Love is a much bandied around word. Yet I suspect not many people really understand what it means to them personally.
It is easy to say “I love you” and when we hear these words we feel so good. On a practical level those words affect us emotionally. They makes us feel appreciated, valued and of worth to others.
So what is it about these simple words that gives them so much power?
The reason we use these words is that we want to reciprocally hear and feel their powerful effect for ourselves when uttered by another. The effect that these simple words have is not so much different from the effect that other external stimulators can have on our senses and feelings.
Love is a drug!
Yet it is our personal power that we give away when we rely on others for approval and acceptance. The person we express our love to feels that power and enjoys it. It makes them feel good particularly if they are unable to generate those feelings for themselves.
However, apart from how expressions of love make us feel physiologically any “notion or attempt to define love” can only be a construct of the mind. It will mean different things to different people. So when you express your love to another that other’s perspective of love and what you are conveying to them may be completely different from yours.
This is where much conflict arises in personal relationships. We assume that others feel and interpret things in the same way and when we discover that this not the case we feel hurt and betrayed.
Yet this is a self-inflicted hurt or betrayal caused by misunderstanding.
Yet where there is love there is also hate. They are two sides of the same coin. Carried to the extreme neither is good. Too much love and we feel suffocated and controlled. Too much hate and we feel separate, isolated and unworthy.
There is always a problem for us if we become attached to others approval. You can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time! The only person you should be focussed on pleasing is yourself (self-love) – that at least you have some control over.
Being responsible for ourselves is a priority if we want to feel self-love.
When we are not centered in ourselves then we can fall prey to all sorts of attractions. If we are focussed in one polar extreme we can be sure that we will be attracted to and attractive to another person who is focussed in the opposite extreme. The attraction or chemistry as some like to call it is based on the finding of balance outside of ourselves through relationship to another.
It is this feeling that we experience that we label “being in love”. When we love another we feel whole in their company. We see what we want to see. However, such an experience will only be short-lived as we are relying on someone outside of ourselves to generate it.
When the “Honeymoon” period is over we start to see the other person minus the rose tinted glasses warts and all. Suddenly we start to think that maybe we are not in love after all! We then begin the search for another person to love and so the cycle repeats.
“Real Love” which is not a mental construct is something which we can all experience when we accept that we are all perfect just as we are (warts and all).
When we can accept ourselves regardless of the opinions of others we develop compassion for ourselves and all of humanity. That is “Real Love”