Blog member, Rebecca, shared this eloquent essay about love through a comment, but her message is so profound and powerful that I feel compelled to post it as an entry so no one will overlook it. Thanks, Rebecca!
I wrote this a long time ago. The few people who read it never really “got” it. I guess it’s about time for me to share it with our CE family:Love is so pure, and so simple. Many people confuse it with something difficult and complicated. It is confused with needs, wants, expectations, obligations, desire. Love is none of these. We say “unconditional love” when such does not exist, because love is not an object to be labeled, nor is it finite and something which can exist or not exist through our own will. Conditional love is a contradiction in terms, for that which is conditional does not equate with love at all.
Love is not something to be given or received, because that is not the nature of love. How can one give away what one does not own? Who owns the air we breathe, the scent of a rose, the colors of the spectrum, the warmth of the sun? They exist, as love exists, except love is limitless in all aspects. Love is all. It is God within every living soul. We may become, in our minds, in our thoughts, unattached from love, but it exists nonetheless. We may imagine we are unloved, but it is not so. Love is eternal and omnipotent, even when we do not allow ourselves to embrace it.
We all need to be touched, held, and nurtured. It is necessary to life in the physical world and a tangible expression of love. It is wonderful and pleasurable, but it is not love itself, and its absence does not indicate a lack of love. Lack of love cannot exist, as lack of God cannot exist.
Have you ever loved someone and they responded in an unloving way? This is because they live in fear. They think love is something outside of themselves that they are called upon to attain, to do, to be, to feel…something that is required of them that they don’t understand how to produce. They get it confused with the many things we humans think of as love. So they retreat, out of fear, and fear obscures love. Surrounded by fear, love unacknowledged is perceived as sadness too deep, a pain too unbearable.
Love truly expects nothing in return, for expectations are a human contrivance. Love simply is. We need to stop trying to shut it out for fear that it is something else. Let go of hiding from love, guessing what it may or may not be. Remove the walls we have built in our minds, for love cannot be contained anyway. Neither can we be separated from it, though God knows we try, by seeking it as though it were not here, everywhere.
If we let go of every thought we ever had about love we will see the light shining so brightly we will be amazed that we ever missed it. The day will come when we recognize ourselves as who we truly are and every soul we encounter will bring forth an outpouring of love, beauty will reside in every sight, and peace will be complete. If we would only allow it to be so, the love that permeates our being, unleashed, would transform our world.
