AGAPE

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LOVE, in Divine Mind, is the idea of universal unity. In expression,

love is the power that joins and binds in divine harmony the universe

and everything in it. Among the faculties of the mind, love is

pivotal. Its center of mentation in the body is the cardiac plexus.

The physical representative of love is the heart, the office of which

is to equalize the circulation of the blood in the body. As the heart

equalizes the life flow in the body, so love harmonizes the thought

of the mind.

We connect our soul forces with whatever we center our love upon. If

we love the things of sense or materiality, we are joined or attached

to them through a fixed law of being. In the divine order of being,

the soul, or thinking part, of man is joined to its spiritual ego. If

it allows itself to become joined to the outer or sense

consciousness, it makes personal images that are limitations.

Regeneration

In the regeneration, our love goes through a transformation, which

broadens, strengthens, and deepens it. We no longer confine love to

family, friends, and personal relations, but expand it to include all

things. The denial of human relationships seems at first glance to be

a repudiation of the family group, but it is merely a cleansing of

the mind from limited beliefs of love when this faculty would satisfy

itself solely by means of human kinship.

Meditate on Love

One should make it a practice to meditate regularly on the love idea

in universal Mind, with the prayer, " Divine love, manifest thyself in

me. " There should be periods of mental concentration on love. Think

about love, and all the ideas that go to make up love will be set

into motion. This produces a positive love current which, when sent

forth with power, will break up opposing thoughts of hate, and render

them null and void.

The thought of hate will be dissolved, not only in the mind of the

thinker but in the minds of those with whom he comes in contact in

mind or in body.

The love current is not a projection of the will. It is a setting

free of a natural, equalizing, harmonizing force that in most persons

has been dammed up by human limitations.

The ordinary man is not aware that he possesses this mighty power,

which will turn away every shaft of hate that is aimed at him. Here

is a faculty native to man, existent in every soul, which may be used

at all times to bring about harmony and unity among those who have

been disunited through misunderstanding, contentions, or selfishness.

Love is more than mere affection, and all our words protesting our

love are not of value unless we have this inner current, which is

real substance. Though we have the eloquence of men and of angels,

and have not this deeper feeling, it profits us nothing. We should

deny the mere conventional, surface affection, and should set our

mind on the substance of love.

Phases

Charity is not love. You may be kindhearted, and give to the poor and

needy until you are impoverished, yet not acquire love. You may be a

martyr to the cause of Truth and consume your vitality in good works,

yet be far from love. Love is a force that runs in the mind and body

like molten gold in a furnace. It does not mix with the baser metals.

It has no affinity for anything less than itself. Love is patient. It

never gets weary or discouraged. Love is always kind and gentle. It

does not envy. Jealousy has no place in its world. Love never becomes

puffed up with human pride, and does not brag about itself. It is

love that makes the refinement of the natural gentleman or lady,

although he or she may be ignorant of the world's standards of

culture. Love does not seek its own. Its own comes to it without

being sought.

Jesus came proclaiming the spiritual interrelationship of the human

family. His teaching was always of gentleness, nonresistance, love.

To do this, one must be established in the consciousness of divine

love, and there must be discipline of the mental nature to preserve

such a high standard. The divine law is founded in the eternal unity

of all things.

Fearlessness

Divine love in the heart establishes one in fearlessness and

indomitable courage. A woman who understands this law was waylaid by

a tramp. She looked him steadily in the eye and said, " God loves

you. " He released his hold upon her and slunk away. Another woman saw

a man beating a horse that could not pull a load up a hill. She

silently said to the man, " The love of God fills your heart and you

are tender and kind. " He unhitched the horse; the grateful animal

walked directly over to the house where the woman was, and put his

nose against the window behind which she stood. A young girl

sang " Jesus, Lover of My Soul " to a calloused criminal; the man's

heart was softened, and he was reformed.

The new heaven and the new earth that are now being established among

men and nations the world over are based on love. When men understand

each other, love increases. This is true not only among men, but

between men and the animal world, and even between man and the

vegetable world.

Feelings

We may talk about the wisdom of God, but the love of God must be felt

in the heart. It cannot be described, and one who has not felt it can

have no concept of it from the descriptions of others. The more we

talk about love, the stronger it grows in the consciousness. If we

persist in thinking loving thoughts and speaking loving words, we are

sure to bring into our experience the feeling of that great love that

is beyond description--the very love of God.

