How To Love And Be Loved

Our sermon for this morning is how to love and be loved.

Of course, we all know that this is one of the favorite topics of conversation, of novels, of TV and radio shows, except that it seems in the last few years one of the favorite topics is trying to show people how to more adequately go boom boom with guns or whatever the new mode of destruction might be nevertheless even so on the whole wherever we go no matter what part of the world whatever is is popular in the way of literature.

On the whole, the thing most apt to be sought, the thing that will hold the interest the most is the subject of love.

And of course, even when we realize how much destruction is in the news and so on, if we remember that destruction is hate, and what else could it be perhaps even in the destructive areas of our educational and propaganda systems we're still dealing with love well there has been much said about love some of it very beautiful some of it about as as nonsensical as ever was dreamed.

But basically and actually, the one thing practically every heart yearns for is love.

Wherever we go, we see eyes looking out, just sort of pleading, "'Won't you love me?

"'Won't you love me?' And we spend so much of our time doing the things that we think perhaps will make others love us or saying the things that we think perhaps will make others love us sometimes we call it approval or praise but if we analyze it, isn't it that we're looking for love we want people to love us and everyone Everyone has some sorrow, some frustration, at least in part. Most human beings have much sorrow, much frustration. And in their hearts, whether they verbalize it mentally or not, there is this terrible, terrible hunger.

There is this ache.

Because maybe when I was a little girl or a little boy somebody said or did something indicating what that I wasn't being loved and this eats in the heart it sorrows us and we walk through life most of us, hungering, searching, wanting, pleading silently. Some of us become desperate enough sometimes with certain relationships we will even plead verbally and loudly and ask things like, please what have I done? Please, what do I need to do in order to be loved or accepted or appreciated? And it's all loved. And of course we're all going backward fast when we do this because we have not realized that he who has to search for love will never find it never on god's green earth because that which you must search for especially when you consider that love if you want to analyze it mathematically would you like to there are some who attempt this and they will say well after all the law of gravitation can be said to be love and gravitation works so much per square inch according to the ratio of the distance or something like that. Of course I don't know my mathematics but the principle truly is present in this idea. And people who say this think they have been very profound.

They have described a certain area of attraction in the material universe and they feel they have have told you about love, which of course is a lot of nonsense, because we can just as much weigh and measure love as we can weigh and measure a thought or a hope. And yet, every one of us knows love is. Indeed, if there were some who were atheists, who didn't believe in God at all if they only stop to think the fact that love exists, even in its little way, even immaturely expressed. The very fact that it exists at all is a miracle and something that we can't even begin to explain. And most of us really haven't the slightest conception of what love is, or if it even can be explained. All we know is that we want it.

It is more precious than gold and silver.

It is the one thing beyond all things at all times that we want. We could be millionaires or we could be paupers. We can have the security necessary for proper function in this physical world or we may not no matter what the situation might be the one thing we all know we want is love of course some of us think of love in terms of the male female relationship only and we feel this is what we're yearning for the proper male-female relationship it is good to yearn for this nevertheless this is only one side of the coin in this manner that if love is it certainly cannot be limited to specialized phases of the miraculous manifestation of life so we go about hunting for something that we will never find because we have it upside down and and we're going about it backwards.

I knew someone who had a very great capacity for love.

Nevertheless, all through her childhood and all through her young womanhood, she used this capacity in reverse.

She went marching hither, thither and yon, hungering, searching, yearning for love. And what she got was exactly the reverse. In other words, she kept attracting experiences of rejection. Wherever she felt here would be the companionship, the acceptance, the love, ah here, very quickly there would be an unhappy or even worse a really tragic experience and she she would find herself alone and rejected. And after a while, although it seemed to take this one quite a long while, some people learn more rapidly than others, it suddenly occurred to her that there was something very, very wrong with the situation.

The fact that consistently she attracted experiences of rejection when basically she was objective enough enough to know that she wasn't that dreadful a creature. She had enough insight into human hearts to realize this. She wondered, what is it that is wrong with me?

And she meditated and meditated. Her heart was quite broken sometimes, apparently.

People need to go into the depths of hell and aloneness, which is exactly the opposite of love, in order to discover just what it is they have been doing that needs correction how to turn their energies in another direction in order to constructively utilize these energies so she meditated and she wept and she railed against the faith and kept crying out my god I want love well Well, she had a very extraordinary experience because just from out of, shall we say, practically everywhere, she had this influx of love, except that it didn't come from anywhere or from anybody.

It was a mystical experience. The love came from all about, poured into her and held her.

