Love is the driving force for life everywhere; for individuals, for nations. Love is an amazing power. In our world at the moment, people have a love of power; but power with no love is not power. When people speak of power nowadays, they equate it with force, like a warrior. To be a force for good, power has to be fully merged with love.
When someone takes a spiritual path, it is to become something different from who they are. A spiritual path is for self-transformation. To make this transformation, they need to look at their own dharma—what they love and what they believe.
They need to do this very deeply. They have to actually stop wanting to be ‘them’. The ideas that have carried for a long time about what is right and what is wrong are now no longer of use, no longer serve them. This needs to be looked at very closely.
They need to look at how they are behaving, what they are thinking and find what is not filled with pure love. It is the only way to be happy, but it takes great humility to recognise what has to change.
Very often, their behaviour is not filled with love, and then there is dislike of the way they are reacting. A natural tendency is to project outwards and blame the situation or person who provoked that reaction.
What is really needed is acceptance, deep acceptance, that what is happening is a mirror. This mirror will reveal what needs to change. Just wanting to change does not make it happen. There needs to be knowledge of the way to make it happen.
If they want a heart full of love, what do they have to do to make that happen? They have to look at what part of them is still small and demanding. What small-heartedness are they displaying? They must do this with love for the self.
They need to accept the circumstances and the behaviour of others and the way life is going—especially if it is not going in the direction they were hoping it would—and just ‘surf’ the waves of life; accept they are a student, they are learning. If they were learning a language, they would listen very carefully.
The only One without any defect is the Supreme Soul. If they connect to this Supreme Being and listen carefully to the power of that love, this will help them to slowly learn and change—to become who they want to be.
Valériane Bernard is one of the Brahma Kumaris’ UN representatives in Geneva and one of the BK team members at climate change conferences.