I wonder about what love is. They (whoever “they” are) say that there is only love in this world and the rest is the absence of it. I don’t like to even use the “L” word for it can be interpreted in so many different ways. We were all raised with differing meanings of what love is or is not. Of course there is spiritual love which is different from romantic love, friend love, pet love, family love, and all the other kinds of different loves. Or is spiritual love that very different?
So what IS spiritual love? My initial take is that of course it is unconditional love which means total acceptance. I wonder if that is the true definition. Regardless most of us are not that way. Most of us do not unconditionally love ourselves much less others. I wonder if we can really do that for our own children.
In a practical sense, how do you do love? How do you practice love? Let’s not talk about the easy ways like bringing a casserole to a shut in or volunteering to be a Big Brother or Big Sister or even giving blood.
One particular way I wonder if it is really love is doing things out of obligation because it is what we feel we should do rather than what we want to do. Is it possible to hate what we are doing for the person, not even like him or her and still do an act of service for them in the name of love? Is this love?
So I feed my dog, walk her, brush her daily, give her her medicine, take her to the vet if I see her in distress. Do I like all that? No, not really. I don’t even talk to her. When my son was young and in the Boy Scouts, he went on some camping trips. I went with him. Did I want to go? Not at all. He went off and did his scout activities and I hung out with the other dads being bored.
This is what I call obligation. The origin may be out of love for my dog and son but is it really a good demonstration of love if I really don’t like or even if I resent it (which I do not in those particular examples)? Maybe the indicator is when I get to that feeling of resentment then it is not really the proper way of doing love?
Guilt is another motivation to do things in the name of love that we don’t want or like to do. Is this true spiritual love to do the act regardless of the motivation or does the motivation negates the act? I contend that it does matter on the motivation which is very similar on my previous posting on how intention makes the difference with our words.
If we do things from true caring rather than what society, guilt, upbringing, or others think we should do then it is spiritual love. In my heart-of-hearts, if I really don’t like the person and I do it my good deed out of pity, guilt or whatever then I would not classify that as spiritual love.
I like the quote my friend edd posted that captures spirituality more so than love but I still want to share it, "
I like the quote my friend edd posted that captures spirituality more so than love but I still want to share it, "
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