Love is Our Divine Purpose
Are you seeking your soul's true purpose? Do you want to know what you were put on this Earth to do? Do you want to know the meaning of life and all that is?
Our true purpose is Love. Love is our deepest essence, at the core of our being. It isn't what we think of today as romantic love, that is only a part. It is a deeper love that is an open-hearted compassion for all living beings. It is a connection to ourselves and each other that is felt in every fiber of our beings.
In the Bible (Matthew 22:37-40), Jesus said:
[37] Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. [38] This is the first and great commandment. [39] And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [40] On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
The highest commandments that Jesus gives in the Bible tell us to love. When he talks about love, he isn't speaking about romantic love, but a powerful love that can sustain us all in our common humanity.
In English, we just have one word for love, which leaves us often falling short in describing the essence of what it truly means to love. In the Greek, the term I am looking for is Agape. This as opposed to Eros, the Greek word for romantic love.
According to Pepperdine University,
The kind of love that doesn't retaliate is what we call agape love. Agape love, which is most often crowned as the highest form of Christian love, is the kind of love and action that shows empathy; extends the desire for good of the beloved; wants the best; extends help or demonstrates good intentions; and is intended for everyone. Agape love is sacrificial.
We can find this type of love sometimes within the context of romantic relationships. It can also be the way that parents love their children, the love you feel for friends and family, love for a pet, or compassion for all living beings.
Within the Buddhist tradition, this type of universal love is referred to as compassion.
According to Study Buddhism,
In Buddhism, compassion is the wish for others to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. It is based on appreciating other people’s feelings, especially when we’ve gone through the same ordeal. Even if we’ve never experienced what they’re going through, we can put ourselves in their shoes and feel how awful it must be.
Many religious faiths teach the value of love and compassion. This type of love has the capability to inspire us to be our best selves. It inspires us to help others selflessly. To love in this way is a deeply mystical and yet fully human phenomenon.
You can find a sense of pure, perfect love when you gaze into the eyes of a child. You can also find it in meditations (such as the loving-kindness meditation), on your yoga mat, through prayer, through contemplation, or by spending time in nature.
When we open ourselves up to love fully, it allows us to open our hearts and minds to other people, allowing us to see them as made up of the same life force energy that we are. Love creates wholeness, oneness and fulfillment.
According to Time Magazine, love is even good for your health:
Love makes you happy.
Love busts stress.
Love eases anxiety.
Love makes you take better care of yourself.
Love helps you live longer.
The more deeply you love, the more easily you are able to carry out your life's purpose. Having a sense of universal love helps us to do what is right, even when it isn't easy. It helps us to foster a sense of altruism, and a wish to do what is good for everyone on the planet. Love helps us care more for other people and their wellbeing.
The more you love, the more you come home to yourself, and awake to your true nature. When we live in love, we live for our highest good. We live for the highest good of others, our planet, and all of humanity. We are all interconnected and interdependent in this world. Creating harmony through love and compassion can bring us together and unite all of humankind. That is what love is meant to inspire us to do. To come together.
Love leads us on a path toward peace and harmony. It leads us to taking better care of ourselves, each other, and our world. Love recognizes that we all need each other, that we are all uniquely beautiful and worthy, and we all hold a special and valuable place in the world.
1 Corinthians 13 tells us:
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
When you seek to love, seek to love like this, and it will set you free. Love without boundaries, without borders, without seeking anything in return. Remember, love doesn't have to be romantic. Love is the unfolding of the thousand petaled lotus. It is the opening of our hearts to our own true nature. The more we love, the more we become awake. As we awake, we love each other more and treat each other with more compassion.
My hope for you is that you will be able to remember your true nature of pure, perfect love. Come back home to yourself, to your true heart, and the love that is the lifeblood flowing through you. Awake to love, and remember that you are a piece of life's heart.
