God is love

Love is the inherent nature of a being. Not only human beings, but even animals and birds cannot live without loving. Love is the essential nature of the spirit or the soul or the consciousness. Hate or abhorrence is the temporary creation of mind whereas love is ever present. Saints of the world describe God as love. But what form of love are they referring to? They are talking about the pure love- the true love for your own true Self; the divine love of God; the genuine love for the Supreme Consciousness; the divine feeling of affection towards every living being; the unconditional love; the innocent love of a child towards everyone around him.

In the modern world, the word ‘love’ is being misused very often in the common language- ‘I love ice cream’, ‘I love watching horror movies’ or ‘I love you when you listen to me’. In common context, the word ‘like’ is more appropriate than ‘love’. This is the reason most of us remain confused about the word ‘love’. It is important for the true seeker of inner happiness, to gain proper understanding of love.

The feelings of love and affection takes different forms because of the ignorance of the being, causing all sorts of miseries in life. When you love money or material gain, the same love takes the form of ‘greed’. Love for new car, bigger house and worldly possessions becomes your ‘desires’. When you begin to love your kiths and kin, love becomes ‘attachment’. When a man begins to love a woman or vice-versa, the love gets contaminated by ‘lust’. Contemporary man spends all the life in such tainted form of love in the outer world while remaining ignorant about the divine form of love. All these forms of outer love keep a seeker away from inner peace and inner happiness.

When the saints talk about ‘love’, they are referring to the pure love for something that is truly yours. Now let’s try to analyze what is truly yours. You love your car or you love your house. But all these material possessions are not truly yours. Those all belong to the ever changing world - today those possessions are yours and tomorrow those can belong to someone else. You say that he is my son or my daughter. But the truth of the fact is the sons remain temporarily with you till he brings your daughter-in-law and daughters seems to be yours till she gets settled with her husband. Similarly all the relations of the world are temporary in nature. Even this body doesn’t belong to you. You have to leave your body one day as your body also belongs to the nature. The five elements of the body, namely earth, water, fire, ether and space will become one with the five elements of the nature one day. So, neither your body, nor its worldly possessions truly belongs to you.

The divine intelligence works in your life in such a manner that it continues to remind you that these all worldly possessions and worldly relations are not truly yours. How? If you have immense love for wealth, then you are sure to incur losses. If you love a friend beyond certain limits, then the same friend very often turns into an enemy. It is a fact of life that enemies are born from friends only – strangers don’t become enemies. If you are very possessive about your spouse, then you are inviting a divorce. No matter how much you love your body, it is bound to get old and clumsy.

After realization of such bitter truths of life, the seeker begins to seek something that truly belongs to him. But what is it that truly belongs to you? Your own true Self, your own Soul, your own Spirit, your own Consciousness or no matter how you call it. The Supreme God, the omnipresent Supreme Consciousness, the Supreme intelligence is truly yours. So, the sages of the world tell us to love the same God that is our supreme well wisher. When a seeker is introduced to such a pure form of love towards God, a divine form of affection arises in his heart for all the beings. Such a divine love is the end result of all the austerities, all the wisdom, all the seeking and all the efforts of a true seeker. Such a divine love gives rise to the supreme peace and bliss in his heart.