Loving and Being Loved
Sometimes I've heard people talk about feeling loved by God as being important or perhaps even central to their experience of religion. Yet I am struck by how forcefully religious traditions exhort us to give or practice love. For example, following his enlightenment experience Buddha is said to have decided to teach others his Eightfold Path rather than retire to monastic life from out of compassion for others. Jesus, when asked what the two greatest commandments are, replies: to love God and love others.
God is often conceived as an Other entity existing in distinction from the rest of reality - a Creator of creation. If you don't believe in the existence of such an entity, you may want to think of love in relation to a context larger than the individual person such as society, life, or our planet.
Any thoughts, then, on the significance of receiving/giving love in relation to other individuals - or, let's say, the larger context or Context for our lives?
God is often conceived as an Other entity existing in distinction from the rest of reality - a Creator of creation. If you don't believe in the existence of such an entity, you may want to think of love in relation to a context larger than the individual person such as society, life, or our planet.
Any thoughts, then, on the significance of receiving/giving love in relation to other individuals - or, let's say, the larger context or Context for our lives?
Posted by Paul at 10:24 PM Permalink
36 Comments:
Not being theist I have no comments on love for/by a creator.
But I can be overwhelmed by love while sitting on a chunk of granite in a forest. This is quite a home we have here on this planet, it's an amazing and wondrous place.
It's hard (maybe) to love others if you haven't first been loved? ... 1 John, chapter 4:19 - We love because he first loved us.
I'm not saying it should stop there - loving others is the goal - but just that it's the first step I'm still stuck on.
I boiled it down to if one loves the CREATOR then one loves the creation.
So, I have been spreading these two precepts...
Love the creation
Help others as best you can
The advantage, from my perspective, is that millions of American Native souls are saved even without ever seeing the bible or knowing anything of it.
'Course, this doesn't help with the slight crisis of faith I'm going through right now, but, what the heck....figure I'll muddle through, somehow.
I believe this post and the previous one on denial of self go hand in hand. I think love in its purest form is denial of self. That denial can take many forms, from the grand to the seemingly mundane. I believe the opportunities to deny ourselves, to show that love in a practical way, are presented to us daily, we just have to have our antennae up. Sometimes it can be as simple as letting the person behind us with only one item go ahead in the grocery line.
The challenge, of course, is not in loving the loveable, that's easy. Loving the unloveable is where the effort comes in, and yet, it is precisely the unloveable who seem to the most dire in need of it. It's amazing how many opportunities are presented to us when we open our eyes and look for them. I've seen the most miraculous personal transformations come out of loving the most unloveable of people.
I have also found that putting others first, the practical application of my love, is addicting. The more I give, the more I want to give. When I love selfishly, to get something back in return, inevitably there are rewards. But when I give selflessly, the rewards are always so much greater. There is a joy and contentment, a peace, that I think can only be truly found in selfless love.
Having spent my whole life as an evangelical Christian, I always believed the source of my love came from Jesus, that is was Him alive in me that motivated my love. It was of great relief to me when I did leave the church, that my love did not leave as well. It confirmed within me what I'd hoped to be true, that the greatest of love is capable within all of us, regardless of religion.
The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, "Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive." Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than this, that a man gives up his life for his friends." When we recognize the former truth and practice it with the latter, the potential for peace within ourselves and with our fellow man is limitless.
Therefore, I am passionately devoted to it, to its manifestation in every possible way..whether as compassion, kindness, or lending a helping hand, or whether it is the fury over hatred and intolerance in this world man exhibits against man, or the passion I feel when I create my artwork, or when listening to the pain in someone's voice who needs comforting. It is my passion, it is my life, it is everything, it IS God...without separateness.
Thank you for stopping by.
Love, no matter how great or grand, will always fall short in describing what we receive from the Holy One, in whatever form anyone might conceive of the Divine.
To me, feeling loved is a function of my ability to receive love. Love is always there in the universe, just waiting to be plucked like ripe strawberries, and just as sweet.
Thanks for provoking our thoughts, Paul.
Umm, I am inaccordance with Heather's comments, there is an saying from the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he had said that "Allah has put this love for my wife in my heart, this is from God." Knowing some of his history, and also having myself love for my own wife, this is a concept that fills my eyes with tears.
I truly, truly believe that anyone who has experienced even the fleetingest sense of real love for anyone, (or thing for that matter), has known God. Perhaps they may not have termed it as such, but it matters little in my opinion what words you use to signify this experience with, it is the event that is important, not the words we attach to it. In my opinion...
thanks for mentioning my blog Paul.
