Reflections

April 2008

The Transforming Power of Love

The Transforming Power of Love

By Rev. LeRoy E. Zemke
Pastor, Temple of the Living God

“He prayeth best who liveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge -
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

“ By the accident of fortune, a man may rule the world for a time, but by the virtue of love, he may rule the world forever.”
Lao-tzu, Tao, Tao-te ching

"The original and positive ethical basis for Christianity was love. God is love. The soul is holy, able to know God and therefore of ultimate significance. Love, as it is interpreted in the fourth Gospel, is the primary fact of the Universe."
Herschel Baker - The Image of Man

Out of the boundless universe life expresses itself as energy, force, heat, rhythm and cohesion. And all of the forms of energy can also be expressed in a word used across the centuries as love. It, too, is an energy that is unseen throughout the world even though it’s presence is felt beyond the limits of language to describe its input, influence or effect upon any one being alone.

While the popular understanding of love is often relegated to the romantic and the erotic, the purest, most spiritual force of love transcends any one area or arena of the human experience to be so contained. Saints, poets and philosophers seek mightily to describe it and well they do, but still it eludes a truly complete or final language in image, metaphor or simile.

Spiritual teachers, sages and a host of philosophers have sometimes labeled levels of the love experience, offering "agape" as the final state akin to Divine Love without judgment and complete acceptance of all beings as they are. Therefore it is some measure of truth that we cannot, nay it is impossible to know the incredible range of the spectra of love’s kaleidoscope. Who can measure human relationships in all their infinite complexity and variety, and their seeming endless reconfigurations and transformations?

Add to the mix the deep love of friends (who stand the test of time), families for each other, races and communities as they intertwine and interconnect across the world. All speak the complex language of love beyond form alone.

We are invited by sacred writings around the world to love God from whom all blessings flow. In the Dhammapada, (Buddhist) we read, “Let us live happily, though we call nothing our own. Let us be like God, feeding on love.”

Mary Baker Eddy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures says, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote in Life in the Spirit, “Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set.”

Love is a Divine Nectar, an ambrosia whose sometimes sensate quality reaches into our very soul and lingers softly like delicate majesty, imbued with its grace and honored by its presence; announced or unannounced, it is always available ... we have but to partake. It is as warm as sunshine, as gentle as soft rain and as nurturing as food to a starving human. It is a sacred force and it is ever available once we inwardly genuinely realize it.

Mankind the world over searches for love and attempts to coax its presence into one’s individual life experience. Yet Kahlil Gibran in his famous The Prophet suggests “And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy directs your course.”

When we enter into the domain of consciousness identified as the love consciousness, we are connecting to a sacred, holy energy. Great masters, illumined beings or those called awakened, speak of love as an energy that neutralizes, balances, harmonizes, heals and “burns” away the heavy energies of selfishness, ego centered goals, prejudice, hatred, bigotry and all manner of outer world imbalances. It restores order, establishes peace, invites and opens the door for healing. The love consciousness seeks not its own end for some preconceived goal or desire. It simply is an awakened state of being that allows us to see the face and feel the heart of God.

Love’s experience transforms us in myriad and multidimensional ways. Let’s explore a few of the potentialities and possibilities.

1. Forgiveness. Have we ever had the experience or discovery of the profound change that occurs in us as when we let go, give up, one of the most difficult or painful memories of a past event that has dominated our very core? When we surrender our need to hold on to wounding, injustice, hurt or pain, and allow “something larger,” a more accepting, forgiving attitude to replace a conflicted one, we notice a change (small or big) in our degree of openness, ease and inner freedom. At the moment we say to ourselves, “it’s over,” “I choose to let it go,” a higher force or consciousness becomes available to us and we can definitely feel the difference. We tend to say, “I feel better.” Life is good. We breathe easier. We open to love’s presence which is about a definite inner (and outer) connection to life ... in a consistent, and conscious manner.

2. Loss. At one point into every life, the issues surrounding loss emerge. It can be the loss of a coveted job, a divorce, a unique relationship, a death, a personal loss of something internal we value such as a position or respect or honor. It can influence any future actions or choices. Often the pain of it is so constricting it can damage our health and totally alter our life style, our relationships to our spouse, children, family and friends. It can and often causes us to lose our way for greater or lessor periods of time. It is debilitating, and can create fear and delusion.

The challenge is to become internally willing or allowing that we can again let go of the circumstances that have impacted us. But the change that can or will come that can make a difference is to remember that this all-pervading Divine Love is surrounding us and is available even in the heart of our pain. It requires us to shift attention, look up and slowly give permission to see love’s presence about us. It may come in the offer of friendship, or someone who is willing to listen, provide counsel, or a person who asks us to share a meal, a movie or morning walk along a beach. When we become open we see the amazing results of this holy presence.

3. Overcoming a problem/challenge such as addiction or illness or a real or imagined barrier in our life opens the door for love’s presence. In his now world famous book, Jerry Jampolsky wrote in Love is Letting Go of Fear that fear is the culprit that imprisons us. Fear causes us to constantly review what happened in the past so we project upon (imagine) what might or will happen in the future. As long as we hold a place for fear inside our nature, we are caught in its snare or net.

When we are able to attain to the state where we can say, “Today is the day I shall choose to be the best man/woman I can be,” then we begin, at that moment to turn in the direction of healing, freedom, newness, possibility and change. We literally are open to love’s presence which is about self acceptance and honoring the spark of the divine that is within us. Addiction tends to diminish the sense of the Divine Spark within. It clouds it, blocks it, and closes it off. Yet I genuinely believe that no soul is ever lost ...the Divine Spark is still there. It just needs to be encouraged and strengthened.

Love is not a panacea offering false hope, but rather a profound inner strength that life’s struggles can be lifted up into the Great Heart of God and thus assuaged, nurtured and transformed.

“When you think of God’s love, you think of the human love you have felt in your heart, and you picture God’s love as greater than that. Because goodness, love, wisdom have been embodied in persons you know, or more perfectly so in the lives of the saints, you are able to conceive these as qualities of God, and to say that He is kind and good and beautiful, that He is wise and loving. Do you see how tangible He is? But without a personal example of God’s divine qualities, we could not conceive of Him at all. So long as we are identified with our own body-consciousness, God will be more real to us in the personal aspect than in the impersonal. So it is easier to strive first to realize him as the personal God.”
Paramahansa Yogananda, The Divine Romance

In conclusion, life is ever inviting us to be open to its mystery. The mystery is not some imagined magical power or hocus pocus illusion to be discovered, but that the universe we live in is friendly and supports our journey ... our unique life experience and asks of us to be open to its thrust as the inner call that propels us into life to learn and discover who we are.

Copyright©2002 Temple of the Living God of St. Petersburg, Inc.