Love is a way of seeing.
So often, we love only that which presents itself. If someone is kind and considerate, gentle and affectionate, it is easy to love them back. But I’m learning that true love is the kind that chooses always to see the man and women of Love’s creating, no matter what is being presented.
Often, when I am commuting to my teaching job on the Paris metro in the morning, I like to take time to look around me at all my fellow commuters. It’s so easy to notice the glum, unsmiling faces of stressed out Parisians, all wearing grey, on their daily ride to work. But I always like to take the time to allow my thinking to go further than that.
Instead, I like to focus on how beautiful that person must be in the eyes of someone who loves them. I assume that there is at least one person in the life of my fellow passenger who loves them completely and utterly and how much their faces would come alive when they know that they are loved. Would I also see them differently, if I was to see them in the full realization of the knowledge that they are loved? Wouldn’t we ALL look different in this realization?
But I think it goes deeper than that. Because, of course, it’s never about another person. It’s always about our view of ourselves and others held in a broader, deeper and richer appreciation of Love, as distinct from the vagaries of human affection that comes and goes throughout our lives. No, we are to summon up a vision of ourselves as rooted and grounded in Love at all times, in all ways, irrespective of the circumstances presented. To hold fast to this can be a challenge, but always brings new ways of seeing that make us feel truly loved.
And if we can especially choose to see others in the light of that Love, digging beneath the surface, what a revolution that would be for the world!
What would it mean if we were able to look at everyone in that way?
Love Not Fear 