"How few understand what
love really is, and how it arises in the human heart. It is so
frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or
nonviolence or service. But these things in themselves are not love.
Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as you see someone as
he or she really is here and how and not as they are in your memory or
your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love
them, otherwise it is not the person that you love but the idea that
you have formed of this person, or this person as the object of your
desire not as he or she is in themselves. The first act of love is to
see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is. And this
involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your
prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of
looking ...a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge
headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire
of this asceticism. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not
taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person's need or your
own?"
-- Father Anthony de Mello