Love

There's nothing
you can know
that isn't known
Nothing you can see
that isn't shown
There's nowhere
you can be
that isn't where
you're meant to be
It's easy
All you need is love
                                       
The Beatles
 
In the relative world of duality, love is both a noun and a verb. Generally, love the noun is thought to be affection, while love the verb is thought to be feeling and expressing that affection. There are other polarities which attempt to describe love also. We wish to discuss love in terms of another dichotomy: the contrasts between transpersonal love and personal love.

Transpersonal Love is a consciousness or One Life Awareness which lies beyond the limits of the personal experience and personal identity. This notion of love is at the foundation of everything that exists in the relative world. We could say it is the ground of being, or the energy that sparks life. We could say many things about what transpersonal love is, and we would never really describe it adequately. It is perhaps easier to identify what transpersonal love is not. Transpersonal love is not something to seek. It is not something to acquire. In truth, it is not some thing at all. It cannot be quantified, described fully, or understood intellectually. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Even if you have never heard the term transpersonal love, you know what it is. While all love is truly mysterious, you know much about it as the subject of innumerable songs, poems, books and art. You can find countless references to love in myriads of places, and know that more will be continued to be sung, written and depicted.

As we attempt to describe transpersonal love, so must we attempt to describe personal love. Most of you have some experience of “being in love.” This is most likely a feeling of affection that you connect with something other than yourself. You might then believe that you know what personal love is because you have a sense of its characteristics and a feeling you can relate to. You might believe that personal love is a particular state of being and is the result of intimate encounters with another. You might accept as true that personal love is a very special response to certain external conditions or circumstances. While all of this is true of personal love, there are many other characteristics to consider.

We suggest that personal love does not exist without a glimpse of transpersonal love being present. Without transpersonal love, the semblance of personal love is actually more like infatuation, or desire rather than true personal love, as we are identifying it. We are speaking of personal love whose nature is unconditional, and constantly reveals the potential for One Life Awareness at every turn. Personal love opens all reality doors such that unlimited possibilities for enlightened consciousness can be present at all times. Personal love, grounded in transpersonal love, arises when first you practice unconditional forgiveness and acceptance for yourself and all sentient beings. You let go of judgments and expectations and begin to see yourself reflected in everyone else and know that everyone is loved without preference or condition. Knowing that you and all beings are always loved and loving becomes the entry point into transpersonal love, which then becomes the ground of being.

You don’t need to experience personal love in order to then “graduate” to transpersonal love. Nor must you know the ins and outs of transpersonal love to experience personal love. We suggest that both transpersonal love and personal love are the starting point and the ending point simultaneously. Both arise interdependently as love.

The power of love, in its absolute nature, is within all beings. Conscious recognition of love in your life as a constant, as an is-ness that is always available, gives the power of love the ability to be expressed transpersonally  or personally without attachment to results or outcome. This power is not created by some cosmic force, nor is it created by you or any other individual self. This power is simply the allowing of all relative forms of love to be the natural and graceful expression of life as it is.

​Love is your essence and your most natural state. It is where you have come from and where you are going. There is an inevitability about love. It is reliable and trustworthy. While it is everything, it is also nothing at all. Love can be your teacher, love can be your student. Love can be your in-breath and your out-breath. Let love fill you and empty you. Be as loved as you are, and know that all love simply is, or as the Beatles once sang, "All you need is Love."

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