"We cannot know what life is unless we know what love is."
—Emmanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom
"In moments like this, in front of death, and being free from the known, we can enter the unknown, the complete stillness where there is no deterioration. Perhaps such moments are the only time in which we can find out what life is and what love is.
And without that love, we will never find the truth."
—Jeanne de Salzmann
It's in the small hours of the morning, as the birds awaken, that I go deep in myself and search for this kernel of love that has formed me. It isn't separate from life; it is life, and, as Swedenborg says, we are receivers of life. This action a receiving life is already born from love; even the worst human being, at the very lowest possible level, is a receiver of this life that has been born of love.
If something goes wrong with it, that is not the fault of life or of love.
My paradox arises in trying to understand how things that appear to be unloving can come out of love. That's the world-question, isn't it?
But I can attempt to understand this vexing philosophical issue directly, immediately, through my own life and my own manifestation, where I believe I am loving — in whatever way I understand that — and then discover that it isn't true.
Even one moment of self-awareness will reveal this, and such revelations are available all day long, every day.
There is talk of loving-kindness in Buddhism, but loving-kindness must be organic; in order for me to have any understanding, I must go to the root of it and sense it within Being, before it is expressed. If there is no connection to this expression within Being before the outward expression, no love can be present.
The way that unloving things arise from love is because of a lack of awareness. If there is no relationship between the expression of love within Being, and outward life, love remains passive and inactive at the core of Being, and is unable to touch life. The capacity is only mediated by an awareness and conscious effort. But the conscious effort isn't an outwardly directed one, which seeks to manipulate or repair outward life; the conscious effort begins in sensing the seed of divinity within me.
This is why Jeanne de Salzmann phrases what she says above so exactly.
Our inner work is a call to understand that we are receivers of life, and to know that this begins with love. To sense this intimately is a sacred task; a duty we have to ourselves, to others, and to the Lord.
These are my thoughts this morning.
May your soul be filled with light.