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To Love, You Need the Will to Love
By
Justin Moreward HaigLet people meditate often but only for short periods at a time. It is better to meditate say, ten times a day for a few moments or even less, than a whole hour in succession. And always remember that the Imagination should be employed and not the Will, as most people understand that word; and further, that whenever we in this Order use the expression to will, we mean to make an effort of the Imagination. Another important point is the necessity for synchronization between feeling and thought. When you meditate on Love, you must not only think Love but feel Love--again through an effort of the Imagination.
Imagination is that Divine ladder built by God, whereby the aspirant may climb to the blissful heights of Realization. Those who indulge in mere desultory dreaming are misusing the faculty of Imagination, but if you have recently become Chelas will for the present practice meditation in the manner I have just advocated, you may eventually find that there will be times when you will be rewarded with the changeless feeling of love toward everybody, whoever and whatever they are, and yet you won't mind if they love you in return or not. At such times there will be no more of those inconvenient antipathies use often feel toward people; whether a person is ugly or beautiful, refined or vulgar, clever or stupid, wicked or virtuous--none of these attributes will inhibit the incomparable sensation of Love flowing out in all its joy and peacefulness from yourselves toward them. Some of you may even discover that such Love-consciousness has become permanent, for you may be only re-acquiring what you have already acquired in a previous life.
Are there no other methods for acquiring this attitude of Love--for remember it is an attitude--other than the methods of meditation prescribed? Personally I believe there are. Take the analogy of the blacksmith's arm: his right arm is an unusually strong and muscular, his left is weak and puny in comparison. Why is this? Because he has developed the strength of his right arm by swinging a hammer; his left he has only used as all people use it who are not ambidextrous. And it's the same with Love--exercise the will to Love, and you develop the capacity to Love, so that your whole love-nature becomes strong and enduring; love in the ordinary way as people do who are merely attracted, and your love-nature remains weak and sickly, and eventually dies altogether. For observe: love requires to be nourished from within and not from without. As long as you are dependent on externals you'll never be safe. Only when you make up your mind not to depend on those externals will you be secure. But you must start now while you're young; when you are old it will be too late. The attitude once acquired will persist of its own accord; then when old age has come upon you there will be none of this difficulty about making new friends that we so often hear of. Instead of merely being fond of one or two friends you'll be fond of ten friends, twenty, hundred--there is no limit beyond what you yourself impose. And of course as the number increases the likelihood of your outliving them increases. The lonely lovelessness of old age is but the penalty one pays for exclusiveness.
To come to a practical suggestion: Why not select at least one person from among your acquaintances who is not sympathetic to you, and then, always, of course, with the aid of the Imagination, will yourself to love that person. I'm not by this implying that there are some here who actually and actively hate anybody, because, as you know, we dare not initiate those who have not got over such an emotion as hatred. But there are still persons to whom you feel--shall we say extremely indifferent; whose actual bodies are not sympathetic to you, so that you would not care to take their arm or touch their hand or show any of that physical demonstrativeness which especially women are accustomed to show one another. You needn't even go further afield than our own immediate circle; for although I admit that on the whole the spirit amongst you is one of love and fellowship, there is in some isolated cases room for improvement. There are one or two of you women who might feel a great deal more loving towards each other than you do a present. Your own hearts will tell you what I myself don't need to tell you. But I ask you to let those hearts of yours speak, and to follow their promptings. I assure you that by acting on my suggestion you can progress very considerably.
I should add that the exercise of this will to love need not be restricted to members of the same sex. How often, for instance, does a woman feel that such and such a man is quite agreeable to talk to, but that she would scream--women are very fond of this talk about screaming--if he were to take her hand or put his arm round her? And the same with a man towards a woman, except that men don't usually scream! Is any form of repulsion, towards whomever it may be, an ideal state of things? Oh, I grant I'm not asking from you something that's very easy when I suggest that you should overcome all such repulsions--but then if we only did the easy things in life we should never progress at all. This Love-consciousness at which you are aiming has, like the kingdom of heaven, to be taken by force; to be conquered; and like all things where conquest is involved it requires effort.
I'll go so far is to say that it would--for some people--be much easier to love God than an unsympathetic neighbour. God you can endow with every lovable and wonderful quality like, and He doesn't suddenly appear in person to annoy and disappoint you. You can even credit him with undesirable qualities, such as jealousy, anger, or revengefulness, if these attributes happen to please you--but your unsympathetic neighbour you're obliged to take just as he is. It is you who have to change, not he--and it is you who first of all must wish to change.
And so I say to you who are striving for Love-consciousness, use every means in your power to attain it. Don't let mere meditation suffice, but learn to love even your seemingly less lovable neighbour. Learn to love him for the sake of the Self, the One in the Many.
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