Pure love is not something grasped or possessed; it is an unveiling of the deepest reality of existence (1 John 4:8). It is not constructed by effort or cultivated by striving but arises when all illusions fall away (Ephesians 2:8-9). “The best of these kinds of beginnings is a sudden emptying of the soul in which images vanish, concepts and words are silent, and freedom and clarity suddenly open out within you.” [1] Love, in its purest form, is not an object to be obtained but a presence that is always here, waiting to be recognized (Luke 17:21). It is discovered not through accumulation but through surrender, in the space left when the self stops trying to control or define it (Matthew 16:25). When one enters into pure love, there is no longer a sense of separation, no need to chase after something external (Romans 8:38-39). Love is not somewhere else; it is the ground of being itself (Acts 17:28).
And yet, the journey into pure love is not one of immediate fulfillment but often one of dryness and uncertainty (Psalm 42:1-2). The absence of comfort, the aridity of the heart—these are not signs of failure but invitations into a deeper trust (Isaiah 50:10). “As you progress, you learn to rest in this arid quietude, and the assurance of a comforting and mighty presence at the heart of this experience grows on you more and more.” [1] Love is not a fleeting emotion or a sensation that reassures the ego; it is the abiding presence that remains even when everything else disappears (Hebrews 13:5). To know love is to rest in it without needing proof, without demanding that it feel a certain way (2 Corinthians 5:7). In this silent knowing, there is no clinging, no grasping—only the quiet assurance that love is what has always been (Isaiah 26:3).
To truly enter into love, one must relinquish the need to understand it (Proverbs 3:5-6). The mind, conditioned to seek clarity through definitions and distinctions, resists the vastness of love’s mystery (Ecclesiastes 8:17). “This love is like the shining cloud that enveloped the Apostles on Thabor so that they exclaimed: ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here!’” [1] Pure love is not a concept to be analyzed but a presence to be inhabited (John 14:23). It does not require comprehension; it only requires surrender (Philippians 4:7). To abide in love is to cease striving and allow oneself to be fully present, without measuring, without controlling (Matthew 11:28-30). Love does not need to be explained—it simply is (Exodus 3:14).
And yet, when love is encountered in its depth, it often appears as an emptiness, a void that the mind cannot grasp (Job 23:8-9). This is not because love is lacking but because it is too vast to be contained within the boundaries of thought (Isaiah 55:8-9). “In proportion as the cloud gets less opaque, the experience of God opens out inside you as a terrific emptiness.” [1] This emptiness is not a negation but a fullness beyond comprehension (Colossians 2:9-10). Love is not something that can be contained in a fixed form or limited by expectation; it is the space in which all things are held, the silence in which all things find their meaning (Psalm 46:10). To love truly is to step beyond the familiar and allow oneself to be immersed in something immeasurable (Ephesians 3:17-19).
Even in the depths of love, there remains a paradox—an experience of separation, even as one is drawn closer (Romans 7:15-24). It is as if the more one surrenders, the more one becomes aware of the vastness yet to be known (1 Corinthians 13:12). “However, in all these things you remain very far from God, much farther than you realize.” [1] This recognition is not despair but a deepening humility, a reminder that love is not something one can own or master (James 4:6). The closer one draws to it, the more one realizes how infinite it truly is (Psalm 139:7-10). Love is not an object to be attained but an ocean into which one must dissolve (John 3:30).
To enter into pure love is not to achieve something but to be drawn into something beyond the self (John 15:4-5). The desire to claim love, to make it one’s own, only reinforces the illusion of separation (Galatians 2:20). “But as long as there is this sense of separation, this awareness of distance and difference between ourselves and God, we have not yet entered into the fullness of contemplation.” [1] True love does not create boundaries; it dissolves them (Ephesians 2:14). It does not demand ownership; it invites surrender (Luke 9:23-24). When all resistance falls away, love ceases to be something external and is revealed as the very essence of being (1 Corinthians 6:17).
The great illusion of the self is that it exists apart from love (John 17:21-23). What one calls “self” is often nothing more than a collection of fears, desires, and identities that obscure the deeper truth (Galatians 5:24). “Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness and void.” [1] The journey into love is not about adding something new to the self but about stripping away everything that is false (Colossians 3:3). Love is not something to be found—it is what remains when all illusions are gone (1 John 3:2). To love purely is to return to what has always been true (Jeremiah 31:3).
Yet, humanity has spent its existence wandering far from this truth, lost in the illusions of separation and self-interest (Romans 3:23). The world teaches that love must be earned, that it must be fought for, that it can be lost (Isaiah 55:1). But these are the lies of a mind that has forgotten its origin (Romans 8:15-16). “We are prodigals in a distant country, the ‘region of unlikeness,’ and we must seem to travel far in that region before we seem to reach our own land (and yet secretly we are in our own land all the time!).” [1] The journey home is not about going somewhere new but about awakening to where one has always been (Luke 15:20-24). Love is not distant—it is here, waiting for the veils to be lifted (Matthew 28:20).
The mind has turned itself inside out, confusing the temporary for the eternal, the external for the real (2 Corinthians 4:18). It is no wonder that love appears so elusive when one seeks it in places it does not dwell (John 5:39-40). “Man has been turned, spiritually, inside out, so that his ego plays the part of the ‘person’—a role which it actually has no right to assume.” [1] The ego cannot know love, for love belongs not to the individual but to the whole (Philippians 2:3-4). Only in surrendering the illusion of separateness does one awaken to the love that has never been absent (1 John 4:16).
And when love is finally seen for what it is, all striving ceases (Zechariah 4:6). There is no need to claim it, no need to be proud of possessing it, for love is not something that belongs to anyone (Romans 11:36). “To think that a man could be proud of this joy, once it had discovered him and delivered him, would be like saying: ‘This man is proud because the air is free.’” [1] Love is as natural as breath, as boundless as the sky (Psalm 19:1-2). To be caught in its embrace is not to be exalted but to be freed (John 8:36).
[1] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation