Snow Melt

Let's Talk About Love

"Invalid Entry" , why not it's one of my favorite subjects. I like M. Scott Peck's definition of love - "...The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." - because it places love in the spiritual realm where it belongs. Love is an attribute of God. The purpose of the individual is to know and love God.

I think people have difficulty in loving God and loving their neighbor because the individual has difficulty in love him/herself. We aren't taught that it's alright to love ourselves, we aren't taught to love ourselves because we aren't taught how truly special we human beings are. So we don't consider ourselves or our fellow human beings special and worth love.

In discussing God's creation of the world Baha'u'llah tells us how special the individual and the whole of humanity is when he writes. "Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He, through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him -- a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.... Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty." (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 64)

We, each individual human being, have the capacity to reflect the attributes of God. However, we can't do this until we cleansed the mirrors of our own souls or spirits. I suspect this is where the saying {c;red}love hurts comes from because cleaning anything, whether it is a mirror of the human spirit or a human body, can sometimes cause pain. Especially when the dirt is ground in and dried. Once the cleaning is done properly, then we have to keep it clean or we have to go through the painful process again.

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