What Love Isn’t
To ask the question ‘what is love’, let us first look at what love is not.
Love is not an emotion. It is not something that comes and goes based on external circumstance. Love isn’t something earned, paid for, or manipulated.
The common belief is that you can give love from ‘here to there’ – but it isn’t something you provide, and it isn’t something you receive because that means that there is always something to lose. That belief brings about fear as it does with anything of fleeting attachment.
What Is Love?
It is a state of being. It’s an internal state of seeing yourself and others. The condition of lovingness shines forth by virtue of what you are, rather than anything you do. External circumstance makes no difference to the state itself.
We will all have had that overwhelming feeling that the state of love brings – perhaps looking at the newborn child or seeing the innocent dog with it’s wagging tail after a bad day. That’s the feeling that the state of lovingness brings – not love itself.
To clarify, let’s take generosity; for example, you are a generous person because of who you are as an individual – not because of anything outside of you. If you are an angry person, then you’ll see the world as angry because that is who you are. Behaviour manifests differently at relative states. It doesn’t precede the state itself.
With intention, we can wish people well and be loving and benign with the world in general. This doesn’t mean passivity – it means operating in a state of lovingness and doing what’s required at that moment from that place.
Level Of Consciousness
In his Map Of Consciousness, Dr David Hawkins showed that the state of unconditional love is at 540 and, therefore, a relatively high state of consciousness. He proved that only 0.4% of the world’s population ever reach that level.
To reach this state, we have to transcend and integrate linear rationality, which is a significant step for anyone to overcome. It is essentially acknowledging the limitations of the human mind and surrendering these limitations to a force bigger than itself.