The Power of Love or the Love of Power
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The Power of Love or the Love of Power

John Lennon- “Love is the answer, and you know that for sure. Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.”

Whatever the question, love is the answer, whatever the wound, love is the healer.

Buddha, Jesus Christ, Rumi, and many great modern teachers such as Dalai Lama, Pema Chodron, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr…Ever wondered what is common to all these great souls?

They all preach that love is the WAY.

True love is boundless and universal, it’s a state of being which doesn’t discriminate between white and black, us and them, or even you & I.

The law of love is one of the natural laws of life. The greatest and deepest law of all. It fills the hearts of all who seek it with kindness and compassion. It is the central theme in the laws of life, for love is cement that make men whole.

By love we mean love of life, love of God, love of people, work, beauty, learning, nature, animals.

In the Old Testament everything was laws, sternness, force. When Jesus came, over 2000 years ago, he brought the love which was the cement to hold men together in fellowship with God. Those that have tried God’s teachings have found this to be true

The law of love is divided into two parts: first, love of God; second, love of neighbor. ” Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Where there is love there is life. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend. Our human compassion binds us the one to the other — not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future. In order of appearance, the first quote is by Mahatma Gandhi, the second by Martin Luther King, Jr and the third by Nelson Mandela.

But what is Love. Love to me is expressed by  *kindness,  ,*unselfishness, *patience,  *understanding, and  *Trust. Each of us is born with the capacity for love, which takes many forms. The visible signs of love are without end: Love for that cute puppy snuggled inside a littles girl’s raincoat; Love in the eyes of the mother who sees her child in the evening after a days hectic schedule; The Hallelujah chorus, a beam of light through a stained glass window, a lump in the throat when the Indian flag goes by. Love is the light and sunshine of life. And that’s what is the power of love.

And now let me switch and share another perspective. While the love that I talked about is Agape is the highest of the four types of love in the Bible. This term defines God’s immeasurable, incomparable love for humankind. It is the divine love that comes from God. Agape love is perfect, unconditional, sacrificial, and pure. Bible also talks about Eros, is the selfish love that tears down. It is as dangerous due to the loss of control that occurs when someone is struck by this kind of love. And yes, I said struck because Eros is found in Greek Mythology as being brought on by cupid’s arrow One is constructive, the other is destructive.

And that’s what today’s discussion all about. The Power of Love is the divine love which falls in the category of Agape and the Lower for Power clearly falls in the other category.

“Power tends to corrupt,” said Lord Acton, the 19th-century British historian. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” His maxim has been vividly illustrated in psychological studies, notably the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which was halted when one group of students arbitrarily assigned to serve as “prison guards” over another group began to abuse their wards.

The experimental results claimed that students quickly embraced their assigned roles, with some guards enforcing authoritarian measures and ultimately subjecting some prisoners to psychological torture. Now I ask you why..imagine if this was not Stanford but your school, can you imagine one set of students randomly selected torturing another set, just because they have been assigned powerful roles.

This experiment is a testimony to Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote- The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.

So, to end, I would like to state that in todays, broken world the teachings of Jesus Christ is the only known philosophy of life which has never been seriously tried. Incredible as our stupidity may seem, man is still blind to the fact that the cause of all his troubles is within himself. The heart of life is love.

A man contains, not only a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, but also a saint and a devil, a believer and a sceptic, a lover and a cynic, a side which is hungry for power and one which is hungry for love. It is upto us to nurture the saint, the believer, the lover.

“Love is the answer, and you know that for sure. Love is a flower and you’ve got to let it grow.”

 

 

1 Comment
  • Jahnvee
    Posted at 14:19h, 12 July Reply

    Lovely..Great thoughts..More power to your pen ?

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