The Opposition of Love and Power

People think that hate is the opposite of love. Actually power is the opposite of love. Love is identity with the other, while power is the desire to control the other for our own purposes. Where there is unconditional love there is no issue of power. From the spiritual point of view, love is much preferred. “Love knows all things, love conquers all things, and love endures all things.”

Some of our very best characteristics, the gold in one’s personality, are the most difficult of all for most of us to cope with. It is often our noblest energies that our hidden most assiduously, such as our capacity for love, generosity, relatedness – these turn out to be equally difficult to express in one’s outer life. For example, you simply cannot go up to someone you see on the street for the first time and say, “There is something about you that is enchanting, and I love you.” It doesn’t work. It is frowned upon by our society, and would create havoc. And yet that capacity for love is one of the finest characteristics in the potentials of any human being.

Inner work provides a means to live out the gold as well as the dark – all those unlived potentials that have not found an adequate place in the practical, every day affairs of one’s life. The aim of such efforts is to relieve the neurotic pressure of these unlived things and the anxiety of choice, transferring it to the level it really belongs, the celestial dialogue of the pairs of opposites, the song of Heaven.