Let us talk about love. About personal love, and about Divine Love.

You know personal love. You have lived it. You have laughed in it. You have wept because of it. You have rejoiced in it. Your heart has probably opened and closed many times in it. You expanded and contracted in it, often trying to hold on to what felt precious as it slipped away.

This is the way of human love. It is the way of most lives.

It can be tender. It can be sincere. It can be fierce. It can be loud and it can be soft. Or it trembles. Or it even turns into terror.

So what is love?

There is an ancient wisdom that says: “The world is run by Love.”

We can observe this everywhere in nature. We can see that there is a law of love and mercy that directs everything in existence forward. There is a sacred order of harmony that is even observed by science.

So love is everywhere and in everything, but now we want to specifically focus on human love and divine love and their role on our path.

We tend to make things complex. So let’s say it simply first.

Love is Love.

There is an ultimate goal in love, no matter where it happens. Love is not just a feeling. Love is in itself a correcting power that overthrows all falsehood. So Love is a strict, but righteous teacher.

We can also see that when there is real affection, a heart begins to soften and to open, because love begins to flow. When there is real care, then it is love that takes care, and in this real love an ego always loses a little of its grip.

Human love teaches us to look beyond ourselves, to find this greater Love.

It is like coming over a false mountain top, beyond which, to our surprise, the real mountain top — a much higher one, appears, and we suddenly see the whole of the mountain we have been on all along.

Divine Love does not negotiate. It does not tremble. It does not waver. It does not depend on others.

This is the Love of the Divine that breathes in the secret chamber of our heart.

When we speak of Divine Love, we speak about something beyond our mental understanding. It is almost like a fragrance without a flower, or like a light without a source, or like an image without a picture. It is an impression that is at the same time not an impression; at the same time an eternal river, while also a shoreless ocean.

We can see it, but we don’t.

We cannot grasp Divine Love, while it still lies in everything as the greatest secret mystery of all life.

Divine Love is never transactional nor emotional. Divine Love is entirely different. Divine Love is a Presence. It is a state. Divine Love is like a temple that comes with us wherever we walk, and we see this temple wherever we look.

Divine Love is a gift that we both receive and give at the same time.

When we learn not to reach out to this love, but to reach out from this love, then through this love a divine radiance descends like a healing dew upon our heart, bringing us peace in which our minds can be still. It even silences the fight-or-flight of our body.

And when we follow this Love, it remains in us, around us, above us, and below us, like a mantle of Love, in which we are at the same time at home, in the temple of Love.

Love is simple. Love is as spacious as the universe, so it never shouts or argues.

In our human loving, we often run after love, often with our arms stretched out so far in our longing that we miss the treasure we carried in our pocket all along.

Human love is often the one who calls, while Divine Love comes to the door.

Human love will always say, “I need you.” While Divine Love will always say, “I am inside of you.”

Human love will exclaim, “Stay with me.” While Divine Love says, “I’ve always been here.”

Human love shoots up like a burst of fire that dies out later. Divine Love glows like a steady central sun that lights up the whole soul.

If we can recognise even a little of this Love, the smallest hem of it, then our human love begins to change. It becomes caring. It becomes giving. It becomes lighter. It becomes kinder. It becomes free.

It stops seeking its own comfort and begins to reflect the comforting Love of the Divine.

This is how love transforms us, and how we are transformed by it, not by rejecting the human that we are, with all our opposing sides, but by letting the Divine enter into our human and allowing it to create a new inner order.

As Divine Love rises in us, the trembling of personal love fades like ice melting from within, uncovering a whole new reality.

This reality does not need proof. It does not fade when things change. This reality of love lies behind everything like a Divine door that is always accessible.

As we step through this door, we step onto the trail that this love spreads directly in front of us.

Then Love will lead us, help us, steady us, ground us, transform us, and attract what is light and full of Love, in the Light of Love.

We only need to turn towards this Love each time personal love gives us the chance. Then we can make this new Love, this real Love, this Divine Love, our new way.

In this Love we are free. In this Love we live for real. In this Love we are, just as this Love is. As you, in your essence, are this Love.

To conclude our contemplation, we would like to read a poem about love:

The Lord is in me, the Lord is in you, as life is in every seed.
O servant, put false pride away and seek the Lord within.

You wander from temple to temple with your mouth full of questions,
but the God you seek is within yourself.

Like the musk deer who searches the world for the scent that comes from its own body,
you live in illusion.

The Lord is the breath inside the breath.
The heart opens and blooms at His touch.
Love streams through the heart of the seeker like a river of light.

And when that Love comes,
the body becomes all flame,
and the soul becomes a song.

He is the deepest silence inside us,
the still point of turning worlds.
When love of the Divine rises up,
all desires dissolve like smoke.

This is the Love that does not waver.
This is the Love that has no opposite.
The Love that burns the veil and reveals
the One who is both seen and unseen.

Look within: your Beloved is already searching for you.
Meet Him in the temple of your heart.