Love,
An image, a video, a story, or anything that describes love to you.
3 Likes
An emotion with many tinges among humans. English is a bit lacking, the classic example is Ancient Greek. I suspect Sanskrit and many other languages have useful ways to describe it.
As far as truly understanding what another being experiences, languages can only be an asymptote at best. English words I’d associate with love are understanding, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, ect.
The most intense forms of love are likely beyond our normal waking experiences. What is likely only a taste can be found in various descriptions of experiences such as those that can occur in “hyper real” states of consciousness reached during out of body, so called, experiences arrived at via spiritual practices and a state of change called death. Entheogens are the easiest route for me personally, but you do you.
Love can also be simulated via psychoactive chemicals that do not induce hyper reality, but synthetic feeling, uh, feelings that can feel quite good. A primary driver of the chemical experience of love is oxytocin; mdma, for example, releases dopamine, adrenaline, but mostly serotonin into your presynaptic clefts. This rise in serotonin then causes surges of oxytocin that promote extreme bonding with entities you may otherwise find objectionable at events like Burning Man.
Long lasting love is chemically tied to endorphins which are endogenous opioids. Our dysfunctional society creates, in many, a lack of connection in general, friendships, community, meaning, and family. This separation often causes pain and anger and the effects on social mammals are profound. This pain is then often medicated synthetically. However, the end of a long term relationship can actually cause withdrawal. This can cause physical heart disease. Deficits in more shallow forms of love produce cravings and sometimes acts of public indecency.
I’d hypothesize the highest form of love would be oneness or fusion, which is appropriate for this venue.
“ 1. Eros, or sexual passion
The first kind of love was eros, named after the Greek god of fertility, and it represented the idea of sexual passion and desire. But the Greeks didn’t always think of it as something positive, as we tend to do today. In fact, eros was viewed as a dangerous, fiery, and irrational form of love that could take hold of you and possess you—an attitude shared by many later spiritual thinkers, such as the Christian writer C. S. Lewis.
Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks. Which is odd, because losing control is precisely what many people now seek in a relationship. Don’t we all hope to fall “madly” in love?
2. Philia, or deep friendship
The second variety of love was philia or friendship, which the Greeks valued far more than the base sexuality of eros. Philia concerned the deep comradely friendship that developed between brothers in arms who had fought side by side on the battlefield. It was about showing loyalty to your friends, sacrificing for them, as well as sharing your emotions with them. (Another kind of philia, sometimes called storge, embodied the love between parents and their children.)
We can all ask ourselves how much of this comradely philia we have in our lives. It’s an important question in an age when we attempt to amass “friends” on Facebook or “followers” on Twitter—achievements that would have hardly impressed the Greeks.
3. Ludus, or playful love
While philia could be a matter of great seriousness, there was a third type of love valued by the ancient Greeks, which was playful love. Following the Roman poet Ovid, scholars (such as the philosopher A. C. Grayling) commonly use the Latin word ludus to describe this form of love, which concerns the playful affection between children or casual lovers. We’ve all had a taste of it in the flirting and teasing in the early stages of a relationship. But we also live out our luduswhen we sit around in a bar bantering and laughing with friends, or when we go out dancing.
Dancing with strangers may be the ultimate ludic activity, almost a playful substitute for sex itself. Social norms may frown on this kind of adult frivolity, but a little more ludus might be just what we need to spice up our love lives.
4. Agape, or love for everyone
The fourth love, and perhaps the most radical, was agape or selfless love. This was a love that you extended to all people, whether family members or distant strangers. Agape was later translated into Latin as caritas, which is the origin of our word “charity.”
C.S. Lewis referred to it as “gift love,” the highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of mettā or “universal loving kindness” in Theravāda Buddhism.
There is growing evidence that agape is in a dangerous decline in many countries. Empathy levels in the U.S. have declined sharply over the past 40 years, with the steepest fall occurring in the past decade. We urgently need to revive our capacity to care about strangers.
5. Pragma, or longstanding love
The use of the ancient Greek root pragma as a form of love was popularized by the Canadian sociologist John Allen Lee in the 1970s, who described it as a mature, realistic love that is commonly found amongst long-established couples. Pragma is about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance. There is in fact little evidence that the Greeks commonly used this precise term themselves, so it is best thought of as a modern update on the ancient Greek loves.
The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we expend too much energy on “falling in love” and need to learn more how to “stand in love.” Pragma is precisely about standing in love—making an effort to give love rather than just receive it. With about a third of first marriages in the U.S. ending through divorce or separation in the first 10 years, we should surely think about bringing a serious dose of pragma into our relationships.
6. Philautia, or love of the self
The Greek’s sixth variety of love was philautia or self-love. And clever Greeks such as Aristotle realized there were two types. One was an unhealthy variety associated with narcissism, where you became self-obsessed and focused on personal fame and fortune. A healthier version enhanced your wider capacity to love.
The idea was that if you like yourself and feel secure in yourself, you will have plenty of love to give others (as is reflected in the Buddhist-inspired concept of “self-compassion”). Or, as Aristotle put it, “All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man’s feelings for himself.”
The ancient Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people—friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even themselves. This contrasts with our typical focus on a single romantic relationship, where we hope to find all the different loves wrapped into a single person or soul mate. The message from the Greeks is to nurture the varieties of love and tap into its many sources. Don’t just seek eros, but cultivate philia by spending more time with old friends, or develop ludus by dancing the night away.
Moreover, we should abandon our obsession with perfection. Don’t expect your partner to offer you all the varieties of love, all of the time (with the danger that you may toss aside a partner who fails to live up to your desires). Recognize that a relationship may begin with plenty of eros and ludus, then evolve toward embodying more pragma or agape.”
So, in English, love is a fuzzy word.
Here is love then in pictorial form:
Still looking? Furvert! I am infinite fuzziness. Judge me by my density, do you? I am unveiled. It is you who bow before me to pick up my excrement. One eye I browned, one blue to have infinite wisdom and magic. You are beset by the twin thieves of the present moment, past and future. I always fully enjoy and I enjoy manipulating you into thinking I serve you when it is I who truly hold the leash. It is Fenrir who shall devour the Earth. I am the lord, your dog.
4 Likes
that was Beautiful,
Much 
to you and your companions ~
2 Likes
Ra includes love in the Law of Confusion in the Law of One. My guess is that Ra is talking about relative love here. With relative love we have polarities like love vs fear.
Absolute Love on the other hand is the love of the One reality. It would be really paranoid if the One was afraid of itself so absolve Love has no opposites.
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” - 1 John 4:16-18
5 Likes
I always turn to the poets for help on the big stuff :).
From Rilke… I see love as the speaker in this one.
I am, you anxious one.
Don’t you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can’t you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn’t my longing ripened in you
from the beginning
as fruit ripens on a branch?I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting.
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.
And this is a part of a poem by David Whyte…
Much has been said about the eternal
and untouchable nature of love,
its tidal ungovernable forces
and its emergence from far beyond
the ordinary, but love may find
its fullest, most imagined
and most courageous form
when it leaves the abstractions
and safety of the timeless
and the untrammeled
to make its promises
amidst the fears, vulnerabilities,
and disappearances of our difficult,
touchable and time bound world.
The second to me speaks of finding love in the moment.
3 Likes