Love is our willing and voluntary cooperation with God to allow His Unconditional gift of Love to flow into our Hearts and then through us and on to other “receptive” Hearts - in a never ending stream that always begins with God and returns once again to God. How then does Love actually work? To answer that question we must first define what Love is not – sex. Human sexuality is a complementary gift from God, but subordinate in nature to the gift of Love itself. Love is always Unconditional, never requiring any action in return except for our willingness to cooperate with Love by having an open Heart for it to work through. Neither does Love put any demands on us to willingly accept God’s free gift of Love. Love is a free and never ending Unconditional gift from God that requires no sexual response from anyone for anything. We Love people and God’s created universe through our open Hearts, independent of someone’s specific situation, condition or response back to us in return: the elderly, a child, a spouse, the sick, the dying, the prisoner, the sinner and even ourselves.
Human sexuality will be discussed at another time, but in short it will suffice to say that sexuality remains subordinate to the gift of Love – when used properly as a human “response to Love.” However, this “response to Love” also includes any number of thousands of possible “responses to Love” – for example: exchanging kind words; showing concern and commitment for another; giving someone gifts or flowers; listening with an open mind and proper attention; sharing a meal with them; withholding judgment against them; and by providing them with food, clothing, shelter or financial resources for their support. Many of these actions can be tied to human sexuality under the category of Romance, but many of these and thousands of other possible ”responses to Love” have no connection to either Romance or sexuality.
One major problem in human society is the basic truth that deception exists in our world, causing many of God’s gifts to His creation to be manipulated and used for purposes other than what God intended them to be for us. God’s response to us is always through Love, so nothing that God provides or desires for us could ever be used in a negative way against us by Him – it is not God’s nature and not even possible for God to act towards us in such a manner. The topic of deception will be covered in detail on another day. However, for now, one of the most difficult things for us to know in our daily everyday lives is to be able to understand just what God’s intentions, or His Will, is for us at any given time. Nothing ever happens by chance, and in every situation and circumstance God desires for us to grow more aware of Him and to be drawn closer to Him. The nature of God will also be discussed at another time.
So how does Love work then? Leaving aside what Love isn’t, now we begin to examine what Love is. We know that Love works in us through our Hearts because we can actually “feel” Love in our Heart as a real, physical response to Love. Love can also “break” our Hearts if it is denied to us or not returned. Someone that is without Love can be described as “hard hearted.” Love is also connected very closely to our intellect, our emotions, our thoughts, our dreams and to our very Soul. In fact, pure Love that is not affected by our human nature at all, actually flows through our Soul. The Soul is not an actual “physical” location in our anatomy, so it is difficult to understand in concept, but suffice to say the Soul is “of God” and may return “to God” after our earthly existence is over. That is why God’s Love is able to connect so deeply with us, and that we are able to respond so deeply through Love back to God in return. We are His creation - He knows us, He recognizes us and He Loves us unconditionally; and He desires for us to return to Him again one day.
We do know, from both experience and through observation, that Love flowing through Hearts or Souls united to each other actually “binds” them together in harmony and unison. The two “open, available and willing” Hearts, both in response to God’s Love working between them, ”resonate” or beat together at the same frequency with each other. In doing so, they recognize this intuitively and without precondition – it is an Unconditional and freely given response to each other through Love. This ”bonding” or “binding together” process is our own unique response to God’s Love – freely given and freely returned. If all of God’s children could be considered as if each one were a unique strand of yarn, with every person assigned their own unique and original color all to themselves, then this “binding” action between willing Hearts would actually ”weave” the two colored strands together to create a ”Love fabric” of yet a third color. This “fabric of a third color” becomes a visual representation of Love shared and returned between two willing and cooperative Hearts.
When people Love each other, for example a family of three – each individual is represented by their own unique color. A Mother, Father and a child would represent three individual and unique colors – just like their own unique fingerprints. Each individual, bound together with one another in the family through Love, would share a unique color with each other as well; say the child to her Mother and the child to her Father. The child has her own color, and shares a unique “fabric color” with each of her parents as well, creating three distinct “colors” of Love in her world. The same holds true for her parents. In all, a Loving family of three would have three unique individual colors and three unique and shared “fabric colors” between them – a total of six colors in total. When this family is viewed at a distance by yet another person, this person sees the “sum total” of their six colors in harmony with each other in what becomes another unique and blended “family” color. If this person then shares their Love with each of the three family members, then three new “shared colors” and one unique color belonging to the individual enters the palette in a response to all of the new bonds that are made between them through Love. This concept of “fabrics of color” between people who allow Love to work though their Hearts is how I perceive God views His created world - an infinite totality of colors, between Himself and all of His creation that He Loves, through connections between people who allow themselves to be conduits of His Love, and additionally through all who Love Him in return. It has been said that God sees the “light” of His Love that exists in all of us, which is in reality only a reflection back to Him of His Love that is first unconditionally given to us. I offer that this ”light” of God’s Love shines in every possible color of the rainbow. Just as God sees our individual ”light” shining through, we can see each other’s “light” shining through as well if we try. It is God’s Love for us that allows this to be so.
