It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud.
The realization of Truth and Reality can never be created by the mind ... it always comes as a gift of grace. Inquiry clears away misperceptions and illusions, making one available to the movements of grace.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.