I‘ve been seeing a lot of posts about L-O-V-E pop up lately and would like to humbly add my interpretation to the mix. This is, after all, my favorite subject! My approach to love is philosophical, spiritual, and of course unique since each one of us understands this mysterious emotion in our own way.
We can begin by describing love as a state of being – a feeling that is tangible yet not quite physical. It is our natural state of existence. It can also be considered an idea or an inherent universal truth. For humans, it is the most intense and powerful emotion which controls all of our actions. It is the point from which all things come from and the point all things strive to get back to. Love is an energy that reigns supreme in the universe. We can not only feel it, but see it reflected in our actions and even in the actions of others. To understand and live in love is the purpose of every soul’s journey in every lifetime. We come here to find it, to create it, to experience it, and to grow more of it. Love has no limitations because it is felt by everyone. It can also be experienced by multiple people towards many other people. It is everywhere, all the time, and there can always be more of it. It’s something that can never be destroyed within our world, but can be moved from one place to another in each person’s life – intensified or lessened as the person chooses. At the same time, love holds us under its spell, controlling many of our actions depending on whether we experience an abundance or a lack of it.
There are different kinds of love!
Who was the first person you loved? Most likely it was your mom or your dad or a foster parent. Then, as you entered puberty and discovered passion and desire you discovered love for someone outside of your family. Do you remember how you loved your first love? It might have been in high school or with your first serious partner in college. Maybe it’s the person you were finally able to come out to. Now think of a different partner that you loved - your second or third one if you had them. The feeling was slightly different for each, right? One might've been fiery and sexual. Another relationship may have been sweet and stable. That’s because all love is not created equal. It’s intensity, energy, and quantity depends on many factors – how emotionally evolved you are in that relationship, how much you trust the other person, how your energies connect and interact with each other, how vulnerable both of you are choosing to be, etc. In some cases, it is a contract that you created with another soul prior to reincarnation to go through a journey together and learn what you need to learn to advance to the next stage of your life. So, the way you feel love for others depends on many factors and can vary in intensity or type. Here, I would like to expand on just four of the major types of love:
1. Spiritual Love
Above all is the love that God has for us. He is our immaterial Father, our Creator, and the Source of this powerful feeling. The question “What would it feel to be loved by Love itself?” comes to mind and that is truly how God “acts” towards us. His love is unconditional for He Himself is unconditional. God, unlike us, creates for the sake of creating. We may believe that we are capable of doing the same, but when we create something, such as write a book or paint a portrait we’re usually doing it for reasons that revolve around ourselves. It may be to earn money, to become famous, to have our thoughts expressed in our favorite medium, to learn how to explain something properly. We also sometimes love for specific material reasons - because they treat us well, because we feel like we have to, because we need them. It doesn’t mean that this kind of love is bad, because love by definition cannot be bad. It just means that we use this feeling for our own unique purposes to enrich our lives in one way or another. The amazing thing is that we are capable of loving unconditionally, just like God, although most of the time we choose not to. We have the ability to look at another person, an animal or just nature itself and feel love for them just because they exists, as they are – faults and everything.
The second most powerful kind of love is the one we feel towards God. It may not be true for all people and definitely not true all the time, but if we do choose to love God fully it is a kind of love that cannot be described or understood by others. Of course every kind of love is unique to the person who feels it, but the general concept is recognized. The fact remains that by loving God we essentially love everything and everyone. God is all around us, within us, and beyond us. His creations are our world and when we focus all those good intentions and feeling on Him we are sending out that energy into our world, creating more love for everyone and everything. If you have ever stood on a top of a mountain, gazed out across a lake, laid in a field, or sat in the forest and felt that pure and peaceful awe of the nature around you, you have experienced love for God and His Creation.
2. Self-Love
To love one-self is to love others. Love starts from God, but due to free will it is our own personal choice of whether we want to accept that love or not. If we do, it starts with ourselves as we must accept all our virtues and imperfections and understand that we are an important part of this world. If we do not have God guiding us to this realization, then it is our own soul helping us a long. Without each of us, the world would be significantly different, less unique and incomplete. No matter what, we must remember that we will always be forgiven and that we deserve the love we receive. We just have to learn how to accept that love and how to give it back, starting with giving it back to ourselves. If we can’t learn to love ourselves then our insecurities will penetrate and reflect in all of our relationships. When we do fully embrace ourselves - that is when our true power is unleashed as we make more and more decisions that benefit ourselves and those around us. Love for yourself is the greatest gift you can give humanity. It serves as the moral compass that will lead you to create miracles for the world that only you are capable of.
