Recently my further reading, to find quotes about spiritual love and divine love, started a thought process to formulate what was the overall purpose of living.
The way many of the writers used terms didn’t seem to fit the inspirations I’d been receiving for 30 years. So I was challenged to come up with this formulation: THE PURPOSE OF HUMAN LIFE IS THE SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE. Of course, that description doesn’t mean much without formulating what is “spiritual development” and how does it happen.
The main inspiration I’ve received over the years had to do with the crucial role of agape. So far I’ve realized that agape is a spiritual power created within every human for 2 functions:
- to bring humans into relation with divine Presence, and
- to facilitate relations with All that Is.
Those 2 functions of agape show the importance of relationships for fulfilling each person’s purpose in life. And of course agape is important for connecting each person with all of the human race. That importance comes from realizing that we are all in this together, and so we can help each other’s spiritual development; in fact, we need each other for spiritual development. Also agape opens each person to the motivation then into action to do what is necessary to help other persons grow spiritually. The way agape works, it not only draws each person into direct connection with God but also develops throughout the human race the capacity to expand the awareness of Divine Presence.
And that’s why agape is the key. It is the spiritual power that is creative in the process of spiritual development. It is the spiritual power that draws people together to help in all that needs helping. It is the motivational power that creates the ‘loving’ in loving community. It is the inspirational power that creates in people the awareness that we need loving, sustaining, supportive community. It is what creates a deep awareness in people that we need to do all that is possible to do to help, support, and nurture each other.
The action that is necessary to grow spiritually comes by working with agape power flowing through us. Even more importantly is the spiritual process in which each of us grows spiritually by recognizing agape flowing in others, and then participating in agape flowing among those with whom we relate. So such is not only the basis of the most profound, creative relationships while also the basis of individual spiritual growth and the spiritual development of the human race.
But now, I have to admit the obvious problem here: each person has to be willing to sense the agape power deep within. Then not only do we need to sense it, we need to allow it to work in our life. The melancholy of human existence comes from not realizing agape power as the basis of our identity, but instead trying to build an identity from an ego. What holds back the spiritual development of the human race is the vast number of people who ignore their agape power when building an identity. Such a vast number, over thousands of years, has produced societies built upon ego-identifying instead of agape-identifying. And so humanity’s spiritual development has been held back.
