How To Find The Answer In Love
What is love? When they say love is the answer, what do they mean? Is it possible to love everyone, even the bad people? How can I love someone who has treated me badly? What is meant by unconditional love? What would the world be like if everyone loved everyone? Good questions! Let me try to answer them, since I have been over forty years a recipient of the rewards of giving life to Love.
Love is a word we use in the English language to describe a way we can feel. A very beautiful lady asked me once, “What is love?” When I answered that it is a feeling, she became very upset and denied the answer. I asked why she would ask a question and then refuse to give any credence to the answer. She was too upset to continue the conversation. I have come to think that she was seeking a more romantic answer. I do still believe that love is a feeling. A simple answer, to be sure. I would have expounded upon my statement had this lady given me a chance, for I have volumes to present; as I intend to take a stab at here. Love is a feeling. A powerful feeling with limitless complexity, history, beauty, and effects.
I have doubt that there is a subject more expounded than love. It pervades all forms of communication that can be preserved and when it comes to verbal communication, it is unimaginably vast, but spoken words are short lived vibrations of the air that can linger only as memories in the mind. Can something else beautiful be said of love? I think it can.
Love probably has as many different manifestations as there are people and even as many as all the people that have ever been. Such is but an aspect of its beauty. I think animals manifest love in their way. As astonishing as it may seem to you, I think the plants manifest love too. Now, consider love as manifest by the Angles, spirits, God, and even aliens. Getting pretty complex, right? Can we discover what love is by all the possible expressions and manifestations it does and has had throughout history and in all aspects of reality? I think so.
Gravity is like love. It is everywhere and manifests itself in countless ways. Light is like love. The light of the sun shines upon the Earth and its inhabitants as one thing but becomes unique for every recipient. Sunlight seems to have no discriminatory ability, or maybe I should say “desire.” Who knows, maybe the sun knows what it is doing. Still, it seems to shine unconditionally on all, even if it hurts. Gravity and light are parts of the reality that we live on Earth that are there for our discovery. They do not require our belief. They do not require our acknowledgment or approval. They just are. As we gain greater consciousness, we improve our understanding of the reality that we must face and our understanding has improved to a point that we know gravity well enough to makes it possible to land spacecraft on comets and to analyze light that started its journey billions of years ago. Love is like these things. It is something that we can understand in greater depth and detail. It could, after all, be something that just is and that we can discover, or not.
Love is unique to you. You love as you love and no two can love the same. This is just something I think likely, but it matters not. The similarity is what counts. We all feel love in very similar ways and it affects our behavior in similar ways. We manifest love for our offspring that compels our behavior more than the compulsions of survival. We even suffer great heartbreak and pain in order to survive for our offspring in the conviction that we must so that we may better serve our offspring. A man would jump in front of a bullet to save his child. A mother would leap to her death to protect her child. Here love is something that makes the loved one more important to the one loving than one’s self. There are exceptions to these things and no two people seem to do it the same, but the similarity is astonishing. It begins to appear to be something that is definable and understandable. It appears to be something that exists on its own.
I am willing to think that love is a part of the universe, the creation, or what you wish to call it; reality, if you will. I am willing. I am not knowing. I think it possible, too, that only life forms can give life to love, can make it part of the universe, are the only source of its existence in the physical universe. I entertain even the notion that inanimate objects love. The non-universe, if you will, the universe that is not physical, if you will, could be the source of love, making the assessment difficult. It is an area of exploration luring us on tantalizingly. It has been said (by Carl Sagan, I think) that we are the eyes of the universe looking at itself. I say that we could be the universe’s way of bringing love into existence. Again, I am not knowing. I am proposing ideas. I lean a bit to the notion that love exists independently of life, much as gravity seems to. I fear that our understanding of the universe is far from comprehensive. We may be incredibly ignorant still. Can you entertain the thought that feelings are something that exists independently, like gravity and light; and how about feelings having their own consciousness? Can you visualize the universe as something that is inclusive of the physical and the non-physical? The division may be a simple product of ignorance. These questions make me feel ignorant. So many questions! So few answers! Someday, maybe, we will know.
We can love. That much I know. I do it all the time. I think that love is the answer to all the problems we face as a species and as individuals of the species at this time. That love is the answer has been said by many for a very long time. To say that love is the answer puts one into the company of some of history’s most wonderful characters. These characters have appeared throughout history and in countless variations. Jesus said that we should love one another. It is said in the Ten Commandments. It is said in any religion I have been able to examine. It has been said outside any religious or spiritual setting. That love is the answer is a thread woven throughout the tapestry we call “life.” So, how is love the answer?