How do we recognize this “light” that shines in each other through the unconditional Love that flows from God? We see the “light” of God’s Love through someone’s eyes -the windows to their very Soul. Someone who loses their eyes or eyesight, for whatever reason, doesn’t lose their “light” of course; it only transitions to shine through their entire body instead. For our discussion here, we will focus on the eyes as the source of God’s Love shining through them. A person’s eyes are the windows to their Soul, and all manifestations of their Soul are then made visible to us through them: Love, honesty, emotion, joy, excitement, sadness, concern, anger, and every other aspect of our very nature is on display through our eyes. We can also see in someone else’s eyes how cooperative their Heart and Soul are to God’s Love and whether their Heart is “open” to Love from us. Our eyes reflect our “response” to Love directly from the depths of our Soul, and over time we can learn to recognize that reality in other people as well.
How then do you actually see the Love or openness to Love in someone’s eyes? The first “response” to Love is for someone to look back into your own eyes. People are aware that looking into someone else’s eyes makes them vulnerable to examination, so they may look away in embarrassment, but over time when they return your direct gaze they are acknowledging that they are allowing themselves to be vulnerable to your gaze in return. People are emotional beings and the more aware they are of their emotions the clearer the lense of their eye becomes, allowing us to look deeply into their Soul. The further removed they are from their emotions; the harder it is to see their Soul clearly. Women as a general category are much more aware of their emotions and feelings than men are, and therefore women are more of an “open book” than men. We can also describe people who “wear their emotions on their sleeve” as someone who allows their emotions to “rise to the surface” in clear view for everyone to see.
Men, as a category, are completely different from women as to the clarity of their eyes, the clarity of their emotions and the clarity of their very intentions – which often puts anyone, men or women, at an extreme disadvantage when trying to assess their response to God’s Love. Men are fully capable of responding to God’s Love with an open Heart in just the same manner as women are, but men do this far less frequently than women do on the whole. Men are “conflicted” in Western society, based on the norms expected of them in general by society, and are taught from an early age (mostly by other men) not to display their emotions; as it isn’t something that men are supposed to do. The further they distance themselves from their emotions, the “light” of their eyes becomes less visible to us when looking in. An extreme example of this are the eyes of criminals and emotionally disturbed people – their eyes can actually become dark, without light. The nature of God and His Love is that He continues to Love someone despite their darkness, because God’s Love is Unconditional, regardless of our own individual failures or circumstances. Another problem with men as a whole is that they usually don’t understand the difference between Love and human sexuality. To regard them as the same thing, and not recognize them as the gifts from God that they actually are, is to misuse both of these gifts.
Are there barriers to Love besides a completely closed Heart? Yes, of course. The Heart automatically reacts to anything that it perceives as a “threat” to it because of our very own human nature. People who would choose to hurt us, either physically or emotionally; people who are aggressive, rude, disrespectful, abusive, untruthful, deceitful or manipulative towards us; and for many, many other reasons, cause our Hearts to “pull away” from them because their actions “repulse” our basic human nature. It is very difficult for our human nature to remain open to others in Love, that “injure” us either physically or emotionally – because of the impurities we carry with us in our own Hearts. God’s Love allows us to grow and change; removing many of the impurities that we carry with us, and create within us the capability for Love to still respond to others - regardless of the hurt we have incurred. This is truly Love on a level that most of us are never able to attain – because we are unwilling to try. If we are willing, God is able to do all things through us, to right every wrong, and even to allow the “Lion to lie down with the Lamb.”
Are there any limits to Love? No. Is there really such a thing as Love “at first sight”? Certainly. Is “young Love” between teenagers and children possible and real? Of course. The difficulty in their unique situation is that they require time and maturity to follow through and support that Love, but it is easily possible. Can one person Love more than one person at a time? Without a doubt. A person can Love their spouse or parents and many other people as well, of both sexes, all at the same time – because the nature of God’s Love isn’t sexual - it’s Unconditional. In fact, taking as an example someone with a perfectly pure Soul, untainted by human nature, one person can Love everyone in the entire world – all at the same time, just as God does. This should be our ultimate goal and desire in the end – to Love God and each other as a pure and Loving response to His Unconditional Love that was first given freely to us by God.
