The Joy of Divine & Selfless Love | Spirituality Podcasts

Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you in part by Book of Zen, makers of inspirational fashion and gift ideas. Visit them online at BookofZen.com. Today’s podcast has been edited and adapted from The Way of Peace by James Allen, published in 1907.

It is said that Michelangelo saw in every rough block of stone a thing of beauty awaiting the master-hand to bring it into reality. Likewise, within each one of us there reposes the Divine Image awaiting the master-hand of Faith and the chisel of Patience to bring it into manifestation. And that Divine Image is revealed and realized as stainless, selfless Love.

Hidden deep in every human heart is the spirit of Divine Love. It is the Truth within us; it is that which is real and immortal. All else changes and passes away; this alone is permanent and imperishable; and to realize this Love by ceaseless diligence in the practice of the highest good, to live in it and to become fully conscious in it, is to enter into immortality here and now, is to become one with Truth, one with spirit, one with the central Heart of all things, and to know our own divine and eternal nature.

To reach this Love, to understand and experience it, we must work with great persistency and diligence upon our heart and mind, must ever renew our patience and keep strong our faith, for there will be much to remove, much to accomplish before it is realized.

Ever and anon, as you proceed, all your work will seem to be futile, and your efforts appear to be thrown away. There may be times when you imagine your work is almost completed, only to find what you imagined to be the beautiful form of Divine Love utterly destroyed, and you must begin again with your past bitter experience to guide and help you.

The individual who has resolutely set themselves to realize the Highest recognizes no such thing as defeat. All failures are illusory, not real. Every slip, every fall, every return to selfishness is a lesson learned, an experience gained, from which a golden grain of wisdom is extracted, helping the striver toward the accomplishment of their lofty objective.

As you proceed, day by day detaching yourself more and more from inward selfishness, the Love that is selfless will gradually become revealed to you. And when you are growing patient and calm, when your petulances, tempers, and irritabilities are passing away from you, and the more powerful lusts and prejudices cease to dominate and enslave you, then you will know that the Divine is awakening within you, that you are drawing near to the eternal Heart, that you are not far from that selfless Love, the possession of which is peace and immortality.

Divine Love is distinguished from human love in one supremely important particular: it is free from partiality. Human loves cling to a particular object to the exclusion of all else, and when that object is removed, great and deep is the resultant suffering to the one who loves. Divine Love embraces the whole universe without clinging to any part, yet it contains within itself the whole, and those who come to it by gradually purifying and broadening their human loves until all the selfish and impure elements are burnt out of them, cease from suffering.

It is because human loves are narrow and confined and mingled with selfishness that they cause suffering. No suffering can result from that Love which is so absolutely pure that it seeks nothing for itself. Nevertheless, human loves are absolutely necessary as steps toward the Divine, and no soul is prepared to partake of Divine Love until you have become capable of the deepest and most intense human love. It is only by passing through human loves and human sufferings that Divine Love is reached and realized.

It is well that the excessively proud, the overly ambitious, the ego-driven, should suffer defeat, humiliation, and misfortune; for only thus can the wayward soul be brought to reflect upon the enigma of life; only thus can the heart be softened and purified, and prepared to receive the Truth.

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