Beyond Our Limited Understanding …
We speak of love often. We long for it. We claim it. We try to practice it.
Yet if we pause long enough to ask, What truly constitutes love?, we may discover that much of what we have called love is only a partial understanding.
Even those who walk the Divine Love Path — who pray, who seek transformation, who desire alignment with God — can carry subtle misconceptions about what love really is.
Our culture has taught us that love is affection, loyalty, emotional warmth, sacrifice, attachment, compatibility. These are beautiful expressions. But they are not the essence.
Love, in its highest form, is not merely an emotion. It is not simply kindness. It is not a contract of mutual comfort.
Love is a living, intelligent, Divine substance that seeks the eternal growth and highest good of the soul.
On the Divine Love Path, we do not manufacture this love. We receive it. Through sincere longing and prayer, Divine Love enters the soul and begins its quiet, steady work of transformation. As it grows within us, our understanding of love begins to change.
This is exactly what’s inspired this blog. When you see truth, you can’t unsee it. What has become apparent, with a strikingly profound awareness, is how little love is a part of our world in its current state.
Where Our Understanding Becomes Limited
Much of what we call love is entangled with fear, need, or identity.
We may call it love when we:
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- Avoid conflict to keep peace
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- Over-give to secure belonging
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- Attach to another out of fear of loss
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- Protect illusion rather than uphold truth
None of this makes us unworthy. It simply reveals that we are still learning.
Divine Love gently exposes these distortions. Not to shame us — but to refine us.
As the soul matures, love becomes less sentimental and more substantial. It becomes less about how we feel in the moment and more about what fosters true spiritual growth.
What Truly Constitutes Love
When we look deeper, certain qualities consistently reveal authentic love:
Love Seeks Truth
Love does not collude with illusion. It does not protect dysfunction in the name of harmony. It aligns with truth — even when truth feels uncomfortable.
Love Honours Free Will
Love does not control, coerce, or manipulate. It allows others their journey, even when we would choose differently for them.
Love Expands the Soul
True love increases humility, patience, compassion, and clarity. Over time, it softens pride and dissolves fear.
Love Operates Within Divine Law
Love is not chaotic sentiment. It moves in harmony with spiritual law. It is not governed by mood, impulse, or emotional intensity. While human feelings can fluctuate — warm one moment and withdrawn the next — Divine Love remains steady and ordered. It is intelligent. It is coherent. It does not contradict truth, nor does it support what diminishes the soul.
Love Transforms
Human love may comfort. Divine Love transforms. It purifies motives, heals wounds, and reorders desires so that the soul increasingly reflects its Source.
How Love Displays Throughout Life
Love expresses itself differently depending on its depth and the progressive state of the soul.
In Relationships
Love listens without rushing to fix. It speaks truth without cruelty. It releases when holding on would hinder growth.
In Leadership
Love acts from conscience rather than ego. It protects the vulnerable. It chooses long-term good over short-term approval.
In Parenting
Love guides rather than controls. It corrects without shaming. It models humility.
Modeling humility may look like apologizing when we have spoken harshly:
“I was frustrated earlier, but I shouldn’t have spoken that way. I’m sorry.”
It may mean admitting we do not have all the answers and saying,
“That’s a deep question. I’m still learning too.”
When children witness humility, they learn that strength and accountability coexist. They feel safe being imperfect—and growing.
In Our Personal Spiritual Journey
Love asks us to face our own pride. It allows buried conditions to surface for healing. It invites surrender over self-assertion, and in our relationship with God, love deepens longing — not for comfort alone, but for transformation.
The Great Reorientation
Human love often asks:
How does this make me feel?
Divine Love asks:
What will help the soul grow eternally?
This shift changes everything. Love may become quieter. Less possessive. Less dramatic. But infinitely more real.
When Divine Love increases within the soul, our definitions expand. What once seemed loving may fall away. What once felt difficult may reveal itself as mercy. Gradually, the river of our limited understanding flows into the vast ocean of God’s Love — where it is transformed.
Perhaps the question is not only ~ What constitutes love?
But also:
Am I willing to let my understanding be reshaped by Love itself?
A Closing Blessing
May we be willing to release our smaller definitions of love and open to the Love that is vast, intelligent, and refining.
May Divine Love enter the quiet chambers of our souls and gently reveal where fear has masqueraded as love.
May we grow courageous enough to choose truth over comfort, humility over pride, and eternal growth over temporary approval.
May our lives increasingly reflect not merely the sentiment of love, but its living substance — flowing through us, guiding us, transforming us into a clearer expression of God’s Heart.
Always in love,
Maureen
