JOY, NOT LOVE, IS THE ANSWER

People say love is the answer. Love is not the answer. It is common knowledge and everyday observance that people often hurt the ones they love the most most terribly, most cruelly and most especially.

The love of miserable people is terrible and cruel, intense though it may be.

Unconditional Happiness is the answer.

It is a fantasy to think we are capable of Unconditional Love without first having the Self-mastery to induce and sustain Joy in our Hearts at will.

Love is not a matter of free choice. We "fall in love". We fall in love with those who we do, often despite knowing that that love is toxic and will come to naught but misery.

We love our children because they were given to us.

We are attracted to whom and what we are attracted without active participation. Yes, we "fall" in love - often in a blind stumble.

A spurned or unrequited lover may strike out in bitterness and even violence and revenge.

The ability to attain and sustain unconditional Joy in the heart, on the other hand, is never haphazard and never just occurs to us. We never fall into ongoing, unconditional Happiness. Happiness that is independent of circumstances and does not waver with the vagaries of fortune is always an act of Supreme Will and Self-discipline.

It is only when we have mastered our Hearts to the extent necessary to attain and sustain Joy in the heart that we can be trusted to love in a healthy and supportive manner.

Those who are in a state of Joy are never driven to seek revenge or harm. We may be madly in love. We may be blindly in love.

Joy, on the other hand, gives us wisdom and insight. No one was ever driven to the brink of destruction or Self-destruction by Joy.

No one ever said: Joy hurts.
It may be said that those who act obsessively do not really love and that is true, but what is preventing them from really loving is their misery.

The beginning of Wisdom is Joy, not Love. From the state of Joy, true, constant, mature, healthy Love follows as a matter of course. Rarely does Love create ongoing Happiness in and of itself in a person who is not possessed of Joy.