God Is Love

A Meditation on the Indefinable Nature of the Divine

God is Love. How many times have we heard the word “love” being used to define that which is ultimately indefinable? I suppose it is because that’s the only word that can even bring us close to grasping the ungraspable. When we use “love” to define that which is transcendent, absolute, and metaphysical, we’re using it to describe qualities and attributes that are non-ordinary, that represent a higher dimension of human experience, intuition, and cognition. That is why the love that is God is transpersonal, because it points us far beyond our unique individuality or the unique individuality of any other. 

God is love. When the most revered mystics from the world’s great religious traditions speak to us about the love that is God, they almost uniformly declare that the nature of that higher non-ordinary, transpersonal love is peace. They say that the love of God is experienced as a peace that is indescribable, a “peace that passeth all understanding.” A peace that is so rapturous and all-encompassing that in its embrace, all fear and self-concern vanish from consciousness. It is a peace, they say, that will set us free.

God is love. The reason the love that is God can set us free is because that unqualifiable peace was the very nature of existence before the universe was born. Before the universe was born, before time and space existed, there was only peace. When we dive into the deepest depths of our own consciousness, deeper than our thoughts and memories, deeper than even our awareness of the world around us, we discover this very same peace—a mysterious and infinitely compelling emptiness where there is no time, where nothing ever happened, where we are always utterly free.

God is love. The love that is God is the experiential discovery of that deepest dimension of our own selves and of reality itself that the Buddha called the “Unborn,” the “Uncreated,” and the “Deathless.” Spiritual masters refer to it as the Ground of Being. In order to discover it for ourselves, we need to follow in the footsteps of the great ones. That means to close our eyes, turn within, and let the world disappear. It means to pray and meditate with such utter sincerity that all that is left is Being—timeless, formless, infinite Being. 

God is love. But the love that is God is not only peace! The love that is God is also the evolutionary impulse—the powerful desire to exist in and as the universe, the surging energy and intelligence that gave rise to the creative process. From nothing came something! God is the driving force at the heart of the entire cosmic unfolding. 

God is love. The love that is God is Eros, the sexual impulse, the biological imperative to procreate. Eros is the felt experience of unbearable ecstasy and urgency simultaneously. It is the felt experience of the universe endeavoring to give rise to itself within our own bodies. Eros is the felt experience of the restlessness of God once he or she chose to create the universe unendingly.

God is love. The love that is God is the uniquely human urge to consciously create. Human beings are the only species that are driven by a compulsion to innovate—to give rise to that which is new. Indeed, the architects of human culture and civilization throughout history have been those great individuals, those rare geniuses, who have taken bold leaps forward in their own fields.  Their evolution-inspired passion has created and continues to create our shared world anew.

God is love. Finally, the love that is God is the spiritual impulse, the mysterious compulsion to become more conscious. Why is it that some individuals are driven by a deep desire to penetrate the profound mystery and infinite complexity of existence, while others are not? It is because they are awake to the love that is God, as the spiritual impulse, that drive that compels them to pray and meditate and endeavor to develop without end. In fact, they will not stop until they make that perennial breakthrough that makes it possible to know the unknowable and grasp the ungraspable.

God is love. I believe the love that is God is bothBeing and Becoming. The love that is God is both the experience of that transcendent peace that passeth all understanding and the dynamic, ecstatic urgency of the evolutionary impulse—the energy and intelligence that created and is creating the universe.

God is love. The love that is God is One and nottwo. The love that is God is both the liberating bliss of transcending the world and it is also, simultaneously, the awakened inspiration and passion for its ongoing development and perpetual evolution.

The love of God is everything.

This post is part of a four part series on love:

Part 1: I Trust You: More Difficult (and more powerful) Than ‘I Love You’

Part 2: Piercing the Romantic Illusion

Part 3: What do You Mean by ‘Love’? 

_________________________________________________________________

Andrew Cohen is the best-selling author of Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening. To download a 38-page excerpt, click here.