The Path To Love is the Practice of Love

[Guest guest]

Love, as a quality, is not neutral. In human experience it translates itself as

feeling.

This 'feeling quality' of love in human relationships whether to parent, spouse,

child,

pet, nature or God is genuine 'happiness'. The more one experiences love, the

more

happiness there is. Eventually, happiness becomes 'bliss'.

 

Beyond bliss is 'ecstasy', which describes the experience of the whole of

creation as

love. To penetrate the illusion that there is 'not-love' is ultimate fulfilment

to reach

enlightenment. It requires that everything that exists be experienced as love.

Once one

is completely illusion-free, harm and hurt to others would just be unthinkable.

But as

human beings develop, the practice of love and its expansion to wider and wider

areas of

life lead to steadily increasing happiness.

 

Here is a simple example:

 

If you work in an office with five people and like two of them, are indifferent

to two

and dislike one, we can give you a 'happiness quotient' of +2 -1 = 1.

 

If you change your attitude so you can like three, remain indifferent to one and

still

hate one, your 'h.q.' will then be +3 -1 = 2. By changing a little more so you

are

indifferent to the one you disliked, your 'h.q.' then becomes 3. It rises to 5

when you

can like them all.

 

Let's suppose your 'transformation' doubles the intensity of your 'liking' by

increasing

its love content. Your happiness quotient will then shoot up to 10.

 

Finally, to find enlightenment, you transform yourself so that you experience

love for

all humanity and the created universe, without exception. Your 'happiness

quotient' is

then infinite!

 

How do you transform yourself? The first thing you have to do is to determine to

try; and

lovingness increases. Then, try to accept that all is ultimately love, even if

this seems

abstract at first. You are now on your way to the deepest truth of all great

religious

belief - God is love, and love is God.

 

Since the truth is that the basis of all existence is love, you also are love.

If you do

not experience yourself as love, your experience of the rest of creation as love

will not

be perfect. The task is to understand and remove everything that prevents you

from

experiencing love as your own basis. The more you can genuinely express that

experience

in life, the more love will become the focus of your identity. Thus is happiness

realised; to have a fulfilled life, you have to seek your own loving nature.

There is

nothing selfish in this, for what you find leads you inevitably to the service

of others.

 

 

- excerpt from 'The Path To Love'

by Carol Riddell

Source: http://www.carolriddell.co.uk/Path%20To%20Love.htm