Love-Powered Living — Love Makes the World Your Neighborhood

Love brings the whole world into your own back yard, and makes you at home there!

Love, applied in its broadest sense, means loving even those who don’t love you back — and doing it without a “goody-goody” attitude or even an air of self-righteousness.

It means sending out thoughts of good will to all, without ostentation or show. And this expression of love carries within it the reward of making you feel at home wherever you go. It gives you an ease and poise in dealing with others that cannot be acquired in any other way. It literally makes the whole world your neighborhood, so that you can meet and mix with all kinds of people in many different places and be equally at home in each situation.

This ability to be at home in your world is a gift that awaits each one, but the price of the gift is love. And the price must be paid before the gift can be accepted.

Updating the Law of Love

A man named Jesus updated the law of love almost 2,000 years ago, but many people still fail to understand and apply the law as it is given.

Jesus pointed to the old interpretation of the idea of loving with these words, “Ye have heard that it hath been said. Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy” (Matt. 5:43 KJV).

Then He quickly added, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute you . . . For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? . . . And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?” (Matt. 5:44, 46, 47 KJV).

Can you find it in your heart to feel a sense of good will toward those who don’t love you back? Can you be glad when you hear that something nice has happened to a person who did you some wrong? Can you rejoice for another person when he receives something that you wanted for yourself? Can you even love those who love you with a selfless understanding faith when they fail to fulfill your hopes and dreams for them?

If you can, and can do it without making a show of self-righteousness, then you have learned to apply the new law of love.

It is fairly easy to love those who love you, even when you don’t always approve of their actions. Sometimes it is easy to love and forgive those whom you understand, with a tolerance for their weaknesses. It’s not easy to love those who have shown no evidence of love for you, or who have even expressed hate or dislike in some way, and whose customs and thinking patterns are alien to yours. But love is the way to inner peace, and inner peace is necessary to poise and confidence in your contacts with the rest of your world. If you would make the world your neighborhood, you must learn to love!

You don’t have to start out on a grandiose scale to put a stop to war in the world. You can begin by putting a stop to the war within yourself, by loving those whom you contact every day.

Remember that love is not a force that you push on another. It is a power that you generate within yourself.

You will not become at home in your world by rushing around hugging and kissing everyone you meet, and gushing out, “I love you, I love you, I love you!” This is a self-conscious attempt to attract attention, not an application of the law of love. The greatest work of love is done in silence, in the depths of your own being, where you resolve your own feelings of difference in a realization of oneness, where you recognize goodness in others in spite of errors they have made, where you learn to develop a feeling of good will even toward those who “despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

It doesn’t require any lavish display at all. Others may not realize what is going on. After all, they can’t see inside of you, where the work is done. But they will see the results, and the results will speak for themselves.

They will observe you as you begin to stand tall in your world, as you appear at ease with all people, as you talk with a friend or address a large group with the same poise and confidence. They will notice that you are equally at home in various places and under different circumstances. But the most important thing is not what others are thinking about you. It is what you are feeling inside. And you will be feeling the inner peace and poise that everyone needs in order to live happily with others.

How Do You Value Yourself?

Of course, before you can love and respect others, before you can reach a point of loving adjustment to your world as it is and faith in your world that can be, you must come to a sort of basic agreement or understanding with yourself. This means applying the law of love to you first.

To a great extent, your world takes you at face value, the value you place on yourself, and if that value is low, then you can expect to have others take advantage of you, generally disregard your opinions or overlook you entirely. Even the love for others that will make you at home in your world must start with love for yourself.

Many people feel that in order to express love, they must completely sublimate their own feelings and give in to the demands of others. They make martyrs of themselves and wonder why they are never appreciated.

True love is always coupled with wisdom. It does not require that you become less in order to love others more. It establishes a balance in giving and receiving and listens always to the guidance from within.

Loving yourself doesn’t mean seeking your own selfish ends at the expense of others. When you are truly in love with yourself, you will always desire to express the very best person you can be, the real, true individual that you are right now in your higher nature. You will stand out in the crowd because you are special — and you know it! This special person would never stoop to taking advantage of others for personal profit.

Suppose you stop right now and determine just how you think of yourself. You may see some ways in which you would like to change, in order to bring the law of love into wider application in your attitude toward yourself.

Ask yourself these questions, and answer them honestly.

How do I think of myself? How do I see myself? Am I at home in my world, or a bit uncomfortable under most circumstances? Do I really, truly respect my higher self, the self I know I can be, and let it do the talking? Or do I approach life apologetically, placing a low value on the quality of my opinions and abilities?
Do I force my opinions on others? Do I try to compensate for a feeling of inferiority by talking a lot or arguing? Do I belittle others, in order to feel more important myself?
When someone compliments me, How do I reply? Do I immediately start to depreciate my abilities, or do I quietly say, “Thank you,” thanking the other person in the name of my higher self?

How you think of yourself has a lot to do with the way you think of others, and the way you see others. You can never clear the view of your world until you first clear the glass within yourself through which you view the whole. Love is the polishing cloth that enables you to establish a proper self respect, so that you will be able to catch the good vision of others, and of your world.

