There is a lovely old metaphor ‘love is a many splendoured thing’ . Indeed there was a lovely old film by this name – and I think here I would especially like to emphasise and concentrate on the word ‘many’. For the word, and particularly the meaning of LOVE, has so many aspects. For some the word love is difficult to use perhaps because we only associate an emotional response and we may not be in the kind of space to be able to express that emotion. Or if we are feeling hurt and rejected, the memory is that of pain and we may not wish to go there. Also, the word love is often misused and used so glibly, it almost loses its value and meaning. So what is Love? Is it simply an emotion? As an emotion, Love is a very powerful and strong feeling that can overwhelm us and were it to get out of control, can also be extremely dangerous. The splendour of love of course is that it also brings us incredible joy and happiness, sometimes overwhelming but the sweet memories of love will always stay with us and serves to remind us when life becomes troublesome.
But here I would like to focus on ‘a many splendoured thing’ because I would like to dwell on the many, many aspects of love. Love, in all its splendour, has many wonderful spiritual and soul qualities. For example, patience, tolerance, faith, hope, trust, joy, courage, strength, perseverance, detachment, compassion, mercy, honour, ethics, integrity, wisdom, understanding, tenderness, kindness and many, many more. It is our purpose, our path through each successive lifetime to develop and unfold each of these wonderful soul qualities. Life itself brings us the experiences we need to unfold these qualities – we certainly don’t need to go out looking for them – and the beauty of this is that we grow stronger from each experience, often without realising it. Life’s many lessons, painful and difficult as they often are, bring us wonderful opportunities to unfold spiritually, not just in understanding ourselves better but also in how we can be of service to others, to nature, to the animal kingdom and to the planet.
It’s worth remembering too that for each soul quality we need to unfold and develop them mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. These four bodies form the cross, the cross of matter is a symbol of earth. Through the earth’s experiences, we learn and grow spiritually. Indeed many of life’s challenges feels like a crucifixion. We become spiritualised by going through all the lessons of earth, by living on earth, by being and participating in life as a human being. In other words, it is through the experiences of our human nature that we are given the opportunity to bring our spiritual nature down into matter. Thus making a wonderful and very symbolic six-pointed star. With the Cross, the six-pointed Star is one of the ancient symbols of Earth. There is a school of thought that we need to snub the things of earth and concentrate solely on the spiritual. Whilst we need to try to see beyond the physical happenings, it is worthwhile remembering that we are on earth to go through the earthly experiences, not to shun them, not to run away from them, not to reject them but literally to go through them. For truly it is these experiences that help us grow spiritually.
So LOVE is the great mediator, it is love in its many aspects, which can go beyond and above and help us on our journey as we often tread the unknown path. However, those two wonderful soul qualities of strength and courage can help us here, not to mention the quality of trust, trusting in a force greater than ourselves to guide us forward.
Let LOVE and LIGHT guide and illuminate your path and may joy fill your hearts.
