The true meaning of love is a wonderful thing. It is the desire of the soul to express itself in terms of creation. It is brought about only through the generosity of the lover to the object of the love. This is why, when we love people, we will go to the limit to help or serve them. Nothing is too great, no sacrifice is enough. The true lover gives all and is unhappy in not having still more of himself to give to the object of his adoration.

Because of our emotional nature, love is generally expressed through the sex desire. But too great an expression of this desire is destructive, for it depletes the vitality and demagnetizes the one who overindulges. Love is the most wonderful thing in the world and creates the highest form of energy known to the mind of man. It will be expressed at the level of passion or become transmuted into artifacts of real and lasting value.

What is commonly called falling in love is in some cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. One becomes attracted to another person, or rather to the image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.

Our culture has a long heritage of the individual learning that they are unworthy children in need of discipline by religious hierarchies. Many religions condition people to believe in their sin and inadequacy. Christianity historically has emphasized the benefits of suffering and the sin of pleasure. We are conditioned with an emotional conditioning of pleasure anxiety. Our fearful contraction prevents our liberation.

In Byron Katie’s book I Need Your Love, Is That True? she states:

“When you say or do anything to please, keep, influence, or control anyone, fear is the cause and pain is the result. Manipulation is separation, and separation is painful. Another person can love you totally in that moment, and you’d have no way of realizing it. If you act from control, there’s no way you can receive love, because you’re trapped in a thought about what you have to do for love.”

Some people, if they cannot get love or admiration, will settle for other forms of attention and play roles to elicit them. If they cannot get positive attention, they may seek negative attention instead by provoking a negative reaction in someone else. Children already do that by misbehaving to get attention.

Love is the wholistic feeling of attraction and is an integrative force. On a personal level it is an expansive giving force. The aspect of love as a communication of energies need be emphasized. There is no reason in the quest for enhanced states of joy that we cannot acculturate the enhancement, technique and knowledge of love to a more sophisticated degree. Finding ways to enhance the enjoyment of life is a pleasurable task and is a legitimate focus of attention.

When one looks elsewhere for the love that is within their own being, it creates a cycle of unsatisfied need that is never resolved. Love and admiration are not really emotions at all but states of being. They emanate from within as the love, joy, and peace that are aspects of all true nature. Knowing the oneness of the self is true love, true admiration, true compassion.