If you want to grow a vegetable or flower you put the seed in good soil and make sure you water it and that it gets the appropriate amount of sun and/or shade according to its particular needs.
If you want to grow love and you want to help grow human potential (both your own and other's) you also will need to provide the right "soil".
In my experience and in my opinion, the best soil to use is love with a capital “L”. Certainly one can coerce, force, or bribe ones’ self or others to behave in a loving kind of way to avoid problems, punishment, alienation, or to obtain some goal or another. And certainly some people can just make a choice or intent to be more loving than not; but, this is human love and has its limitations. We can not do it with human love alone for that will fluctuate as moods and situations fluctuate. The kind of Love I am pointing to is the kind of love that so many before have tried to point to. This love can be experienced and transmitted but it can not be defined, articulated, nor taught by ordinary means.
That is why so many people misunderstand discussions about this kind of love.
This “Love” I attempt to speak of is constant. It is all-wise and knows how to apply itself in every situation. It is grace. It is a gift. The requirement, if there is any, is to be receptive. With an armload of unhealthy ego one cannot have the arms of freedom to embrace this love. Once embraced, the ego can better maintain the perfect, healthy, orientation it was meant to have before it became stained with doubt, fear, and a sense of not being good, acceptable, or lovable.
It is a gift to be given away and in the process of doing so, it can be experienced and received by both the giver and the receiver. It will enrich both lives even if nothing seems evident to validate that claim.
When someone truly loves you it gives you a sense of peace and you feel safe. You do not feel judged or rejected even if the person does not agree with you about any or many things. In this place of unconditional love a person can find the right kind of soil in which to grow. When some creatures in nature need to shed their skin they do so and when they do, they reveal the form that was always there waiting to come forth. So it is with humans. As we shed our false ego, our false sense of self, we become that which we were all along but was hidden from us. All it takes is unconditional love, the best soil fortified with the best nutriments. In the arms of this Love we are free to discover what our damaged egos are unable to reveal to us. We become more able to fulfill our potential and to shed the shackles of the limitation that our wounded condition conferred on us. We are at last free to love and to be loved in the truest sense. The sky is the limit when love is the soil.
When we have finished this life, the only thing we can take with us is this love for this is what we truly are.
