Daily Meditation: Sunday, August 16, 1998

Do not concern yourself with knowing whether the person you …

08/16/1998

Do not concern yourself with knowing whether the person you love is also the person who loves you. Why not? Because love circulates; it goes from one person to the next. If you receive it, you also have to give it. What you give the person you love, he or she in turn gives to the person he or she loves, and so on. It forms a chain, a current that starts from you and comes back to you having passed through thousands of other beings. People who are content with simply returning each other's love do not let the current flow. In fact, they do the opposite: they cut it off. Here is another image: think of human beings as climbers who are members of one and the same rope. Each one of them has to go forward and the rope must stay taught. If you say to the person in front of you: ‘I love you, turn around towards me', you hamper the progress of the entire rope. To turn back towards another means to go backwards, letting the rope slacken, preventing those in front from continuing their ascent and those behind from following their route. Everyone must move in the direction in which the entire rope is moving. We have no right to stop to look at each other and talk to each other. We must continue to climb towards the summit, without respite and without failing.