A: Yes, but what do we mean by “have limitless love?” That raises a question: What is limitless love? Who has limitless love? How do you know if you have limitless love? And this raises a very serious question.
To answer this, I must go back to the beginning of my own healing ministry. I was reading in all of the literature that word “love”—divine love; love; you must love one another; you must love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul; you must love your neighbor as yourself. Oh, the literature was filled with that word “love,” and the reason that this annoyed me was because I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t feel love. I had no feeling of love and didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know; I had no realization of that. Now, what do you mean by “love,” and what does all this mean by “love?”
But I had three wonderful friends—all practitioners—and one night we were all together, as we occasionally were, and I asked that question, firstly because two of them were the very personification of love. They were both mothers—good mothers—and women of whom you could truthfully say, “They are very loving.” And I asked them that question, “What is love? What is this love that I’m reading about in the books? How do you love the Lord thy God? How do you love your neighbor as yourself when you don’t feel any love?”
Well, they looked at me as if I’d just lost my mind.
“Why, Joel, when we talk of you, we always speak of you as one of the most loving people we know!”
“Me? Oh, don’t ever say anything like that, because I must be truthful with you. I don’t even feel anything like love. I have no sense of what it means, and truthfully I don’t love anybody, and I don’t seem to love anything.”
Well, you know, for a long while they wouldn’t believe me. Eventually they came to know that that was true.
Now, as long as I was in that work, people did think of me and speak of me and even tell me to my face how very loving I was. Why? Well, because I would sit up all night if necessary to heal somebody, or I would go to any length to visit them or to go to a hospital if there was a need—do anything that was necessary in the ministry. And for that, they called me “loving.”
I’m going to tell you the truth. I had no sense of being loving or loving anybody, and I didn’t do it because I loved anybody. I did it for only one reason: If we are going to devote our lives to
spiritual healing, we first of all should know what the principles are that are involved, and then we should put them into practice with every opportunity that’s given to us. That’s why we’re in the work, and so when I undertake to work with someone or take a case, it isn’t because I love them, and it isn’t because I love mankind. It is because I have discovered a principle, and that’s my job to show it through, to bring it through, to prove it, not only for the world, but for me. How can I live with myself if I’m not proving the principle of the work that I’m in?
Well, it so happens that that’s what they call “love.” All right. As far as I’m concerned, the only love that’s involved is the love of this principle, the love of this work and wanting, if it is a principle, to see that the whole world gets it, and that with every healing we are proving to the world the unreality of disease—that it is not necessary to die of disease.
One time in Los Angeles, I was called to a very, very elderly woman who was given up, and the family sent for my help, and the woman was restored. Somebody in that family knew a man who is well-known internationally as a religious leader and told him about this wonderful healing in their family. Some months or years later, when this man and I met, he said, “I wonder why you did that healing. At her age, she’s only going to live a short while longer anyhow, and what is she going to do with her life between now and then—knit booties for her grandchildren?” In other words, she’s not going to contribute anything spiritually to life or even humanly contribute a great deal, so what difference does it make if she passes on at eighty-nine or ninety or eighty-nine-and-a-half or ninety-two-and-a-half?
My answer was this. I didn’t know that lady, and so I had no interest in her whatsoever. My interest was that God is life eternal, and my function is to demonstrate it on earth; to prove it, if it can be proven. And that’s the reason I did it. It wasn’t for love of her or her family. It was for the principle’s sake, and she got the benefit of it. But it wasn’t only she that got the benefit of it. Doctors knew what had happened; the family knew what had happened; and in some way or other, a greater interest in spiritual healing was awakened.
So it is that I ask you this question: “What is limitless love?” According to the Master, it is to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and to love thy neighbor as thyself. Each one has to put their own interpretation on that.
Now, there is a point that I have seen for years and years, and it’s a major part of The Infinite Way teaching—that since we are infinite; since the allness of God constitutes the allness of individual man; there is nothing that can be added to us, and if we lack anything, it is because we are not expressing it, not because either God or man is withholding it from us. I always use the illustration of that poor widow who was asked, “What have you in your house?” Today I read this passage in a book—that if you want the wealth of the Indies, you must carry the wealth of the Indies to the Indies. This, in short, sums up the whole secret of supply. Whatever it is that you want, express it. It’s already within you. Don’t believe that you are going to go somewhere and find supply. Don’t believe you’re going to go somewhere and find love. You’re not. You’re going to carry it there, or you’re not going to find it.
In one of our Letters recently, I commented on the fact that I receive so many letters from people wanting help for companionship. Well, I always write them, “I can’t do that, because I don’t believe you want companionship. I think you’re looking for a companion, and that’s something quite different.” Anybody that’s looking for companionship can have it on five minutes notice. All they have to do is be a companion, and they have companionship. Be a companion. Start out with “What have you in the house?”
“Well, I have companionship.”
“Good. Well, go out in the garden and express that to the flowers or the bees or the birds. Go down to the ocean and express companionship to the fish, or go out with the squirrels somewhere, but express companionship.”
Get it out of your system, and before 24 hours roll around, you’ll find somebody sharing companionship with you. But to make a vacuum of yourself and sit back here and say, “I want companionship,” and now wait for somebody to come and bring it to you—there is no such thing. There’s no such possibility. You are offeringnothing. You’re merely seeking to get, and everybody has a mental wall up against those who are seeking to get. Everybody knows intuitively when there’s a parasite outside looking to clutch on.
Therefore, if we really want companionship; if we really want love; we have to find some way of expressing it, and this is the secret of supply—monetary supply: there is no way to spiritually demonstrate supply except in the degree of one’s giving. It will never come through getting, because you’re just setting up a vacuum and expecting somebody to come along and fill it for no good reason. But the moment that we begin to “open out a way for the imprisoned splendor to escape;” the very moment we begin to share, cooperate, give, bestow; that outpouring is that which returns to us. The bread that we cast upon the water is the bread that comes back to us.
Therefore, again answering this question, of course there’s no way to be perfect except through love, but there is no way to love through the emotions, except in human love. But I’m talking now about divine love. There is no way to express love through desire. Love is only expressed in putting out into circulation something that we have, whether that is clothing, money, or the ability to pray. As long as we expend it, it returns to us.
And so the lesson that I’ve learned since those early days is this: the reason we miss the meaning of love is that we’ve been taught to think of it as an emotion, or we’ve been taught to think of it as doing good to somebody, and that may be true on the human level. It isn’t true on the spiritual level. On the spiritual level, it just means an outpouring of whatever it is that one has stored up in consciousness and the willingness to share it, and I don’t know that anyone feels any emotion about that. Certainly I don’t. It’s a way of life. It’s like the fruit tree’s giving up its fruit. I don’t think the fruit tree has any emotion about it or any feeling that, “Oh, I’m doing you people a great favor. I’m feeding you.” No, the function of a fruit tree is to give up its fruit; the function of a flower bush is to give up its flowers; and our function is merely to let God express Itself through us in whatever way our nature attests to.
1This excerpt is from Recording 454A: 1962 Mission Inn Closed Class, “Integrity, Spiritually Understood..” It is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available from The Infinite Way Office website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.