Love
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." — Goethe
Do you know what love is?
Do you know or have true love in your life?
There is such a thing as true love, just as there are many ways to be taken in by false "love."
True love is an inner spiritual quality, a gift and blessing of God, which is not found in everyone. Some people simply do not have love, to be able to share love. This is a commonly ignored truth about society. But, would it not have saved you a great deal of suffering or despair if you had known the truth about love when you were young? Society promotes our ignorance, so that we will fall into the traps that await us. Popular songs (promoted by adults) inform young people that whatever feels good is "love." But that is just a lie.
Can we say we really know what love is, in a society where people "love" everything — money, drugs, beer, sports, sex, food, chocolate? Is that really love? Does loving something (or someone) make it right, good, or true? Is finding acceptance in another's arms "love," or perhaps compensation for having lost part of ourselves somewhere along the way in life? Are we so desperate for love that we enter relationships with those who do not have our own best interests in mind, who bring us pain and suffering? It happens every day.
What commonly passes for love is: romance, lust, sex, acceptance, approval, agreement, sympathy, ego, emotion, similar conditioning, family ties, possessiveness, nationalism, fantasy, desire, excitement, dependence, hurt, attachment, addictiveness, obsession, illusions, and delusion. None of these is love.
In our society, where words often conceal the truth, what many people call "love" — love of their social group, their political ideology, their race, their culture, or themselves — is actually contempt for those they feel are unlike them.
How many people find themselves in unsatisfactory, abusive, or unloving relationships, including marriage?
How many go from one relationship to another, hoping to find the love that they cannot find within themselves, in someone else? How many people "love" only one special person — who can see no wrong in them? Is this true love? These are typical illusions about love: a little bit of love is worth a lot of abuse; your love is the solution to someone else's problems, or their love is the solution to yours.
Strong emotion overcomes reason; it controls the mind. False, emotional love is a trap for good people — because it is their nature to love, to open their hearts, to accept others. Still, obsession has nothing to do with love; it is extreme ego, emotional attachment, self-centeredness, and possessiveness, not love.
There are spiritual misconceptions about love, too. The injunction to forgive those who do wrong keeps deceivers, liars, cheats, and abusers in your life. You might think you just don't love them enough. In this way, though you may have love, your behavior can be misdirected: you may act out of guilt, not love; you may act out of fear of rejecting others (or being rejected); you may act out of false emotional "need," the need to be accepted by others, or to preclude loneliness. You may act out of feelings of lack rather than love.
If you have Jesus in your heart, Jesus is the Love in your heart, the Truth, and the Way
If you ask Jesus for direction, you will find that you are helped out of the darkness, out of abuse, out of delusions and misdirected emotion or ego.
Jesus said, "If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you do not belong to the world ... the world hates you."
Whether the world appreciates you or not is of absolutely no importance. You may have people in your life who have no real love for you, or who are incapable of love. They may lie, deceive, and confuse you as to what love is. They do not want you to have the true love within you, in your own heart, which comes from God, Christ, Jesus. Those with no real love or light or truth in them hate God and Jesus, and you.
Let Jesus free you, now. When you are no longer trapped, used, abused, drained, or hurt by misguided "loving relationships" you are free from one of the biggest traps of exploitation this world has laid for you. The "spell" of illusory love has been broken, and instead, you seek, embrace, and accept the True Love of the Divine, within you.
God loves you. God is with you. Jesus is no further from you than your own heart. You can find that now.
True Love frees you; it does not bind, trap, seduce, exploit, use, or deceive you. Love of the Divine frees you from wrong; it does not make you more blind to and accepting of wrong. True Love is not supporting, overlooking, enabling, denying, defending, or becoming unaware of what is wrong, evil, or a lie. True Love requires the most fundamental honesty with yourself, and others. True love is corrective; it brings a person closer to the Truth within them. And, Jesus Christ is the Truth, Love, Life, and Higher Good we seek.
