Emotions--What's Love Got to Do, Got to Do With It?

A friend of mine recently asked, "So what about love, then?" What's not to know, right? To me, being uncertain about a basic emotion like love is similar to being uncertain about a basic emotion like rage. In a moment of full-blown intensity, most people aren't acting all that rationally, and the uncertainty doesn't come up. Some people say, if you're in love, then you know it--there's nothing to ask. Ahh, to be young and foolish again (and again, and again...)

In response, I wonder, "Do I want these passionate states directing my life?" If the answer is an unequivocal yes, then, there is nothing further to wonder about; do your thing. If the answer is equivocal, it may make more sense to look at HOW to answer/respond/live well than to come up with some conclusive sort of answer that is ultimately unsatisfying. I certainly want passion to be a driving force in my life, but I'm not sure I want passion alone steering.

Nonattachment allows all things, allowing each thing to be as it is. The New Testament, 1Cor. 13:4-7 says, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

In my own words, I'd say that it is difficult to hold onto a clear sense of what one wants if we do not include some feeling of connection to what I've called fourth level self-identity (what many people have referred to as religion or spirituality). It's good to have some of these Biblical sorts of reference points that feel like they are bigger in some way than my current desires and deliberations. Before I was around, Paul the propagandist--call him a saint or not--was writing on these topics that people have considered since the beginning of time. Dramatists have made much of the difficulties involved in love from Oedipus Rex to Romeo and Juliet to Grosse Point Blank and beyond.

So there is this tension between what we feel in our bodies and "hearts" and genitals (first level), what we live in our daily lives as adult citizens and perhaps professionals (second level), how we see ourselves as global citizens at this point in time (third level), and what we deem to be worthy spiritual aspirations and experience (fourth level). When we are muddled on how our take on these various levels can integrate, our choices feel confused and the results seem random. Even in the best of circumstances, everything constantly changes.

This is where, beyond a personal appreciation for passion and love, beyond how all of this influences my professional and civic roles, beyond how I'm influenced by our time period in history and our global ecology, and beyond or within what I believe in and experience as spiritual, RIGHT NOW COUNTS. Regardless of what I know and regardless of what I don't know, life is happening. What do I have to say on love?

1. Love. Yes, do it, it's who we are.
2. Be aware that everything we do affects our reputation and situation. Be smart and act well. Deceit and jealousy always bring a heavy cost. Sometimes honesty and openness do too.
3. Times change. We can learn from history but not relive it. Every moment is new. Feel the newness whether you remain with someone, remain with no one, or change the people you are with as you go.
4. Find the space within your heart for freedom within relationship and beyond or through relationships. When we find clarity and balance, they are never something separate, they aren't add-ons.

Paul said love believes all things; what does your heart believe? Ramana Maharshi said that the intellect is only helpful so far as to make one sink the intellect into the ego, the ego into the Self; what is there? Ghalib wrote, "The drop grows happy by losing itself in the river./ A pain when beyond human range becomes something else." And Chogyam Trungpa said that wisdom is, being given a hint, we spontaneously pick it up. What is your truth?