Chapter 20 - LOVE THE KEY

But the greatest of these is love - I Corinthians 13: 13.

For a good many years now I have made a practice of sending out my love to all mankind daily, in the well-known words:

Dear people, everywhere, I love you all.
I love you all, I love you.

I think that I came across these words, or something like them, in Trine's In Tune with the Infinite, about forty-five years ago. Afterwards I found the same idea, but in different language in the much older writings of an Eastern sage. He suggested that we should turn to the east, the west, the north and the south and bless all humanity.

The mere repetition of 'Dear people, everywhere, I love you', although an admirable practice, cannot in itself achieve much if we do not charge the words with the all-powerful vibrations of love. But what do I mean by 'love'? By love I mean agape, which, so scholars inform us, is the Greek word translated 'charity' in the Authorized Version of the New Testament. This was done, so I imagine, to distinguish it from physical love, i.e. that love which demands something In return for what it gives. Agapé, some scholars assure us, really means the Divine nature poured out, which is a giving of Itself to the uttermost without any thought of, or desire for a return of any kind.

In my own small way I sometimes think that I understand, in a very feeble measure of course, something of what Jesus must have felt when He wept over Jerusalem, and also when He said: '0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem ...how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.' As I utter the words: 'Dear people, everywhere, I love you al, I love you', I feel that I am pouring out my soul with all the strength of my being upon all men. It is not merely an utterance of words, but an outpouring of the soul with all the strength of which I am capable.

As I do this I experience a feeling of great power in my solar plexus. While uttering the words silently, I breathe out as strongly as I can, putting all the feeling of which I am capable into what I am saying, and this generates a greater feeling of power in the same region. We have to give out, with all our might and strength, not with the idea of getting something in return, but simply in order to give and give yet more and more. It is a pouring out of the soul in utter abandon. We have to be like Jesus pouring out His soul over Jerusalem and of whom it was said that He poured out His soul unto death. As a result of this pouring out of our soul we receive more power, we become capable of more love; for by pouring out our soul thus we create a vacuum which is at once filled with love of like nature to the Divine.

This sending of our love to all mankind is however the first stage. We have such compassion towards people that we desire more than anything in the world to pray for them that they may be blessed in every possible way, especially in the best of all ways. It is our desire humanity should be at peace, that each one should have work to do, and return home tired but satisfied at the end of the day, rejoicing in 'something attempted, something done, to earn a night's repose'. That is what the masses of people everywhere really long for, but which war prevents them from enjoying. 'lf only war could be prevented,' they say 'then we would sally forth at the beginning of the day to do work which is necessary and well worth doing, after which all our needs would be supplied.' But war cannot be prevented without a change of heart-only agapé can prevent war.

Consequently when we pray that all mankind should be blessed, we mean that they should be blessed in the best possible of all ways, instead of in only a material way. And so we continue sending forth our love, adding:

May you be divinely blest in every possible way;
may your lives be filled with harmony, joy and peace,
and may the deepest longings of your soul be satisfied, in God.

We pray with all our might that all men should enjoy the same blessings and satisfactions of soul which we ourselves desire. In the words of Jesus, we love our neighbour as we do ourself.

Jesus also said that we should love God with all our mind and strength: this means that we should pour out our soul in love, adoration and gratitude when we pray to God.

When we pray to Him, we should pray with all the fervour of which our nature is capable.

I have found it helpful to make use of the opening words of the Psalm 103: 'Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.' This can be made a powerful exercise if we say mentally the first half of the text while we are inhaling deeply, and the second half whilst we are exhaling strongly. But perhaps everyone might not like to do this; in fact many could not do so, because of their inability to breathe deeply enough or to control their breath.

Therefore I do not recommend readers to try it, but merely state that it can be done.

The effect that this practice of sending out our love has upon those of us who practice it, is that we enter into a state of union with all mankind. We become a universal lover of humanity; in our heart we have a place for all men. We see the Christ in everyone - the beggar at our door, the king in his palace - all are alike to us. We are all one underneath the surface - all brothers and friends, united in God our Source. Yes, underneath the surface we are all one. 'I am the Vine, and ye are the branches', said Jesus. All the branches of the vine are united in the parent stem, and all have flowing through them the same one life of the Vine.

