LEARNING TO LOVE

PETE'S JOURNAL, MAY 2003

 www.seekeronline.org

"To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible
deception; it is an eternal loss for which there
is no reparation, either in time or in eternity."
Kierkegaard.

Love
by
Leo Buscaglia

(An Excerpt)

Love as a Learned Phenomenon

There are those who will dismiss love as a naive
and romantic construct of our culture. Others will
wax poetic and tell you that "love is all," "love is
the bird call and the glint in a young girl's eyes on
a summer night."

Some will be dogmatic and tell
you emphatically that "God is Love."And some,
according to their own unique experience, will tell
us, "Love is a strong, emotional attachment to
another ..." etc.

In some cases you will find that
people have never thought of questioning love,
much less defining it, and object violently even to
the suggestion that they think about it. To them
love is not to be pondered, it is simply to be
experienced.

It is true that to some degree all of these
statements are correct, but to assume that any one
is best or all there is to love, is rather simple. So
each man lives love in his limited fashion and does
not seem to relate the resultant confusion and
loneliness to this lack of knowledge about love.

In discussing love, it would be well to consider
the following premises:

One cannot give what he does not possess.
To give love you must possess love.

One cannot teach what he does not under-
stand. To teach love you must
comprehend love.

One cannot know what he does not study.
To study love you must live in love.

One cannot appreciate what he does not
recognize. To recognize love you must
be receptive to love.

One cannot have doubt about that which he
wishes to trust. To trust love you must
be convinced of love.

One cannot admit what he does not yield to.
To yield to love you must be vulnerable
to love.

One cannot live what he does not dedicate
himself to. To dedicate yourself to love
you must be forever growing in love.

Nowhere along the way have people been directly
exposed to love as a learned phenomenon. What they have
learned of love they have come upon indirectly, by
chance or by trial and error. Their greatest exposure
and often their only teaching has been through the
commercial mass media which has always exploited
love for its own ends.

So most of us never learn to love at all. We play
at love, imitate lovers, treat love as a game. Is it any
wonder so many of us are dying of loneliness, feel
anxious and unfulfilled, even in seemingly close
relationships, and are always looking elsewhere for
something more which we feel must certainly be
there? "Is that all there is?" the song asks.

There is something else. It's simply this... the
limitless potential of love within each person eager
to be recognized, waiting to be developed, yearning
to grow.

It's never too late to learn anything for which you
have a potential. If you want to learn to love, then
you must start the process of finding out what it is,
what qualities make up a loving person and how
these are developed.

Each person has the potential
for love. But potential is never realized without
work. This does not mean pain. Love, especially,
is learned best in wonder, in joy, in peace, in living.

To live in love is life's greatest challenge.

About the author:

Leo Buscaglia is a person who truly
lives as he speaks, who feels and is not
fearful of displaying his emotions, who
loves and is joyous in that love.

A professor of education at the University
of Southern California, a native
Califomian, an inexhaustible traveler, a
much-loved and carefully-listened-to
speaker, Dr. Buscaglia shares here his
beliefs with us in LOVE.

Love by Leo Buscaglia, was published by Ballantine Books, NY, NY, 1983.

This book is available new and used from: www.amazon.com

CHANGE YOUR LIFE THROUGH LOVE

by

Stella Terrill Mann

Surrender Your Heart to Love

HAVING seen what love is and what it can do for us,
and having recognized that we must love now or learn by
suffering to love eventually if we are not to perish, we
have decided, have we not, that we are going to change
our lives through love. The question is, how to go
about it? What shall we do first in order to start our
life-changing project?

Since we cannot change the law of love any more
than we can change the other spiritual laws we must
learn how to change ourselves by bringing all our desires,
acts and beliefs under the law of good for all. In this way
we can change not only our daily lives and affairs for the
better but our very destiny, as well. Nothing less than
good will permit our growth here or hereafter.

The first thing we must do then, is to surrender our
hearts to love.

To surrender means to "yield to any influence,
emotion, etc.," says Webster and further defines heart as
"the seat of life or strength; hence mind; soul; spirit."
Our purpose then is to place our strength, our life, our
mind, our soul and spirit under the influence of the
Spirit of Love.

We may hear about the law until doomsday and never
once get a benefit from it unless we put it to work. Until
such surrender is made no one can do much for the one
who would change his life.

Even Christ Jesus did not
help before he was asked. Jesus' formula of "Wilt thou?"
and "Dost thou believe?" put the issue squarely up to
the sufferer. Jesus was not a dictator or a fighter. He
was a teacher. He explained and demonstrated the laws.
He forced no one to accept the Spirit of Love as a way of
life. Nor does that Spirit, God, force us.
We have free will.

Since Jesus Christ knew more about how to change
lives than any man who ever lived before or since, we
do well to study His method. Until we rise to that height
of moral consciousness and love which He knew and
felt, we cannot hope to do the works He did.

But we
can learn His method and use it at our own present level
of understanding and love. We do not know all that
Jesus knew but we are very sure about two points in His
method of healing for we can so easily prove them in
our own lives.

First, we must believe we can be helped
and secondly, we must be willing to be helped. We have
to fulfill these two requirements before we can hope to
change our lives through prayer and love. Prayer is
asking. Love is desiring. Faith is believing.

The more we know about the methods of changing
our lives, and the more we can grasp of the cause and
workings of the spiritual laws, the more quickly, easily
and permanently our change will be made.

We can be
certain that Jesus' three words "Dost thou believe?"
referred to His whole teaching and not just the simple
idea that the one asking help had to believe he could
be helped. Somehow, by His great love of humanity
and His perfect understanding of the spiritual laws,
Jesus was able to go directly to the inner perfect soul
of the sufferer and remind him of all those truths of
existence which he had known "since
before Abraham was."

That is not a strange phenomenon. It is one we
use every day. Let's look at it a bit further in order to
understand it better so that we too, can use it at will.

First, we know that what is true on one plane of
existence is true on all planes. For example, we know
that the human body remembers all that it ever learned
through the ages of man on earth and uses this stored
knowledge any time the need arises.
This is true of the mind, too.

Psychologists tell us that human experience
is never completely wiped out, but is stored in the
subconscious mind of the individual so that anyone who
understands the laws or rules of action involved can
uncover those hidden experiences and bring them up
into the conscious mind. Science says these memories
of the human race have accumulated
for millions of years.

Now if mental and physical experiences are never
lost but only filed away safely until needed and called
for by the individual, it necessarily follows, does it not,
that all spiritual experiences, facts and rules are also
remembered. They too are stored, ready to be called
upon at any time when needed by the individual.

What is true on the physical and mental plane of existence
is also true on the spiritual plane. This is exactly
what Jesus taught and proved. The trouble is, we don't
yet know how to dig into our own souls and uncover
these memories of spiritual experiences, rules, forces and
actions in the way that Jesus knew.

To know how to do
this is the missing link between our being able to do
what Jesus did and our desire to do it.

This book is out of print but can be purchased used from: www.amazon.com