What is Love?

What is Love?

Love. You will say this word thousands of times in your life, but are you really sure you know its full meaning? I remember experiencing a lot of confusion for many years about the concept, because I unconsciously confused love with things that are only aspects of love or things that are not even representations of love at all. But I was used to believing a certain idea. 

Perhaps it's easier to understand what I want to convey if I first explain what love is not :

Love is not sex. This may seem obvious, but I remember that when I was a teenager this was not at all clear. And I continue to meet mature people  who believe that a strong sexual attraction means love. Sexual attraction is the chemistry of bodies. The sexual understanding experienced by a couple who love each other is made up of much more than simple attraction; it is made up of respect, attention and care for the other. Sexual attraction alone does not produce love; more often it produces attachment and dependence on the other.

Love is not sacrifice. When I listen to people telling me that they are doing everything for someone else forgetting themselves, their needs and desires, my heart trembles, because I learned myself that this is the most direct way to annihilate yourself. Love does not require sacrifices, or giving up yourself for others. Love is the celebration of the fullness of yourself in relation to others. Love does not require you to fit in, to shrink in order to not hurt someone else, to dim your light so as not to obscure someone, to avoid expressing yourself for the good of the family.

Love is not possession. Considering anything as a possession puts your mind, which have a desire to control everything, at peace. But love is choosing in full freedom every day to be at someone else's side because this is the best way to be fully yourself. And when you realise that it is no longer so because you are suffocating or you are suffocating them, you should be able to question your relationships (not only romantic, but also family relationships and friendships).

Love is not addiction. When you can't live without someone else, in most cases it's not because you love them so much, but because you don't love yourself enough. You are not yet fully aware of your power, your abilities, your true identity, and the other is a crutch to lean on that makes you feel more confident. It is different when you are absolutely aware of your ability to live alone, but you choose to be with someone else because this relationship has the power to amplify your happiness.

But then what is love?

Love is an energetic vibration that your body perceives as pleasure, as excitement, as contentment, as wholeness, as joy. It is an expansive vibration that takes you outside the boundaries of your body and drives you to open yourself to something greater than you. It is "I choose" instead of  "I should" . It is a reminder to remember your connection with the “all that is” that you have forgotten. The love of a couple is in its small way a representation of this: when you are deeply in love with someone you forget yourself and you are projected into a larger dimension beyond your finite body and your needs.

Love is the vital energy that circulates in your body, which has allowed you to exist and continues to feed you, to make you grow and learn. Love is the only thing that truly exists and it the blueprint of the entire Universe. We are all expressions of love and no one is without it, otherwise we could not exist. How you manifest this love is what defines you. Even the most seemingly evil person in the world is not without love. They have just become disconnected, chosen not to tune into that frequency anymore; they have stopped believing and listening to it.

Love is the energy that allows us to communicate without words with our pets, to enter into deep harmony with nature, that moves us to tears in front of a sunset or a starry sky. It is harmony, peace, wonder, joy.

Love is the energetic frequency that, we are discovering, can heal the physical body, because it restores balance where we have created chaos with our unconscious beliefs and choices. We just need to love our bodies back to health. 

There are many conditionings that distance us from representing the love that we are. The most powerful are fears. When we learn to listen to our fears, all our decisions and actions depend on them and invariably distance us from love. The more frightened we are, the more incapable we become of loving unconditionally. 

If you are interested in understanding how much you are capable of love, really question yourself about your fears and you will have that answer.

(pics credits Steve Halama for Unsplash)