Since love lies at the foundation of life, all humans possess the capacity to love, but love itself is learned. We’re born able to breathe, not love. Love is developed as we learn to be less important and self-involved.
This is not easy for us, since being self-important and self-involved is the frame of mind we develop immediately after birth. Few creatures are more selfish than a baby, and many adults never grow out of infancy. Infants crave attention, which is not the same as love.
The first action, in any act of love, is letting go of our egos. Self-interest corrupts love. Love pursues what is best for someone else, not ourselves. Love does not seek an advantage, never lives through others, and lacks a desire for control. When we act upon what is good, without consideration for ourselves, we act as God acts. God has no ego.
Letting go of our egos also means letting go of our feelings. Feelings are not a substitute for love and love does not depend upon feelings. When it comes to love, actions do speak louder than words, and those actions are not determined by our daily moods. Unlike emotions, love is constant, often requiring us to act in a loving manner despite our current emotional disposition. Love may motivate different feelings, but is not one.
Since God has no ego, and presumably lacks neurotransmitters, God is not an emotional being. Despite reports that God is wrathful, angry, jealous, and vengeful, God’s love for creation is not based upon how God happens to feel. As Jesus says, God sends the rain upon the bad and good alike.
For humans, unlike God, love requires a modicum of emotional awareness. Since we choose our emotional responses to people, we can also change our choices. People may push your buttons, but how you react is up to you. Love is always a choice.
This fact is what underlies the teaching of Jesus to love our enemies, even if most Christians choose not to believe him. Included in his teaching is the idea that love does not depend upon what we happen to feel. We don’t have to like people to love them. Transmuting hate to love actually provides life-enhancing benefits to the former hater. That’s the way love works.
Being egoless, God has no boundaries. Being egoless, love has no favorites or scapegoats. This is one way we find God’s love impossible to understand. For humans, making alliances is a survival strategy, and tribal thinking underlies much that we do. When it comes to love, some people are more important than others. But God doesn’t have a tribe and love doesn’t bestow favors upon the preferred. Living beings are equally loved. For humans, this provides an always future goal.
A good exercise for learning how to love is learning how to listen. Have a conversation and simply pay attention to the other person, without a parallel inner commentary concerning what you think about what they think, and planning your subsequent response, if they ever get done talking, so that you can talk. It’s harder than you may believe. Early indications are that God doesn’t have such problems.
Learning to listen is hard, just as learning to love is hard. If it was simple, the world would be a very different place.
Image of two children by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
Image of hands with manacles by Photo by http://www.pexels.com/photo/low-section-of-man-against-sky-247851/
Image of man holding cup by http://www.pexels.com/photo/pensive-ethnic-man-listening-to-answer-in-paper-cup-phone-3760607/
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