And she hunted wildly in her mind to try to understand where does this come from and the thing she was aware of incidentally was that this experience this every where-ness of love that was holding her didn't seem to have the slightest personal element in it it was impersonal now don't be fooled I am not going to say look for the impersonal love that's what you might have thought hearing about this experience and you will see why I'm not going to say that because this is one of the most beautiful ways that human souls escape the dangers so-called of love because of fear the fear of being hurt it's quite a little trap that aspirants often fall into you know at At any rate, here was this experience rich, deep, and yet impersonal. And this young woman, incidentally, was not overly pleased with it. She was in the midst of a mystical experience. She was being held by an impersonal love, yet she was not joyous about it, because, because, and here we come to the matter, she cried out, but this is so impersonal, and it is personal expression I want.

It is personal experience I need. If it isn't in the person, what good is it?

Well, she was having a peculiar insight, but didn't quite understand it yet. And then her little pet suddenly came to her as she was still weeping held in this mystical experience and this little dog started to kiss her face and to comfort her and suddenly she became aware of this little creature, this pet, this adorable bit of livingness and as she looked at this creature suddenly she had insight after insight after insight it was just like a million explosions took place in her consciousness suddenly she realized what it was that had been wrong with her a little dog taught her and what was it this little dog taught her basically we couldn't go into all of it. Experiences of this kind are usually so involved with many things coming at once simultaneously that when one attempts to give them verbally one can only take high points. Well what this little dog taught her was basically this. She knew how to love a little dog but she did not know how to love people because this little dog was a very reprehensible little creature. This little dog was penurious, jealous, possessive, sometimes most disobedient, a very argumentative, and so on. Well, this sounds like a rather reprehensible character, and yet this young woman adored that little creature.

She looked with indulgence on some of these little cut-ups. Other people might get annoyed at times and she was sorry, but she secretly smiled. She thought they were quite charming, these little examples of its rather reprehensible nature, and yet she loved the little creature. She occasionally spanked it for very bad behavior, but even when she was punishing it underneath, underneath, there was this indulgent lovingness. In other words, it was not spanked with hatred or vengeance. Even when it was being trained, there was that acceptance of the little creature.

And so the young woman said to herself, isn't it strange that I know how to love a little creature, how to accept this little creature exactly as it is, and I cannot do that with people. Why? What in the world has been wrong with me? I have been so busily looking for evidences of their lack of love, of their lack of appreciation. My attention has been so centered in searching for how they feel about me and looking for demonstrations of their lack of love for me that I have missed the boat entirely. And she knew then that what she had to do was reverse this process.

Without love, with goods anything, really, as we all know, the only periods of joy anybody or anyone has ever really had the real joy have been the moments when our love has been flowing from within out if we look into our hearts we will see that this is true yes we've had pleasures wonderful bits of news I mean there are lots of joyous things that can occur in life but But the deepest, most intense, most fulfilling satisfactions, which we have had, some of us far too few, throughout our lives, have been in those rare moments when with purity, from within out has flowed love to someone or something.

And yet, on the whole, we are not able to hold it, mainly because we are hunting for the love from the outside in. We want others to appreciate us. We want others to indulge us. We want others to be grateful to us for our unselfishness. Though we might not use those terms. We might say to ourselves I show such evidence of this and that I put myself out or I slave or I work my fingers to the bone or I sweat blood or whatever expression seems to cover the subject more adequately for ourselves and yet so and so is not appreciating me is not loving me is not returning this wonderfulness that I am giving out. Have we really been giving out wonderfulnesses when what we've been doing really is basically trying to buy praise, purchase appreciation?

This is what we usually do. And why do we have the need to do it? Because underneath we have not accept it ourselves because we have too much pride and vanity because we dare not face the fact within our own hearts that when I am a child I speak as a child and we think it's a pretty terrible thing perhaps that we're children, so we put on an act and we do not then know how to accept other children of God. You see the children in the fairy ring here?

Children of God know that they're young. A child knows it's young and enjoys being young and dances.

That's part of the charm of the child and perhaps this is part of what is meant that except you become as a little child because we have to unlearn so many of the things that we seem to have learned throughout our lives and mainly what we have to learn is that only as As we train ourselves, you know love doesn't come by itself really. That is not love towards others. We have to train ourselves to love, just like we have to train ourselves to think.

We have to train ourselves to love. And most of us don't realize that either. But we must apply ourselves to the study of what we do with our emotions towards other human beings. This idea of impersonal love is a very beautiful bit of nothing. It is a meaningless expression. It is a glorious escape from reality for those who haven't got the courage to expose themselves to the heartaches and the pains of children because they are afraid of being hurt. And as it says so beautifully in the Prophet, he who hasn't got the courage to fully flavor love also will have much less of the joy and of the pain, a rather flavorless life truly. If this universe and all its living creatures are an aspect of God and in Qabalah in our work this we reiterate constantly this is the heart of what we stand for all things are aspects of God whatever they are no matter how they look and therefore if all things all people all creatures are aspects of the one universal life, then indeed the only way that the impersonal can be expressed is through its personal relationships. If we want to sit on a tower and say, well I love humanity in general but I can't stand them individually, which lots of us do. We are not expressing in the relationships of life that miracle that we call love. Now are we? And yet many of us, many of us do this of course or if we say so and so isn't worthy of being loved again in much of the rich spiritual literature in the world we have seen where it has been said in many ways and certainly in the Bible, the sun shines on the just and the unjust alike.

