Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Outflowing Love and Service
To put oneself in harmony with the Infinite — and draw the like back — by deliberately holding and sending out an attitude of love and rendering kindly service.
Hold love as a deliberate, all-day attitude. Silently send “Dear everybody, I love you” to everyone you meet. Look past their faults to the real self in them; refuse to judge or hate. Let the love overflow into kindly service, and teach by how you live. Love sent out, Trine says, returns as love.
What it is
Trine treats love not as sentiment but as a practical method of attunement: deliberately holding an attitude of love toward all, continually sending it out, and letting it express as “kindly service” — by which one comes into “the kingdom of harmony” and, by his attraction principle, draws the same back.
“In the degree that we love will we be loved. Thoughts are forces. Each creates of its kind.” It is the relational face of the same oneness: because all share one Life, goodwill toward another is alignment with the whole, and “love is the fulfilling of the law.” The signature drill is concrete and small: a friend of Trine’s “continually holds himself in an attitude of mind that he continually sends out his love in the form of the thought,—‘Dear everybody, I love you.’”
The Method
Faithful to Trine (In Tune with the Infinite, ch. V “The Secret, Power, and Effects of Love”):
- Adopt love as a held attitude, not a mood. Decide to live in the thought of love for all: “Live only in the thought of love for all and you will draw love to you from all.”
- Send it out continually. Use Trine’s micro-practice: silently breathe out, to all you meet (and to all the world), “Dear everybody, I love you.” He notes the thought “invariably produces its effect before it returns.”
- See the divine in each person. Look past the “evolving, changing, error-making self” to “the real, the changeless, the eternal self” — “when we thus recognize the God in every one, we. help to call it forth ever more and more.” Refuse hypocritical judging: “when we condemn another, by that very act we condemn ourselves.”
- Let love become service. Where you meet error or suffering, let “compassion. change itself into love, and love. manifest itself in kindly service.” Help the weaker “until he can stand alone.”
- Teach by living, not preaching. “By example and not by precept. By living, not by preaching. There is no contagion equal to the contagion of life.” The method is embodied conduct, not exhortation.
- Refuse the corroding opposites. Trine’s warning is part of the practice: “Put hatred into the world and we make it a literal hell. Put love into the world and heaven. becomes a reality.” Drop antagonistic thought, which “kills” both ways. (Sourcing note: all quoted phrases are Trine’s own (ch. V); steps sequence his prose into a usable practice.)
Source & Lineage
Trine fuses the Gospel ethic (“love is the fulfilling of the law,” Rom. 13:10) with New Thought’s thought-force, making love an operative spiritual technique. Contrast (don’t duplicate):
- Buddhist loving-kindness / metta is a seated radiating meditation moving through self → loved one → neutral → difficult → all beings; Trine’s is a walking-around, all-at-once attitude (“Dear everybody, I love you”) tied to his oneness/attraction metaphysics, not the metta stages.
- Atisha’s tonglen takes in suffering and sends out relief on the breath; Trine only sends love out and expects it to return — no taking-in of pain.
- The distinctive Trine note is the attraction claim (“in the degree that we love will we be loved”) and service as the natural overflow — love verified by deeds, taught by example.
Common refinements
Forced or false love. Pasting “I love everyone” over real anger is brittle. Trine’s love begins in seeing the deeper self of the other; cultivate the seeing, and feeling follows.
- Bypassing harm. “See the God in everyone” is not “tolerate abuse.” Goodwill is compatible with boundaries, justice, and walking away.
- Sentiment without service. Trine insists love “manifest itself in kindly service” — feeling without deeds is incomplete.
- Self-neglecting over-giving. Kindly service is not martyrdom; sustainable goodwill includes the self.