A work of beauty requires the diverse and contrary qualities of discipline, hard work, gentleness and love. To create a work of beauty, a human being needs a spiritual life and a rhythm, and those two things need to work well together. By "rhythm" I mean a slower, more thoughtful pace than that which is generally lived in this society.
Someone who loves us can often see our soul potential more clearly than we can ourselves. When this happens, it has a catalytic effect; it invites and encourages dormant, undeveloped parts of us to come forth and find expression. Indeed, we are often most strongly attracted to those who we sense "will make us live—and die—most intensely... the experience of soul always contains this double yearning: to feel the meaning and beauty of our individual life, and to connect with the larger, universal currents of life flowing through us.
~ from "Fighting for Enlightenment" by John Welwood in NEW AGE, August 1996
Someone who loves us can often see our soul potential more clearly than we can ourselves. When this happens, it has a catalytic effect, it invites and encourages the dormant, undeveloped part of us to come forth and find expression.
Whenever our heart opens to another person, we experience a moment of unconditional love. People commonly imagine that unconditional love is a high or distant ideal, one that is difficult, if not impossible, to realize. Yet though it may be hard to put into everyday practice, its nature is quite simple and ordinary: opening and responding to another person's being without reservation.
At the very heart of our experience, each of us has an intuitive sense of the value of unconditional love. We discover great joy when we can love without reservation, suspending judgments and opening fully to the vivid reality of another's being. Unconditional love has tremendous power, activating a larger energy which connects us with the vastness and profundity of what it is to be human. This energy is the energy of the heart ... This energy is the Love of Christ.
