It is a rare human being who can love everybody. We all want to be happy, but even though loving others brings greater happiness, we don’t love everybody equally.
In energy terms when we feel love, the vital heart centre opens. It is like a flower opening to the sun. It can give us an amazingly deep experience of joy. But sometimes the heart centre is open only a little and can even be shut tight. To love everybody is an ideal but right now we will probably find that although at times we feel loving, at others we don’t feel love at all. If we are honest with ourselves, there is just neutrality or indifference towards the majority of other people.
Why it is difficult to love everybody
There is in essence one reason for our difficulty – we see others as separate from us and as being different in nature. When we love, it is 
because we recognise in the object of our love something akin to our own nature. When we don’t love, that recognition isn’t there. There is something alien about the other person.
Beneath the veneer of our personality, we all share the same spiritual nature and the purpose of life is to find that nature within us. At times we may see it and we recognise everyone else as exactly the same as us at the very root of their being. Then a resonance occurs that can cause ripples of energy that trigger a sensation of deep joy in the heart.
So often, though, that recognition isn’t there and that lack is the cause of all conflict. Disputes, jealousy, anger and dishonesty all arise from this. All negativity and all indifference stem from this wrong view. Yet the truth is that if I give to you, I give to myself; if I take from you, I take from myself. If I love, I enrich myself; if I feel anger or hostility, I deprive myself.
How this selectiveness affects our happiness and well-being
By failing to see that everyone is of the same nature as us, the heart centre oscillates. It opens and it closes.
The effect of this is that our happiness fluctuates. When love is present, our vitality increases – we radiate energy and our aura expands; if we don’t love, they recede. This happens because love connects us to the universe; when we love, recognise and connect with others, we “plug in” to universal energy, so to speak. At other times, we run on our own batteries, which have limited life and power.
We have choice
By choosing not to love – and whatever we may think, there is a certain amount of conscious choice in it – we restrict ourselves. We decline to engage fully with life. Okay, painful experiences in the past may be the reason for some of that non-engagement; but much of it arises from apathy and selfishness. Love is passionate, fiery and outgoing and its radiance nourishes, increasing our happiness and well-being. By not loving at times, we cut ourselves off from that.
Some might argue that it’s human nature to be selective because we have been conditioned in this way. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. Indeed, we should do something about it because surely our spiritual duty in this life is to improve ourselves as human beings and so help to improve the world.
Based on an extract from The Great Little Book of Happiness available here.
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