You have probably heard it said many times in your life that love is the answer. Has it ever made sense to you? Have you doubted the veracity of the statement? If it is the answer, why has it not solved our problems? I discovered the answer for myself through love in the spring of 1971. It is the answer. Of this I am certain. But you have to do it right.
In light of the fact that we feel love in so many different ways, we can see that there is a love that is different. You may have never felt the kind of love that is the answer. Maybe we can consider the strength of love; one being more or less strong than another. Maybe we can look at love as something we feel in various qualities. There seems to be complexity here that challenges consciousness and language; especially when considered as something that exists independently of humans and even in the non-physical universe. What comes into relevance quickly here is that there is a love that is the answer and the others are not.
Far be it from me to say, but I will. You have to reach the point where your love is the kind that will work; as the answer, that is. It surely must be unconditional love. It must be immortal and invincible. It must be of a certain nature, quality, strength, or something. It seems that some people do not know love that is the love that is the answer. I do not say this with any certainty, and I fear that what I am writing here is true. I hope I am wrong. I hope that the love that anyone fells is the right love to be the love that is the answer. I can only base my understanding upon my own experience.
I found the answer in love in 1971. It transformed me in an instant. Since it happened I have been attempting to understand it better and to explain it to others. I feel that I have never actually gotten it across via communication. Maybe it is beyond me. I do not seem to tire of the effort. I can tell you that I had been through a long and difficult experience with the love I felt for a girl and that when I decided to try to love everyone I chose the love I felt for her as the love I wanted to feel for everyone. I did this simply because it seemed to me to be the strongest love I knew, and I must say here that I was obsessed and overwhelmed by it for many years. She broke up with me and took me back six times, and each time my love increased. The story is one I intend to write someday. The thing to understand here is that I felt a strong, deep love for this girl and I wanted to feel the same for everyone. My effort resulted in my re-birth.
I began to live my life with the strongest degree of honor that I am able to conceive, and my conception keeps growing. I became happy beyond my wildest imagination. I have been happy ever since. The changes that come over me are something for another book. It was transformative. I know of no other experience that even seems to be the same. I read about Buddha, Krishna, Mohamed, Moses, Jesus, and others seeing similarity but not what I can take to be the same. This could just be me; I don’t know. Of this I am certain, I experienced “love as the answer.”
In very little time I felt that I had found The Answer. I was and still am convinced that what I experienced can solve all the problems we currently face and probably relegate any we may come to later to mere adventure; fun, challenge. By merely deciding that I wanted to try to love everyone as I loved that girl and pursuing that objective in my heart and mind, it happened. I had discovered the answer in love.
I had little difficulty attaining my goal. I pursued it with my logical mind overcoming every obstacle I encountered along the way until I realized there was nothing stopping me. Once that was accomplished the rest just happened. I was taken by it. I think you can do it too.
The logical process I went through may or may not be necessary for you. I had to figure out how to love people I didn’t know, people who were bad, people who had done painful things to me, and people who would not love me back. Ultimately, I reached a place where it didn’t matter who or what they did. I just love without condition. I don’t love someone to be loved in return. I don’t love someone because of what I can get from them. I don’t even love someone for what I can get by feeling it. I don’t love someone because they are wonderful or beautiful. I love someone because my love is like sunshine. It does not discriminate. I am shinning love on everyone and everything all the time.
I do not need a policeman to make me treat people right. I don’t need laws to keep my behavior peaceful and benevolent. Money does not make me unkind. None can make me honest. Love makes me honest. My desire to be healthy and live long does not make me refrain from eating any kind of meat or root. I simply cannot kill something I love any more than you could kill your baby because you like the taste of its flesh, or even because you are starving. The way you might treat your child, if you love your child, is the way I treat everything. My love is unconditional. My associations are completely conditional.
I do not love everyone the same, though I love all those I know not of the same. The slightest knowledge or experience of a person forms my love into a love that is unique for that person. I do not have to like the person’s behavior, looks, status, or anything. I decide who I will associate with based strictly on my judgment. It is strictly conditional. My love is not. I wish I could associate closely with everyone, but people do not behave in ways that I approve and I have to be responsible for my actions, and association is an action. People who do not have love guiding them, tend to do things that I would like to see never done again. I have lots of friends, but I do not put my stamp of approval on everything they do. Since I love them, I am pretty easy with them.