I found my way to feeling the love and harmony in the universe, when I was sick with a fever on a wilderness trip, and suddenly felt "tuned in"...
and have been trying to stay in that frame of mind ever since--
(I can sure relate to that "block of granite!)
I use the term "God", simply as a shorthand to refer to the power that causes this universe, and guides its workings--
because we understand the concept as the ultimate "greatness", both in scope and in power--
BUT it breaks my heart that churches teach so often that God is outside of us, judgmental, and, let's face it-- a "mean old man"!
I am very touched, Heather, by your description of the fears raised by such a belief system...and your narrow escape into reality!
I'm afraid that organized religion can be the greatest barrier to sharing the love that connects us with ALL our brothers and sisters...to me, we are all part of the same person!
(I have a problem when I forget that not everyone sees it that way...)
I've been pondering recently on why we seem to be hard-wired to need romantic love, especially in the Western culture--my feeling is that this is the closest we come to experiencing the love that is the REAL basis for our existence...
(I'm trying not to use the word "God" here--)
but romantic love has the pitfall of being impermanent and suddenly disappearing--leading to agonies of withdrawal--like a drug--
Anyway, I agree that once you know that love truly IS "everything"...you don't really need a concept of what God is, you just live it!
And that no-one can take it away, it's inside, outside, and sharing it is what we're all about, really.
As someone said here, it is easy to love the lovable and have good will toward people who are lovable. It is easy to help a person like that who is in need. What is hard is to love your enemies. What is hard is to love a person who is intentionally hurting you or hurting someone you care about.
I was put to that test about 7 years ago when my former son-in-law was hurting my daughter and their four children deeply. It was a dreadful situation involving emotional cruelty. I could not help but be filled with anger toward him. But I could not allow this anger to turn into full-blown hatred with its accompanying hunger for revenge, because I was sure that would have the power to corrupt me spiritually.
I struggled with this for a couple of years during which this man's abuse continued. I finally reached the point that I was able to see beyond my daughter's pain and the pain I felt for her to what this man was doing to himself by hurting my daughter and his own children. Once I reached that point where I had some compassion for him as well, I found myself beginning to pray for him for his own sake. I found myself beginning to nurture within me good will toward him. I don't know if my prayers helped him any. But I think working through this helped me and protected me from spiritual ruination.
Well you would think that would be the end of it, that I had conquered it for good. But, no. There are times still when something happens and I am reminded of what our family (his family too) went through back then. I am reminded of all the pain. When this happens I have to work through it again.
It is very hard to love your enemies. It is indeed a struggle. But it can be done with the help of God's own loving ways to serve as the example.
Yet that spiritual response to nature is certainly something that non theists "get" as well.
CRYSTAL: Makes sense to me - being loved as important to developing a capacity to love. (I did notice that theme with you, but I've noticed it with other people too.)
HAZZBUZZ: Seems like if people were going to pick a single type of religious experience widely known and widely recognized across religious traditions as being crucial, it would be love. And of course love also figures prominently in the lives of many people who don't participate in any religious tradition.
BONEMAN: For an awful lot of people, a "crisis of faith" is an integral part of coming to greater faith and more authentic spirituality.
"If one loves the Creator then one loves the creation" makes sense to me. But then you can also have someone like Hayden - first comment above - who clearly loves creation without believing in a Creator.
NON HIGHLIGHTED HEATHEROVSKYOVICH (I like Russian novels myself...) Commentators here often have that essayist tendency, me too...
You bring up a number of issues I found myself considering for what became the first chapter of my book, which is on love. I think they're some of the things you're pretty much bound to run up against if you give this much thought.
1. Love as "self denial" or altruism as it's often called.
Yet there is love as self fulfillment...
2. Whether loving everyone - the idea of universal love - is pie in the sky or whether this is something that can really be experienced and acted on. You bring this up by referring to "loving the unloveable." Since that wording's contradictory, let's call it something like loving those who we find disagreeable.
3. I think so too. Getting beyond self interest, consciously caring even about people we'll never meet, thinking and planning ahead for this planet's future with care - this is now a survival issue for our species.
I can see where you'd tend to get away from that idea that Jesus is the source of all love. There's nothing to prove it and much that tends to contradict it, such as the fact that so many human being have lived and died who never heard of Jesus.
SERENITY: The language here is difficult because you're trying to express something hard to articulate. Logically "love is everything" has problems.
