all about love

I have a viney plant that sprouts beautiful red blooms (Red Mandevilla) that we keep inside in the winter and outside on a balcony in the summer. It usually doesn’t bloom too much in the winter but continues to grow and vine its way around. In the late spring when we put it out on the balcony, it continues to vine wrapping itself around the balusters. Once the vines are firmly rooted, it starts to bloom. In thinking about love and the book all about love: New Visions by bell hooks, this is the image that came to mind. Only through knowing, accepting, and loving the self can we reveal our love to others. Like the vine, it is only when we are anchored in who we are that we can show our beautiful gifts, in love or otherwise.

Hooks writes, Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. Isn’t this a fact? Can we separate love from relationships? Can we agree that there are people who have a deep connection of love who are not in a relationship, and there are those in relationships who cannot say they are in love? Even in our relationships with ourselves, we feel like failures because Simple axioms that make self-love sound easy only make matters worse. It leaves many people wondering why, if it is so easy, they continue to be trapped by feelings of low self-esteem or self-hatred. As hooks illustrates, so many of our relationships can use a little work through reflection...parent/child, romantic love, self-love, Divine love, love in loss, redemptive love, angelic supportive love.

So how does hooks define love? She uses M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled (1978) definition: the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth...Love is as love does. Love is an act of will–namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

I teach a course in teacher training about the navarasa, the nine primary emotions. Rasa is a great word that means juice, essence, or taste. Our emotional life is the juice of life. Without it, our lives would be dry and empty. You may think these are all “positive” emotions, but the rasas include love, joy, wonder, calmness, anger, courage, sadness, fear, and disgust. Love is shringara (śṛṅgāra). It could be the love between parent and child, between lovers, or love in separation. We see these types of love in prayers to the Divine where the poet/devotee calls out to their Beloved, their father/mother/child, or prayers to see/come closer to the Divine. Whatever relationship causes the greatest feelings of love and affection. This rasa also is encouraged through beauty--art, music, whatever we find beautiful.

There is another word for love and affection in sanskrit, sneha. This is also the word for oil (among other things). In Ayurveda, the process of abhyanga, or oil therapy, is a wonderful expression of self-love. I cannot tell you how many clients who have started this practice report back feelings of calmness, acceptance, and body acceptance/positivity. Truly transformative! The expression of self-love is a daily practice–sound familiar? And, thus, an action, intention, habit. The WILL and choice to love oneself.

I do have to disagree with the text on one point. She writes This is why progressive seekers after truth urge us all to be tolerant–to remember that though our paths are many, we are made one community in love. Swami Vivekananda on September 11, 1893, at the first World’s Parliament of Religions, said My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. Can we strive for acceptance–not just tolerance (the attitude of “I guess it’s ok”)? To recognize the love of others as promoting their spiritual growth through our acceptance and acknowledgment.

To focus on love and the beauty of life is to worship the Divine in all of creation. But this focus on love is a practice, an action to be chosen over fear, expectation, and disappointment. Try this in your sadhana (practice)-promise that you will be kind, tender, and loving in actions, words, and thought for a specified time-maybe start with 30 minutes. See what comes up to challenge your practice. Maybe nothing. Maybe you will sail through. But, keep in mind that this kindness applies to how you speak to yourself also so even if you’re alone it can be challenging.