There are two kinds of love: love for its own
pleasure, or love for the sake of another; the first is carnal love, the
second is spiritual. Carnal love knows the other person only in a
biological moment. Spiritual love knows the other person at all moments.
In erotic love, the burdens of the other are regarded as impairing
one's own happiness; in spiritual love, the burdens of others are
opportunities for service.
Somewhere along the line, the modern world has been duped and fooled into giving the name of love to some vague obsession which parades itself in every billboard advertisement, reigns in the film industry, puzzles dramatists who must solve triangles short of suicide, makes novels best-sellers, perfumes so exotic as to be unfit for tyro's concupiscence, and humor more spicy. Love has become so vulgarized, that those who really love are almost afraid to use the word. It is used now almost exclusively to describe one of the opposite sex, rather than a person; it is made to revolve around glands, rather than a will, and is centered in biology instead of personality. Even when it disguises itself as infatuation for another, it is nothing else than desire to intensify its own self-centerdness.
Purely human love is the embryo of the love of the DIVINE. One finds some suggestions of this in Plato, who argues that the purpose of love is to make the first step toward religion. He pictures love for beautiful persons being transformed into love for beautiful souls, then into a love of justice, goodness and finally GOD Who is their source. Erotic love is, therefore, a bridge which one crosses, not a buttress where one sits and rests; it is not an airport but an airplane; it is always going somewhere else, upwards and onwards. All carnal love presupposes incompleteness, deficiency, yearning for completion and an attraction for enrichment, for all love is a flight for immortality. There is a suggestion of DIVINE love in every form of erotic love, as the lake reflects the moon. The only reason there is love for creatures in human hearts, is that it may lead to the love of the Creator. As food is for the body, as the body is for the soul, as the material is for the spiritual, so the flesh is for the eternal. That is why in the language of human love, there can often be detected the language of Divinity, such as "worship", "angel", "adore".
TO BE CONTD..
Somewhere along the line, the modern world has been duped and fooled into giving the name of love to some vague obsession which parades itself in every billboard advertisement, reigns in the film industry, puzzles dramatists who must solve triangles short of suicide, makes novels best-sellers, perfumes so exotic as to be unfit for tyro's concupiscence, and humor more spicy. Love has become so vulgarized, that those who really love are almost afraid to use the word. It is used now almost exclusively to describe one of the opposite sex, rather than a person; it is made to revolve around glands, rather than a will, and is centered in biology instead of personality. Even when it disguises itself as infatuation for another, it is nothing else than desire to intensify its own self-centerdness.
Purely human love is the embryo of the love of the DIVINE. One finds some suggestions of this in Plato, who argues that the purpose of love is to make the first step toward religion. He pictures love for beautiful persons being transformed into love for beautiful souls, then into a love of justice, goodness and finally GOD Who is their source. Erotic love is, therefore, a bridge which one crosses, not a buttress where one sits and rests; it is not an airport but an airplane; it is always going somewhere else, upwards and onwards. All carnal love presupposes incompleteness, deficiency, yearning for completion and an attraction for enrichment, for all love is a flight for immortality. There is a suggestion of DIVINE love in every form of erotic love, as the lake reflects the moon. The only reason there is love for creatures in human hearts, is that it may lead to the love of the Creator. As food is for the body, as the body is for the soul, as the material is for the spiritual, so the flesh is for the eternal. That is why in the language of human love, there can often be detected the language of Divinity, such as "worship", "angel", "adore".
TO BE CONTD..
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