It shines on the just and the unjust alike. Shall we choose where the sun shall shine? In actuality it is God who chooses who we shall love more deeply or or less deeply. So it is difficult to explain just how this comes about.

Nevertheless, it is more like the laws of attraction. There are certain elements which rush together into a marriage. That's, even the scientists use this term now, you know. And there are other elements that rush apart. In order to know love, it's true we have to know its opposite. Therefore if we have hated, and I do hope we have all hated, isn't that a strange thing to hear in a temple? And do you know why it is important? Because unless we have recognized in our own heart and been willing to acknowledge our capacity for hate, truly we will not have the capacity to love. We will cover up our nakedness. We won't be naked like these children. We will cover up our nakedness in order to hide from ourselves that which we cannot bear to look upon, we will crawl off into dark corners, and we will not be able to love.

You do not overcome, whatever that means also, because we don't really overcome, we outgrow.

That's more like it. But we do not outgrow certain immature expressions unless first we recognize we have them.

And as we need to hide these elements from ourselves, we hide them or attempt to hide them from others, most of the time not too successfully, I think that we've noticed. But as we attempt to hide these things, you see, we're not forming any real relationships at all.

He who has frankly recognized the times in life when hate has welled up with either bitterness or fury and perhaps even murderous intent, this is the human being who can learn how to cope, with this energy and train himself to transmute it into its opposite. It's just like consciousness. People say, why have we got good and evil? That of course is another topic one day. But in order to be able to be conscious at all, you have to have something to be conscious of and this automatically makes a separation in the consciousness. If you haven't got your laws of opposites, you have no positive qualities to direct and control and develop. And it has been found those who have been capable, as children and so on, are the most hate. Often if they've had the capacity and the karma and the soul growth, have later been capable of the most and most profound love. And that is why we say, we hope, you have all looked into your hearts enough and seen that you are capable of hating. Because if you're not capable of hating, you're not capable of loving. In occultism we learn how to take hate and gradually as we grow use it to construct events like instead of hating people we learn to hate injustice.

Didn't Jesus whip the money changers out of the temple? What do you think he was expressing. He was using the principle of hate to express love. That's what he was doing. We cannot escape the laws of opposites. And if we try to, all we will do is bury more deeply within ourselves the capacity for love, which is the only rich joy and fulfillment that life can bring. So we must learn to recognize where it is that we hold bitterness, resentment, hate. Very often we wish somebody would die, you know, but we don't dare admit it to ourselves. Certainly all of us have at some time wished that somebody would drop dead. And unfortunately most of us feel guilty about it. As though death were horrible evil, sort of materialistic in a way isn't it? Because it might be that this is the greatest blessing we could be conferring on anybody. A little laughter is good to release the tension.

But you see, when you can chuckle at our own tendencies, we can chuckle at our our own tendencies, our immaturities, but truly we learn better how to handle them, how to recognize them, and we learn how to love.

Like my chuckling over a very amusing little incident with a friend, he thought that my little dog was much too undisciplined, and she did something naughty one day at a social gathering, very naughty, I guess, not dangerously so but naughty and he's quite a disciplinarian he said now aren't you going to punish her well I thought well I guess she should be disciplined and he's probably right so I wag of my finger at her and I said you naughty girl and he said what are you doing rewarding her for good behavior? That's what it sounded like. Well, of course, perhaps this is a little unbalanced, but it's nice to be a little unbalanced sometimes. It makes us feel more human, and I'm willing to grant that I'm a little unbalanced there. Nevertheless, the main thing is this indulgence. All right, now let us take it then with people. You know, it's a curious thing, but if we recognize people's little personality quirks their vanities their egos don't forget we have them too this is the point but if we see them in operation with our husbands our wives our friends our sisters our brothers and so on these all these little quirks if um we could feel this indulgent love towards them it would be amazing what would happen to the relationship and of course that is the secret behind loving in other words it's acceptance we reject all the time instead of accept this doesn't mean that if someone is out trying to torture or murder someone else that we just stand by and with a real holy expression on our faces and we say well poor thing is just young and immature I accept it I mean of course some people try to utilize that idea in order to escape the responsibility of love because you see love knows how to withhold in order to give greater riches and love knows how how to discipline in order to truly love. Because love is not out for self-glorification.

