Do you think you can 'learn' to love?

[Miss Hepburn]

I'm convinced that is why my sister was born 4 years before me ...to be a loving influence.
I'm convinced that is why I found my guru...was to 'teach' me or open my heart to love; not to be loving,
that comes naturally when you feel love in your heart.
But, to feeeel real love in your heart...I belief that is why I am here, anyway.
For those that are just these angelic, loving types, naturally nurturing to others - well, they've learned it!
People have diff reasons to come back here to learn different things.

How does a person learn to love? I suppose by others being truly loving to them?

I know here on this Forum in 2011, I learned for the very first time that
a glorious thing to do was to ask our Father for His Divine Love.
(No one ever taught that that I knew of...you?)

It was said by someone on the Other Side that ''His Divine Love was the only thing that transforms a human soul.''
So he said with all the power he had in him he encouraged us to ask for the Father's Divine Love....lemme tellya...esp the first time?
It is very humbling..

I do feel people that were raised with love and affection find it easier to feel and show love. (I was not raised that way, at all.)

Ideas?

[Unseeking Seeker]

You raise an important point, Miss H.

In my view, love, corresponding to the heart chakra, is a tough one to crack, simply because love employs no use of force. The lower energy centres represent our animal nature in the material, the higher three above heart relate to the soft skills and the ethereal, whereas heart is the centre, the seat of our soul.

On a basic level, love is active in all entities but that love is maternal, paternal or of the possessive kind, as between lovers for example. It assigns ownership over the object loved, hoping for recognition and reciprocation.

As sensibilities become refined, love transitions as selective empathy and then widens as universal compassion, rooted in purity of being. This softening of heart, making it porous and gentle, kind and mindful, in my view, it is a long process, requiring repeated incarnations.

God’s energy is love. We are here to grow in love and wisdom. Some souls learn faster, others slower.

In the spiritual journey, I’ve noticed that there is great focus on awareness, maybe related to energy (kundalini), non-dual recognition and so on. Now, speaking from my experience, the kundalini process gets us to bliss in permanence and recognition of Self reveals who we actually are but awareness without love is barren.

The love we speak of is agape love, an effervescence, like the light of the sun, the wafting fragrance of a flower, the mellifluous song of a nightingale, the soothing light of the moon.

How may we become love enabled? Shift from head to heart; that’s what all paths say, don’t they?

[CosmicWonder]

When I was able to chose my first spiritual gift, It was unconditional love for a part. I needed that for myself.

[Altair]

Is this another chicken or egg question (like many questions on here )? Either we ''learn'' these things as they are genuinely new and to be developed, or these things are already present. Leaning towards the latter, it's already there (though it may be buried). In this case, you don't learn it.

[AngelBlue]

No, I don't think we can "learn" to love.
We can learn french or maths , but we don't and can't learn "how" to love.
It's either there ... Or it isn't.
And even if we feel love, we can soon realise it's not what we thought or how it should be.

I loved my parents. And why wouldn't I ? They were my parents. But it soon became apparent over time that they were sadly lacking in various areas and it became more and more obvious to me over time that I was not being supported as I should be as their child , and even more importantly , I did NOT feel loved.
So, over time, I began to draw away from them more and more to the point that I just felt "indifference" towards them.
I really do not feel any great empathy towards them , and neither do my 3 siblings .

On the other hand, when all of my babies were born, I KNEW in each instance that the love I felt for them could and would never be compromised in any way , shape , or form.
I would willingly give my life for them , that's how much I love them.
And they have felt and known that love every single day of their existence.

And now , when they are going through some terrible emotional traumas of their own with regard to their children I can promise that I feel the physical pain in my heart for them, and in a sense it makes me wonder all the more about the seemingly lack of emotions or love from my parents.

Their is no teacher on the whole of the planet that can teach you to feel that kind of love deep within your heart .

[AngelBlue]

....having said all that, on the other flip of the coin , I think that many of us DO have to learn how to love ourselves .

[CosmicWonder]

@AB

I think learning love is more about learning how to love ourselves. Its not about giving our power away before we have it. So I agree in my own way

Kind regards,

CW

[Baile]

Originally Posted by AngelBlue

No, I don't think we can "learn" to love. It's either there ... Or it isn't.

This question, like every other, has multiple answers depending on the perspective. Yes we can learn to open our hearts to love all human beings. The same does not apply to intimate partner relationships, where the love is either there or it isn't as you said.

And when I say love all human beings, I mean recognizing the other as a soul, and fellow member of our collective. I don't mean love as in approving every one of their actions. You can love the soul and still critique the human behaviour.

[Baile]

Originally Posted by CosmicWonder

I think learning love is more about learning how to love ourselves.

That's understood as the necessary first step in the process of, as Miss Hepburn put it, opening one's heart to love others.

[AngelBlue]

Hi Cosmic.
Yes, they say don't they, that before we can love anyone else we need to be able to love ourselves first....
So in that respect you are right.

In my experience, I never felt loved and that's awful for a child growing up , so when I had my children all that love that I had stored up over years and years just EXPLODED out of me like mount etna !!!

All my love was focused on my children , and later down the line I had to learn how to love myself because I literally had no self confidence or self worth.
And that is because I was not felt loved in my tender years.

And we are all different in our various different lifestyles and experiences.