It is curious how we understand that great unknown that is love. Much has been said and much is said about it. We dare to categorise it and even subdivide it according to who it is addressed to and where it comes from. We distinguish between three large groups of love: fraternal love (between siblings and friends), parental love (between parents and children) and couple love. Regarding the latter type, the researcher John Alan Lee (1977) defined six types of couple love using Greek words: Eros (romantic love), ludus (playful love), storge (friendly love), mania (obsessive love), pragma (practical), agape (selfless, seeks the welfare of the other). These labels of love in couples have been worked on from a psychological point of view in order to understand the interaction of the affective relationships of the members of the couple. The doctor in neuroscience Eduardo Calixto (2018) explains in an easy-to-understand way the transformations at the neuronal level that the brain carries out when the individual experiences falling in love. From a neurobiological point of view, love is defined as a chemical process that occurs when certain hormones are released and neurotransmitters are involved in an extraordinary brain process that generally produces pleasure. This explains both falling in love and falling out of love. If it were only a physiological or mental process, then I ask myself: where do the emotions that embody love reside?.
This way of theorizing helps us to understand the word of such an extensive meaning as love from our thinking. Therefore, once we have used the mental field to put order in the ideas related to the theoretical concept, we intuit that it is not enough since a great flood of emotions accumulate when we make reference to love. The chiropractic doctor named Joe Dispenza (2014) proposes the placebo effect through mental and emotional activation by the very conviction of being able to change reality. In this sense, meditation techniques help greatly to balance the different emotions we feel when we are in love. The state of falling in love changes perceptibly the prism from which we perceive our reality. The state of well-being, even euphoria that we experience when we are in the full biochemical process of falling in love, leads us to the ability, through placebo (which would be: maintaining the relationship with the loved one, feeling reciprocated in the feeling among others) to heal ourselves, as explained by the prestigious surgeon from Harvard University, Dr. Alonso Puig in his lecture (2017).
In the two previous paragraphs I have shown a very brief scheme in which the term love is conceptualized, from a scientific vision and therefore easily assimilated by every reader. I consider that the world built on pre-established beliefs, a work of deconstruction of many of them that limit us has to be done in order to advance in the expansion of our own consciousness.
It is true that love as such can be studied scientifically through the physiological effects it produces in our brain and thus in our hormonal flow. Psychology and philosophy also typify love in order to understand it at the level of cognitive processes.
Love is much more than that.
Love is an abstract concept for our limiting mind that tries to adjust it to previous experiences, without realizing that the more it tries to adjust it to a previously experienced reality, the more possibilities of failure arise since the mind acts in a repetitive pattern of behavior. It is not a good idea to cloister love within our mental body. On the other hand, we have also learned that love requires suffering since one has to give oneself to the other in order to please him or her in whatever aspect one chooses within one’s relationship. This leads us, without further ado, to toxic relationships and abuse of power. Far away is the balance of giving forces that manifest love. Most people pretend to find love outside of themselves and mentally identify love with the emotions that result from their different family, friendship and couple relationships. In this way, generally what is achieved is to deposit the expectations of what one intends to receive when maintaining a relationship with a person. Obviously a great failure is produced since in general the expectations cannot be fulfilled by the other since there is no balance in the relationship itself. We have been taught culturally and we have it printed in our cellular map, that we have to beg for love.
My own vision of LOVE goes beyond the understanding of it from the mind, emotions and feelings. It does not fall under any of the conventional parameters of generic measurement that only show the consequences of the unbalance in the unconscious use of love.
As we love, we are loved. Indeed, I am not referring to an external person identified as: the other, but to our own “alter ego” in its spiritual concept. That is to say; the reflection of ourselves from a purified vision, which can only be obtained when we remain centered and serene from the stillness of our solar plexus connected to universal love. At that moment we love our “alter ego” which as a mirror reflects what we have projected, so the energetic heart expands and we feel loved.
Love is unlimited, contagious, organic, flexible, in constant expansion, giver, compressor of crystalline particles of pure light, permanent explosion and contagious of serenity. In short: SUBLIME. Everything that each one of us in essence is. Dare to experience it in YOU.
Lilian Marín
20th September 2022
Alonso, M. (2017, September 28), Love and the sense of belonging [Paper presentation]. Integra Foundation. Madrid.
Calixto,E.(2018), Amor y desamor en el cerebro / Love and Lack of Love in the Brain.Ed. Pinguin.
Dispenza, J.(2014), You are the placebo: Making your mind matter. Hay House Ed. Lee, J.A. ( 1977 ). The Colors of Love.Ed. New Press.
