Love
“When you Love God with all your heart,
You break all barriers on the way to heaven.”
The 7th step on the Ladder to Heaven is Love. Unless we love God, we cannot climb further on the Ladder to Heaven. We may live with faith and hope, with trust and enthusiasm, but it is love that finally takes us forward in our journey to God. In the beginning, our love for God appears in our prayers. But if we are truly passionate about God, if we are obsessed about God, then we will go in search of our God.
How does one experience this Divine love for God? One's love for God is so deep and genuine that one seeks nothing else but God. One only seeks God and ultimately finds God. It is not easy to experience this love for God, but those who go on a quest and realize the truth, experience this Divine love. They go beyond the common understanding of love and see love as a Divine fountain of joy and peace that flows from God.
When we live our life crossing the 6 steps on the Ladder to the Divine, we become passionate about God, we seek God, but how can we attain God? The love for God leads the true lovers of God to go on a quest and realize God. There are times when it is not love for God, but a quest for God that takes us forward in our search and when we realize God, we experience a deep love for God. It is this love that takes us forward on the Ladder to Heaven.
The fact is that love is Divine. That is why a dead body cannot love. It is the Soul inside us that truly loves. Who does the Soul love? In reality, it loves other Souls because the Soul to Soul connection is Divine. But this is unknown to man. Thus we don't discover the true meaning of love and realize that love is Divine.
We human beings do not realize the true meaning of love. The truth is that God is the source of love, the fountain of true love. It is Divine love in our Soul that manifests as love that we see in the world. Just like Divine white light from the sun splits through raindrops to produce a rainbow with seven beautiful colours, Divine love from the Soul appears as love from the time we are born till we die. To understand the seven colours of love that flow from Divine love, we can relate them to the seven colours of the rainbow – VIBGYOR. Violet love is love between a child and its parents. It's a beautiful love and it lasts throughout life. Indigo love is love between two friends. Don't we all remember those days when we loved our best friends in our school so much? As we grow up, we all experience Blue romantic love. We also experience Green love which is love for ourselves. There is no human being who does not love himself. This self-love creates self-esteem and self-respect but at the same time, it can also result in ego. Then there is Yellow intellectual love and Orange emotional love. Finally, there is Red erotic love that is famous all around the world. All these manifestations of love emanate from the Divine but we are ignorant of this truth.
When will humanity realize that the 7 colours of love are inadvertently the love within us loving the Divine? If only we realize this and overcome the ignorance about love, the gift of love that is in each one of us will passionately propel us to heaven.
There are several ways to love God. One such way is to serve suffering humanity. When we realize that God lives in each Soul, we go beyond the surface, beyond the outward appearance of the ones who suffer. We live with the philosophy- 'serving humanity is prayer'. We realize that the only way to love God is to love every man and animal that comes our way. Those who love God experience God loving them in return, whether it is a dog wagging its tail or love from near and dear ones - they experience God's love every day that they live.
How does one measure their love for God? It is said that to truly love God, one must live with a triple yearning - the yearning that a miser has for gold, the yearning that a lover has for his beloved and the yearning that a little child has for its mother that it has just lost. If one has this triple yearning for God, then it is considered that their love for God is ultimate and they will realize God. However, for one to realize God, one must go on a quest. One must search for God. One must ask questions that will ultimately make them realize the truth about God.
This 7th step on the Ladder to Heaven is the turning point. Some people live their life loving God as they believe in God with faith, hope, and trust. But they don't go beyond. They live religious lives but end their life just loving God. They don't search for God, seek God and thus they don't realize God. Only the true seekers of God go on a quest and realize that God lives in the temple of their heart. They make God-realization a priority of their life. They don't live a life that is filled with rituals and superstitions. Their love for God is so deep that they make this an obsession and they passionately seek God.
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True love is Divine,
It is a fountain of joy.
We can love God by loving all the
manifestations of God.
Love
TAKEAWAYS