What is Love?

[Siemens]

Hi,

I’m thinking about spiritual themes since decades. One of the questions I’ve been thinking about is: What is love?

I come to the following conclusions:
(1) Love is smaller than Happiness. Because the purpose of all life is the pursuit of happiness and love is just one type of happiness beside many other forms. So Love is a subset of happiness.
(2) How should we then define love? Apparently, love is just a state of consciousness. A state defined by two features: First it feels good. Love is primarily a feeling that is pleasurable. Although it would seem that the other person we love generates this feeling in us, the “love-feeling” is created to 99% within the individual itself. The second constituting element of love is that the individual who is experiencing love has the wish to care about the loved individual or entity.

Love = a good feeling + the wish to care about someone or something else.

In the case of personal love “someone” could be our husband, wife, kid, parent, sibling, friend, neighbour ....
In the case of universal love the “something” could be the planet, humankind, or universe.

[Heatherkey]

Surely the purpose of all life is procreation and preservation of the species. Reading your definition of love, the care that you mention would serve that purpose better than a pursuit of happiness could.
I am interested in how you would define happiness.

[inavalan]

Neither love, nor happiness are the purposes of life (procreation either). Both of them are emotions, and they exist only accompanied by their dual negative emotions, including the worst (counterproductive) one: fear.

The widely recommended "unconditional love" is, supposedly, a non-dual state of awareness, that should preclude the genesis of dual emotions, and ultimately the fear.

In the universal evolvement there is a progression: instinct, emotion, intellect, intuition. Each form of physical materialization is centered somewhere on that scale.

[Heatherkey]

Inavalan, those steps of prgression notions along with ideas of there being a purpose for all life change when viewed with intuition.

[Dargor]

The only kind of love I know is parental love. But since humans are like animals, I suppose it's only natural to care for your offspring. Besides that, I don't believe in other forms of love.

[Rawnrr]

Love is a glimpse of the experience of unity with another aspect of this world.
It comes from the spiritual experience of oneness beyond the ego where we are all part of the same undivided energy. But in the physical world we are only able to catch this experience in small doses due to ego and distraction.

[dybmh]

Question: What is Love?

It's a very good question. The concept of Love, in my opinion, is one of the fundemental building blocks of existence.

I think that Love is best defined as energy which is: Nurturing, Feeding, Giving.

Love can be both constructive or destructive. Healthy constructive Love is generally what is meant by the Christian concept: God is Love. This healthy constructive Love is usually easy for people to imagine because most people experience healthy constructive Love from their parents.

However, there is unhealthy destructive love as well. This can be described as smothering, obsession, and dominance.

From my life experience, I think that the way to maintain healthy constructive Love and to prevent unhealthy destructive love is to balance Love with Respect ( aka Restraint ).

Unbridled Human Love without limits seems to trend towards obsession and dominance. While Love that is balanced with Respect and Restraint do not.

That is my opinion on "What is Love"?

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by SlayerOfLight

The only kind of love I know is parental love. But since humans are like animals, I suppose it's only natural to care for your offspring. Besides that, I don't believe
in other forms of love.

That's interesting. I have never experienced love too (except a kind of parental love). But I believe something like love does exist because else other people wouldn’t make such a big deal out of the issue.

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by Heatherkey

I am interested in how you would define happiness.

Happiness is the condition a conscious being would chose self-motivated.

Originally Posted by Heatherkey

Surely the purpose of all life is procreation and preservation of the species. Reading your definition of love, the care that you mention would serve that purpose better than a pursuit of happiness could.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Procreation can’t be a purpose if the ultimate purpose weren’t happiness. Without happiness what should procreation be good for?

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by inavalan

Neither love, nor happiness are the purposes of life (procreation either). Both of them are emotions, and they exist only accompanied by their dual negative emotions, including the worst (counterproductive) one: fear.

I didn’t say that happiness is the purpose but “pursuit of happiness” is the purpose of all material life.

Originally Posted by inavalan

The widely recommended "unconditional love" is, supposedly, a non-dual state of awareness, that should preclude the genesis of dual emotions, and ultimately the fear.

If you claim that the pursuit of unconditional love is the purpose of material life, I would say: unconditional love is a form of happiness. I define happiness as the condition a conscious being wants to experience most or that feels best.