A Little about Love The thread in today's service has been constant through all the readings and hymns, that of love. This word 'love' is a very difficult word to understand. Why is this so? It is because we constantly misuse it. We often in our daily life say, "I love this ice cream or I love those flowers". We say that we love a particular television programme, a friend or a group of friends, a football team, a TV or film star, a sunset, lying in bed on a Sunday morning, a particular drink, a rainbow etc, etc. etc. We all do this to a greater or lesser extent. We all use the word 'love' to mean 'like'. But love does not mean like. It's meaning is nothing like the word like. But we all do it. Vaguely like, greatly like or massively like, are nothing like the word love. Like is a very limited word. It should be used on generally small limited experiences that create within us a positive emotional response to the event, place or time. 'Like' is a recognition that we have realised that we have gained a positive emotional lift, even a 'kick' if you like. Ah! You say to yourself I know what love is because I love my husband, wife, child etc. Yes, I know and will accept that the word love is related to those nearest and dearest to us. It is even related to experiences and things. But not in the way that people commonly use the word. So be careful how you use it. Love of a family member is also not love. It is nothing like love. This life experience that binds us into long lasting relationships and family groups is not love. This is attachment. This is emotional addiction. It is quite necessary for the stability of the family unit however. It is so strong that we are sometimes even prepared to risk death for it. For example a parent trying to save a family member from a burning building or throwing a child to safety knowing that they cannot move quickly enough to get themselves out of the way of a vehicle about to hit them or giving their loved one the only food that there is when there is not enough for all. In the initial stages of a relationship, this 'attachment' binds us to the other person. This is an emotional-hormonal-chemical binding and we do it to ourselves. We tie ourselves to a particular man or woman and this can last sometimes for life. But in this state of attachment we rarely see our partners or our children as they really are because our attachment imprints a fixed set of misconceptions about who the other person actually is. These misconceptions act like a filter to our experience of the person we have an attachment to. This keeps us from seeing who and what they really are like. Not only can we not see things as they really are but we really expect to receive something from the other person on an ongoing basis. The only saving grace to this setup is that the other person is also caught in this very same trap. But is this love? This is not love and while we are in this state we are lost to reality. This is evolution being played out at a personal level. This is physical and cellular life making sure that there will be successive generations of people. Important though this is to the survival of our species it still isn't love. No matter how many times we use this word love in this evolutionary sense it still does not make it true. Love is not the pre programming and hard wiring of our body and brain which reacts to air born chemicals and surface skin chemicals produced by a member of the opposite sex. We have got it wrong again. This is a misuse of the word love. This is not what Jesus or any other of the great mystics was talking about when they used the word love. Love is a state of being. So what does that statement mean? How would I recognise this love and how can I attain this state of being. Do I even really want it? Do I really want this on top of all the rest that I have to do and cope with in this life. My life is full to the brim already and to add just one more straw to my back might break me. I can't do any more. I can't be any different. I am who I am. The risk is too great. I have responsibility for my wife, children, mother in law and all the others. I have responsibilities towards my boss, my job, my customers, my neighbours, my friends. Do you recognise this from your own life experience? Well there we go again with an attachment. We are attached not only to those who we think we love. We are attached to lots of different people and organisations. We have expectations about these people and who these people really are. These expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations, hide the reality of what these interactions really are. And just like the earlier evolutionary attachment, these attachments are also emotionally based and locked into a range of rigid expectations. This is evolution played out through society. This is based on us knowing who we are and how we relate to others. This is important, we say. We need to know where and how and when we fit into this large societal framework. This is because it is important to our survival and therefore our family's survival because the survival of our children is important. And we play this attachment of society out in the same way that we play out that of our evolutionary-chemical-emotion attachment of sex and families. And we find the same misuse of the same words that we use to describe how things are going. We say I love my job, my co-workers, my business etc., etc.. We are even likely to push ourselves to the actual point of personal self destruction through high levels of stress and overwork. In fact increasingly our society demands just this of us. In the attachment of 'society' we no longer see things as