOVE.
Von Eckartshausen,
Higher Knowledge.
My object in living is to
unite
My avocation with my
vocation
As my two eyes make one in
sight.
Only where love and need
are one,
And the work is play for
mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really
done
For Heaven and the future sakes.
Robert
Frost – ‘Two Tramps in Mud Time or A Full Time Interest’, Selected poems 1955