Love is NOT patient. Love is NOT kind.... St. Paul's beautiful, poetic description of what love is in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13) is NOT what love is. Rather, it is what love looks like, what it smells like, what it may show up being like. But, that is not love itself.
In fact, if you follow St. Paul's definition and attempt to follow it as you would a recipe, you will become a fool for the system. But, if you dig deep inside yourself for the courage to face the truth hidden within your own shadow, your own denial which protects you from the truth and all the obstacles to your own integrity and creative self, you will meet authentic love. When you embrace the genuine article, which is a gift of the Divine, which is grace, then your life may look like St. Paul's definition. But, we first need to embrace the truth of who we are and of whose we are (pardon the triteness of that statement) and then you will embark on the journey to authentic love, to your authentic Self which is one with the great Self of our Master Creator, or God. This is the way, the truth to authentic life that Jesus taught. The other way, the false love, is the way to death.
Love is not the emotions of liking, feelings of affection or sentiments of positive responses when someone meets your personal desires or attachments. In our world, love may be another addictive feeling. In fact, as I look around, it is THE addictive feeling. So, what we think is love, is not love. Maybe it was for this reason that the Greek's had several words to define love, ranging from eros, to agape to koinonia. Real love is a superhuman power to create. It is full submission to the Divine author of our lives. It is not pink. It is not soft. It is not pretty. Love is courage and it comes with a srong piercing sword to break the hold the world's systems have us trapped in. It is not a sword for the battlefield. It is a sword for the soul, to free it from the iron traps in which it is caught. It is often tough love. It can be harsh sounding, but it is liberating ultimately. It is the most necessary cure for our world's terrible delusion, of abuse, exploitation, control and destruction of life on almost every level.
"Love is a function, a power, a purity of intent and the core honesty of all that is." *
While love is a choice, one which we can either embrace or run from, it is also at the core of your nature. It is who you really are and the real fuel for your living and creating. Once you run on love, which will demand all the courage you can find within yourself, you will have the power to command your dreams into life. Love, real love, is totally foreign to our material dimension of life. It is the substance of God and it comes only from God. It is also eternal and with it, you will encounter your own immortal self, not the image you wear around in this life trying to please everyone, including the system's puppeteers who control you and the entire world, whomever they are. We may not know who they are, but we know the systems that control all of us, that take our money from us through elaborate advertising campaigns, which create needs which aren't there.
To uncover where you need love, real love, peel away the layers of your fear. What are you most afraid of? If you can embrace that fear, then you can begin to pull open the curtains on the system. And, there are - as you must be well aware - several systems that control us. There is obviously the modern economy, there is the modern culture and then there are various religious systems that run several parts of the planet, which of course war with each over their respective sense of rightness. There are tribal systems, familial systems, political systems, national systems. There are, in fact, layers of systems, all of which have various holds on what we do, who we think we are - none of which we are at all.
As children we're taught early on to begin to decide what we will do when we grow up, to find an external sense of identity and then spend the rest of our lives learning the skills to master that identity and then find the best job that matches those learning skills. Slowly, we're taught that we are somebody "out there" and we need to find that "somebody." What if we don't? What if we can't?
How many of us have found ourselves in that state of limbo, that place of not fitting into the world system and so we have imposed on ourselves negative self images because of it? Blessed are you if you can't fit in to the system because it will be a lot easier for you to detach from it. When life seems uncertain and it almost feels like the bottom is going to fall out - of our economy, even our political structure and everything is changing - we cling to what feels solid and nothing feels as solid as an ancient old system. This is when we need to reach deep within us for the real deal and that is God's divine love, buried underneath all the layers and it's alive, radiantly, powerfully, magnetically alive, humming forever alive within you.
It is love. When you seek it, it will be found. Through your own focused intention to find it, the power of your conscious mind will locate it, will listen and will hear it and love will come to you and will speak to you and be with you and help you be the creator you were always born to be.
Synchronicity! This morning I was listening to the CD "Steering by Starlight" by Martha Beck. It is a step by step tutorial to help achieve exactly what you describe above ~ how amazing is that! Keep on writing.....
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