The subject is love, and I will be attempting to discuss love in a broad sense. There is a principle in nature, and by nature I don’t mean the conventional sense, but nature as the primal essence from which evident things emanate. The principle seems to be a healing/balancing force.

As a matter of general balance, death does not seem to be the dominant force. Death seems to exist only complimentarily to a deeper edict in the great life of which we are all a part. This principle, which I will name love, seems to extend beyond any real measure of human rationalization, and seems to be capable of action not only through individual things, but as a transcendent whole.

Love is a force vs. a state of being?  Those concepts aren’t separate. Even in physics a seemingly static object is existent only in a kinetic state. Its “state of being” is also action.

The force moves our state of being? Yes, or we resist it.

Could it be loosely related to herd instinct? More like directly related, but broader than that.

Need of others? Yes, though to predicate it on the need is perhaps confusing. Some identify it as a need of others, but it predates our awareness of that need. Like an ecology, our very natures are shaped for its purposes.

There are strange human notions that arise, and are in no way substantively true. Ideas of independence as opposed to natural dependency, but the principle of love arises not from dependency. Nor does it exist to foster any awareness of dependency. It’s actually a form of freedom. An awareness that acknowledges individuality, and empowers us to allow other potentials in us, and any love relationship to actualize. Dependency is just sort of an inert and arbitrary fact, and is not love. You can’t be said to love without choice, and choice exists as a potential for growth in general, or in a selective way.

People who say ‘I can’t live without you’ are more about dependency then love? Possibly, but there is another possibility that they are acknowledging a sympathy/complimentarity that is pervasive in their current awareness of their state. Let’s be honest. We are creatures of context. As much as human beings want to believe they are self creative and self arising, they are not. But people are often not being mindful of that when they say “I can’t live without you”. In the average state that idea is more restrictive than empowering.

I once heard a simple, but accurate definition of love. “Love is the willingness to allow those we care about to be exactly what and how they are.” We can and will care about people in a negative or positive sense. But without the ability to recognize the legitimacy of another’s state, and give place to their modes of being/expression, you render the person an object. You sharply limit love as I defined it earlier as an empowering decision that releases the potential for a relationship to evolve, rather than just a dependency.

It gets into roles quickly on us. Our relationships have expectations of the other. Indeed. Much of conventional relationship training is more a psycho/spiritual contagion or mass hysteria, than an actual reflection of love. People get to relating to the expectation, blinding themselves to the person, and withdrawing love when the expectation proves false.

More often relationships are defined by what we receive than what we give, and people will also do the ‘bait and switch’ game. Starting a relationship they act a certain way to get the love, and then once they have it start acting as they normally would? Which precludes actual love from ever starting. In that scenario there isn’t actualized love, nor can there be. Love is shot down by the opening falsehood. But to give a concrete example, it is sort of like military strategy in a way. If I expected someone to “be the woman”, then I’m not paying attention to who she is. The fact of what a woman is has no arbitrary definition, nor is an arbitrary definition literally possible. But as I form and pursue a relationship with the actual her, then our exchange of love can start and grow and be viable. It can’t be known, but it can be perceived. Sort of like the divine, love itself is relational, and I would venture that it’s foundational and omnipresent.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~