Love

I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.

At the ethical level, love is genuine and demonstrates its own seriousness. It is an eternal commitment, turned towards the absolute, something Kierkegaard himself experienced in his long courtship of the young Régine.

else. What we call the pain of love arises from mistaking unhealthy attachment for love. It looks like love but it’s very different. Love is a movement of the heart that opens and radiates out. Attachment is contraction of the heart as it closes in fear. “Love is not painful,” Ram Dass said with a wise smile, “and now that you know the experience o

“the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this def

All the forms of human love we discussed—affectionate love, friendship love, sexual love, and committed love—are simply responses to an outside stimulus. They are not loves that act independently of the one being loved. We find a person of the opposite sex attractive; the potential for sexual love is birthed. We see someone’s innocence or kindness,

Love can only exist in freedom. The true lover seeks the good of his beloved which requires especially the liberation of the beloved from the lover.

the true expression of our spiritual nature is love, and love isn’t what we think it is. Love is synonymous with this fierce embrace of life. Love is seeing yourself as everything and as everybody, and that seeing is not for your mind. It’s not meant for your ego. You can never see all as one with your ego. You can only see it from your essence.

Love, particularly over time, embraces all the positive aspects of friendship but love relates to the totality of the being of the other, and the surrender of the body becomes the material symbol of that totality.