{"id":19931,"date":"2021-03-15T09:41:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T13:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19931"},"modified":"2021-03-15T10:59:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:59:35","slug":"the-flow-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19931","title":{"rendered":"The Flow of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4CGkt67F2uI\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Love, which might be called the attraction of\nall things toward all things, is a universal language and underlying energy\nthat keeps showing itself despite our best efforts to resist it. It is so\nsimple that it is hard to teach in words, yet we all know positive flow when we\nsense it, and we all know resistance and coldness when we feel it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we are truly \u201cin love,\u201d we move out of\nour small, individual selves to unite with another, whether in companionship,\nsimple friendship, marriage, or any other trustful relationship. Have you ever\ndeliberately befriended a person standing alone at a party? Perhaps someone who\nwas in no way attractive to you, or with whom you shared no common interests?\nThat would be a small but real example of divine love flowing. Don\u2019t dismiss it\nas insignificant. That is how the flow starts, even if the encounter doesn\u2019t\nchange anyone\u2019s life on the spot. To move beyond our small-minded uniformity,\nwe have to extend ourselves outward, which our egos always find to be a threat,\nbecause it means giving up our separation, superiority, and control. Animals\ncan do the same thing for our souls if we will allow it, sometimes better than\npeople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Men seem to have an especially difficult time\nat this. I have had the pleasure of presiding at many weddings over the years.\nThree different times, as I prepared the couple to exchange their vows, the\ngroom actually fainted and fell to the ground. But I have never seen the bride\nfaint. To the well-protected and boundaried male ego, there are few greater\nthreats than the words \u201ctill death do us part.\u201d (I am sure women have their own\nblockages, but the commitment to love doesn\u2019t seem to be one of the major ones\nfor the vast majority of women.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Love is a paradox. It often involves making a clear decision; but at its heart, it is not a matter of mind or willpower but <em>a flow of energy <strong>willingly allowed and exchanged, without requiring payment in return.<\/strong> <\/em>Divine love is, of course, the template and model for such human love, and yet human love is the necessary school for any encounter with divine love. If we\u2019ve never experienced human love\u2014to the point of sacrifice and forgiveness and generosity\u2014it will be very hard for us to access, imagine, or even experience God\u2019s kind of love. Conversely, if we have never let God love us in the deep and subtle ways that God does, we will not know how to love another human in the deepest ways of which we are capable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Love is\nconstantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned\u2014even,\nand especially, when things go wrong. Love allows and accommodates everything\nin human experience, both the good and the bad, and <em>nothing else can really do this. <\/em>Nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stages of Growth in Love<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re told by developmental psychologists that there\u2019s a staging in our growth in love. We have to start with self-love and respecting the self. If we don\u2019t respect ourselves, we won\u2019t know how to respect anybody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then God moves us to group love, family love,\nwhich is basically the love of people who are connected to us or who are like\nus. A lot of people don\u2019t even get there. They don\u2019t know how to love their\nfamily or those close to them or those in their group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From there, God moves us to the third level,\nwhich is universal love; I\u2019m afraid a much smaller number of people get to this\nplace. As we see in politics, in our country, and throughout the world, at best\nmost people just get to the second stage of knowing how to love people who are\nlike them: their race, their nationality, their religion, their political\nparty. When we stay at this second stage of group love, we clearly don\u2019t create\na healthy society. We see this in the rise of white nationalism and the\nviolence at the U.S. Capitol that took place earlier this year. Many of us who\nidentify as white in the United States are just coming to understand that it\nwas this second level of exclusive love for our own group that was the\nfoundation for most of the oppressive systems of our nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Acts 10 we see how even the so-called first\npope, Peter, had to be taught by the Holy Spirit how to grow in love. Peter was\nat the stage of group love, believing that God only loved the Jewish people.\nAnd then this strange thing happened where the Holy Spirit fell upon Gentiles!\nPeter looked around and said, \u201cOh my gosh! God seems to be for everybody and\nnot just for the Jewish people!\u201d He understood that it was okay to include\nGentiles into what we eventually called the church. In spite of this, most of\nchurch history has not really imitated Peter\u2019s insight. We pulled back into\ngroup think and group love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Peter said, \u201cIn truth, I see that God shows no partiality. In any country, whoever fears God and acts uprightly is acceptable\u201d (Acts 10:34\u201335). At that moment he became both a Jewish and Christian heretic! Peter himself began to recognize that God works with all people of goodwill\u2014not just people in his group. But he had to be pushed there. Little by little, God leads him to universal love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"298\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-12-500x298.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19934\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-12-500x298.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-12-300x179.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-12-768x458.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-12.png 1918w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Love, which might be called the attraction of all things toward all things, is a universal language and underlying energy that keeps showing itself despite our best efforts to resist it. It is so simple that it is hard to teach in words, yet we all know positive flow when we sense it, and we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19937,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19931\/revisions\/19937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}