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 Thoughts to ponder as you go about your day |
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#7 NICE LOVE Love is a much-advertised product these days, not just commercially (in terms of greeting cards, music, and the array of products we are told will help us to love ourselves and others), but philosophically as well. Every spiritual teaching encourages us to love ourselves, our fellow human beings, our community, and the world. Not only is it the right thing to do, they tell us, but it is remedial. Love is a type of medicine. It heals and brings about social change for the better. In order to know Love, we are told we need to become “more loving. But our definition of "loving" is often tainted by human concepts. Since most of us don't live in the awareness of divine Love’s ever presence, we end up trying to imitate what we think divine Love might look like on any given occasion. And all too often, what we imagine divine Love will look like is "nice." Nice is how we commonly define Love—as nice thoughts and nice gestures. Although some books have tried to balance the equation by reminding us that love can look plenty tough at times, still the consensus is that love should be an overall pleasant experience. The way we get this pleasant experience is by doing loving things--nice things. The more often we do them, the more loving we will become. And hence (here comes the pay-off) the more love we will experience! To know the allness of infinite Love, like everything else in our world, is a question of incremental increase. All we have to do is become very, very loving, i.e., very, very nice. The good news is we will make more friends along the way and everyone will like us! Or so we are taught. In spite of all the promotion “nice” gets, "being nice" doesn't have anything to do with being truly loving. Love is a divine affair. And it carries a spiritual, not human, definition. As a matter of fact, the word "nice" comes from the Latin root "nescience" meaning "ignorant, not to know, lack of awareness." These are adjectives we probably don’t want attached to us! There is a very good reason why love has been confused with what is delightful, agreeable, friendly, and socially acceptable. Who is deciding what the meaning of love is but us! The group! The majority vote. And since when did the group ever want disturbance or disruption of any kind? Why not take what is perhaps the most important word in any given language--LOVE--a word that should denote courage, strength, passion, genuine concern, and self-sacrifice--and turn it into something that is socially acceptable, inoffensive, and overall . . . Nice! Frankly, if I were the devil's assistant and wanted to undermine the power of Love in the world, I would make sure that somehow along the way the word "love" got reduced to something like "nice." And maybe also personal gain, sexual gratification, and a warm fuzzy feeling that makes us feel all toasty inside--in fact whatever makes us feel "good." Fortunately, Love remains--untouched and unviolated by our misconceptions. Far from soft and fuzzy, Love is a call to courage, to discernment and defiance of the status quo. In this challenge we are fed and protected by real Love--Love according to Spirit's definition not ours. Love doesn't define itself by whether it makes us feel good. Love defines itself according to what is true. And the Truth is rarely nice. Likewise, as strange as it may sound, there is nothing nice about real Love. And this is a good thing. |
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