When there are quarrels and disputes, a recognition of this fact soon puts an end to them. I have frequently noticed a wonderful change take place when I have suggested to disputing and quarrelling people that 'deep down we are all friends, really'. A smile has come to their faces and their better nature has been displayed in their changed expression. Yes, we are all friends below the surface. We are all one in God.

We need not however stop at sending our love to our enemies and to all mankind, for we can proceed to extend it to all creation. We can say:

Dear earth and sky and land and sea, I love you all, I love you.
Dear trees and flowers and rivers and streams, I love you all, I love you.

And so we can proceed throughout all inanimate nature; we can send our love to mountains and valleys, to moor and fen, and so on.

But we can go yet farther. We can send our love to animate nature. We can say: Dear birds and beasts and live things everywhere, I love you all, I love you.

As we utter these words, pouring our soul in love upon all things, we become one with them all. The effect of saying that we love all things is that in course of time we really love them with a love which stirs our being, even though previously we may not have loved them at all.

Eventually we become universal lovers in whose arms the whole creation can find refuge and sanctuary. Behind the birds and the animals there are their archetypes from whom they proceed and to whom they return. These receive us as universal brothers into their everlasting habitations.

Thus we come to the end of all strife and struggle, into a state of peace, for it is intimated to us that we are at one with all creation and that we rest together on the bosom of God.

Love is indeed the key to every situation in which we may find ourselves. When we are attacked, criticized and abused the natural thing to do is to hit back, thus returning evil for evil; but the Jesus or Love way is to send our love, pity, compassion, forgiveness, to our enemy, like a beam from a searchlight. Love applied in this way is dynamic.

The shafts of malice directed against us return to the sender -consequently love is the best defense. But I do not think that self-defense should be our motive, for that would be using the greatest power of the Spirit for our personal advantage.

This may however be the best thing that we can do at the time. Indeed, it is a great achievement for a beginner to refrain from retaliating, and to send forth love in return for injury, even though he does so in self-defense.

We should aim however at a higher love than that applied in self-interest; we should send our love and pour out our soul in order that our enemy may be blessed. What one might term metaphysical love - that is, love used as a weapon of defense or to achieve certain ends - is really a counterfeit of the real love (agapé) which is the Divine nature poured forth.

When however we can love and bless our enemy with all the power of our deepest soul nature, desiring above everything that he should be blessed in every possible way, according to heavenly standards, and also desiring no benefit for ourselves, it is then that our love becomes like unto the love of Him who poured out His soul unto death.

And the same thing applies to our competitors. It is usual to look upon them as enemies and to do everything possible to hinder and thwart them. But when competitors arrive on the scene, the first thing we should do is to pray for their success, and to bless their undertaking. We should next call upon them and wish them every success. And finally, we should always speak well of them whenever their names are mentioned.

Jesus taught the secret of successful and harmonious living, which was to deal with every situation and experience in a spirit of love and co-operation. If everyone were to do this, we should have heavenly conditions almost at once; but alas, only too often we act, not according to the Jesus way of life, but rather to the worldly way of self-interest and opposition. Instead of loving and co-operating with each situation as it arises, we either try to avoid it or else fight against it. Or we might even pray to have it removed.

But the right thing to do is to welcome and co-operate with each experience as it arises, and to bless it. Father J. P. Caussade says (in his book Abandonment) that the secret of sanctification is to do willingly those duties which we would be compelled by life in any event to do. By this he means that we should have to pass through the experiences in any case, and that if we cooperate with them we become sanctified whereas, if we do not cooperate, we gain nothing from what we endure. How true it is that we have nothing to fear if we surrender and abandon ourselves to the will of God - if we cooperate with life instead of fighting against it or trying to avoid its disciplines!

Loving co-operation, so I have found, is the great secret.

When passing through times of almost incredible difficulty and complication, I have found that by co-operating with the experience and doing the best that I could with it, and being as faithful as possible in a practical way, looking to God to bring about an adjustment in His own way and at His own time, God has in every case brought me victoriously through.

