"There is plenty of love" said the voice in my heart. "Everyone has lots of it. But much of it is misguided: You love your own desires, or attachments, rather than other people. The old classics like lust and gluttony, sure, but in this age people particularly love status, or respect. If they worked as tirelessly for others as they now work to be recognized, respected and looked up to, the world would be overflowing with love. Just like everyone has got a certain number of hours a day, so each has got a certain amount of love, but it too can be wasted on yourself."
There is more to this, like, once your love runs in the right direction, its quality can still be improved. But this is a start, to recognize that everyone loves, but to a large degree we love "in the wrong direction", toward ourselves rather than toward others.
4 comments:
Yes, just so.
Well said, Magnus.
I'd don't know as there is a finite supply of love; isn't it kind of like sunshine, where there's more radiating out than we can possibly catch and utilize?
As in we are conduits for the flow, and not the source?
OK to love the self. However, gluttony, lust, and the craving for respect are not very noble ways to love your self. But if its all you've got, you better take it.
We humans are always limited. But we have an inner drive to grow. This can take many forms. In each form we perceive the prospect of growing or becoming more complete or merging with something wonderful. If that "wonderful" is God or the Tao, and we grow in this direction, that is indeed good. If our "wonderful" is tasty food and we grow our waistline, we are a bit off track. The inner drive is there, but to err is human.
Obviously as children, we need to first grow in the physical sense, then the mental sense, before we can to any great extent begin growing spiritually. This is as it should be. But it is easy, because we have known the blessing of the physical or the mental, to get stuck there, and try to grow beyond our measure when we should have moved on.
In all the things we desire, we desire the One, but we are wandering around with our eyes to the ground, seeing the sun's light reflected now in this, now in that shiny thing. Or that is what I believe in my heart. It sounds like we are agreed in this.
We humans are always limited. But we have an inner drive to grow. This can take many forms. In each form we perceive the prospect of growing or becoming more complete or merging with something wonderful. If that "wonderful" is God or the Tao, and we grow in this direction, that is indeed good. If our "wonderful" is tasty food and we grow our waistline, we are a bit off track. The inner drive is there, but to err is human.
Obviously as children, we need to first grow in the physical sense, then the mental sense, before we can to any great extent begin growing spiritually. This is as it should be. But it is easy, because we have known the blessing of the physical or the mental, to get stuck there, and try to grow beyond our measure when we should have moved on.
In all the things we desire, we desire the One, but we are wandering around with our eyes to the ground, seeing the sun's light reflected now in this, now in that shiny thing. Or that is what I believe in my heart. It sounds like we are agreed in this.
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