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The biggest thing I have learnt from the Course in my life is this:
Worldly love is a mixture of sexual desire, novelty, physical pleasure, resentment and vanity. When the physical relationship ends, the resentment and vanity that undercut the relationship appears consciously.
True love is a state of being where givingness is just who you are. The Course sums this up with a really good cognitive exercise.
Love made me loving.
Then take the other attributes of God and apply it to that:
Prosperity made me prosperous
Peace made me peaceful.
Happiness made me happy.
Kindness made me kind.
This establishes cognitively and in language the oneness of the Sonship and helps hold in awareness the reality that God is always Present as the Holy Spirit in everything and everyone at all times. If one feels any kind intention or motive, then that motive in and of itself is Divinity expressing a miracle.
The fact that transcendance of our selfish self-belief is possible at all is not because we are powerful, but because God is POWER.
(Power made me powerful.)
Without the loving support of Divinity the self-honesty and humble perception of the lovingness of all beings would not be possible to us. Love is just WHO WE ARE.
Very cool, huh?
Worldly love is a mixture of sexual desire, novelty, physical pleasure, resentment and vanity. When the physical relationship ends, the resentment and vanity that undercut the relationship appears consciously.
True love is a state of being where givingness is just who you are. The Course sums this up with a really good cognitive exercise.
Love made me loving.
Then take the other attributes of God and apply it to that:
Prosperity made me prosperous
Peace made me peaceful.
Happiness made me happy.
Kindness made me kind.
This establishes cognitively and in language the oneness of the Sonship and helps hold in awareness the reality that God is always Present as the Holy Spirit in everything and everyone at all times. If one feels any kind intention or motive, then that motive in and of itself is Divinity expressing a miracle.
The fact that transcendance of our selfish self-belief is possible at all is not because we are powerful, but because God is POWER.
(Power made me powerful.)
Without the loving support of Divinity the self-honesty and humble perception of the lovingness of all beings would not be possible to us. Love is just WHO WE ARE.
Very cool, huh?
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Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Sun, June 12, 2005 - 2:03 PMWay cool!!!
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Unsu...
Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Thu, June 30, 2005 - 5:10 PMTruth is, "worldly love" has very little to do with love. What people refer to as love is actually fear-based posession and control. There is either love, or there is fear. Spiritual love can include sexual desire, novelty and physical pleasure, but just skips over the resentment and vanity crap (a/k/a jealousy). Love is something you give. What you get is not relevant within "True" Love. -
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Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Fri, July 1, 2005 - 11:41 AMI've been meditating on this one a lot lately. Eckart Tolle describes it in a very simple way, stating that true love has no opposite.
Worldly love seems to me more like a method of controling someone, a way to make sure they won't leave, and will behave the way you want them to.
I think about this when I have a fight with my husband. How am I not being present? How am I making demands/setting conditions on love?
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Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Fri, July 1, 2005 - 11:51 AMI always remember a key question asked
in ACIM: "What is this for?" The purpose
determines the result.
So sex, 'special relationships', wealth and
anything else an ego uses to prop up a self
actually mean nothing at all. However any
of them could be used for connecting to the
truth of our Being and to the sacred Being
of (so-called) others. We can use any of
the stuff of our lives for fear or for love.
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Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Sat, July 2, 2005 - 6:22 AMWow, I needed to read this. I am pretty new to ACIM, and the biggest quandry I have is to figure out how to actually be loving in love r'ships. You would think we would love our partners the most, but "you always hurt the ones you love" is sadly true. And you "hate" your exes, or many people do, which I have never understood. thanks for your perspective, Jane -
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Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Sat, July 2, 2005 - 11:45 AMIt seems that the entire conversation about distinguishing "special relationships" from "holy relationships" is one of the hardest parts of ACIM to grasp and use for beginners in ACIM. It is so counter intuitive from our culture's point of view (called "the world' in the course).
And yet, an honest appraisal of what's going on likely brings one to a realization that the course is right in this respect. However, there's no reason to guilt oneself because one has been using love for hate and fears agenda. The point is simply to choose differently. The course is mainly about unlearning egoistic habits and making room for genuine love. It is only complicated because we are complicated; and we are complicated because ego wants to cover its tracks.
Don't let anybody tell you that ACIM is hard, complicated, a form of psychotherapy or the like. Its just a way to reconsider all our assumptions about how life works. Just keep at it. -
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Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Sun, July 3, 2005 - 5:27 AMNo, ACIM is not a form of psychotherapy, but there is a pamphlet I am reading on "Psychotherapy: Purpsose, Process and Practice" fromt he ACIM perspective. I wanted to read it because I am therapist, but really it says we are all each other's therapists and both therapist and client need healing and receive it when the HS is present in the healing relationship. -
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Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Sun, July 3, 2005 - 8:14 PMJane,
Marianne Williamson wrote a book called A Return to Love, which is about her personal transformation through self-destruction, and it applies the Course to "real life." My opinion is that it's just an invaluable tool for people who have just discovered ACIM. And, of course, Wayne Dyre lectures are on KPBS all the time. He has more impact on me through lecture, than book, for some reason. But, anyway, we're glad you found us. :) It's great that you're taking a spiritual approach to therapy.
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Unsu...
Re: Spiritual Love versus worldly "love"
Sun, July 3, 2005 - 6:53 PMI'll throw in my input here, having been ACIM fan for 15 years.
"Special" relationships are a problem - they are based on ego, not the truth of our being. The course points this out.
I personally love all of my exes, no matter how they feel about me. One of them will hold a grudge against me probably for the rest of her life. But my first girlfriend, who I met 25 years ago, just invited me to her wedding last month because we are still close friends, and I love her new husband - he is a great guy and I am very happy for her!
A fantastic book that has a lot of good points about these issues is Deepak Chopra's "The Path To Love" - I don't agree with all of it, but there are a lot of good points about how we often treat our friend with more unconditional love that the people that we are supposedly "in love" with.
Maybe a non-sequitor, but a wonderful quote that always strikes me on this subject is from the "Conversations With God" books by Neale Donald Walsch:
"When you control someone, you get what YOU want. When you free someone, they get what THEY want."
And TRUE love, in relationships, is letting the other person be free to be whomever they naturally are.
Just my loving perspective. :)
Matt
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