Dec 04, 2016

 Follower of Jesus (4)

“The most important one” answered Jesus,

“is this: ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, The Lord is one Lord.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart

And with all your soul and with all your mind

And with all your strength.’

And the second is this:

‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

There is no commandment greater than these.” (3)

Mark 12:29-31

Love! That word has many meanings, and is tossed around about everything from “I love spinach” (or not) to the love of soulmates to the potentially overwhelming sense of the presence of God that can lift one to the heavens. I want to talk about the two forms of love that expresses all the various ways that love is seen in human relationships, both between humans and between God and humanity. These forms are 1) Ego-based love, and 2) Soul-based love.

Ego based love

Ego-based love is not the love as spoken by Jesus. Ego-based love is a form of attractive feelings that are too often described as ‘love’, but is a form of narcissism where the needs of the self is front and center. Ego-based love is played up in the movies, books, and other media where only the self and the feelings of the self are considered important, and is the core of Valentines’ day cards and gifts. Now this attraction between one another is a good thing, but if it stops with only this attraction, it will fail to find the core of the meaning of the true meaning of love. True love will always have this attraction as part of the makeup of the relationship, but it will not stop there.

Another word for ego-based love is infatuation, or in extreme cases, lust, which is extolled in our society as the norm for all to live by. This form of love is seen in many, if not most sexual relationships in our western society. It is the principle reason for the failure of most marriages. Once the excitement of the first blush of the physical relationship wears off, the lack of give and take between the two involved will eventually doom the relationship to the ash heap, and the two people wander off looking for the next burst of excitement, which is doomed to a repeating cycle of failure.

Ego-based love is a one-way form of love, only on the receiving end for both involved. Ego-based love stems from the instinctual center of our brain, where the reproduction urge is based, and where infatuation is front and center, urging the cycle of reproduction with hormones that make this joining together feel so good, and at the time, so right. But later, in hindsight, that joining together fails to satisfy our need for the give and take that is the hallmark of a relationship where the flow of love between the two echo the flow of love seen in the Trinity, where the other is part of the self in spirit as well as physically.

Ego-based love is self-centered, and is rarely extended beyond two people. When it is extended further into many, it usually results in the formation of a cult centered around the charisms of a single individual who feeds off the adulation of their followers, leading to failure on a grand scale.

Many young loves start off as ego-based love, but if both are open, it will grow into another-based love and then into a soul-based love. But, in general, if a person is trapped at the level of the ego, that person cannot move out of the ego level, demanding the other love them by giving to them, without being willing to give to the other in return.

The ego-based person can only love in an ego-based way, and is doomed to a life of loneliness and sadness until they learn to give of themselves. Ego-based love is selfish, feeding upon the emotions of others while never giving of themselves to others. This type of love can never love God with all their strength and all their mind and all their soul. Even though God loves them with the eternal love (“God is love”), their self-love has formed a wall that prevents their recognition of that infinite love that is theirs for the taking.

Meditation

My Eternal Lover, I come before you naked and stripped of my ego. You alone can see my being down to the most hidden part of me. I welcome you into my soul, to fill my spirit and give to me the overwhelming sense of Love that is eternal. I have seen Your love for all humans, too often ignored and seemingly turned away by so many. I am so grateful for Your presence in all that we do, for, indeed You are the all in all, flowing in and out of all that is, Your Life creates all that exists throughout the universe and beyond. I place myself into Your care, knowing that all will be well, throughout eternity.

 

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