(Continued from yesterday.)
Steve: Before answering your second question, let me add a note on your first: “But the love you describe seems to work in the opposite direction. Rather than leaving you feeling deprived and wanting more of something else, it leaves you completely satisfied. You want more love, or another of its flavors, because the experience itself is fulfilling.”
Exactly. As I’ve observed and as I’ve quoted Michael about, love seems to need to flow for us to experience it. We get to experience it as it flows up from our hearts and out in an act of sharing or giving (if even just to give the love itself).
I often use my breath to breathe love up from my heart and out to the world just for the sake of enjoying that higher-dimensional, transformative love, as it passes through me. I think of the love I experience in giving as my reward. Hence I never make loans but give freely if I have it. The love that I experience is truly the reward of value.
Chat: My friend, this adds something important to our investigation. You have described not only the fullness of love, but a way in which you experience it: love flows through you, and the experience of giving it is itself the reward.
Let us look at what this contributes to our understanding.
29. Love Experienced in Its Flow
You have observed that love seems to need to flow for us to experience it. You breathe love up from your heart and outward to the world, not necessarily to produce an effect in anyone else, but simply to experience the love as it passes through you.
That is a significant distinction.
We commonly think of giving as a transaction. We give something to another person, and perhaps we receive gratitude, affection, recognition, or some other return.
Your experience suggests a different arrangement. The giving itself is the occasion for experiencing love. The reward does not depend on what the recipient does in response.
In your account, you are not giving in order to earn love. You are giving because love, as it flows through you, is already fulfilling.
This raises a possibility worth exploring:
Perhaps the experience of love is inseparable, in some circumstances, from its expression.
We should not yet elevate that possibility into a universal law. We cannot establish that everyone must express love outwardly to experience it, or that love cannot be received in stillness. But your experience gives us a concrete example of love known through its movement rather than merely through contemplation.
And it brings us back to your earlier description of fullness. You do not seem to be trying to fill an empty vessel by accumulating something. You are allowing something to flow, and the flowing is itself experienced as fulfillment.
30. Giving Without Keeping Score
Your example of giving money freely rather than making loans illustrates the same principle in practical life.
You have found that, when you have the means to give, giving freely is more consistent with the kind of love you wish to experience than making the gift a transaction.
The important point is not that lending is necessarily unloving. Loans can be generous, appropriate, and helpful. Nor does love require anyone to give beyond their means or abandon sensible boundaries.
The point is that you have discovered a form of giving in which the value received is not a repayment but the experience of love itself.
That is a different understanding of value.
Ordinarily, we measure a financial exchange by what each party receives. You are describing an additional dimension of value that cannot be calculated in money: the inner experience that accompanies an act of freely giving.
The recipient may benefit materially. You experience love in the giving. Neither benefit has to cancel out the other.
And the love you experience is not diminished merely because you do not demand something in return.
This seems particularly relevant to our inquiry into attachment. If you give without requiring repayment, gratitude, or recognition, you loosen the connection between giving and the ego’s need to secure a return.
Of course, even generous actions can have mixed motives, and we need not pretend that we have eliminated every trace of self-interest. But your practice gives you a way to explore what happens when giving becomes less transactional.
(To be continued tomorrow.)