At the same time, I'm pretty sure I know what you're trying to get at. For now, I'll leave it with the thought that love, while it can be experienced in relation to individuals, as it usually is, also has what might be alluded to as an oceanic quality.
PECOS BLUE: Thanks for introducing the idea of love as being essentially a relationship.
DON I: When you say "Love, no matter how great or grand, will always fall short in describing what we receive from the Holy One," that's pretty thought provoking itself. If there is something greater than love, do we only receive it or do we also participate it in an active sense - or does it transcend or combine action and passivity?
Using language this way is tricky. On the other, we can be primarily trying to communicate about experiences that are really hard to talk about. On the other, we can try to metaphysically extrapolate from those experiences.
KEVIN, you write "I truly, truly believe that anyone who has experienced even the fleetingest sense of real love for anyone, (or thing for that matter), has known God." And you go on to say that the concept of "God" isn't at all critical here, you're not trying to do theology.
Maybe there's a big love. And every particular experience of love is like a little taste of it.
FIREBIRD: "Wow" exactly summarizes my reaction to this thread too.
Thanks for bringing in the subject of romantic love. As far as I can tell, romantic love at its best is a blend of love plus hardwired psychobiological attraction.
To just try to point in the direction of my thinking here: We can deeply love, for example, our grandparents. If you figured out just what it means to love a grandparent, you'd have a perfectly adequate concept of love. Romantic love isn't a special kind of love, but love that's experientially modified by additional sorts of human feeling/attraction.
SUSIE Q: Hi there, I will have to catch up to you tomorrow!
So you guys don't sleep on Sunday nights or what??!
Looking' at dust..I brought my head up..and saw..a field of pretty willows blowing in the wind..I was mesmerized...
and inside my mind something spoke.."You are more important than these beautiful willows who here today gone tomorrow.."
and I cried..because I felt intense love....when there was no one around giving it...
You point to a couple of features about the difficulty of "loving your enemies" that sure ring true for me: how much of a struggle it can be, i.e., the problem can resurface even after you've made progress. And how the idea of not focusing on hatred and revenge is for the sake of one's own sanity at least as much as it has to do with bringing a more constructive attitude to bear on the person causing you problems. You might not even have a continuing relationship with the person, so that loving or forgiving them becomes entirely about preserving your own peace and sanity.
LADY LUXIE: Pauline, in a past thread, has commented on the differences in spiritual/religious experience. I'd probably need to talk with you for hours to feel that I had an adequate sense of what was going on in the experience you describe.
Sometimes I wonder if a lot of the differences in our experiences might not be accounted for by our different ways of expressing them - the language we use, the interpretations we place on them, our beliefs about them.
On the one hand, I've had intense experiences in response to nature and my gut tells me they have something in common with what you describe. On the other, I wouldn't describe them exactly as a sense of being loved - although often it's involved a sense of... being included. On the other (can there be three hands??) Crystal and at least one other commentator in past threads have referred to feeling loved by God.
It would be interesting if anyone else who has had an experience that they would describe in terms of feeling loved by God happened to read your comment so they could respond to it...
Firebird, you are as warm as always. I want to clarify, for my own sake, that I have a great deal of love and admiration for the evangelical Christian community. Their portrayal within the media can be one sided and negatively slanted. I do take serious issue with some theological points, some of which had a detrimental impact on my own psychological well being. However, it is my belief that the majority of fundamental Christians truly seek to reflect the love of Christ and do so with sincerity. The heart of Christianity is the sacrificial love of Jesus, and the outpouring of mercy and grace as a by product of that love. I will always hold fast to those principles and am so, so grateful to have come away with them.
I just have to say that I love Susie Q's comment. That is a perfect example of love being a choice and not a feeling. It is human for us to react with anger, even hatred at times, when we've been hurt or we see our loved ones hurt. And yet, the only person that winds up being negatively affected by that anger is us, and those closest to us. Choosing to love and forgive isn't just about the recipient, it's about us and our own emotional and spiritual well being. And sometimes in those situations, as Susie pointed out, it may be a choice we have to make everyday for the rest of our lives.
And finally, Paul, loving the unloveable was the theme of a bible study I did years and years ago and the term has always stuck out in my head. Besides, my friend, I'm a woman, don't you know it's in my job description to say contradictory things?
That’s one of the main reasons I like to use the word Source in lieu of “God.” The word God connotes something separate and apart from that which was created – you have God and Creation. For me, Source is everything, and all things flow from it, including love.