3. Family Love
Another amazing version of love is love for your children. I have not had the pleasure of fully understanding this kind of love, but when people talk about the connection they have to their children it’s impossible to not feel how much energy is transferred from one to the other. Because love is energy, it can be felt physically. You can actually feel this if you’re near a parent and their child. You can understand it without experiencing the same kind of affection for the child in particular, but just observing. That force connects us creators to our creations. We hold a universal responsibility to care for these beings until they are able to navigate the 3rd dimension without our help. A parent’s love is so strong, that many will give up almost anything for the safety and well being of their offspring. A parent’s love is the kind of love that can change the world in an instant and it is the driving force for the kind of people that grow up in each generation.
You can feel the same kind of love for anyone in your family. Sibling love is a particularly strong bond that stays with you throughout your lifetime. You often feel closer to the souls who are in your family because those are the souls that you have traveled with throughout many lifetimes. There are also cases when a soul is thrust into a completely new group of people so they can learn new lessons from each other. Ever met someone who is the archetype of a black sheep in their family? That soul has taken on a responsibility to provide new experiences and new challenges to a group of souls that may have gotten stuck in their ways. The more experiences you share with your siblings, the stronger your bond becomes and the more love you can create and share with each other. Of course much of this love comes from childhood memories, for things you’ve done for each other, sometimes even just for the fact that you know you are related to them. Long lost relatives often find that they already love each other even though they are essentially strangers. Growing up with someone solidifies your trust in them, since you know their past and their character, which makes it easier to forgive transgressions. Both are components necessary for love to bloom.
Love for your friends comes from building and putting hard work into those relationships. People often say that you love what you put your heart and soul into and that is very true for the people you interact with on a daily basis and the people you confide in. Friendships can often be safe havens for people who might not have gotten the same amount of acceptance from their family, peers in school, or society in general. Friendships tend to break the chains of judgment. You may meet a person with whom your share only one thing; over the years you begin to accept their opposing opinions and then you realize that you love them for being exactly who they are, and even more so because they are so different from you.
4. Romantic Love
The love that most people think off and focus on is of course romantic love for your partner. True love like that is one of the most powerful loves that we can experience in our human existence. Some people may not tune in to the love between them and God, although it is always present, and some may choose to not have children. Some grow up in abusive households or without family which makes it harder for them to trust others or maybe they were never taught how to show their love. Romantic love though; that is something that each of us can find as long as we are fully open to it.
We may not always fully understand love logically, but that is because it is more emotional than logical. We can speculate on how it comes about within the human body or infer its true purpose, but we can never really know what it is beyond how it makes us feel and how it reflects throughout the universe. Romantic love is something that we have no control over because it comes so suddenly with people that our rational mind accepts as strangers. Sometimes it appears quickly, other times we realize months into the relationship. True love is inexplicably connected to our soul. Soul mate love, which is what humans strive to find, is the closest love we can experience as humans that reminds us of where we come from. If you believe the theories that we are pieces of God or are parts of the oneness of the universe, then it’s easy to understand how our desire to completely connect to another person or another soul makes us feel closer to that “home place” beyond this life. We like our partner for the many different qualities they possess. We respect them for their morals and actions. We love them because we love them.
There is no true explanation that can suffice when you love another person. It is a feeling that brings your spirit so high that you feel like you’re floating outside of your body in a sea of pure bliss. It’s a feeling of complete wholeness where that part that you never even knew was missing inside you is filled to the brim. It is a feeling of security, of someone always having your back even if you do separate in the future for other reasons. Love is such a powerful emotion that when it overtakes you there is nothing that can be done to stop it and no one should ever want too. At times it can even be overwhelming, but the rewards are worth the sacrifices, the connection is worth the struggles.
The Human Component
The human component of love is how we love each individual person and how different all those loves are. It is also about how you show that you love someone through your actions. You cannot love one partner exactly the same as another because they are not the same, and neither is the love you feel for each of them. The same goes for the different ways you love your siblings and your parents, or friends. There are certain degrees to love, and each is unique just like every person is unique. The important thing is that it is still love at its core. No matter how you show it or for what reasons, love is the emotion that bonds you to your people and to all people.
Once you embrace love, it grows more and more into a magical and powerful force that brings abundance and joy into your life. Love is perfection that should continuously be shared between people. The biggest courtesy a person can give back to the world is to love everyone unconditionally. When we choose to love strangers, without any expectations of being loved back or a feeling of obligation because we think that we need to be “better” people in some way, is the highest form of unconditional love. When we desire to love others just for the fact that they share our world and exist in this universe is when we are truly doing what we were put on this Earth to do. And with all the mysterious ways love weaves itself into our lives, we owe it to ourselves to accept it and share it by including love in everything that we say and do.
Image credit: Pixabay open source
The family photo is my own :)