*LOVE - also see WORSHIP, GOD, FELLOWSHIP, HEAVEN, FAITH, HOPE, CONNECTEDNESS, ONENESS, SEX, INTEGRATE, WHOLE, UNITY, CONSCIOUSNESS, WISDOM, SURRENDER, ENERGY, EMBRACE, PRESENCE, MYSTERY, GRACE, GRATITUDE, APPRECIATION, AWE, BEATITUDE, BLESS, BLISS, DESIRE, WILL, ACTION, TRANSFORM
Antonyms: HATE, FEAR
Defintion: A strong positive emotion of regard and affection
Symbols: HEART
No one can fully comprehend God with his knowledge; but each one can grasp him fully through love. The miracle of love: that a loving person, through tier love, can embrace God, whose being fills and transcends the entire creation. (Cloud of Unknowing, p28)
Pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness and love, annihilate the Selfhood in me. (p283) Love flows secretly from God into the soul and draws it mightly back into its source. (p300) The soul that sees Him [One] everywhere [many] is one of love's secrets which is only known of those who have experienced it. The simple vision [knowledge] of pure love does not stop at the outer husk of creation; it penetrates to the divinity which is hidden within. (p305) Love raises the spirit above the sphere of reverence and worship into one of laughter and dalliance [playful flirtation]. (p525) (Mysticism)
It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Francis Thompson's peom about God being "The Hound of Heaven"
Love of power vs. the power of love.
Love vs. Fear.
As part of the ONENESS of ALL THAT IS, we are God and God is LOVE. We are part of the Truth of ONENESS vibrating at LOVE. As part of the ONENESS of LOVE we would never have been able to experience Love. In God we are LOVE. Without the illusion of separation we would never have had the opportunity to experience Love. (http://www.silcom.com/~joy2meu/Love1.html)
God's voice can be heard if the devotee loves Him deeply enough and refuses to give up. Think of God steadily [prayer]. Have faith in Him. No one can find God without continuous [faithful] love for Him in the heart. To feel that love for God, one must practice it. (2nd Coming, Vol 1, p528)
Love is the primal force of evolution. For the goal is not regression back into the One, but evolution forward to the One and experiencing that the unity is still there. The goal is the experience of the not-two, the experience of both sides of the coin as One. Love shatters the loneliness and redeems us from the prison of egocentricity. Love has the power to transform. (p194-5) All pain is pain of separation. Love is the entrance to, and the beginning of, the path to home, to God, to the One. Each half needs the other in order to experience itself as a Whole. What we call sin is basically nothing but isolation from our deepest essence. The splittting up of the One brought a separation, but it also brought the energy of love. It is the force urging us back to the One. We come back to the One only through self-surrender. Our process of growth is painful. Love and suffering are closely connected and it seems that love even needs suffering in order to ripen. Love becomes a marriage, a symbol of the oneness of the Divine with the human. (p274-5) What separates me from the state of being "inside the gate" is actually just my thought-world. I am surrounded by love. All being is love. We find love here in life and beyond that in death too. (p306) (Meaning)
The relationship with God is characterized by love, but the point of love is that the ego has to be annihilated. (History of God, p211)
Faith makes of us lords and love makes of us servants. (Martin Luther?)
You find love when you give it away. (Awakening, p40)
Swani Ji of Agra, when speaking of Sat Desh (the real or abiding country) said: 'What beauty and glory! How can I describe them? There is nothing here to convey the idea. Love plays the supreme part. IT IS ALL LOVE.' (Yoga, p19)
Dualities of above and below, inner and outer, male and female, and
so forth is healed by love alone. The longing desire of humanity for
completion by way of wholeness meets the unconditional affection of
Divinity proceeding from the fullness. Yet, this divine affection needs
vehicles wherein to manifest and become effective. (Jung, p214)
How best may a man make himself beloved? A man will be beloved if, possessed with great power, he still does not make himself feared. (Yogi, p392)
God's love can be symbolized in both the binding of atoms and gravity in the cosmos. Atoms are composed of protrons and electrons which, although opposite in charges, attract (love) each other. Objects in the cosmos have gravitational pull (love) for each. (Randy, 3/12/97)
Love is letting go of fear. When we are at peace with ourselves, we're not vulnerable to the attacks of others. (Tao Peace, p65)
Love has inspired masterpieces in poetry, music, and art, yet still transcends our ability to explain. Love is more than the sum of its parts. Expressing love takes us out of our limited egos with no thoughts of returns. We soar above earthbound individuality, perceiving our part in the larger pattern. Like an aerial view of our favorite city, love lifts us up to discover a wondrous symmetry. New patterns of harmony emerge as we see how all life connects. The power of love lets us expand our consciousness, where our self expands to include the world around us, all apparent discord and duality resolving into greater harmony. (Tao Peace, p202-4)
Love is not just a mere sentiment or emotion described by so-over-worked a word. It is a power, the supreme power of the universe. (SRC Nov-Dec'96 Newsletter)
The love we give and receive is all that matters and all that is remembered. Suffering disappears; love remains. (Soup, p7)
If a young person's love is selfish, concerned with validating our own sense of worth and meeting our own needs, and if mature love is mutual, letting the boundaries of self blur as we become one with another person, feeling that person's pain and pleasure as if they were our own, then the mystics are telling us that there is yet a higher form of love, a love that redeems the world from brokenness. (How Good, p116)
