Blessed Love,
Love is one of the most Important teachings within Rastafari, and is seen as the main solution for all of the problems in the world.
As there are still a lot of problems on a personal and global level, we would like to remind people about this Icept.

What is this Love that we are talking about that has so much promise hidden in it?
It’s more then the Love we feel for our partner, family members or friends, because it’s only natural and logical that we have affection for the people that are close to us. It is a deeper kind of Love that makes us Love people and things that don’t fall in these first three categories, but makes us Love people we don’t know, even the ones we don’t necessarily like.
It is an unconditional Love for all Creation… the Moon, the Sun and All the other planets in the Universe, a Love for everything that has Life in it.
This Love comes from knowing that all these things are connected and we are all part of One Living entity that some of us call YAH, Rastafari, The Most High, God, Allah, Rama, Ra (whatever our culture has named it). The fullness of this entity can’t be explained so easily as it is beyond our conception of reality, but when looking at how big and diverse Life is, the perfection of creation, the beauty of it, the complexity and how everything fits together, we can begin to overstand the greatness of YAH and that should motivate us to show Love and appreciation for being a part of that.
Besides that, most of the religions and other teachings describe God or this Life Force as being an endless fountain of Love, the source for all that is good and if reflected or emulated leads to a path of righteousness and happiness, full of blessings…
The most important thing people should know is that We are All a physical and spiritual part of this entity and are therefore also connected to each other and that we have a common interest and goal…this is where one of the most famous sayings within Rastafari come from (one Love, one Heart, one Destiny).

These are some reasons why we should be feeling and acting on Love, but what does this mean in practice?

Here are some attributes or characteristics that we could contribute to Love…

• being kind to people
• being kind to animals
• being respectful and nourishing to nature
• being helpful to the needy
• forgiving
• Practicing non judgment
• honesty and truthfulness
• non violent
• caring
• sharing
• being in good/positive spirit
• free of anger/negativity
• taking good care of your body
   

The Love we are talking about embraces all these qualities, and can be gained through conscious choice. As mentioned already it is a different kind of love that we have for our friends, family and other loved ones. There are even different levels of love for these types. As the love for your mother or father is different than the love for your partner. Or the love for a cat or dog is often different then a human being, the love for something materialistic, love for a certain taste...there are different levels of love. The type of love we are talking about is the deepest kind, and comes the closest to the type of loving yourself. For if you love yourself, you are kind to yourself, you forgive yourself, think good thoughts about yourself...even though you know you are not perfect we allow ourselves to be imperfect without feeling negative about it. It is also mentioned in the Ible, Mark 12:28, When one of the teachers of the Law of Moses came up with something while Yahshua and the Sadducees were arguing. He heard Yahshua give a good answer, he asked him, “What is the most important commandment?”
29 Yahshua answered, “The most important one says: ‘People of Ysrayl, you have only one Lord and God.
30 You must love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.’ 31 The second most important commandment says: ‘Love others as much as you love yourself.’ No other commandment is more important than these.”
32 The man replied, “Teacher, you are certainly right to say there is only one God.
33 It is also true that we must love God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and that we must love others as much as we love ourselves. These commandments are more important than all the sacrifices and offerings that we could possibly make.”
34 When Yahshua saw that the man had given a sensible answer, he told him, “You are not far from God's kingdom".

This type of Love should motivate us to be kind, helpful and good natured, being conscious of who and what we are and the connection we have with each other.
This iception of Love is so simple (because we can all relate to loving someone, thing or our self) that it should not be too hard for people to follow this livity, but yet somehow we do find it very difficult to live by. Maybe it is because a lot of people lack in self-love and therefore can’t relate to the things mentioned above. That is where the saying “You must first love yourself, before you can love others” comes from.

Some examples of where we can see that the fullness of Love is lacking…

• How many people are eating and drinking unhealthy things, that we know are not good for us?
  As it is an act of Love to nourish and take care of the body that gives us the wonderful opportunity to live and experience life, we can see that there is some Love lacking in this area. This where the saying my body is my temple comes from… our body is a vehicle and expression of YAH that should be treated with care and Love.
• How many people are eating the flesh of animals that we know have been mistreated and have often lived a life of torture?
  Is this an act of Love we can ask? Most of us know more or less how the animals we eat get treated which is often horrifying with a total lack of respect for that living entity (a wonderful creation of YAH with the spirit of YAH in it). First of all do we really need meat to live healthy lives? Rastafari and many others have proven we can easily do without and that is actually healthier. There is enough information in this website to prove this. For the people that don't believe this, if you think meat is a necessity for a healthy life (for protein and such) that is up to you…but still, if you eat meat. You could still make a conscious and more Loving choice to eat only biological meat of which we know that the animals are treated with more respect. We know this is more expensive, but then you have the choice to eat a little less meat (let’s say 2 or 3 times a week instead of every day). The reason why you could do this is for the compassion/Love for the tortured animals that get sold in the supermarket. Making a small personal sacrifice to help others (animals in this case, that also have the gift and right of life in them) can be seen as an act of love, although we encourage not to kill anything.
• How many people usually only think of them selves and hardly ever do something good for someone else?
  Is this an act of Love? Why not share if you yourself have plenty, and you know other people are in desperate need? We overstand that when we find an opportunity to help our self through hard work or some other way, that we think of our self first (although it would be a greater act of Love if we didn’t). But there are plenty of people that have stable lives and are financially taken care of, when we are in this position it wouldn’t hurt to give a helping hand to someone else instead of spending everything on material things... There are so much nice things to buy in this world that we can always find an excuse not to help someone.
• How many people are committing adultery?
  Is this an act of Love? It shouldn’t have to take a long explanation to make people overstand that deceiving and hurting the person that we are supposed to Love the most and we are the most close to, is not an act of Love…
• How many people take hard drugs?
  This is another one that doesn’t need much explanation. With a little bit of common sense we should know these things are very bad for the human body and soul, we can all see what this does to people. Remember our body is a temple of YAH.
   

People who can identify themselves in the categories above (not to mention the thief’s, rapists, killers and drug dealers) can ask themselves if they truly overstand and live by the Iception of universal Love.

Living in Love doesn’t stop at doing something good once in a while… Truly living in Love is a Livity that is permanent and endless and has influence on multiple levels of consciousness, always inspiring people to make the Right choice over the wrong. Every day we get confronted with situations that force us to make a choice which is good or bad, or better for worse. Big or small decisions, it doesn’t matter…Every choice we make can be seen as an act of Love or lack of it, from what we eat, to how we treat the people we meet, ourselves and the environment. This might be easier said then done, but being aware of this and making the choice to learn to live this way is the first step to take and not hard at all. By consciously thinking about whatever we are doing, having made the choice to live in Love will take us through a learning experience that will take some time to fully master. Some things are easy to change…like if you are doing something that hurts yourself, someone else or nature. But after the more obvious changes have been made the path gets more narrow and the choice between good and bad gets more difficult to make.
But this is the path of Love we as Rastafari recommend, because if practiced to the fullest and long enough will cause Great Blessings for you and All…