“We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.” – Martin Buber
How do you come to meet your world? What version of you do you present to everyone when you interact with them? I think these kinds of questions were on the mind of philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber when he wrote about loving powerfully and how we come to meet one another.
Just like Buber, I believe that we become fully human when we meet each other as individuals and not as objects for our use. But seeing and treating others as individuals and offering the same kind of respect that we would like for ourselves, is much harder than it sounds. Most of us usually want something from every conversation and interaction. We want something internally that pleases us, helps us or encourages us. So our interactions become one of the many tools we use to accomplish our daily goals.
If we want to respect and meet others in powerfully loving ways, then we will need to recognize that our goals for each interaction should be scrutinized. Most of us have grown accustom to acting in ways that support our continuous task and goal driven nature. This way of interacting will often make it very difficult to realize that we are actually interacting with the intention of gaining something. And thus we meet one another selfishly transactional and inauthentically.
How do we interact with others with powerful love? Bring more questions to your interactions than statements. Be more interested rather than trying to be interesting. And come from an internal place of unconditional love of spirit. This means when I interact, I remind myself that I am complete. I am whole already, and I do not need to be understood by anyone, nor do I need any consensus of my ideas with anyone. When I do this I am freed from most of my ego, and I can now operate without the pressure of trying to get something from my conversation.
I am love. I am joy. I am so very good. And so are each one of you!
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