Purity

It is popularly taught and believed that there is but one love; that

God is love and that all love is from Him, hence that all love is

God's love. Love is a divine principle and man can know it in its

purity by touching it at its fountainhead. There it is not tinged in

any way by man's formative thought, but flows forth a pure, pellucid

stream of infinite ecstasy. It has no consciousness of good or evil,

pure or impure, but pours itself out in great oceans of living

magnetic power, to be used by whosoever will.

Thinking gives color, tone, shape, character to all creation. Error

thought has put greed into love. Wherever love is tainted with

selfishness, we may know that error thought has made muddy its clear

stream, so that it no longer represents the purity of its source.

A Magnet

Love is the drawing power of mind. It is the magnet of the universe,

and about it may be clustered all the attributes of Being, by one who

thinks in divine order. Many who have found the law of true thinking

and its effect wonder why supply does not come to them after months

and years of holding thoughts of bounty. It is because they have not

developed love. They have formed the right image in mind, but the

magnet that draws the substance from the storehouse of Being has not

been set into action.

To demonstrate supply, we must think supply, and thus form it in the

consciousness. We must conserve all the ideas of substance in the

mind. We must vibrate with love in thought, word, and act. Then will

come to us on the wings of invisibility that which will satisfy every

need. This is the secret of demonstrating plenty.

Love never sees anything wrong in that which it loves. If it did, it

would not be pure love. Pure love is without discriminating power. It

simply pours itself out upon the object of its affection, and takes

no account of the result. By so doing, love sometimes casts its

pearls before swine, but its power is so great that it transforms all

that it touches.

Evil

Do not be afraid to pour out your love upon all the so-called evil in

the world. Deny the appearance of evil, and affirm the omnipotence

and omnipresence of love and goodness. Take no account of the evil

that appears in your life and your affairs. Refuse to see it as evil.

Declare that what seems evil has somewhere a good side, which shall

through your persistent affirmation of its presence be made visible.

By using this creative power of your own thought you will change that

which seemed evil into good, and divine love wilI pour its healing

balm over all.

Always remember that love is the great magnet of God. It is, of

itself, neither good nor evil. These are qualities given to it by the

thinking faculty in man. Whatever you see for your love, that it will

draw to you, because as a magnet it attracts whatever you set your

desire upon.

To focus your love about self and selfish aims will cause it to draw

around you the limited things of personality and the hollow shams of

sense life. To focus your love upon money and the possessions of the

material world will make you the slave of it, and will make your life

a failure and a disappointment.

Difficulties

You may trust love to get you out of your difficulties. There is

nothing too hard for it to accomplish for you, if you put your

confidence in it and act without dissimulation. Do not talk love and

in your heart feel resentment. This will bring discord to your body.

Love is candor and frankness. Deception is no part of love. He who

tries to use it in that sort of company will prove itself a liar, and

love will desert him in the end.

Love is satisfaction in itself--not that satisfaction with personal

self, its possessions and its attractions, which is vanity, but an

inner satisfaction that sees good everywhere and in everybody. It

insists that all is good, and by refusing to see anything but good it

causes that quality to appear uppermost in itself and in all things.

When only good is seen and felt, how can there be anything but

satisfaction?

Universal Goal

When love, the universal magnet, is brought into action in the

consciousness of our race, it will change all our methods of

supplying human wants. It will harmonize all the forces of nature and

will dissolve the discords that now infest earth and air. It will

control the elements until they obey man and bring forth that which

will supply all his needs without the labor that is called the sweat

of his face. The earth shall yet be made paradise by the power of

love. That condition will begin to set in for each one just as soon

as he develops the love nature in himself.

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love,

I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.

And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and

all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,

but have not love, I am nothing.

And if I dole out all my goods, and

if I deliver my body that I may boast

but have not love, nothing I am profited.

Love is long suffering,

love is kind,

it is not jealous,

love does not boast,

it is not inflated.

It is not discourteous,

it is not selfish,

it is not irritable,

it does not enumerate the evil.

It does not rejoice over the wrong,

but rejoices in the truth

It covers all things, it has faith for all things,

it hopes in all things, it endures in all things.

Love never falls in ruins;

but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or

tongues, they will cease; or

knowledge, it will be superseded.

For we know in part and we prophecy in part.

But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.

When I was an infant,

I spoke as an infant, I reckoned as an infant;

when I became [an adult],

I abolished the things of the infant.

For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face.

Now I know in part, but then I shall know

as also I was fully known.

But now remains faith, hope, love, these three;

but the greatest of these is love.