Love One Another

Love is one of the biggest powers in play in the human drama. We talk about it casually so much and are raised with very elementary ideas about what it is. So we think it is covered territory, “We get it, yes, ‘Love one another,’ that’s all very nice. But let’s be practical . . . .”

We doubt that love is the answer because we do not understand it.

I do love you. But what does that even mean? Many unloving things happen in the name of love. What is it we want when we say we want to be loved, to have love in our lives? When we feel loved, we feel seen, accepted, understood, fed, heard, held, considered, valued, cherished, drawn close, admired, protected, safe, nurtured, embraced, and given the benefit of the doubt.

Does that sound right?

All of these symptoms of love are internal, intangible experiences. However, we experience them just as clearly and directly as we can smell cookies in the oven. If we haven’t yet smelled the cookies, we may doubt there are any cookies at all. We may be jealous of those who are always talking about the cookies. We think there is some secret out there we don’t have access to. This is because our rational age doesn’t have any tools to help us understand and work with this Mystery of Love.

Love is experienced.

Love cannot be collected, owned, contained—or even transferred.

Love is a living, moving, powerful force that is always in play. It’s a radio station that is always on—a song that is always playing. It can be tuned into at any time, and you can feel the joy of its rhythm at any moment both inside and out, alone or with others.

It cannot be earned, started, or stopped.

Love is the only thing that will help us now. But there is nothing it can’t heal. Beter news, there’s nowhere it’s not.

When we see the entire human experience through the lens of the love that obviously allowed for it and supports it every moment, we stop hurting. Our eyes our opened and we can begin on the journey of ending suffering in ourselves and others. It’s an organic system that works inside to open the heart, much like the immune system naturally works to start closing up a cut. “You” don’t need to tell it what to do. “You” already know how to do it and are already doing it.

Love is not a belief or an opinion, it does not lend itself well to hard mathematical understanding. Life can never be experienced in symbols alone. Life is simply an obvious force that can be experienced by everyone directly at any time, and which, if paid attention to and learned from can make your life less painful and more interesting.

How to Love One Another?

Before we understand the nature of cause and effect, we may try to stop the suffering others experience mainly though ways that appeal to our need to see proof that we are helping. This works well when you can directly experience the hungry filled, the wounds bound up, and the smile come through the tears.

In our smaller circles, we usually love by feeding each other (body, mind, heart). This can result in the immediate reduction of suffering and uplifting those around us. However, this level of help can sometimes still deeply immersed in the cycle of ignorance.

If our work is simply to keep putting out the fires caused by others’ or our own ignorance, our life still becomes consumed and filled with the fruits of ignorance.

We are not clear on what love is in our world, so let’s clarify:

Relieving immediate suffering, here in this moment, by feeding people—heart, mind, body—this is the foundation of expressed human love.

If you desire to feed (nourish, strengthen, make whole) heart, mind, or body, this is love. This is giving, this is making whole.

If you desire to take or feed upon someone else’s heart, mind, or body, this is want. This is taking, feeding on as food.

If you are allowing others to feed upon your heart, mind, or body in a way that takes away your sense of wholeness or inner nourishment, this is misunderstanding, a distortion of love or service. We may believe this is the only way we can love (feed) others—with our own flesh, so to speak. We may have been taught this kind of loss of self is righteous sacrifice, or fed upon as a child, so we continue to fill our function feeding our own being to someone who can never be filled.

Yet soon, we find ourselves emptied and unable to give more. We can then feel even more discouraged at our inability to “help.”

So how do we help end the suffering and cycle of ignorance once and for all, boldly and universally? We actively train in the human superpower that accomplishes all: faith.