This is the principle of self respect:

You cannot love others without first learning to love yourself. When you learn to place the proper value on yourself you will find it easy to apply the law of love to others.

This principle gives insight into many marital problems. The husband who consistently criticizes his wife in public may be compensating for a feeling of his own inadequacy. On the other hand, a wife who nags her husband constantly may lack confidence in herself.

Only those who have a healthy self-respect and a love for the vision of the person they can be, will form healthy relationships with others.

At Home with Yourself

But even where others are suffering from feelings of inadequacy and are having problems adjusting to others, you can be at home in your world, if you have first learned to be at home with yourself!

You can always be a better person than you think you can. You can always do more, be more, express more and grow more than you believe you can at the present time. Life is growth, and the place you are now is a long way from the heights you can attain, if you will just stop fighting yourself and start being your-self — the real self that is revealed to you in your highest moments of aspiration.

Nothing is too great for you to attain, when you are willing to work with the law of love, selflessly and conscientiously, to become the person that, in your deepest desires, you have always wanted to be.

Perhaps you have thought that you would like to be like another person. You may have said, “If only I had what he has!” or “If only I had his opportunities!” You may not have realized it at the time, but the thing you were seeing in the other person was actually a potentiality within yourself, a design that you can fulfill as you enter into a fuller expression of the powers that are within you now.

Your hopes and dreams and aspirations have revealed to you something of the person you can become.

Do you like this person? Of course you do, or you wouldn’t want to be beautiful, charming, forgiving, successful, poised, and confident. Do you want to be this person? You can, if you are willing to do the work that is necessary to bring forth this picture from within yourself, to fit yourself into the pattern that is beginning to evolve in your mind.

Take another look at this new you, the person that you are beginning to visualize in your mind. Perhaps you would like to write down the qualities this person expresses. Make a list. Somewhere near the top of the list of qualities you would like to express write “poise” and “love” and “confidence.” You might want to add “wise,” along with “loving.”

It doesn’t hurt to think of the qualities you have admired in others. But now relate them to yourself. Draw a picture in your mind, filling in all the details of the way you would like to feel and to fit into your world.

“Falling in Love, Just a Little Bit”

You might try falling in love, just a little bit, with this person you can become. Because the more you truly desire to express the picture, the closer you will come to identifying with it completely.

Don’t become carried away with your personal accomplishments and achievements to date. Don’t decide that you are already perfect, and others are wrong if they don’t appreciate you fully.

Rather, begin to think of yourself as a flower unfolding, beauty and goodness, strength and success in the process of becoming. And love this person that you can be. Love the new you! Love this potential of yourself so strongly that you refuse to concentrate on past failures or errors. Instead, continually determine to become that which you can be. Do it in love!

Develop a strong, healthy respect for the greater self that you can visualize in your mind. This is the only way that you can learn to love others—by first loving the highest and best self you can see yourself becoming.

Under no circumstances should you fall in love with your little human self, with all its frailties, selfishness, false pride and smallness. But you must love your great potential, or you will never fulfill it.

Personal vanity may provide temporary enjoyment, but a true valuation of yourself looks to spiritual potentiality and works toward the development of your inner powers and abilities.

You are here for a very special purpose. You are here because God needs you through whom to express. How can you fulfill your divine destiny unless you accept and appreciate the talents He has given you to use, unless you respect and love the vision of the person you can become?

If you have difficulty in finding a real sense of security within yourself and a real belief that you can do and be something greater, mark the paragraph above, go back and read it every day for a month, and then see what kind of a picture you can build in your mind.

Say, over and over to yourself,

“I’m here for a very special purpose. God needs me through whom to express. I am unique. I am here to fulfill my own divine destiny.”

Then picture in your mind the very highest expression of good you can imagine. Love the picture. Desire to fulfill God’s plan for you. And you will be well on your way to success.

Watch Your Words

Watch your words. Let them fulfill the picture you are holding in your mind. Never depreciate yourself in your conversation. And don’t make ridiculous personal claims, either. Rather, let your conversation express the person you want to be, one who has a good healthy self respect, but no false pride, one who loves the person he can be, but makes no claim to having reached the pinnacle yet. Talk as the new you, the one you see in your mind, would talk.

Test your conversation with these questions:

Which words do I say more often, “I can’t” or “I can”? Don’t make ridiculous false claims for yourself, but do learn to think in terms of “can” rather than “can’t.”
How do I accept compliments? Do I ever deny the good qualities I want to express? A thought of appreciation for the compliment and a quiet “thank you” are far better than a long-winded denial of some good you may have expressed.
Do I tell others my troubles? Each one has his challenges to meet. Talking about yours doesn’t solve them. It only serves to intensify them in your mind. Instead, see yourself as a problem-solving genius, and work from your potential there.

If you want to learn to love and respect yourself on the highest level, and to employ this principle in the most effective way, take a lesson from the Master Teacher.

Jesus said, “I do nothing of myself’ (John 8:28 KJV). He also pointed out, “The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 14:10 KJV).

