Perhaps the only thing we're here to do is to learn how to love. Perhaps nothing else really means anything in the end except that. Can we love?
But love what? Ah, there's the rub.
When we address our love, when we say, "I'll love this but not that," we're limiting our capacity to love. Because how can we be truly loving if we're excluding something, whether in a person or in the universe?
Ultimately, our love has to include everything, because if anything is left out then our love is directed, picking and choosing, and to that extent the seed of our divine love is less open to further ripening.
The quality of divine love, which is our example, is that it leaves nothing out. Nothing is excluded, nobody is excluded, no situation is excluded.
If you feel that there's a person or situation or quality that you can't love, try breathing in that resistance and then, on the out breath, send love to that person or thing or quality or situation or group, whatever it is. Do this repeatedly, and you will feel a hardness inside, which is a form of pain, softening.
From this standpoint, every moment of our life is simply an opportunity to love. Have you noticed that whatever it is you say or do can be done with or without love? Have you noticed that the same action, whatever it is, can be done with love or without? And the difference, both internally and in terms of the result in the world, is incredible.
Can we love whatever is in front of us this moment? Can we love ourselves, too, just as we are, in all our seeming imperfection? Can we love our situation, just as it is, whatever it is? (This doesn't mean that nothing can be changed, just that we lower our resistance first.)
Can we love the infinite, which in fact is always right in front of us (as well as inside of us), exactly as it is? Or, to put it in different words, exactly as we are?
—jim sloman, 11/22/00 for Nov 22
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