Life is quite simple, Humans complicate it. We set rules and have to define or label everything. We then can struggle with something that doesn’t to conform to our set or rules, ethics or beliefs. Love is one of these things, it doesn’t fit easily into a particular box or bracket.
We use one word- Love to cover an extremely complicated, sometimes confusing and deeply both joyful and a killer at the same time. The Ancient Greeks had six words for love:
- Eros (sexual passion)
- Philia (deep friendship)
- Ludus (playful love)
- Agape (love for everyone)
- Pragma, (longstanding love)
- Philautia, (love of the self)
See? We’re often using one word to cover a huge range of emotion and attachment there! No wonder we all get confused from time to time. Not that this encapsuates what love is, but it is a lot easier to begin to comprehend when it is broken down a bit more. Of course, you can tick more than one of the boxes for any one person, animal or object (maybe not Eros though, if it is an animal or object 😉 )
Nowadays, in the west, men are stereotypically expected to be “real” men and not expected to show their true feelings, cry, love one-another. To be strong is to be macho and not show you can be hurt, or let your guard down. We can then have a problem with saying I love you from one man-to another. We assume that the person saying it is ‘gay’ (obviously meant in the unfortunately unaccepting slur-kind of way). My real problem with this, other than I don’t see being in love with someone of the same sex as being a problem, is:
a) Love doesn’t just stop because you are the same gender and some religious figures don’t approve. Love pre-dates religion. Love is not just a human emotion, so it figures that the beings before us loved too. Just saying.
b) Even if the person who says they love you is the same-sex as you, it sure as heck doesn’t mean they will want to sleep with you. Believe it or not, in the same way that not every woman will want to sleep with every man, not every man who likes men will too.
“Oh Love, oh love
Won’t you rain on me tonight?
Oh life, oh life
Please don’t pass me by”
– Billy Joe Armstrong. Song: Oh Love (Green Day)
This morning I did a Reiki self-treatment which was focused on my heart chakra. This is the energy centre of love and emotion. Connecting in with it, I feel, today, I understand a bit more about the feelings I have. I LOVE lots of people. I love them in different ways. Some easily fall in one or two of the Ancient Greek subdivisions, some more than that..
With so much fear being projected at us, terrorism, fascism, divide and conquer tactics, the rise of the right-wing – it is important to remember that our universal default setting is TO LOVE. We might not like, but we do love instinctively. We have to learn how to be in fear and in hate, and by golly we are being tought this. It’s probably Agape (love) that I have for the protagonists this year, really cranking it up for us. I don’t like what they are doing- I must stress, I don’t like their actions one bit. But I guess in some ways they need more love than anybody else right now…
A lot of us being tested right now as 2016 completes its global shadow challenge. That’s okay, take time out, time away from facebook, the media and focus on your heart and your capacity to love. Take time out to follow your heart. Love is a higher frequency than fear or hate, by maintaining the love vibes you are keeping your own energy at a high level, which is not just best for you as it will help everyone else too.
Don’t wait around for love to find you. Be the love you want to feel. Trying hard not to sound like a Wet Wet Wet song (eek!), but really, love is all around us.
Injoy, inlight and inlove,
Phoenix
Holistic Transformation 