Personal pride and self satisfaction both tear down the very self you want to become. But recognition of the power of God, mighty to do His good works through you, establishes the good. It also establishes a strong and reliable basis for the love of self which expresses as respect and enthusiasm for the person you are designed to become, the person you can be with God’s help.

Now apply this idea to the principle of self respect:

You cannot love others without first learning to love yourself. When you learn to place the proper valuation on yourself, you will find it easy to apply the law of love to others.

You place the proper valuation on yourself by learning to know and to respect the loving, kind, considerate, poised, happy person God designed you to be. When you love this idea, this perfect pattern and promise God has given you, and are beginning to call it forth, then you are ready to establish happy, harmonious relationships with others by applying the law of love.

The Circle You Live In

When you have established a good relationship with yourself, based on a healthy love and respect for the person you are becoming, you will have true poise in dealing with others. You will experience that sense of balance, stability and ease that not only makes you at home in your world, but also enables others to enjoy your company and to benefit from it.

Again, remember that love is not something which you force on others. It is a power that is generated within you, a deep-down caring for others in the sense of wanting good for all persons, an ability to cross boundaries in your mind and even wish well to those who have seemingly harmed you. Remember, love is greater than anything that has happened, or can happen, in the course of daily living. And love begins in you!

Love is its own miracle, but love makes miracles happen in new and unexpected ways when you begin to work with this idea to establish a new relationship with your world.

First of all, it makes your world bigger. It enlarges the area in which you live and express.

Look at it this way. In a sense, you live in a world which is carefully laid out on a map or a globe, with colors and lines to designate countries, oceans and continents. But in reality you live in only a small part of that world, the part which relates to you in mind, feeling or in physical environment. You, inside yourself, outline the circle of your world and fill it in according to your interests and your activities and attention.

Your world may be small. It may consist of a small circle in which you relate to your family and close friends. Other people whom you meet in the course of a day may intrude into your mind only in the sense that they provide goods and services to support you and the people in whom you are really interested, those who are close to you.

Your world may assume a different pattern. It may consist of books and teachers and a great search for knowledge, with people only incidental to the search, relatively unimportant to your way of life. Again, the circle may be small. It will only be as large as your ability to relate to it. The boundaries will be drawn by your thoughts, feelings and interest. Your world may be as large as your country, and you may feel a great inspiration in the form of a patriotism as you seek to bring forth that which is right and good for all people in your land. But again there are boundaries to your world, boundaries set even by your dedication to the idea of good for one people, perhaps to the exclusion of all others.

Remember, you are the center of your world, and the circle extends out from you as far as you send it.

Interest in world affairs and in space exploration has extended the boundaries of the world for many people today, even in the cases where the expansion was only temporary, followed by a closing up, back to the daily rut or family routine.

Enlarge the Circle

But why can’t you live in a large circle all of the time? Why do you have to put on blinders and settle down to mediocrity and resignation? Why can’t you live with the expanded vision of your world and your aims in life all day long every day?

The answer is that you can, and we all will, when we learn to love, in the largest sense of the word.

This is the principle of the circle:

With your mind, you draw the circle in which you live. It will be small or large as it expresses your interest and your ability to love. It changes as you change inside.

Since you are the constructor of your own world, your own circle of life, you are also the one who must change it. And it is only inside yourself that you can expand or contract your world. It has nothing to do with others and their ability to draw you into their world. No one can do anything to change the world in which you live, because the world in which you live is centered in you and is determined by your thoughts, feelings, reactions and inner relationships.

But suppose you do want to expand your world. You will, when you learn to love.

First, apply the principle of self respect, so that by learning to live with yourself you will be better able to live with others. Develop a good picture of your inner potential of good and work on expressing the person you want to be. Do it consciously and creatively all of the time.

Then look outside of yourself, and discover that the rest of the world needs your blessing—not force, but the blessing that comes from a desire to help and to heal. The blessing may be given actively, as you discover new ways in which you can serve, or it may be projected silently, as a part of the universal sense of oneness that blesses all.

Several years ago we had a project which extended our circle of life tremendously. And it did it all through love.

We were asked to participate in a tremendous experiment in love. People all over the world were to stop at a certain time each day and simply concentrate on God’s love, seeing the rays of His love encircling the globe. The request came from Malaya, and it carried with it a time schedule for the whole world, so that wherever we were, we would all be tuning in at the same time.

We simply sat quietly at that moment and pictured God’s great love encircling the globe. It was a tremendous experience in working as a worldwide group to know the power of God’s love to heal, harmonize and solve the world’s difficulties. It was an experiment that expanded the world in which all of us lived, because it enabled us to feel a sense of closeness and oneness with people we had never seen in lands we had never visited, but could visit in love and caring.

If you would truly make the world your neighborhood, try expanding the world in which you live. You don’t have to visit other lands to send your gift of love. But you can become a part of the larger world by loving, by caring, by looking beyond selfish interests and daily concerns. You don’t have to neglect any part of your daily life to do this, because you do it within yourself, as a part of your attitude toward life and the world in general.

Love. Care. Be interested in others as well as your own higher self. And you will find that truly the world is your neighborhood, a fast growing neighborhood.