DEFINITION
Love
- A strong positive emotion of regard and affection
- Any object of warm affection or devotion
- A beloved person; used as terms of endearment
- A deep feeling of sexual desire and attraction
- Sexual activities (often including sexual intercourse) between two people
We all know what it is to love, right? Even the most violent amongst us has loved someone in his life. Perhaps his mother, or father, or a partner. When we fall in love something magical happens doesn’t it? We can’t think straight (a good thing), and our whole being feels giddy. We just can’t focus on our work and any tasks we have to do seem like frivolous distractions compared with being in love. It uses up all of our energy, but it requires no effort. We don’t suddenly decide to be in love, when it happens it happens. No one can explain it. Sometimes the feeling lasts a lifetime sometimes just a couple of months but it is an experience we can never forget.
I have always told my girlfriends at some point that I love them (it’s something you say to make a girl feel good, right?), but without fail, the love seems to wane, and the gritty business of just being in a relationship takes over. We all have bills to worry about, our careers, our own problems, and pretty much everything else.
Life gets in the way doesn’t it? All you want to be is in love, but circumstances won’t let you just “be,” and soon the intense emotions (any strong feeling) start to fade, and all you are left with is the mundane stuff. “I think we should split up” one of you says, and that’s the end of love!
Funnily enough, when partners stop being together, other emotions kick in like hate, or at the very least, dislike. I have never understood how I can go from feeling all the love chemicals rushing around my body to having no feelings for them at all. Love seems to be such a temporary thing.
“You have to take care of love” one of my girlfriends once said to me. I never really knew what she meant, but I think what she was getting at was that I should spend more time with her, just her, and pay her some attention, but what do I know? We split up soon after that.
So what thought waves or chemicals are passed invisibly between two people to create this intense emotion we call love, which is, after all, only a man-made word? Perhaps it is just a biological process that takes place to ensure the pair bond is complete and that procreation will take place. But it “feels” like something a lot more than that doesn’t it?
When you look into somebody’s eyes (the window to the soul, someone once said to me) you can feel this intense connection, a connection that has nothing to do with words.
What is it that attracts us to each other in the first place, they say that opposites attract, but what is doing the attracting? Is it a silent chemical connection, or are waves being transmitted across the air? What do you feel like when you catch someone’s eye across a room, and they catch yours? What is connecting you? Would you feel the same way if you hadn’t held each others stare?
The eyes are indeed a window, not to the soul, but to the mind. For in effect it is the mind doing the seeing, the eyes just channel the light. And when you look into someone’s eyes for long enough, it’s like you are reading their mind. Actually, you are; and they are reading yours. Not consciously of course, but more telepathically (communicating without apparent physical signals). How else can you explain this thing called love?
My love for her
It’s strange the people you end up with. I didn’t even like her in the beginning, but the more we talked, the more our minds came closer together and we started communicating without words. I remember the first night I kissed her, we spent what seemed like an eternity looking into each others eyes. She on the top bunk of the hostel, and me standing looking at her. Suddenly it was as though there was a rush of chemicals running around my body, not in the way you have before sex, it only happened when I looked in her eyes.
And that’s the thing isn’t it? The difference between love and lust. With lust you look at the body and with love you look deep, deep into the eyes. Then I kissed her.
From that moment, I was in love. I mean really in love, I couldn’t stand to be away from her, but as time went on, and bills, and day to day stuff got in the way, it just turned into, can’t stand her. I couldn’t understand how I was losing all the feelings of love for her, to be replaced with just a mild annoyance at her presence. In the end we split up. We said we still “loved” each other, but living together was just too hard. And so I left.
I thought long and hard about where it had gone wrong but I realised that the original love had never really died. It had been awakened, and couldn’t die. This love was not a process of the mind, it couldn’t be, the mind is governed by thought. This love had been crushed by the society we chose to live in and through our actions, we had driven each other apart.
Have you ever noticed that if you are having relationship problems, having a holiday together seems to rekindle the love, only to have it dashed onto the rocks when you return home? Why do you think that is? People say that the holiday was not real life, that real life was back in the house with all the bills, but think about this with me for a moment; what is more real, two people who can be just with each other with no pressure or a society which forces people to constantly compete?
Unfortunately so many relationships are ruined by the creation of this fast moving individualistic society.
I don’t know if man and woman are supposed to stay together forever, from a biological point of view. I know that the church led creation of marriage is purely artificial. But if you find someone you love why can’t you be with them? “Outside pressures” is often cited as a reason for relationships breaking down, but surely we can create a life without these pressures?
I realised some time ago I still loved the girl whose eyes I had looked into, but I knew because of “outside pressures” we would never be together again. But the bond is still there. You can never break something that deep. Whatever we would like to think.
I want to move away from relationships for now, as I think that there is possibly something more to this love than “meets the eye” (excuse the pun). What I really want to discuss with you is love at a different level. What I mean is love that cannot be divided even by “outside pressures.” A love that bonds us all. A love that is created along with every particle in the universe. But I don’t know what it is or if it exists. I think it does. I feel that love for another individual is just one level – that there is something deeper. Maybe I am wrong, but I would like to explore it with you nonetheless in the form of a dialogue with self. Let us start.
A dialogue with love
Me: Now, I know I have called you “love,” but it is just a dialogue with myself. Is that right?
Love: You would be correct!
Me: So I’m just going to throw this question out there; is there something deeper than love for another person?
Love: Do you want there to be?