The Original Sin is the belief that there is not enough love to go around, and therefore when someone else is loved, he or she is stealing that love from us. Might this be why infidelity has greater power to destroy a marriage than physical abuse, alcoholism, gambling, or criminal activity? Children don't really want to be loved equally, they want to be loved uniquely. Love is like a muscle; the more it is exercised today, the more it can be used tomorrow. When we "give away" our love, God replenishes it so that we become the channel of His love flowing to all of His children, a channel that never runs dry. (How Good, p123,135,140)
Love courses through everything, no, Love is everything. How can you say, there is no love, when nothing but Love exists? All that you see has appeared because of Love. All shines from Love, all pulses with Love, all flows from Love - no, once again, all is Love! (Islam, Wisdom, p330)
I have experienced many expressions of love in my lifetime. Yet the experience of which I speak transcended any previous or subsequent experience of love. I knew at that moment what love is. It was not an experience in some special degree of one or other aspect of love, such as love between husband and wife, love between mother and child, love of neighbor or enemies, or love of nature, although each of these aspects was present. The love experienced was love that includes all these individual aspects and yet transcends all of them taken together. I was grateful beyond measure that I should have lived to experience this. (Contemplation, p138)
"Eros love" vs. "agape love"
Franciscan theology tells us that love precedes knowledge. We truly know only that which we love. You have to make that leap of faith, that act of love, that act of self-gift if you want to hear the Word of God speaking to you. (ThemesOT, p9)
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and all your might. (Dt 6:4-5)
There is no justice, there is only love. (Job ______ )
Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute you. (Matt 5:44)
You shall love the Lord, thy God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Mt 22:37-40)
A new commandment to love as Christ loved us. (John 13:34)
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (John 14:15)
This is the love of God that we keep his commandments. (1 John 5:3)
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. (John 15:13)
God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)
All things work for good for those who love God. (Rom 8:28)
If I have all faith, but do not love, I am nothing. (1 Cor 13:2)
So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:13)
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:8)
We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. (Heb 12:6)
For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. (John 3:16)
You can never teach "Love of God" to a child who has never been loved - you must first love the child. (Aaron Powers)
But the love we give is only meant for ourselves. (Question?, Moody Blues)
God loves us so much that it hurts (as we do when a loved one dies) and causes Him to suffer (by seeing the evil that we do to each other). (Randy)
Through hearing it may believe, through belief it may hope, through hope it may come to love. (St. Augustine)
Love and do what you want. (St. Augustine)
God chose the way of weakness, He relinquished power for the sake of love. (p204, The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey)
Power tends to cause suffering. Love absorbs it. (p205, The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey)
Question 4 on The Nature of God - If God is all-powerful, why doesn't He destroy Satan? The time will come when God has assembled a body of people who freely love Him, which will prove beyond any doubt that love is the most powerful force in the universe. (p48, 200Answers)
To approach the highest spiritual realities, human thought required the illumination of the revealed Word; and only LOVE could truly reach the infinite. (Passion, p189)
Love isn't really love until you give it away. (Crucifix, p25)
He conceived of a universe which he could love and peopled it with creatures who would have the power of choosing whether they loved in return. Without love, the universe makes no sense at all. Love is its creative principle, its sustaining principle and its energising principle. (Quest, p45)
One of the principal objects of the universe was the exploration of love to its ultimate possibilities. God himself is one, unique, ALONE. Mutual love as generated by the gender principle, has an infinity of expressions. (Quest, p52)
Belief in God is only the beginning of religious life. The substance of that life is learning to love God with the fullness and intensity He deserves, and to express that love by our behavior in everyday life. (Quest, p119)
We are sweetly anesthetized by God's love, so that we don't experience the trauma. (Awakening, p200)
I felt God's love one day shortly after Promise Keepers when driving home from work and stopped at the street light. It felt like that first love you have with a girl friend before having any fights and conflicts. (Randy)
May I know thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
And follow thee more nearly. (St. Richard)
Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love. (Cathecism 1827)
*SELF-LOVE
The more we treat ourselves in a loving fashion, the more able we are to respect others and be of real service to them. Self-love includes a proper care of the body; good nutrition, exercise, rest, play and respect. Self-love is right and good. Selfishness, narcissism and egotism pose as self-love, but are just the opposite. (SRC Newsletter, May/June 1997)
See the web for Loving God without an Agenda