spring

Creative work, like love, is not an exclusive gift bestowed on only a chosen few. A few now possess sanctity and moral vision, heroism and wisdom, genius and talent. But all that is merely activation of the potential dormant within every soul. A sea of love, an unexhaustible wellspring of creativity, bubbles behind the consciousness of each one of us. . . . All creative work that is done in its own name and for its own sake is divine in nature. Through it, people elevate themselves and fill their own hearts and the hearts of those around them with God.

The whole cosmos is a Self-giving of God. And we will find our place in the great dance only to the extent that we love.

I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity . . . I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not—more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.

Love gives naught but itself and takes
naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love . . .
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

There is the same difference in a person before and after he or she is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and it was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too and that is its real function.

Real love is always difficult, as the German poet Rilke said, because "it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world in himself for the sake of another, it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances." Eventually, love forces us to turn within. In the Symposium, his meditation on love, Plato called love a child of fullness and emptiness, suggesting that there is a kind of desolation built into every love. There comes a moment in the progress of most loves when lovers feel isolated and unfulfilled, because they have discovered that they cannot find real and enduring meaning by reaching outside themselves, clinging to their lover. . . They may see that it is only by daring to open to the silence at the center of themselves that they can begin to feel the presence of the One whom they have been searching for all along.

Love, like a flame, cannot fail to give out light.

Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility . . . though weary, it is not tired . . . though alarmed, it is not confounded . . .

Blessed are those whose hands and heart
have maintained justice,
who have lived in accordance with
the laws of Love;
those faithful to Love Consciousness
will hear the good counsel, the
guidance of Wisdom in their hearts.
The fruits of integrity, justice,
sharing, and compassion
bear only blessing.