Following the Center - on the trail of Love

(alternate title: The Spiritual Ecology of the Sun)

Love is pay-forward, and pay-back, at the same time. . . .

It’s hard to turn away from spirit, and not become egotistic.
Although, the corollary is also true - that is, without love imbuing one’s spiritual wisdom, another form of egotistic destitution can play out.

What is functionality in an incarnation?
In other words, what is love? How does it work? - this heart of life essence, this living business? What would functionalism look like?
Shall I turn to my center, and strive to discover what love is?

Prayer: Love, what would you have of me? Here I am, love, what would you have me do? Teach me, lead me, guide me. Help me to know you, as you are.

One answer: Of those I encounter - strive to know them, as they are. Even beyond their own self-awareness.

Love is ever accessible.

Until we evolve further, we can only love to the edge of our development. Yet, love is, by nature, full. Fully evolved in itself.

We can strive to progress in wisdom, or strength. But love is not the same as these other two aspects of spirit, because love is, by nature, always fully evolved.
Still, I can embody it only to the extent my own progress, or evolution, will bear.

Love is, by nature, of perfect wholeness, fully developed. But a human receives the Impulse into the self gradually.

A white horse. Love rides a white horse.

Ask for love to enter all various activities. Dancing, painting, writing, relating, sleeping, working, meditating, Qi-gong, ?

Study the sun, if you would know love.

Someone said: “Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.”
Sometimes.

Love transcends sympathy and antipathy, using empathy as its optimal vehicle.

Love knows what matters.

Let your center guide you, but listen closely because it whispers - like the wings of an owl in flight.

First Cause. Creative Forces.

“The older we grow, the more we begin to love the wisdom revealed by life. In the wisdom revealed by life, man forms the seed of his next life as the spiritual core of his being ripens. But the deeds of love are not deeds which look for compensation in the next life. By everything we do out of love, we pay off debts. The only actions from which we have nothing in the future are those we perform out of true, genuine love. It is because men are subconsciously aware of this that there is so little love in the world. A soul must be very advanced before deeds can be performed from which nothing is to be gained for itself; but then the world profits all the more. Love is the “moral” sun of the world. Interest in the earth's evolution is the necessary antecedent of love. A Spiritual Science without love would be a danger for humanity. Without sense-born love, nothing material comes into the world; without spiritual love, nothing spiritual. Creative forces unfold through love. We owe our existence to deeds of love wrought in the past. To pay off debts through deeds of love is therefore wisdom.”
- Rudolf Steiner

“Knowledge of spiritual truths helps induce love.”
- Rudolf Steiner

Acts of love pay off debts from the past. Creative forces gave freely from the beginning. Since then, we owe a debt.
Love is the continuation of the creative force in the world.
As we evolve, we come increasingly to a place of willingness to love, despite there being no return for that love.

Feeling lost? Wondering. . .how is the way forward?
Love abides, and is there to light the way. We have only to attune to it.

When I try to portray love, it falls inadequate. Can the sea be held in a river bed?

Love abides, love presides, is ever present and shows up in full force.

What are some other words for love?
The Creative Force? God? The gods? ?
And various qualities that merge, diverge, and re-submerge into the realm of love - compassion, forbearance, forgiveness, generosity, mercy, imagination, nurturing, creativity, endless depth, challenging, electrifying, uplifting, imaginative, mystery-forming, holding in balance, diamond-forming, all-serving, rising-from-ashes, whole-making, catalyst, instigator, a small bird chirping from the darkest bower, a crystal swan winging over a galaxy-ocean, uncompromising starlight, ?

Two arenas of interest emerge now. One has to do with love’s dance with wisdom, the other with love’s consort with power. (The triad, as treated here - power, love, and wisdom - comprises the fullness of the All)

1) Humor - though humor tends to arrive as love in tandem with wisdom, lacking love, it can become malicious.

2) Chi or prana - tends to arrive as a combination of love with power, or strength. Power, devoid of love, runs the risk of falling into dangers such as black magic.

Love, embodying humor in the realm of nature, becomes the laughing brook, the wind chuckling through a ripened field, a mischievous raccoon, a trickster coyote, a boisterous chickadee.

Love, embodying power in the realm of nature, becomes a wide range of aspects - a small trout flashing the full chroma of its scales in the current of pure waters, a fountain, thunder’s promise, lightning’s instant delivery, or even the whole wide world of the plant kingdom, steeped as it is with etheric energy.

The Sun as an Embodiment of Love

Observe the sun’s effect: evaporative, ripening, infusing fruits with its essence, dissipating haze, heating the soil of compassion, sending pure streams down mountain heights, drawing prayer from the mendicant.
The rising sun is golding the morning, the setting sun becomes an profusion of color painted across the western skies of our soul-hood.

With timeless radiance, the sun gives itself, uninhibitedly, unremittingly, with no expectation of return. What longer-living, enduring being/thing exists in the natural universe? It is god-like in its pure-giving nature.
The sun comprises approximately 99.8% of the solar system’s mass. So, we could say that 99.8% of the solar system is actively giving itself to life in a loving way. Also, hydrogen and helium constitute 98% of this mass. So, even from a material perspective, 98% of matter in our solar system is composed of very ethereal substance! (shall we call it Spiritual substance?)
The sun is brighter than 85% of the stars in our galaxy (most of which are red dwarfs, not even visible to the naked eye. . .and, a typical red dwarf has less than 10% of our sun’s luminosity). We could say that we are well attended by our very own illustrious and benign Creative Force/Godly being.
Although the sun appears to revolve around the Earth (rendering a feeling for the sun as a being external to our experience), the Earth actually orbits around the sun (rendering a feeling that the sun resides in the center of our experience).
Thus, the heart is a fitting metaphor for the sun, and vice versa.
To paraphrase Helen Keller - To apprehend the most beautiful things in life requires us to go beyond seeing, or even touching, into the realm of feeling, with the heart.
Our interior, metaphysical, sun reaches out to resonate with the out-pouring of the outer sun.

To view the whole version of this article, visit Insight21.

An exploration of the dynamic nature of love, as well as the spiritual ecology of the sun.

J Graf is the coordinator of Insight21 and Earth Vision - doorways for the 21st Century.

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