Love has its limitations when it is directed towards limited beings, but love directed to God has no limitations.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
If someone limits their love to a single object, saying, ‘I only love this and there is nothing else I need’, surely they have not the right kind of love either. True love is limitless. Though it begins by being limited in such a way, yet it progresses and some day breaks out. … To speak of the jealous God means that the unlimited force of love cannot allow its expression to be directed towards one limited object. That is why the love of God alone is the culmination of love, for love is as vast as God. Verily, love itself is God.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Chapter 9 – Love, Human and Divine )
The individual soul is a shoot that springs from the all-pervading Spirit, its goal being its origin; and every attachment it has on its way is, no doubt, a detaining on the journey. The soul is never fully satisfied so long as it has not reached its destination. The love of the external world is a rehearsal before the performance, which is the love of God, the Inner Being.
( from Sangatha, Series II: Tasawwuf [ unpublished ] )
People can love another human being, but by the very fact of our loving another human being we have not got the full scope. To express all the love that is there, we must love the unlimited God. One admires all that is beautiful in color, tone, or form; but everything beautiful has its limitations; it is only when one rises above limitations that one finds that perfection which is God alone.
As we give all things they come back to us through Love. The more we give, the more comes back. Love has its limitations when it is directed to limited beings, but love that is directed to God has no limitations, God alone deserves all love, and the freedom of Love is in giving it to God.
( from Sangatha, Series III: Ta’lim [ unpublished ] )
Love for one person, to whatever depth it may have reached, is limited. Perfection of love lies in its vastness. ‘The tendency of love is to expand, even from one atom to the whole universe, from a single earthly beloved to God.’ When love is for the human being it is primitive and incomplete, and yet it is needed to begin with. We can never say, ‘I love God,’ who have no love for our fellow beings. But when love attains its culmination in God, it reaches its perfection.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Directed love is like focused light. If even a little of the light of the sun is focused it starts a fire, as can be witnessed by the use of the sunglass [ ie a magnifying glass — Muiz ]. Therefore, while passion has power it is lacking in beauty and destroys either the object of passion or the one manifesting it. In love, power and beauty are in equilibrium and remain so until one is covered by the other.
In true love, whatever its plane, power and beauty are balanced, and such love brings joy although it is not sought for the sake of joy. It is life itself, and when that love, that life, and that beauty are spread out to the Omniscient God, it brings God into our being and we are, as the Bible says, gods indeed.