What's This Thing Called LOVE?
In A Road Less Traveled author, M. Scott Peck defines love as “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth...Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action.”
Genuine love is volitional more so than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love unconditionally. A choice. Searching for a definition of love that resonates with me, the above quote holds a deep interior meaning.
Given the present state of the world: hateful language, school killings, crimes against marginalized groups of people, wars, and pillaging the earth; it appears we are short on love. At the very least our understanding on how to project it out into the universe is lacking.
When love is held up as the will to nurture my own as well as somebody else’s spiritual development it takes on a whole different meaning. The sensitivity, awareness, and care required for that kind of attention settles into the cells of our bodies and provides an antidote to actions being expressed in many places throughout the world. It makes love an active force in which everyone can participate and choose to vibrate higher and bring others with them.
I don’t think we fully understand that meaning of the word. I know I didn’t for a long time. I wonder if love is a word the human race is having difficulty wrapping its brain around because in its most profound delivery, it is so simple. Maybe that is because it’s not about thinking at all, it’s about a much deeper organ, the heart as Henri Nouwen suggests:
What makes us human is not our ability to think but our ability to love.
If he is correct, maybe we are overthinking love because in actuality it merely requires stepping into the universality of its resonance and expressing it through sincere acts of kindness. Rather than engaging in mental gymnastics of whether someone deserves our love or objectifying love as in what we can get in return; perhaps we might be better off, just being present in ourselves and delivering that deep soul-searching intention and curiosity out — as we relate to another.
All Abrahamic religions speak of love and even other sacred sects acknowledge that love is an essential part of their expression.
Certainly Westerners, myself included have been guilty of throwing the word around meaninglessly, as in “I love Haagen Dazs vanilla bean ice cream,” or “I love my Birkenstocks,” or “I love the Thai food at a certain restaurant.” What we are really expressing is an exuberance rooted in enjoyment.
Perhaps the command of Jesus to love your neighbor as yourself is a profound invitation to participate in the great Love that requires our entire being: heart, soul, and mind.
With that we are placed on a solid foundation, the ground of and for all beings. We are getting personal and interpersonal at the same time. Do we really love our neighbor as we love ourselves? For all practical purposes, maybe the phrase should be reversed. “Love yourself as you would love your neighbor.” Now that is a strange twist to a phrase that has been overworked and misunderstood through the ages. If we really loved ourselves would we be attacking others in endless wars, obsessively participating in massive creature and human suffering, and demonstrating total lack of reverence for human dignity as flagrantly displayed on social media?
I certainly have failed in consistently expressing love in a manner that is resonant with my better self. While love can come through us as a feeling, perhaps we have missed the other side of the coin; that the quality of love comes from a place deep within us, our heart. Hearts broken-open are the sources of love pressing outward.
Is that what the true practice of love is all about? If so one might stand in awe of the many understandings of “love” as diverse as the population. However, while expressed in numerous ways there is really only one truth. If we don’t love the divine Source in ourselves it is highly unlikely that we will be able to share the deepest expression of love with anyone else. And often when we do, what we observe or even experience are projected reactions to how we have been loved, which isn’t really what we want to be doing or who we really are.
So, you might be wondering what these revelations have to do with dance and spirituality. As spiritual human beings, we are prime movers, carriers of messages. Dancers are keenly attuned to the vibrations of another, informed by music, rhythms and stylized shapes through movement. Other creative people cultivate that alignment as well, but you don’t have to be an artist to acquire that wisdom and practice it.
When we step into the consciousness that we are all connected by a universal thread that is binding; what affects me also affects you—the meaning of love takes on a totally different nuance. It is inclusive. It is spacious and full. It is all-encompassing.
Perhaps that is what mystic, author, theologian, and writer Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was contemplating when he wrote the following:
Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale . . . Love loves; this is its nature.
It’s possible that we have misunderstood love as something that we can take and give away like a piece of chocolate cake. We purchase it at a price and share it only to the extent of our willingness to give something away, but limited by our hunger for a thing or person we want.
We speak of “falling in love” which implies that we can “fall out of love.” But, that makes no sense if love is universal and without any awareness, if it is a free-floating energy that goes where it will and attaches to other attractive and meaningful energies. The vibration of love is everywhere.
William Shakespeare certainly messed with the notion of love in “Romeo and Juliet.” While there are many shades of meaning floating through the tragic plot, the point is that the lead couple from two warring families, the Montagues and the Capulets were not suppose to be together due to a long held family feud. But, they got together anyway, completely ignoring all barriers to the contrary. However brief, their relationship transcended human deterrents and they identified with an essence much deeper than ordinary circumstances.
We all have heard of couples that overcame enormous odds to be together, to defy the laws that said, “your love is not valid or acceptable according this particular man-made law.”
The longer I [James Baldwin] live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance—is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.
Baldwin peels back another layer of love. We are not to be fooled by our perceptions and outer appearances. Going right to the depth of the matter, love sees into the soul and heart where truth speaks and is expressed outward in light. It’s the kind of Light that can change anything and everything, at any time. A light rooted in something so profound that its generative power and expression automatically leads to service, kindness, and joy with no strings attached. It’s pure and unconditional and we all have the potential to express that kind of extravagance.
Reflecting on love, Richard Rohr put it this way:
There is a part of you that is Love itself and that is what we must fall into. It is already there. Once you move your identity to that level of deep inner contentment, you will realize you are drawing upon a Life that is much larger than your own and from a deeper abundance.
Given our short time in our bodies and how our behavior affects events near and far would it not seem unreasonable to devote enormous amount of energy in preserving the art of inner being; aligning our outer expression with our divine nature—that kind of love! When we are in that space, that life-flow, we genuinely express the best parts of ourselves.
The conditions we presently have created on this planet and with other people is not who we really are. There is much work to do, share, and express in the name of love. Said beautifully by Leonard Cohen (1934-2016):
We are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made
In love we disappear.
Perhaps, one day (soon) many more will know this immeasurable LOVE which is in us and runs through us like a stream of cool, fresh water. We are bound together in goodness, truth, beauty, and grace with the elegance of a dancer floating through the stratosphere in a prayer of movement.
Apparently, Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) knew well the importance of pure love when she penned:
We become what we love, and who we love shapes who we become.
With that in mind we can choose to shape everything around us through LOVE.