^•Ŧy - Truth Unity

PERSONAL LOVE vs. UNIVERSAL
LOVE.
ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY.
349
]HERE is one difficulty which I have
observed all New Thought students suffer.
It is, perhaps, the hardest experience we
have, but, fortunately, it is the result,
chiefly, of a misapprehension of terms,
which did not originate within us. In our language,
in a general way, every word means several things,
and everything is expressed by at least several words.
And this is just the cause of our difficu'ty. In the
old thought, love, affection, passion, express practically
the same emotion. In actual fact, the
three emotions are very different. We have called
the feeling which we have for our friends, love;
usually it was simply affection. The feeling between
man and woman is most often passion.
I want to discuss the first two, and try to make
the distinction, which seems clear to me. With the
latter, those who have even a desire for New Thought,
have nothing to do. We have all known what it
means to have had deep affection for certain beings.
W e all.know that that affection is very generally a
very selfish emotion. Mothers say they love their
children with all their hearts; they could not live
without them; they suffer torture if they are deprived
of the companionship of these dear ones. Whether
the place in which the mother's lot is cast is the best
for the child's development, is a matter of slight
importance. The mother cannot live without her
child.
W e have all known this affection, and all suffered
through it, and yet some of us still cling to it. Then
must we conclude that human affection is wrong?
W e turn to our teachers, we read of non-attachment,
of universal love, of the impersonal, and to our
poor sorrowing hearts comes the revelation for the
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