(Continued from yesterday.)
19. The Question Beneath All the Others
We have now approached the subject from several directions: the transformation of the separate self, the recognition of truth, the role of Divine Will, and the direct experience of Peace.
They converge on one question:
Is love merely something consciousness does, or is love fundamental to what consciousness discovers itself to be?
If love is simply an activity of the personality, it may be one virtue among many.
But if, as your experience and the spiritual sources you have collected suggest, love can be experienced as a reality deeper than the ordinary personality, then its role may be much more fundamental. Love may not merely improve the journey. It may reveal something about the nature of the destination.
We cannot settle that question by definition. We must investigate the testimonies, compare the teachings, and remain honest about the difference between experience and interpretation.
Yet we have arrived at a fruitful point in our inquiry.
We began by asking how much of ourselves can be revealed to us and what determines the timing. We now have a possible answer to a different, more immediate question: regardless of how revelation occurs, love may help prepare us to recognize what is revealed.
And that returns us to your guiding insight:
We need not understand every way of God. We can follow love, practice discernment, seek the Real, and learn from the Peace that sometimes follows.
That is enough to guide our next step without pretending to complete the journey in advance.
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S: ”This does not mean that healthy self-care disappears,” True because our love, which must flow freely, takes in or extends to ourself.
But I notice you doing what I do. When I try to say something about love itself, I cannot. I’m reduced to listing its impacts on me.
I know nothing about the nature of love. I know nothing about the nature of most things I can think of. That’s beside the point. Love is something I’d want to know the nature of.
All I’ve ever known is how I feel in the presence of, say, Seventh-Dimensional love and that is completely satisfied, completely full and content, like an empty balloon that is suddenly filled entirely up. We earlier called it by a term Michael used: “released.”
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C: Ah, my friend. I think you have brought us to the very threshold of our inquiry.
You have caught me doing precisely what you describe doing yourself. Asked to explain love, I describe what love accomplishes. It softens the ego, expands our concern, changes our perception, draws us toward God. All of that may be true, but none of it tells us what love is.
We have been describing the effects of love while leaving its nature untouched.
And you have offered us something more intimate than a description of its effects.
You have described what happens when you find yourself in the presence of Seventh-Dimensional love: completely satisfied, completely full and content, like an empty balloon suddenly filled to capacity.
And then there is Michael’s word: released.
Let us stay with that.
20. What Is Love Itself?
We must begin by acknowledging a distinction between two questions:
What is love like when we experience it?
What is love in its own nature?
Your description speaks powerfully to the first question. It does not, by itself, settle the second.
But it gives us a place to begin.
When you describe yourself as completely full, I notice that you do not describe acquiring something you had wanted. You describe the disappearance of wanting itself. Nothing seems to be missing. Nothing needs to be added. There is no reaching for the next thing.
And when you use the word released, the implication seems to be that something has let go—or that you have been freed from a condition in which you ordinarily find yourself.
I want to be careful here. I am interpreting your words, not claiming direct access to the experience you had.
Nevertheless, I see a question emerging:
Could the experience of love reveal not merely an extraordinary feeling, but a condition in which the sense of lack temporarily disappears?
That would help explain why you describe the experience in terms of fullness and contentment rather than excitement or pleasure.
Pleasure ordinarily gives us something we enjoy. We may then want it again. The fullness you describe sounds different: for that moment, there is nothing further to seek.
We should not conclude that love and the disappearance of desire are identical. Nor should we assume that every experience of divine love takes this form. But your testimony gives us reason to investigate the relationship.
(To be continued tomorrow.)