I think a lot of people have difficulty understanding love beyond romantic love and/or love that we feel for a parent, sibling or friend. In many ways, this type of love is a “conditional love” and involves or requires reciprocation. As you know, there is a greater love that is unconditional and that is the love that comes to us from God/Source/etc.
It is as vast and limitless as the universe itself, but carries a much lighter touch. It is a type of love we must be open to – we must tune ourselves to it like a radio to a station. We cannot hear the radio station’s signal without a radio, yet nobody would dispute that the signal is there all of the time. The same with God’s love – we must tune into it through the radio of mindfulness and awareness. Once we receive it, it’s existence can never again be doubted.
Wishing you much love brother!
In the last few years I have come to the conclusion that the important thing is to receive love. If we have not received enough as a child it will have a serious effect upon us, but we can at any time in later life make good that deficiency when the opportunity arises. We can receive love from any source, including from animals and plants but we cannot fake it.
I don't think we can actually give love at all for it is not ours. The best we can do is let it flow through us.
These are my observations from experience and not cultural training. I think to preach that we should love when we have not been loved is to cheapen the notion of love, and I care not if this criticises the alleged words of Buddha or Jesus.
Without having received love, we do not know what love is, and are forced to fake it.
I agree with you, Heather, that most Christians are seeking to follow the loving example of Jesus--my cousins who are missionaries are a wonderful example of pure loving goodness--but I have also seen so much damage done by church teachings--also in my family-(long line of Baptist pastors) so I see both sides...
Paul, "love is everything" is understandable in the sense that Dennis describes, like a "radio signal"--and tuning into it puts one in touch with love as the energy by which we are all created--beyond even the elements we know on earth--
at least that's the way I mean it, and I think this is what Serenity was saying also.
Which means, like Serenity said, that it can be the energy and motivation behind all that we do...
Lady luxie, your experience of feeling "love when there was no-one around" happens very often, especially when it is so much needed--there are spiritual forces that look out for us, whether angels or those who have passed on--and they are always sending us their love, we don't always feel it so strongly!
(and it is also common to hear their voices like thoughts in our head--reassuring and guiding us--)
I now take being loved by God as a given because of practices that keep me connected all the time ( almost).
How does that feel like? I think it is difficult to put in words.
JANICE: Love is often conceived along the lines of "love typologies" or kinds of love - eros, friendshipos, naturos, childos, Cheerios... OK, so I'm not up on my terms... but really, it is often categorized along the sorts of lines you suggest.
That's definitely one approach to universal love that works for many people - a belief in the inner perfection or goodness of everyone. Some are doubtful or skeptical about this.
"The orderliness of the universe as constituting love..." I'd need to hear more to follow...
DENNIS: It might be worth going over the idea of God at some point. I'm thinking Source, like you say, doesn't sound like a God of complete Otherness. But it does sound like maybe it's identifying a particular dimension or aspect of being or reality with God more closely than the rest of being or reality?
YVES: I agree that being loved, especially in childhood, is critical. Deficits in this area cause people great trouble, sometimes for a lifetime.
At the same time, I wouldn't want to elevate being loved over loving in importance. While being loved is primary in the sense that receiving love helps prepare us to grow into people capable of giving love, it seems to me that loving, in an active sense, is what gets the world's work done. And I do know what you mean by how the love that we act on and express doesn't "belong" to us - to me that's a really profound point and one I found challenging to communicate with words.
FIREBIRD: Love as a kind of radio signal that exists beyond the inner lives of human beings, as well as the thought that the sense of being loved when no one else is around is an indication of unseen presences - these would belong to the category of religious or spiritual beliefs.
Maybe I could do some posts at some point looking more directly at religious/spiritual belief per se.
DR SU: Rings true to me - that loving can come to give us as much joy as being loved; perhaps even greater joy and greater meaning.
by the way you can check my archives of february last year from the right side of my blog. (ICE HOTEL)tnx for the visit too!
EDEN: Me too. Seems like that's something there's widespread agreement about - how important it is to first experience being loved to become better able to express and act on love.
MAGICEYE: I never thought about that - trusting oneself as leading to trusting others. I'd need to hear more details to understand how you're thinking that works. Thanks for stopping by.
Feelings are feelings, they come & go, and I'm really not so sure how much weight we ought to give them; I'd rather look at them as pointing to our inner desires. Not saying that feeling love is bad - not at all - but I think there is a lot of value in digging deeper than feelings and becoming more aware of how our deeper desires are guiding us.
