Baba used to say that Christ was the incarnation of Love. Christ showed us what Love is. He Loved without qualification; there was no arbitrariness in His Love for all. Even on Calvary, He Loved.
For me, Baba modeled that same Love, always. In every moment, he taught me what Love is.
We all tend to think we know what love is; the problem is, we only know what we have been taught, and what we have concluded on the basis of our very limited experience. We do not willingly put our ideas of love to the test. If we did, their limitations and distortions would be exposed.
For many, what they call love is really about power. Whether they realize it or not, they see life in terms of the exercise of power. Accordingly, they see everything in light of hierarchies and roles, and love is just a function of how people use what power they have. This usually translates into a resentment of people whom they see as outranking them; whoever is an authority figure is automatically perceived as a loveless oppressor. Love, then, is being in a position to oppress and choosing not to. It is the benevolent exercise of power.
| Benevolent | Undiscriminating |
| Condescending | Equal |
As the above fourchotomy reveals, this wrong understanding of Love means that we relate to others only in terms of their apparent position relative to us in a perceived hierarchy. What we call “love” only happens from higher to lower. When we see others getting along well with people above them in a hierarchy, we cannot see this as a good thing, as the recognition of an underlying equality; we can only see it as flattery or politicking on one side and favoritism on the other. We can only love those beneath us in some way. And if the only people we can love are beneath us, the truth is we are not loving—we are powering.
Great beings Love equally. Love precedes whatever hierarchies we inhabit in relative reality; to Love we must come from a place of Unity and equality, and only then operate appropriately within the hierarchies of relative reality.
When we confuse Love with the exercise of power, we are also thinking in a very limited way about safety and security. If we see life in terms of power relations, we will only “love” when we do not feel threatened in any way. This means either that we have to have power over those we “love” or that they agree completely with our conception of love and are willing to take the subordinate role. We will only feel safe in a relationship when the other person submits to us.
Another way in which we conflate Love and the exercise of power is through woundedness. Many of us as children only received what we knew as “love” when we were wounded or unhealthy or miserable. This encouraged in us the habit of identifying with the wounds we see ourselves as having received—and of seeing “love” as inseparable from woundedness. The fourchotomy that results from this thinking reveals how delusional this is.
| Wounded | Unloving |
| In pain | Resilient |
We then equate love with a vibration of woundedness and want to share it with others. If others reject our wounded vibration, they are rejecting our “love” and therefore have no love. In our minds, we will work to get others to “love” by being magnificently wounded or wounding them. At its extreme, this delusion may even lead us to mortally wound ourselves so as to wound everyone else into loving us.
People misinterpret Christ as wounded. He is seen as the suffering servant, and for our part we are to share solidarity in suffering. That is not Love. That is not what Christ wanted for us. That is not what God wants for us. Love has nothing to do with power or woundedness. Love always leads to resolution for everyone, at all times, in all places. And that resolution is our birthright. Love leads us to Love.
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