What Is Love?

Here is an exploration of spiritual love, a mortal attempt to bring the great intangible into practical and concrete words. Enjoy!

Love is so big! It is the most powerful energy in this universe, and because of that it is difficult to put it into words, to grasp its grandiosity.

Love is consciousness, which is different from the energy of romantic love we tend to focus on when we talk about love.

Consciousness brings awareness and the possibility of zooming out and seeing things from above. 

We tend to live in our own single perspective of life, and that everyone who goes against us is not loving us. Yet, love as consciousness has such a bigger picture of everything, a much greater understanding of what is and isn’t for us.

Love is caring. I love saying that fear worries and love cares, and that’s a huge practical difference, but a difference few perceive: can you care- but not worry?

Nurturing

Love wants more love and life to emerge, it wants love and life to thrive and grow!

And so, the best metaphor I can come up with to illustrate love is that love is an energy of nurture — like nurturing a plant.

If you have a plant at home you know that each plant has different needs to thrive. Some need a lot of water, others need little. S

Yet, regardless of how much water or how much sun the plant needs, there is a balance. A plant can die if it doesn’t get the water it needs — but it can also die because it was overwatered.

Meaning that if we think love is a fixed thing, like being always nice and saying yes to everything, we can, in fact kill it. 

Love as consciousness brings an understanding of what is needed. It is this understanding that is caring and nurturing.

It is through our fears and lack of consciousness that we end up overwatering — not watering the plant at all.

Love won’t overwater the plant, because love wants the plant to thrive. Love knows the dosage. 

The consciousness of love brings oneness and connection — differently from fear and worries, which bring separation. 

Is Love to Always Say YES?

We tend to think love is to always say yes, that if we love someone we should give this person everything. But is that really love? Or is that a distorted version of love?

Our emotional wounds make it very hard for us to see love clearly. Fear distorts our hearts. 

Think about a parent that has a child who wants ice cream all the time. Would a loving parent say yes and give all the ice cream in the world? Or would the parent be aware that this is not nurturing the child, and so say no, enough?

Love is not always saying yes, and allowing anything. Love is nurturing so that love and life can grow. 

Nurturing your child
Nurturing yourself
Nurturing your partner
Nurturing your family 
Nurturing everything you care about so it can thrive
Nurturing your relationship with your partner as a third entity created between the two of you

There are many dimensions to care about that are interdependent — which understandably increases the complexity of love (especially when we are living in our minds). 

We look for certainty, as in “love is always food on the table” or “displays of affection”. Sure, we all have different ways of expressing our love, but they don’t have to be rigid. 

Love as consciousness and understanding requires discernment because every situation is a different situation in terms of what is nurturing.

That’s right: what is nurturing changes. Yet, we want ready-made answers, and our expectations to be fulfilled- but love is too big for that. This is why it can be so difficult for us to grasp love. 

Especially when we often act from our own fears and insecurities, and not from a place of nurturing. Love is expansive, and not fearful. 

Our emotional wounds in our emotional body act as a knot that prevents us from being in our hearts. 

Love can be nice, and love can also be firm and say no.
Love can be peaceful, and love also knows how to protect what needs protection. 

If someone we love is being attacked, would we just sit and watch? Love can fight to protect what it loves — and love also knows when to let it go. 

Love is brave and love is powerful. Remember, it is the strongest energy in this universe! 

Love can make tough choices and stand for them.

We are perfect as we are — and we need to grow

Here’s the duality in our human experience of love: we are perfect as we are and we need to grow.

If we say only we are perfect as we are, we stay in stagnation. Yet, there is no such thing as stagnation – in fact, stagnation leads to contraction.

We need to grow and heal our wounds, so we can live in joy and live our purpose. Yet, not in a way that is harsh, that only cares about creating and growing and not enjoying and smelling the flowers. 

Sometimes, it is self-loving to take a break and rest.
Other times, the best thing we can do, out of self-love, is to get out of bed and work on our dreams and surrender to the work.

Self-love is not cutting ourselves slack all the time, with constant gratification. This is nothing ego preventing us from being who we are at a soul level.

Love has a deeper understanding beyond what we want right now, for it is nourishing, it wants us to grow, ongoing.

That’s why sometimes we as children get upset with our parents for not giving us ice cream. As adults, we need to know that allowing ourselves to eat ice cream all the time is not good and not self-loving.

Self-love is not shopping, constantly going on massages and forever resting. There’s no such thing that is constantly a manifestation of love. 

Self-love is much bigger than that: it derives from its longing for us to flourish. 

Self-love is to do that which will nurture us, so we can thrive and expand our love consciousness. If what we need now is to rest, to recharge for the next step of growth, then we rest. Other times, what we need is to stop giving ourselves excuses and do what we came here for.

Love, as consciousness, with its greater understanding, requires honesty. Truth serves love, and we can’t act on love when we refuse to see things for what they are. 

To learn more about what spiritual growth is, get my free guide “What Is Spiritual Growth?”