"You’re trying to do something very bizarre, very strange. You’re
trying to find love and affection, understanding, you’re trying to obtain
them without knowing what they are. But you don’t know that you don’t
know the nature of love and so you invent your own interpretations of them.
And so you call a sentimental mood love, and so a man or a woman says with
emotion that he cares for you and you take that as being a sign of love,
affection and you hope of protection. It doesn’t work the way you think
it does.
Now, you’re going to have to give yourself a jolt this evening in order
to knock out altogether all the concepts and eagernesses that you have
toward obtaining that virtue that you call love. Because you sort of use
that word as the standard, as the flag, and you hope that all other virtues
will come underneath it such as someone caring for you, being protective
toward you. So you use that word quite consistently. However, have you
noticed, and you will notice it now, you will notice that the yearning is
still there, that the emptiness is still there. And all you know to do is to
flit like a butterfly from one petal to the next, hoping that by chance the
next experience, the next flower will be the one to take away the ache. It
won’t.
Now I said at the start, you have to qualify for love. How do you do that?
Well, let's go very, very carefully into it so at the end of your sincere
trail, search, you’ll have a glimpse of what you have to put your entire
mind and heart to in forthcoming years. Get it very clear therefore at the
start that you don’t know what love is."
from a talk given 3/24/1989 V H's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 27, talk 655, track 1
