Love or Fear

What is Love?

I used to be quite confused as to what love was. I thought it was caring about the welfare of someone, a strong desire to be with that person, an intense feeling of romance or something along those lines. I read a book that a friend gave me years ago and found the definition I now use. I will paraphrase: Love is the willingness to extend ones energy to lift them self or someone else to a higher plane. The book was The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. Willingness is always proven by action. if one is truly willing to do something they do it. That's a given. What is hard about this is knowing when one is really trying to lift someone to a higher plane or just satisfying the Ego's demands. The Ego is probably the biggest block to love. Each of us has in some varying degree an Ego that conflicts with love. It is the part of every human that is self serving or self satisfying. It may be a healthy thing in some, but most of the people I know have a hard time resolving the inner conflicts it creates. Having a friend or mentor to talk openly about these issues helps (both the person with the conflict and the mentor).

How does the Ego cause conflicts? Mostly through fear. As certain amount of fear is normal. It shows itself in nature as the "Fight or Flight" instinct. Animals show this. Humans, maybe due to the neurotic nature of society, have taken this instinct out of proportion. Some parts of society even use this instinct to try and control others (the opposite of Love). This is evident if one watches the news. It is only there to instill fear. Aside from warnings about natural disasters (which are very rare) what good can come from what is "reported" in the news? Here are a a few items that I've noticed in the news that never really became the "epidemics" that were predicted

Fear shows its ugly head in many ways. It is relentless and usually the cause of the fear can be shown to be false or of very little importance. The good part of living in a society is tha tsomeone will tell Chicken Little that the sky isn't really falling. Truth is a good anti-dote to fear. Be sure that the "truth" isn't just some form of fear in sheeps clothing.

No matter what the issue, the best thing to do is try to decide if the issue is based on fear or love. I wish I could say I always do that, but I don't. I get some serenity when I do. Speaking of serenity, I do crossword puzzles to exercise my mind in the morning. One day the hint was "Without worry" the answer was "Serene". Worry is another name for fear.