Love II

It seems that there are indeed many different flavours: love of child for mummy and daddy, love of mummy and daddy for child, love of mummy for daddy, love of daddy for the striking blonde with the big boobies! New romantic love, mature romantic love, love of new friends, love of old friends, and then there is the kind of love that is inspired by the sight of children playing, the love of life during a profound or euphoric moment, and the love of doing something really rewarding.

Science doesn\’t have a model for love, and if you were to take certain hardnosed scientists\’ views that anything that can\’t be seen under a microscope, formulated with numbers or proved in some way doesn\’t exist, then you would be left with a very sterile worldview. And yet, of course, love very clearly does exist. It pervades our relationships and it overtakes our mood. When in full flow, it is an emotion that can conquer all our doubts and insecurities and allows us to shine, radiating joy into the world (a little cheesy, but undeniably true!). And what a beautiful feeling when inspiration suddenly strikes and we engage in a gloriously selfless act of love and giving.

Unfortunately, what we so often witness in our world is \’love constipation\’ – too little selfless expression, a lack of genuine completeness and an awful lot of neediness. The simple reason is we are so caught up in the milieu of modern life that we simply don\’t have systematic access to this depth of pure deliciousness. It is something we appear to feel on an ad hoc basis. Love is fleeting, we work ourselves into the ground in the name of love and yet we frequently react with impatience, frustration or irritability with those we love because at that moment in time, our nervous system has become overwhelmed and we lose connection with the love zone. We are in flight mode.

All those glorious neurotransmitters of love; oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, become less prevalent and in their place come the emergency services that are adrenaline, cortisol and noradrenaline. But they come at a price and a reversal of their activities takes something more than the occasional dusting down of a Barry White LP!

Having gotten ourselves in such a pickle with all of the demands of life, attaining consistent love flow requires a little time and attention. We need to diligently work off the painful memories stored in the DVD library of our nervous system so that the pure, untarnished flow of love that exists within us all can turn on and stay on, through all of our life activities. It is quite literally a \”labour of love\”, but it needn\’t be an arduous one, or even a conscious one at that.

When we meditate, the pain of memories past steadily dissolve, our joy for life increases and our access to our deepest and strongest resources broaden. The flow of love builds from trickle, to stream, to riverine flow. We don\’t need to engage in detachment, become a raving hippy or change in any way. All we need do is utilise a technique that helps us develop our robustness and our capability for greater life experience and greater love experience.

We can then take our love into the marketplace of the world and develop our capability to let the light of love illuminate the cavernous voids that have sprung up like weeds in untilled soil. The big wide world offers us the greatest playground for expressing ourselves, and for learning the lessons that we all must accumulate on the journey of life. And the more we meditate, and the more we systematically align ourselves with the source within, the easier and easier it becomes to access an ever greater capacity for caring, sharing and loving in a way that is effortless and spontaneous.

And having unlocked this vast oceanic reservoir of complete joyfulness, you start to see that we are merely prisms for the light of love. Love shines through us and splits into a spectral array of different flavours, each accompanied by its own unique signature of hormones and emotions. There is the giddying heights of a new, exciting romance where just the mere thought, sight or smell of another sends dopamine racing through the pleasure pathways and sex hormones racing to our loins. Or there is the mature vintage of deep and consistent levels of oxytocin release, where trust and companionship have become the primary vehicles for expression.

Alternatively there is the serotonin fuelled kinship of close friends sharing formative, boundary breaking experience. All of these flavours share the same source, and yet find expression in ways which seem distinct. And like colours on the chromatic wheel, they all combine so beautifully in a way that contrasts and compliments and amplifies their splendour. Taken as a whole, they create the full palette of a life lived in love, not just temporally, but at each and every precious moment in time. The love flow has become universal.

Many of us who\’ve been doing this for a while are now in the throes of this evolution ourselves. At first, perhaps when you\’re on retreat you start experiencing little snapshots of universal love. Something starts bubbling up that is bigger than you, and everything around you. Then you start experiencing it any time you de-excite the nervous system and find your centre. And then, after much diligent practice, it starts to permeate everything and every place. You see the good at the heart of everything. You are still wise and strong enough to stand your ground when required, but when not, you are surrendered to the flow of love and life and it is simply incredible. Bigger than anything you could have ever comprehended.

Once you have reached this place, there is no price you would pay to have it any other way. There is no reward you could be given, that would exceed the rewards of your everyday life experience.

The minutiae of life may still be there, but the underlying theme is something whole, powerful and magnificent.