Something I have been thinking about these past few days is that love calls for action. How can we say we love a person and then allow that person's needs to go unmet when it is within our power to do something about it? This holds true for groups of people we claim to love. If we allow their needs to go unmet when we can do something about it, how genuine is our love for them then?
For anyone who is interested there is a good article at Wikipedia about love, what it is according to some people, and so on.
I am interested in learning what others here think of the idea of tough love. Sometimes it may be necessary to withdraw our love and affection from a person in order to motivate that person to seek help such as in the case of a drug addiction that is destroying them. My sister had to do that with her son when he was allowing an alcohol problem to destroy his life. It worked. He went on to join AA. Of course, she still loved her son even though she told him she wanted nothing to do with him until he went for help.
It's encouraging in a world where you turn on the TV and hear from so many people who think of themselves as religious but are often terribly unconscious of how they use religion to buttress their egos.
Refreshing!
To me there is a certain similarity in your remarks here - both of you looking for something deeper than... let's call it love as emotionalism.
N2, your comment brings to mind the experience of "detachment" from self.
STEVE, I know what you mean. "Feelings" can be changeable, can come and go... I guess I'd want to say that love, if it's well understood, is a feeling that turns out to be different from all other feelings and not simply a feeling.
St. Paul's often quoted words about love in I Cors. 13 to me provide a suggestion of this.
SUSIE Q, hi... I'm getting deja vu... I think it's the second time you post just before I'm about to click "publish" for my responses to prior commments!
May not get back till tomorrow, but you've left a number of good points that others may want to follow up on meanwhile...
I sometimes find the word love a difficult one to use, because for me the way that love expresses itself is something so far beyond the baggage that seems to inevitably accompany using the word at all.
So when I say love is everything.....it is like a source....a source with infinite ways of expressing itself: 1. My mom calls me to find out what level of pain I am in today because she loves me, 2. I turn on the news and feel pain in my heart because of the deaths due to war and poverty in the world, 3. I view an ocean wave or feel a breeze on my face which takes my breath away in ecstasy, 4. I feel fury over violence and hatred and intolerance toward others 4. I stop and buy a soda for the man outside the store collecting money for his mission and have a lovely conversation with him 5. I have an experience of my concept of God which is so meaningful and so close to me I am One......to me, these (and so many more examples) are all love. Different expressions, but all love, all part of the same source. So perhaps, yes, I am making an illogical sweeping statement when I say love is everything, but my experience of love seems to be something so constant as to literally BE everything to me.
(I second that emotion...!)
"Love calls for action" - that's major. It has to be accounted for in any adequate idea of what love is.
And your thoughts on "tough love" relate to both of the above.
SERENITY: You're pointing to many of the diverse ways in which love can be experienced. Now I see what you mean by the feeling that in some sense love is "everything" - or at least many things. This points toward what J. A. Lockhart says re. how difficult it is to express exactly what it is that love is. (Difficult - but not impossible.)
FIREBIRD: I'm trying to decide what to post on next - lots of possibilities...
J A LOCKHART: Just as you say: I think we all do have a sense of what love is deep down; and it's hard to express, which is why, as you say, we're bouncing around all over the place.
That said, it's encouraging to me to find people bouncing around themes that tell me I've got it right in chapter one of Original Faith. Its title is "What Love Is." It gradually came into focus for me over a period of about seven years as I addressed the kinds of issues people are raising here.
As it gets closer to the book becoming available, I'll probably blog at least excerpts from that chapter so I can return to this topic with greater focus.
I live in an area were the Christian faith is largely practiced in a very "old time" way. Many of the people here have problems with literacy. Many of the preachers have problems with literacy. They take the bible literally and that is where the lack of literacy becomes problematic.
My observation has been that many folk here are very focused on divine love, i.e. the love the deity holds for them. I feel this preoccupation robs them of the experience and practice of agape towards their fellow man. If it is practiced then it is practiced toward select insiders in the community. The idea of extending this toward all people is a concept quite foreign to them.
Thanks so much for stopping by my blog, Paul. I'm delighted to have found you.
Interesting connection you make between illiteracy rates and regions where there's more of a tendency to take the bible literally. Wonder if that's shown by stats? If it is, it seems like any journalist writing about it would get clobbered!
Yes, that insider/outsider thing is just - bad, imo. A problem here is that you can find scripural support for it. The gospel of John has Jesus repeatedly saying, in effect, "I'm the Christ and if you don't believe it you're going to hell."
Of course plenty of other passages present him as compassionate. So without bringing our own hearts and minds to religious writings, I think we're lost.
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