Love, Yet Again

MON., MAR. 10, 1986, 6:04 AM
FARM, STUDY

Love is such an important part of spiritual life that I need to bring this to your heart and mind fairly often in our relationship. You know that this Triune God, of which I am a partner, loves you, but the Teachings, in their style as well as their content, give you clear evidence of this. As you are loved, so do you have the capacity to love others. Love can be what you feel, what you do… or who you are. Part of this is your choice, and part is just an inevitable expression of your own spiritual development. I always have much to say about love… most of it repetitive and reinforcing. Are you listening in love?

Is love a part of health? You bet. Health is how well you function in your various life roles, and love is the greatest enabler in that functioning. You just do whatever you do… from writing a newsletter, to painting a house, to counseling with a student… better and more effectively if you love what you’re doing, those involved, and Me. Love begets love, so that as you love, even in the midst of doing some task, you are developing more capacity to love – right now and on into future activities.

One important aspect of love is relationship. You can love to the extent that you can relate. If you relate well to a person you have the most capacity to love her or him. If there is no relationship, then loving a person is very difficult. Loving in the abstract is the feeblest form of love. And, of course, as you do love, relationships improve, and as relationships are more obvious and sound love is greater. It is the supreme example of… the strong get stronger… to him who has shall more be given.

Just about the saddest of human conditions (in contrast) is the person who has not been loved, who has little capacity to love, and few relationships of any quality. Such a person may struggle to relate and to love, but often doesn’t even have the strength to struggle.
6:52 / 7:02
Then the result may be negative attitudes and a cynicism about life that allows for little appreciation and turns all others away… except those with tremendous capacities… who can love the unloveable when no love is returned. Yet as often happens in My economy of life, one of the happiest and most wonderful events of life is when such a sad human is helped to love and truly turns toward loving as an expression of life. This is the true “lost sheep.”

Love is not easy to research by accepted scientific methods. It can be studied, and there is some value in this, but it doesn’t lend itself to being “manipulated” in the ways science now requires. This makes for an interesting “value exchange.” If one values scientific study then there is an inevitable devaluing of some aspect of life which cannot be studied by such methods. Conversely, if one values love highly then there may be some loss of appreciation for science, since it seems inapplicable in relation to love.

There are two answers to this dilemma. One is to be able to value “things” that are unlike one another. Some are able to value science and to value love and not be the least concerned that science cannot be used to increase understanding of love. The other is to expand science so that it can study a wider range of reality – even love. Each has value, even as they are different responses to seeming incompatibility.