All religions teach that love is happiness, that love is our
heart's desire, love is the answer to our manifold problems. But what we hear
is that we ought to be loving, that
love is an ideal beyond the normal human reach. We see love as an obligation,
not a gift; as a sacrifice, not an opportunity. We talk as if all we want is to
love and be loved. But we rarely think of love as a decision that is up to us,
either to make or avoid making. Least of all do we think of love as a state of
mind we are frightened of, and resist. A
Course in Miracles is unique among spiritual teachings for emphasizing
repeatedly that we are afraid of love, and that it is only when we put aside
the fear and allow ourselves to fill with love that we discover who we really
are.
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love,
for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the
blocks to the awareness of love's presence...
What blocks love is always some form of fear. The world
constantly tells us that love itself is risky. It is liable to complicate
matters, and may hurt us. It would have us believe that to be loving is weak.
To be seen as tender-hearted implies you are a pushover. To have a 'soft spot'
is to have a fatal gap in your armour. To be open and unreserved is asking for
trouble. As for 'harmless', it is positively an insult. Yet 'to abstain from
doing harm', as the Hippocratic Oath suggests, is not merely passive as a
guiding principle. We recognize in environmental terms that there is grace in
treading lightly and leaving no footprint, rather than to plunder as we pass;
but few of us will put 'harmlessness: to neither harm nor be harmed' at the top
of our list of personal ambitions.
Again, in social interactions we disapprove of acts of
violence; but we are not really disturbed by our own violent emotions and angry
thoughts. We do not make it a priority to stop them at the border, challenge
them and refuse them admittance. The world would teach us that life and love
are not the same. On the contrary, all nature seems to witness to the idea that
life for one organism must always be at the expense of another. These days, the
adjective 'aggressive' is used admiringly, especially in sport and business. The
message is, you must be ruthless to succeed, not a wholehearted, laughing,
loving human being. We are told it is more practical and effective to be 'hard-headed',
as if to be 'soft-hearted' is to be spineless. but wouldn't you rather be clear
headed, and great hearted? Then you make
room for mutual understanding and fearless compassion, and can work with other
people rather than against them.
The world relishes the idea that 'I must be cruel to be
kind'. But where does it originate? From muddled Hamlet, trying to justify to
himself the fact that he has just murdered someone and feels compelled to
murder again. If we are not clear in our own minds that cruelty and love are
irreconcilable opposites, and that one can never lead to the other, how can we
be sure of anything?
Love and hate are not head and tails of the same coin. Love is
the same whichever way you turn it. We confuse the resolute quality of love
with its vacillating substitutes - like sentimentality, and anxiety to please -
which sometimes, from some angles, look like love. The difference is that love
does not select some people or some attributes or appearances to love, and
exclude others. It does not waver or change to hate when its ulterior motives
are thwarted. Love has no ulterior
motives.
Love brings out the best in you because love is the best in you. It is the love in us
that finds better solutions, builds bridges, overleaps obstacles, lifts us out
of despondency. Yet we are afraid of love, having confounded it with ideas of
sacrifice and loss. Or rather, we have subtly distorted our understanding of
what love is because we are afraid of
it. We are afraid of love because it entirely levels us. Love is a state of
mind that makes us all equal, collapses barriers, dissolves the pretences,
offences and defences that we depend upon to keep us feeling distinct and
important.
We are afraid of love because we cannot control it or know
what it might do to us. Love is enlarging. It is too vast to be restricted to a
favoured few, or to be put aside as irrelevant while you get on with the 'real'
concerns of life. Love is not a smiley face you put on and off according to how
you feel or how other people are living up to your expectations. It is hate
that narrows our point of view and leaves us petty and isolated, with far fewer
options. But there is a familiarity in smallness that we cling to. It feels safer to build fences around ourselves and not to
expose ourselves to close encounters of the heart and mind that might make us
look foolish and feel vulnerable.
If you are not afraid of love today, what will you do
instead? How will you interact with others? What conflicts will you address, what
burden will you let go? When you start the day with the thought I will not be
afraid of love today (W282), you do not go out to fight dragons or defend
the right, nor do you slink evasively through the day hoping that a thunderbolt
will not strike you dead. It is a kind and gentle thought that allows the truth
in you to rise to the surface and lead the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment