The Meaning of Agapé

More than 5 years ago this blog started when I was led to naming a spiritual power with the ancient Greek word ‘agapé.’ This happened as I began to open to that spiritual awareness during my morning meditation time.

I traced all this to my new understanding of Romans 5:5 as I left ‘agapé’ in the Greek instead of making the common mistake of translating it as ‘love’: “the agapé of God has been poured into the center of our being.” So that new perspective has led me to spend morning meditation time focusing on accepting the spiritual flowing of agapé by “sensing” agapé as “access” to more profound spiritual experience. I let that bring me access to spiritual “manifestation” of divine Presence.

One day early in this new practice, after morning meditation, I became aware that I was being led to a book in my collection that I hadn’t read in 4 years. That book was Love, Power, and Justice by the theologian, Paul Tillich; I opened the book and on pg. 33 found this: “… agape enters from another dimension into the whole of life and into all qualities of love. One could call agape the depth of love or love in relation to the ground of life. One could say that in agape ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love.” That confirmed what I was experiencing.

Reading the word “manifests” had a powerful impact on me! When I saw the way he connected agapé with divine manifestation -- used in the same way that it had come to me in meditation -- I was convinced that a breakthrough had come to me. In the weeks that followed, this became increasingly more important in my morning meditation. Finally as Jan. began, I decided to start this blog dedicated to exploring agapé as a spiritual power that is our access to the manifested divine Presence.

That last sentence has become for me a verbal ‘touchstone.’ Because I consider universally ever-present spiritual Source to be so far beyond the awareness of humans (no matter how much of a spiritual genius a particular human could be), we need a way of access. That is, without some type of manifestation to us, we have no ultimate spiritual awareness. So then we need some way to access that spiritual manifestation. And that way has been given us -- "poured into the center of our being."

During these 5 years I have been opened to the awareness of agapé as that access power to whatever divine manifestation that is available to humans. I continue to become more deeply aware when I pray for agapé to draw me into the intimacy of divine Presence. As I describe in my book, The Seven Steps of Agapé Prayer, I pray first that agapé power flows in the life of a person who is spiritually important to my development, then in the lives of specific friends and family members, then in the lives of strangers I see on my walk to where I meditate every morning, then in the lives of people whom I have found to be difficult, and then in the lives of people in groups such as churches. During this meditation time, as I have my awareness opened to the vastness of divine Presence, I follow the vastness to pray both for agapé in the lives of all sentient beings, and finally for agapé to flow for all of Creation.