Affinity

"Knowledge is the basis of true affinity in life."

"Relationship is the experience of self-expression and affinity."

"What is real intimacy but the ability to experience affinity? What is affinity but the ability to join your life and mind with others?"

Affinity with God

"If you are experiencing true affinity, inclusion and happiness, you are experiencing God."

"Whenever you experience real affinity or recognition with another, you are validating God."

"Your relationship with God is not based upon ideas. It is based upon the experience of affinity and purpose."

"Bodies and objects are either likeable or not, depending upon your criteria for judgment. As a result, it is more difficult to experience affinity and real relationship with a body or an object than it is with the Presence. When you project images or judgments upon the Presence, they have nowhere to attach themselves.

In essence, this means that you can relate to God far more easily than you can relate to yourself, to other people, to physical objects, to the world or to the universe. Because God is a Presence, you can experience affinity with God far more immediately and completely."

"God is a pure experience of relationship because God is a pure experience of affinity. This is a pure experience of shared power. This is a pure experience of the right order of authority in your life. It is a pure experience of love and inclusion. If your desire for this relationship is strengthened and if your capacity to experience this relationship is gradually expanded, then you will be able to experience this affinity with God within your meaningful relationships with others and with the world."

"You find God in a pure impulse, in a timeless moment of recognition, in the desire to act beyond the sphere of your own personal interests and motives, in the recognition of another, in the motive to give, in the inexplicable experience of affinity."

Knowledge and affinity

"As you experience true affinity in relationship with another and experience a greater purpose together, you will validate and verify your purpose for coming into the world."

"The experience of affinity with life and affinity with another, the experience of a greater motivation in life to exert a greater effort or to reach a goal that must be accomplished, however undefined in the moment—these are the evidence of Knowledge."

Love and affinity

Love "is an experience of affinity and shared identity."

"Love is the result of experiencing affinity and you cannot experience affinity with yourself if you are separate from life itself."

Affinity and greater relationship

"When you learn to experience affinity with others, you will gain access to your impersonal mind, and you will see that it contains a greater love, a greater contribution, a greater comprehension and a greater expression than your personal mind."

"Your Inner Teachers will help to cultivate and nourish these growing associations so that your experience of spiritual presence and your ability to experience affinity with other people may grow."

"You cannot join with people at random. Your piece of the puzzle will not fit with theirs. Though you may greatly love one another and have a great sense of affinity and spiritual resonance, the relationship will not have this greater dimension."

"Your capacity to experience relationship and affinity and your capacity to express yourself constructively with people must be cultivated first in order for you to wisely and successfully encounter intelligent life in the Greater Community. Building this capacity will enable you in the future to have a direct encounter both with your Inner Teachers and with your Spiritual Family."

"You do not need to feel an affinity with the Greater Community or even to believe in it to come to the understanding that your purpose is related to it."

Wisdom training and affinity

Wisdom

"is for you who feel an affinity with all life and who have a sense that your life and your purpose extend far beyond the immediate circumstances of your individual existence here. It is meant for you who feel and long for a deeper affinity with another, who seek relationships that are meaningful and permanent, relationships that have a greater context and a greater capacity for self-expression and for shared affinity."

See also

Desire and Capacity

Grandiosity

Relationships of higher purpose

Spiritual advancement

Theology

Further study

• Relationships and Higher Purpose, Chapter 1: Your Most Primary Relationship