True Love

Click the title of this blog for quotes on true love...

How does power help us find true love?

It doesn't. In fact it leads us away from it.

I can't tell you what true love is.

I believe I have had it. Lived it. Revelled in it. Been crushed by it.

I think I would know it if I saw it.

True love isn't perfect or always pleasant... but it is true.

But to answer the question I don't think I need to be able to describe the mechanics of love. I don't even think that is possible. Love - true love - is that which is beyond this life - this physical experience. True love is that which permiates all beautiful, joyful things. It is ever present and available to come into our lives.

However this life is something that must be accepted and lived. It is to be learned and overcome. Available in this life is an abundance of love.

Also within this life there is an abundance of power relationships.

I do know power.

I know the source of all power is need.

I know we all need love. We seek it. We yearn for it. We fight to get it. We cling to it. We pine for it when it leaves. We require it. We desire it. And we are attached to it.

I know that the promise of true love - deep unlimited and unconditional love - love of the soul - love that goes beyond the here and now of this life - love that brings the ecstacy of the beyond - love that is the purest of connections - that love, is probably the greatest mechanism of power there is.

There is really nothing we want more than that kind of love.

The promise of that love will control, influence and seduce us like nothing else.

And we know it will have the same effect on others.

Power is the exploitation of another person's need to gain some advantage.

True love will take joy in the happiness of all people. Not just the happiness of the actor.

To use power to find true love, to use power to motivate others to help us find it or to give it to us, is like using a pin to find a balloon.

You know you found it when you have destroyed it.

Power destroys trust.

We would trust nothing more than true love. We trust no one more than those who truly love us.

Unfortunately, we seek true love without the ability to describe it unless we are looking at it. And we use power everyday, even in our most loving relationships.

I am sure we have all used power to pop the balloon of true love a few times without meaning to. And we have suffered the pain which follows.

I can offer two things I've learned.

First - sometimes we use power when we don't want to. This is just a bad habit that is hard to break. We need to be gentle and forgiving with others and ourselves. And just because someone used power on you doesn't mean they don't love you. It sounds paradoxical, but in that same use of power on you, they used it on themselves. They hurt themselves as much as they hurt you. That is hard to forgive.

Second - you can never have love if you chose to use power. True love requires true power.

True power is the complete self-control of your own needs so as to depower all others. It is the ability to see through the illusion of your needs and rise above. No one will have power over you because you do not have any need that you do not understand and have the ability to control. Because of this ability, not only will you never be a subject of power, but you will never act like an actor.

True power is the ability to be free of all power.

True love is not about needing someone. True love is to take joy in someone. Joy that sees and accepts and loves the weakness, flaws and failures of that other. It sees the beauty of the flaws and failures. It sees the struggle and the quest and the inability to attain perfection as the best reason to love perfectly. It holds the realization that loving them is never a cost to us. It is always a fulfillment. It is always good to love - even when it hurts.

True love and true power require the purest of compassion.

Then no matter what happens, no matter what we get, no matter how they love us back, all is joy.

Ya, easily said...

It's an incredible, intimidating, heart-breaking quest...

Compelling and fleeting...

But what else are we here for?