Love, Characteristics of Spirit, Spiritual Growth through Spirit, Articles on Spirit and Spiritual Growth

Characteristics of Spirit

Love

by Jef Bartow

If you are like many of us, the last three months of Serenity, Innocence and Integrity have been difficult to understand, penetrate and internalize. Don't feel bad if you feel like you have failed, because I believe that's par for the course for most on the Spiritual Path. Let's see if Love can more easily lead us into an orientation to Characteristics of SPIRIT.

The simple definition for Love is attraction. "It is indeed the free-flowing, outgoing, magnetically attractive force which leads each pilgrim home to the Fathers House." The expression of Divine Love into our systemic universe is in one way a synthesis of the five Characteristics of SPIRIT including Love, Harmony, Faith, Purity and Serenity.

In its synthesis, Divine Love embodies the attraction of Love; the affinity, perfecting and unifying into wholeness of Harmony; the nurturing and healing of Faith; the clarifying and lucidity of Purity and the translucent motivating of Serenity. Another way to put it is that Divine Love is the Oneness which perfects, heals through transmutation, delineates, clarifies and finally motivates all movement within our universe. It is the coherent force which makes all things whole and draws those whom it seizes beyond themselves; a burning fire and Absolute Light.

A simpler way to embrace this Love is through its expression as coherent attractive giving. Coherent can simply be defined as an integrated and unified connectedness. But is this how we experience love in everyday life? I would suggest that most love that humans experience is not a one-way coherent attractive giving, but a two-way giving with an expectation of receiving. Frankly, this is how Love becomes a mixture of compassion, humility, relatedness, empathy, codependency and sympathy.

So how do we move from a human love to expressing Divine Love in our life? Let's walk through how our human love can become Divine Love. Physically, love is the simultaneous balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces which maintains our system of planets and stars within the Milky Way. This love is what holds our system together as a related group. Love stimulates our galaxy and many, many more to dance around our source, aptly and synchronously named "The Great Attractor."

For us, empathy helps us move beyond our desires and relatedness toward a dance with our higher source. Love further helps us embrace the charity of inner virtues and a humility within our egoic life, which makes us a loving human. As we move into a higher spiritual orientation, Love brings a compassionate balance of outer objective orientation (self) with a harmony of inner meaning (soul) for our life. As higher inspiration, Love becomes the rapturous ecstasy of an inner life. Finally, Love leads to a synthesis of objective love-wisdom and subjective being.

Spiritualizing Exercises

For the next 30 days, we have a motivating opportunity to begin embracing this Divine Love. First, let's begin with the concise definition of this Love as coherent attractive giving. Take time during your daily reflection to examine how you are an example of attractive giving. How much of how you give relates to what you will get in return? How much of how you give is selfless and oriented to the needs of others? From this, what one thing can you do this month to enhance your selfless giving? And how can you maintain it ongoing?

Second, the system of astrology can be helpful here through its synthesis with Spirit and Matter. Astrologically, Divine Love is interrelated with the second House and Taurus within our energetic chart of life. Therefore, our sense of self-worth, our abilities and our material possessions (all 2nd House activities) will help.

This astrological orientation helped me resolve a quandary that came to me when my mentor said to me: "Love is about giving of yourself." When we give of our self-worth and abilities, we are giving of our selves. For the next 30 days, how can you use your abilities and sense of self-worth to give of yourself to your loved ones, your day-to-day co-workers and humanity in general? Beyond this, how can you utilize your material possessions, whether financial or otherwise, to be a source of coherent attractive giving?

Further, since esoteric Taurus represents "transmutation of desire into Love; seat of divine purpose and Mother of Illumination," I believe you will find these exercises a helpful way of expressing Taurus within your life. Another way to put it is: we can use Divine Love as a source of illumination which will help us transmute our desire into Love and live our divine purpose on earth.

Finally, as a source of coherent attractive giving, I relate the attractive part of Divine Love as attracting all life to fulfilling its needs, not my needs. I further relate coherent as coherent with my purpose and destiny, giving to all life such that it fulfills its purpose and destiny. This means orienting to a giving in which we don't lose a sense of self on the Spiritual Path, but enhance our growth through focus on others.