L'earning to Love. Lesson 9: Sacrifice

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Lesson 8: Sacrifice

To do things right, takes guts. You need courage to Love right.

In these days of Hallmark cards, loving is described as some sort of “mushy” romantic feeling, where soft, vulnerable weakness allows for giving in to complicity, complacency, subjection, abuse and wrong-doing. Virtue, honor and dignity are no longer pathognomonic prerequisites of love. We love from our need to be loved and are willing to do anything in exchange for loving. We ‘love’ for economic interest. We ‘love’ out of spite. We ‘love’ to cover up the social mores of a marriage. We ‘love’ and lie. We ‘love’ for immediate sex. We ‘love’ for control and power. We ‘love’ in idyllic self-deception. We condition our loving in exchange for something…and if we don´t get it, we ‘stop loving’. The idea of love eternal, of free unconditional acceptance is no longer related to our couple, being limited, at best, to our children.

No wonder newer generations don´t believe in love anymore. We have been unable to be an example for them, teaching them, rather, to lie about love. True love has to start by being true to oneself. That may involve standing up against family, society, religion, culture or race and it requires courage. It is particularly difficult because we live in response to external motivations, rather than developing insight enough to know ourselves, and recognize our true feelings. Even knowing oneself, one needs self-governance to rule over the in-fighting of our inner drives between feelings, thoughts, imagination and desires.

We have to love not from what we feel, or from what we think, or from what we desire and interpret. We have to love from our Center, grounded in our Higher Selves. We have to fight against the built-up control that our unconsciousness has given our Lower Selves…’loving’ from hurt, resentment and revenge. The true fight for love starts at the heart. We have to resist and stand up to our tendency to fall for the enticing, easy way that our lower Selves offer, standing up to deceit.

Loving, centered in our Higher Selves, becomes more authentic and transparent. It is that truth that will make us strong enough to stand up against our immediate satisfaction and power over others. It makes us less gullible to manipulation and control. We will however have to crush our egos, our self-delusion, our self-complacency; and that will hurt.

 Hurting to make things right is the ‘sacrifice’ required. As its etymology implies, it is making (lat. facio) things- sacred (lat. sacer).