Art of True Love
Today, people talk of hard skills, soft skills, communication skills and technical skills. However, life skills are more important than professional skills! Love is far more essential to a successful life than vocational degrees. For love purifies our life and makes it sweet and meaningful
Have you ever asked yourself: What is the secret of life? Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani, in one of his books, writes about the secret of a happy life. He tells us, “When you enter the portals of Heaven, God will not ask you about your caste, status, or wealth. He will not ask you about your educational qualifications, your designation or your business acumen. He will ask you whether you have learnt the art, the life-skill, of loving your fellow human beings.”
Love is the light that illuminates the dark ways of life. Love is Heavenly. Love is beautiful. To grow in the life of the spirit, we must learn the art of selfless love. This is an art that can be learnt very easily. It is the art of speaking gently, lovingly and sweetly. Let us learn to offer a helping hand to everyone who needs it. Let us be humble and treat others with respect and look upon all creation as one family with God as the loving Father of us all – and we would have mastered the art of true love!
Today, people talk of hard skills, soft skills, communication skills and technical skills. But, life skills are more important than professional skills! Love is far more essential to a successful life than vocational degrees. For love purifies our life and makes it sweet and meaningful.
What is love? What is the way of love? The way of love is selflessness. It is the way of sacrifice. Love has no place for ego or selfishness. Love is an ever expanding positive energy. It was Rabindranath Tagore who said, “Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.” I cannot define or explain love to you! You have to feel it in your heart; you have to experience its healing, purifying powers, for it blesses both those who love, and those who are loved.
Love is not possession. Love is not attachment. Love is above hate, envy and jealousy. Love comes without any strings attached to it. Love is unconditional. Love is divine. Love is pure energy. It is a flood of sublime thoughts.
When I talk about love, I do not refer to physical sensations or sexual attraction. One of the most admired women of the modern age, Helen Keller, said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched they must be felt with the heart.”
True love is a feeling that touches the mind, heart and soul. It is perhaps the feeling which is the highest that any human being is capable of: for I believe that love is of God; in fact I believe that love is not just an attribute of God – Love is God and God is Love! That is why I urge my young friends not to fall in love – but rise in true love!
Love is not out there somewhere. It is with you, within you. The more you offer love to the world and the people in it, the more it will come back to you! Indeed, it was a wise man who asserted: “Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.”
I have always been a great believer in the strength and sustaining power of true love – love which transcends the physical and the material, love that is divine and universal, and moves out to all people, to all of creation! We must all love one another – or perish!
In love, I believe, is the solution to all the problems of life; if life is a battle, love is its victory; if life is a story, love is its theme; if life is music, love is its melody; and if life is a flower, love is its fragrance!
The world’s greatest need today is love-inaction! This love manifests itself in sympathy, service and sacrifice. If we would wish to show true love, we must pour our life out in sympathy, service and sacrifice to all humanity.
God has created us and poured love into our hearts so that we may alleviate the pain and suffering we see around us.
Let us not curse the darkness. Let us kindle the light of love in our hearts!