they really are. As with all attachments, we see things as we want them to be. We are blind here in our society just like we are in our relationships. We are lost - totally lost. So what is love then? Well the one thing that we do know is that it isn't anything to do with being attached to some person, some object or some activity. I say activity rather than job because we can have an 'attachment' to anything. An ardent footballer or supporter can be attached to specific players and his club. We can become attached to a band or group, even the brand of equipment that we use in our homes or gardens and just like all attachments we are bound by our blinkered certainties. Just like with the earlier attachment of sex, I have offered you this morning, with these attachments we become just as unthinking and unknowing. We don't see things as they really are…. and so we are lost. As a simple rule of thumb when we hear or say "I love.... whatever it is." This is most likely not true. It isn't love. It is attachment. So what is love? I know, I said it was a state of being and it is. So what then is attachment. This also is a state of being. This is a state of blinkered or filtered seeing. It is the state of being in, but not a functioning part, of reality because we don't see the totality of reality. We can't see reality as it is. This is a state of being as well but it is more accurately a state of 'un-being' because in 'attachment' we can't see things as they really are or reality as it actually is. Conversely, love therefore, is the state of being 'in-being' or 'total-being' or perhaps 'totally-in-being' because a person in this state of being begins to see things as they really are. It gives a much wider grasp of reality. So what is it like being 'in' love. To some extent this differs from person to person. For some, 'total in-being' can be very frightening. All the props that have been used up to that point, are gone. All those things and ideas and words that we have been hiding behind no longer serve their purpose. At the moment that someone has 'become' they can take fright and trigger back to their original state of 'un-being'. They go back to their comfort zone. This is possible because the step into 'being' or 'awareness' is very small. If this happens it is not because they have really decided to be as they were, but rather that the fright and the aloneness seems to trigger the previous and more long standing state. After this happens some of these people have no memory that they ever reached the state of 'being'. It is not beyond the realms of possibility, that with some people, this process is acted out over and over again. So how do you really know that you have crossed into 'being'? Well, I think most people don't know. They might have an odd experience, or they might not. What they do though, is carry on with their life because that is what they have to do. However, because they are seeing things as they really are they now begin to act in a different way. Often, this is not seen by the person, but rather by their family, friends and work or other associates. Over a period of time many of their friends drift away because the person who is in 'being' has begun to act and react differently to that which was previously expected. The person may no longer find that what they were doing satisfies them. So they stop doing it or they do it in a different way. Little by little they change. It isn't that they have been hit by a bolt of lightning which leaves them on a high twenty four hours a day, seven days a week for ever more, though for a small number this is just how it seems to be. It is that they slip more often into being more loving, experiencing more periods of joy in unexpected ways, Kindness, goodness and faithfulness become more pronounced. Over time they become more patient and seem have more self control. In a nut shell they become like Jesus is portrayed to us and certainly like the mystics across the ages. These changes are not an end in themselves but rather the effect of the outward manifestation of love that they are now more open to. Remember this is not the love as seen and experienced by the rest of mankind but rather the greater love that embraces and underpins the whole of our reality. Yes, you have heard me mention this list that contains: love, joy, kindness, goodness and faithfulness, patience and self control before as I have frequently spoken of them over the last few years. These attributes are referred to as the 'fruits of the spirit' and are listed by Paul in the 'Christian testament'. However, be wary, neither these attributes nor the state that they point to can be said to be the sole property of Christians or Christianity, because they are not. Many other cultures also have people who have come to 'be' and this has been going on for millennia. You can experience this 'Kingdom of God on Earth' and the transcending effect of love. All you have to do is to allow yourself to 'be'. This state is only a step or a thought away. There is no entrance exam. When you change to 'being', you 'become', you have 'awareness', you have become enlightened, you have entered the 'Kingdom of God on Earth'. It is just a part of growing up. However, most people don't seem to do that - grow up, that is. This is a real shame because I think that this is what we are supposed to do - grow up I mean. So have I really said what love is? No I haven't. I have only given a glimpse of what others looking in, tend to observe. But that is all right because I will return to this topic again, perhaps again and again. But to give a hint, it is about being in the wonder and the now Amen Joe Potter  03/08/2008