To love we extend ourselves | The Road Less Traveled

Many, many people possessing a feeling of love and even acting in response to that feeling act in all manner of unloving and destructive ways.

Love [is] the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own and another's spiritual growth. Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.

When we extend ourselves, ... we do so in opposition to the inertia of laziness or the resistance of fear. Extension of ourselves or moving out against the inertia of laziness we call work. Moving out in the face of fear we call courage. Love, then, is a form of work or a form of courage. Specifically, it is work of courage directed toward the nurture of our own or another's spiritual growth.

An essential part of listening is ... the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside.

We may feel ... that we are listening very hard, [but] what we are usually doing is listening selectively, with a preset agenda in mind.

---

Dr. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

From sections:

Love is Not a Feeling

The Work of Attention