It's often been said that love is blind. This is the most ridiculous statement that was ever made at all. We see a couple of people in love, and their eyes are glowing like stars, and you can see light shining and radiating practically about their heads as they hang on to each other's hands, walk along the street, lost in the magic of their in-loveness, and you will hear some people say, isn't that disgusting?

Hmm? Haven't we all heard it? Isn't that disgusting? Is it? Isn't it rather tragic that we should think that people lost in love, we don't care what level it is, love is love, there are levels and levels. But isn't it tragic to think that we would condemn a couple of children dancing in their fairy ring? But that's what many of us do. Love is blind, we say. How often have we ourselves said, what in the world does he see in her? Or can she see in him while we watch two people sorry-eyed although we think perhaps one of them might be terribly homely and obnoxious even what the so-and-so see in so-and-so we shake our heads in disbelief maybe so-and-so is seeing truly even though tragically it's temporary because you know what gets in the way the personality the inability to keep focus on the love from within out this continuously hunting for the evidence of that without in appreciating us properly. And so we lose our magic fairy ring because of wanting for ourselves instead of rejoicing and practically floating in an infinitude of the joy, of the privilege of even being able to sit and look at some beloved. A beloved might be a sunrise or a sunset, you know, or a little creature, especially a little creature like my little creature, and people that's the hardest thing you see people it's so much easier to love nature than people because we don't know we have forgotten that people are nature also and we are too busily hunting for all the reasons that we should dislike like even our loved ones how many of us can say we have never marched up and down our own houses or maybe we've been sitting just grousing to ourselves about a you know what our husbands or wives or some close relative in the family was because he or she did so and so and so and so and just kept working ourselves up and feeling very sorry for ourselves because of the unfair treatment we were receiving from that individual. Now mind you we are not saying that individuals should not treat us fairly. The point is if we are hunting as a basic habitual pattern for all these evidences which we do emotionally and subconsciously you know, this is what we're going to pull pull out from our relationships.

Because our relationships have the capacity for almost every kind of response. We are one being, we are not separate beings, whatever appearances say. On subconscious levels, we are broadcasting back and forth, continuously.

And we get back what we've been broadcasting. Broadcasting and if we learn how to broadcast Acceptance love indulgence understanding or a desire to You see we haven't really got the desire to know what goes on in other people's hearts Do we really Do we take the time to sit down? With our various friends and relatives and question them with acceptance on how they feel, how they think. Do we really do this? Do we find that other human beings are willing to confide to to us practically anything, even things which would be considered more or less criminal in this world. And there are such acts. Well, remember this. If human beings do not, in general because there's nothing that's ever a hundred percent but if in general human beings do not feel free to confide to you that is by confiding we mean things that they would never want anyone else to know we can know this we do not know how to love from within out because here again let's go back to this young woman that we were speaking about. After she had this tremendous inner experience and she sat down to analyze it, she decided on a certain modus operandi to try to develop what she now thought she would have to develop if she were to overcome this horrible, tragic emotional state which she found herself in so consistently so she sat down and started to practice loving she started off with the easy things first she practiced loving the sky and the sun and her pets and her trees her garden and she went on to those close to her who were the easiest to love she did it just sitting alone in her house for a while and she just kept practicing from the within out loving and accepting the various people that she knew loving and accepting those who had injured her and you know a very amazing thing happened here just practically overnight this young woman found herself the center of more friendship and devotion and love that she knew what to do with. She must have been an extremist because she went from one extreme to the other, which perhaps is necessary in order to finally settle down to the middle of a moderate way. But she found herself surrounded in all sides every time she turned around. There were people just practically pushing her door down to try to do things for her and many other amazing little miraculous things so she knew she was on the right path at last she certainly did and so she never had to again sit down and weep and say I want love I hunger for love not that in hers or anybody's lifetime there aren't experiences there are some people whom we may love very deeply who may betray us well there are certain things like karmic ties karmic debts there are some people who cannot respond even to the beautiful outpouring of real loving because of something in their own growth that where they haven't got the plug-in shall we say for the electricity to flow back there are occasional such instances but the thing we must remember is that in general it's in general the total picture is what we need to look at and we need very much to recognize that only only as we are interested in others and concerned for their well-being, only as our hearts are moved with compassion for their problems, only as we try to help them unload a little of their pain and give them acceptance, acceptance. Only so will we find that we have the satisfaction in life, which we all should have, of loving relationships, so that wherever we go and whatever we do, the one thing we would know in our hearts, always there will be loved ones, even if we left an army of them behind always a new glorious miraculous adventurous flock of relationships would gather anew the glory of livingness is in learning how to love from within out and the rest will take care of itself