Love is not something you need to create or invent. Love is an energy that is always present. It is one of the fundamental realities of the Universe. What we need to do is to be open for love, to be a channel of love. That source of love which is always present, is also always loving you.
When, for example, we fall in love, we are already more open to that source of love and it becomes very natural to also pass that love forward. When we are in love, we feel more connected to life, more vibrant, and we feel that we are part of everything. When we stop loving, life becomes more dull and less alive.
When we think of love, we often think of couple relationships. However, love isn’t only that. It is an attitude towards life. By connecting with this energy of love, we learn to love for the sake of love, without any object.
“To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.”
– Alphonse de Lamartine
Active love and passive love
You may wonder why we say ‘active love’ and not just ‘love’. Usually in our lives we want to be loved, we want to receive love or we want the other to be more loving. This could be called ‘passive love’; an attitude in which we expect love from the other. We often assume that love comes when it comes, and when it doesn’t we either accept it, or blame others for it. In these moments, we are in a state of waiting. This state of passive love is very different from active love. Active love is based on the notion that we can take charge of love in our own lives. We have the choice of how much love we actually experience in our lives. There is an important ancient principle that we can take into consideration: “The love we offer is in fact the love we receive”, or “the love we give to others is the love we give to ourselves”. The more love we offer, the more our hearts fill up with love and even start to overflow with love. Here we learn to tap into that endless source of love, and from that place we can easily pass it forward to others, too.
Whenever we discover something uplifting and delightful, whether a person or a life situation, a piece of art or a place in nature, we discover something that contains love. Engaging with these sublime moments in our life helps us to awaken our hearts and be open to love and thus to life.
“Love is the only revolution that does not betray anyone.”
Why be active in love
In spiritual traditions it is said that through love, even the impossible becomes possible. Miracles can happen through love. Love transforms you from within. By loving actively, you become the best version of yourself. You become more happy, compassionate, tolerant and kind. Love has a deeply alchemising and transforming effect. We can live more easily in harmony with all of life, and even live states of ecstasy.
Love awakens the noble aspirations of the soul and thus, in time, through the practice of active love, some inner transformations will happen and to a certain degree restructure the personality, so that points of view and understandings will become more elevated and eventually even divine.
On the path of love, it is not enough to just learn some theory. Love is not a theoretical lesson, but a deeply experiential practice. When you have this wish to love more, you can practice it in the little moments in the daily life and to always cultivate love, whenever you can. For example by doing the little extra things, to be the first to offer love, and to express the courage to not hold back. Active love can be the smallest gesture, but when done truly with love it is not a small gesture any more.
It is a very big step to make, to love no matter what. To always choose love is a real path to walk, and to walk the path of love means to choose love continuously, even when it is difficult, or when you feel hurt. As a result of practising active love, even more so in those moments, you will start to fall more and more in love with life itself. Every moment becomes part of your own love story with life.