Me: Well, it would be nice, but I have just been thinking that this love shouldn’t be divided into just one man one woman that somewhere there is a love for all.
Love: Do you love all?
Me: Well, not in that way.
Love: What way?
Me: Well you know looking into someone’s eyes and kissing them and making love to them.
Love: Do you think you need to look into someone’s eyes and kiss them to love them?
Me: Well, no, well, yes, I guess so, how else do you love?
Love: (SILENCE)
Me: Ok I get it. I don’t need to look into someone’s eyes, but how will I know if I love them if I don’t get the butterflies in my stomach!
Love: That is just a physical sensation, it has nothing to do with love.
Me: Oh, Ok. Erm, so how can I love everyone else then, it’s probably a good thing to do.
Love: Do you have to know? There isn’t a method.
Me: Well I don’t know how to do it. I want to love every being on this planet but I don’t want to have to kiss them all.
Love: This is no time for jokes. You say you want to love every being, does that include all the animals and plants and trees?
Me: Yes I guess it does.
Love: You do already.
Me: Do I? Great. But it doesn’t feel like it.
Love: Like what?
Me: You know, what love is supposed to feel like.
Love: We are mixing up two things here, physical attraction to enable procreation, and love which has nothing to do with physical attraction.
Me: I see. So what does it have to do with?
Love: (silence)
Me: Look, how can I already love everyone and everything? I haven’t had time to think about it yet!
Love: Exactly. You do not need thought it just gets in the way.
Me: Ah, so love is always present but thought stops it somehow?
Love: (silence)
Me: So if I stop thinking I can love?
Love: You are love.
Me: How?
Love: Because you exist.
Me: What? I don’t understand. How can it be that simple, don’t we have to make a decision to love?
Love: Decision is thought.
Me: Ok, So say I accept your (my) advice and I agree I am love how does that help me, how does that help the world?
Love: You are not trying to force everyone to be love, you are saying that you are love. That is all, when people see that they too are love the world will help itself.
Me: Ah, so everyone needs to see this individually there’s no point in me telling everyone.
Love: Why would you, it is not the truth.
Me: Wait but you said everything was love, if that’s the case why can’t I tell people and maybe they would wake up?
Love: It is not truth.
Me: Ok, but how long do we have to wait until everyone discovers that they are love?
Love: As long as it takes.
Me: But should we just stand around and watch while people kill each other?
Love: If that is how they will learn, yes.
Me: It sounds all a bit uncompassionate to me.
Love: But can you see, love is universal, that is, it is part of everything that exists.
Me: So why can’t the scientists see it?
Love: Because scientists see with their eyes.
Me: Ok I am love, it is universal, now what?
Love: Now nothing.
Me: Is that it?
Love: I guess so, is there anything else?
Me: But I don’t understand, it can’t be that simple.
Love: But it is.
How can love for all mankind be that simple? I just can’t understand it.
Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions, maybe I misunderstood, maybe I wasn’t listening, but who was talking? Me!
Me: Look, I’m not happy with the answer. I want to know more.
Love: Stop resisting.
Me: Resisting what?
Love: Stop resisting what is.
Me: What? How can I if I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Love: You are resisting truth, you are resisting what you know to be true.
Me: Am I, am I the resistance that is stopping love?
Love: You are.
Me: So how do I stop resisting?
Love: By stopping resisting!
Me: How?
Love: Let go. And be love, it is everywhere in you.
Me: Ok.
So perhaps I am right, maybe resistance is what’s stopping us all from loving, not in the sexual way, that is biological, but universally.
And you don’t need to say I am love. Because If I am already then why mention it? That is merely division.
But if love is universal, and we are all part of the whole, then surely compassion is the same. But wait a minute I have spent this whole book splitting love and compassion into two separate words. And I know why. Because humans have divided them, they have created separation in everything. Why am I surprised that they have divided compassion and love?
But I thought love was “a strong positive emotion of regard and affection,” and compassion was “the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it,” but I must forget the dictionary definitions and focus on the whole. That is me. I am the whole. I better have a quick dialogue and check!
The end of division
Me: Hi there, me again. Look, I’ve just had this bit of insight and I wanted to run it past you.
Love: Go on.
Me: I think that love and compassion are the same, I think we have divided them just as we do with everything.
Love: Go on.
Me: Well, love is a man-made word which describes feelings for another, and I know I am love, part of the whole. And if I love someone, then I must be compassionate at the same time.
Love: I see.
Me: So if I am, love I am compassion, there is no division. There cannot be one without the other. So why have I spent a thousand pages dividing them?
Love: Because insight is a process.
Me: But should I go back and change them?
Love: Why would you? You can’t tell anyone truth. You have to find it out for yourself and even if people understand what you are saying it doesn’t mean that they are going to get the same flash of insight you did.
Me: Well I am happy.
Love: Why?
Me: Because I can now see how I am still dividing everything, even towards the end of this book!
Love: You are human, and humans love to divide.
Me: No more: I divide nothing. I am indivisible.
Love: Are you sure?
Me: Absolutely. Although there can be no absolutes can there?
Love: Why?
Me: Because it implies an end, a conclusion when there can be none, just movement.
Love: So who are you, love, or compassion? Or both?
Me: Neither. I am, that is all.
Love: You’re learning.
There is nothing left to say, I cannot tell you you are love, or that love and compassion have been divided by man, that there is no one without the other, I can only leave you these words and wish you luck on your own journey.
By alan macmillan orr
‘the natural mind – waking up’
2009
