Love and Resonance

It feels only right that my first entry in a blog entitled “Love Letter” be on one of my favorite topics, love.

I think a lot about love and have for as long as I can remember.  Not only romantic love, though that feels the most charged for me personally.

So, what is love and what is it to love?  It depends on who you ask.

When I was a teenager, I had a friend that worked at a convenience store after school.  He said once that he tried to fall in love with each and every person that walked through the door.  He felt that true curiosity and an open mind were the primary ingredients to love, and that reciprocity was not only irrelevant, but often distracting. This felt just as absurd to me back then as it does now, but perhaps he was on to something, and I like that he was thinking about it.

Some scientists will tell us that love is little more than a chemical reaction; a potent cocktail of hormones and endorphins.  Philosophers tell us all kinds of things.  For Plato, a “divine madness,” and as someone who has been in love a few times in this life, this phrasing makes me feel as if I could leave it at that and hit submit, but let’s humor ourselves.  He believed that what begins with attraction to the body evolves into love of the soul, and thus the love of beauty and truth at their very core.  Both Aristotle and Kierkegard spoke to agape, or selfless, unconditional love, though bound more by commitment than attraction or madness.  Psychologist Carl Jung elaborated on agape, arguing for a second form of love, Eros, the passionate desire and yearning for union.  He believed both are of equal importance for healthy, long term relationships, and that through true love, we are able to face our shadows, maximize our creativity, transcend consciousness itself, connect to the Divine, and ultimately, find what it is to be whole.  This feels like we’re getting warmer.  If you ask 20 people the same question, “what is love?,” you’re bound to receive 15 different answers, the other 5 not knowing how to respond at all.  Not only does the experience of love feel as if it’s entirely subjective, but the language we have available to us is inadequate as far as I can tell.

During a meditation recently, I entered a space where it became apparent that I was able to communicate with something seemingly outside of myself in a somewhat conversational manner.  There are many names I could give to this, but here I will call it Spirit.  I asked about a few things, one being “what is love?”  I’m not a medium and I don’t frequently interact with Spirit in this way through meditation alone, so this felt important to me, and I wish to share it with you.  

The conclusion I came to is that love is not an emotion in the traditional sense, and it is not something one gives or receives.  Rather it is an amplification of something in the presence of a beloved.  It is the center, the core, both the beginning and the end as it is, was, and will always be there, in the same quantity, with all of the same features.  It does not dissipate when a love affair comes to an end, just as it does not begin, it only is.  To resist this knowing only diminishes one’s capacity for resonance with love.  

This explanation begs some questions, I know, some of which I went on to ask.  

It can feel as if the experience of being “in love” is something separate from oneself, or something happening to the self.  It can also feel as if it’s something that one can give to another through expression, gestures, language, and nuanced interactions.  But it is not.  It is simply the amplification of what is already at the center.  Why does it feel impossible to achieve this heightened amplification without the presence of a beloved?  Because resonance is amplified through intimacy, and resonance is the means by which the human self is able to experience love.  Is this the only way that love can be experienced?  No, it is the way that the human self is able to experience love.  Why can one not achieve heightened levels of resonance through intimacy with just anyone?  Because the subconscious mind identifies those that will allow for greater resonance based on what you understand to be past, present, and future connections in other versions of being, thus informing the conscious mind.  The frequency with which intimacy is achieved between two souls in any version of being increases the capacity for resonance in all versions of being.  This creates a sense of pulling towards, or magnetic attraction.  This magnetism is the mechanism by which intimacy is sustained, and resonance amplified.  Why love?  Because love is the purpose.  There is nothing else.  What is love?  The space between.

What this left me with is the same as with many answers to profound questions, more questions.  

Love has always felt spiritual to me, particularly romantic love.  A mysterious, expansive, unwavering pull towards, sometimes seemingly illogical.  An indescribable hunger and a deep, familiar knowing.  It feels as if it enlivens a part of myself that is otherwise dormant, but not distant.  Like poems or songs I know all the words to despite never having heard them before.  Bliss and terror and everything in between, before it settles and bliss becomes simple joy, and terror, well there’s always a bit of terror.

So what does it mean?  For me, it’s a reminder that it’s true, love is just as magical as it feels. And that the pushes and pulls I feel towards people, romantic and otherwise, the kind that feel old and deep, have meaning.

I’ll leave you with this poem from Pablo Neruda that illustrates, in part, the mystery of love, but tell me, what is love to you?

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz

Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

In secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

But carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

Risen from the earth, lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

So I love you because I know no other way

Than this: where I does not exist, nor you

So close that your hand upon my chest is mine

So close that your eyes close with my dreams.