And not only so, but I have been advanced in spiritual understanding and considerably strengthened and developed by having had to pass through the experience; or rather I should say that it has been through acceptance, and co-operation that the experience which - if opposed would have been most hurtful - has been turned into a blessed means of spiritual quickening and advancement.

But by co-operation and acceptance I do not mean resignation. When I was young it was believed that God sent disease and sickness and other negative ills and that, if we gave into them, then that was doing God's will. This was called being resigned - by which it was meant that we were resigned to, and prepared for, the worst.

That, so it seems to me, was all wrong: Divine Love does not send disease or other negative conditions. It means that we have got hold of, or have sunk down into, an inversion of the real and true. A sinner is a kind of inverted saint.

When however he is converted or turned round, he may grow into a saint because he will then be growing and developing in the right direction.

Thus, when we co-operate with an experience we do not become resigned to the worst, but instead accept it in order to work through it and overcome it. For instance, if we meet with insult and injury, hatred and violence, we know that it is all due to lack of love, and that it is really an inversion of love. Consequently we apply love to the situation, thus turning disharmony and disorder into harmony and order.

From this it is easy to see that love is always the key to every situation in life.

God is Love, and God is All. We live and move and have our being in God, therefore we are immersed in Love even as a fish is immersed in the sea. The vibrations of Divine Love impinge upon us and would penetrate through us if we were not insulated against them. This insulation of separation and selfishness, however, wears thinner if we ourselves make use of the love which gives itself (looking for no reward) to the world. Also, active love and adoration towards God are equally efficient in wearing away and dissolving the insulation which separates us from Him.

From this we see how vital is the teaching of Jesus in emphasizing the two commandments that we should love the Lord our God with all our mind and strength, and our neighbour even as we do ourselves. Through following these commandments we enter into Divine union; we are in God and God is in us. Actually God has been in us all the time, for we could never have any desire to seek God if it were not for the fact that there is That in us which corresponds to God and is of the same nature, for only God can know God. Of ourselves we can do nothing and are nothing.

It is the Spirit of God in us who knows God.
God immanent gazes face to face with God transcendent.
The Son has returned to his Father, saying:
I and my Father are one.
God, our Centre and Source.

When I wrote these words I thought that they were original and that it was a very daring thing to write, but now I find that the same thing was said much better by Hans Denck in 1542. In The Luminous Trail, by Rufus Jones (Macmillan, New York), we are told that Denck in one of his little books which is preserved in the University of Marburg, wrote:

'Apart from God, no one can either seek or find God, for he who seeks God already in truth has Him.'

Dr. Jones adds the oft-quoted saying of Pascal: 'Thou wouldst not be seeking God if thou hadst not already found Him.' It gave me a thrill when I read this, for it shewed me that there always have been those who have realized this great truth, and that even as the Wise Man said, 'there is nothing new under the sun'.

Of course, it is useless for us to send our love to all mankind, if we do not also put love into practice in our dealings with our fellow men – indeed, we do ourselves great harm if we do not practice what we preach. But sending our love to all mankind makes it much easier for us to act in a loving way in the common affairs of everyday life.

If we pray for a certain person that he should be blessed in every possible way, then we find. that we want to do him the greatest possible amount of good. Also, if in a moment of forgetfulness, we act outside love, we feel very miserable until we have confessed our error to the one we have hurt and made amends for it. Thus we prove that if we have love (and act in love) we have everything; whereas if we act without love we lose everything and become 'as the heath in the desert'. The way of love is not all loss and sacrifice, and by that I mean that we do not give our love in vain, although at the time it may appear to be so, and we must be willing that it should be so.

Rufus Moseley tells of the love of a woman who took upon herself the care and upkeep of her sister's five orphan children, in spite of the fact that she herself was almost sick unto death. He writes: 'Her love and her will to live enabled the God of love and life to lift her up and to make her well. She did magnificently by the five children and in doing so opened the way for almost unbelievable blessings to come to her.' Then Moseley adds that there are no investments like those of pure love and mercy. It is when we look for no reward and expect no return that it is then possible for the richest blessings of Heaven to come to us.