October 28, 2018
By Steve Beckow
What is it about love that makes it universally respected and desired?
If my memory serves, the most hardened criminals, in their deepest confessions (Hollywood and otherwise), are often cited as saying, “I just wanted to be loved.”
As a Sociology graduate student, I did a study of love songs. It seemed to me that no other theme was as widely taken up in music. Closely followed by falling out of love, watching my love walk away, losing my love to another, etc.
Why love?
I can only speak for myself, but for me love has to be far and away the most satisfying … state of being … I don’t even know what to call it? It’s more than a feeling. It isn’t a thing.
It is something I experience. It comes from inside of me, in its most noticeable flow. Everything is love so it can come from outside too.
It pays no attention to my body. It isn’t restricted to flowing in blood vessels or passing along the surface of my skin. It comes up with no attention to the physical. Therefore it isn’t generated by any physical organ like the physical heart.
It isn’t even generated by the spiritual heart (not the heart chakra). It comes up through the spiritual heart, from an unknown source. Is it the Self? The Mother? The One? Ultimately it must be the One.
The door of the spiritual heart (hridayam) opens and love can then be felt to flow.
Love does flow. Where? Well, it flows everywhere. I get the benefit of it as it flows up from my heart, through me, and out to the world.
The touch of this more-refined and more-powerful love is transformative. In ordinary love, if anger arises, it overtakes the love. In transformative love, if anger arises, it cannot get close to this love. If it tries to approach, it instantly disappears. Higher love transforms the circumstances rather than being affected by them.
I suppose all of us have some experiences or prior knowledge of love because, when the word is spoken, in my recollection, almost everyone defers to it or pays respect to it. I have not known anyone who has spat on the ground and said, “Love? What a load of sawdust.” Somebody done somebody wrong, perhaps, by walking away. But no disrespect for love itself.
I’m willing to assert, until disproven, that love is universally sought after.
I already described how love feels to me in another article. (1) There is nothing objectionable about love. (2) Real love, when it comes, upstages everything else and holds our attention for as long as it’s present. It leaves us hungering for more when it leaves.
We study depression and anxiety, but we don’t study love. Someday we will, simply because it’s a condition we’ll live in 24/7 and we’ll all be endlessly rich in it.
Footnotes
(1) “In the face of [this kind of love], fear vanishes into thin air. I’m brought to a complete standstill, no longer on guard against anything.
“Drawing more love up into the space causes me to feel wafted aloft. I drift in this experience of love completely comfortable.
“Imagine all the things people have ever done for you to make you comfortable – pillows, temperature, tucked in. Imagine them all being done for you at once now. Complete comfort.
“Now introduce into that space the most desirable in every sense. The best flavor, aroma, feel, etc. That’s what this kind of love is like – the best in every respect. Every sense, every inclination always already satisfied, by this kind of love.” (“The Quickest Way,” October 27, 2018, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/?p=296695.)
(2) Unrequited love hurts but that has nothing to say about love itself.
Source: Golden Age of Gaia