If you are a killer of humans, I do not want to know you or be around you. If you hurt children, I am a danger to you. If you kill the animals I love so that you can eat them or put their body parts on display, I might be willing to associate with you, but I will not approve. I am conscious enough to know that your path is one you must take and that the path is the right one to take, I just don’t want to be beside you if you are doing things that cause me too much grief. I grieve over the things you kill. I love the animals, the fish, the birds, the crustaceans, and all living things. I do not approve the predator/prey relationship of Earth. I never will. It must change. Someday, I think it will. In the meantime, I accept the things I cannot change and work as hard as I can to change things within my power; as limited as it is. I am content knowing I am doing what I can. The words you are reading are part of my effort. I will love you forever no matter what. If you will join me in loving everyone, we can associate a lot. We can even manifest a paradise on Earth.
You have to apply the answer to your life first. When everyone does this the problems we have will evanesce like vapor from a dew drop. I was re-born through love. I became someone different, better. I was inexorably compelled to make myself into the best person I could conceive. As my conception of the best person grows, I grow. If enough of us do this, our troubles will be over. More than that, our lives will become something unimagined.
I can visualize the world I was born into as it would be if everyone loved everyone. It is beyond beautiful. We will have to come up with new words to describe it. Then, I can see an evolution of consciousness that holds wonders inconceivable to the minds of people today. Maybe you believe in God. Consider God communing with us in two way association. Imagine being held in God’s arms. Are you starting to get the picture? If you believe there is no God, consider the way society would change when everyone was conducting themselves in ways that would make most of what we spend our time and energy on today unnecessary. No prisons or jails. No military. No laws. No borders. No police. No crime. This list can go on for quite a while. Society would be a lot more fun and lot less dangerous. What we have and what we can do today is so limited by the nature of our society and the characters of the people composing it. That it is hard for some to visualize the way it could be.
If you want to consider technology, consider it without the constraints of finance and conducted by people who love everyone. We will discover things that cannot be discovered today. We will bring about things that have been discovered already but cannot be implemented due to social restraints. For example, we cannot distribute a little box to everyone today that will transport the person that has it anywhere desired. It would topple the economy. In the U.S.A. we must have the jobs related to our current system of transportation. Too much unemployment would cause a depression that would be disastrous, ecologically and personally. In a society populated by people guided at every moment by love, most of our systems would vanish harmlessly. People would do things because they enjoy doing it. Waste would be minimized. Today, waste is part of the economy. We make things wear out so we can keep production going. We overdo bureaucracy because people need jobs. Technology born of love will make our current state seen as barbaric. We are creatures of the universe. The stars beckon. The other galaxies seem impossible to us today, but will come within our reach. The wonders are only just beginning. Now, art is something that has only just begun, too.
A person’s artistic talent finds trouble expressing in this society. The struggle for survival is still paramount in the lives of most Americans. It gets harder and harder every day to make ends meet. We have to work constantly just to stay afloat. The few who have the time are restrained by the condition of the world around them. Inspiration has trouble getting through all the anguish, pain, depression, and death that pervades life on Earth. It even seems that much of our art is born of these things. That is too limited. People who live in the world of people who love everyone will find within themselves the art that will set new levels. We will produce everything as art. Utility will take a back seat in production yet it will reach unheard of levels of expression. Our art will find new mediums. Even the Earth will be a canvas.
Earth is already beyond beauty. Imagine it nurtured and cared for by billions of loving individuals. Cleaning it up will be gigantic task, but a vital part of the requirements of the transition to the new world. We can’t just stop everything. We have to go to work with a new meaning. We will move steadily into the new world, not crash into it. For you, each of you, it will be a “crashing into,” but for the world to come it take place with wisdom and knowledge. All that will come naturally to a loving heart.
So, try to love everyone. Try to find the answer in love. You can do it. I know you can. You may need to develop a higher level of love, a stronger love, a better love, whatever relative word you want. But you can start by simply trying. I think an earnest desire is really all that is required. Just evaluate the love that you feel and select what you think is the strongest and best love that you know, and then try to feel that way for everyone. When you find something preventing it, find a way to go ahead through, around, under, or over it. Overcome all obstacles. Realize that everyone lives in the subjective reality that they only can live. It is theirs and they can only deal with it with only what they bring to the table, so to speak. No one is smarter than they are. No one is more capable than they are. No one does anything they cannot do. No one ever does less than the best they can do at the time under all the circumstances they face, and yet few ever do as well as we think they should have. We change with every moment. What we couldn’t do a moment ago, we may be able to do in the next. What seemed the thing to do at the time may never be the thing to do again. How can you not love someone when you understand them and the circumstances thoroughly? They are mostly just like you. The differences are minute. The circumstances are never the same. It doesn’t matter what they do or who they are. You can love them because you want to love them. Doing so in sincerity will yield rewards beyond this author’s capacity to communicate.
I am waiting here for you. I wait in my private little paradise “that makes me think of two,” as Neil Young put it. I think of everyone though. I am here. Join me. It is the lonely thing left for me to want.