Daily Meditation: Friday, August 21, 2020

Nothing in heaven or on earth can forbid you to love. Love …

08/21/2020

Nothing in heaven or on earth can forbid you to love. Love is life. But we must learn how to love, that is, how to spiritualize and sublimate our love. Why? So as to be capable of working with this love. ‘How do you mean: to work with love? And what about the pleasure in love?’ Pleasure will be replaced by work. ‘But does that mean that there will be no more pleasure?’ No, the pleasure will still be there but it will be more subtle, more complete, a pleasure that nothing can ever again alter, whereas pleasure as we generally understand it is sooner or later reduced to ashes. One type of pleasure is like gold, the other is like lead. Gold does not rust or tarnish; it is always precious, rare and radiant. Lead is dull; if you cut it, it shines for a moment then grows dull again. When alchemists tried to transform lead into gold, they were really trying to transform humans’ lower nature into their higher, divine nature. And this is possible once humans learn to replace pleasure with work.