{I can tell you why it resonated with me?}

Excellent.

{I guess it bothers me that we’re all supposed to be looking for love but no one quite understands what it is, or knows how to differentiate it from infatuation or limerance or what have you.}

Are we all supposed to be looking for love? I understand you to say that society puts emphasis on what it calls love, and people feel pressure to live up to the so-called ideals. Society’s idea of love seems to be based on image, status, consumerism, bettering oneself in social standing and so on.

Differentiating it will be different for each person. What you feel is love, is love to you. You don’t need to defend your feelings, explain them or question yourself. Presumably we all grow over our lifetimes, and what is love for you now, true in this moment to the persona, can change in the next. That is the ever-changing reality. There is also a constant reality.

{So this approach to love, as a temporary, transient but powerful connection and understanding of others appealed to me.}

As you write above, it feels like you are on a track that is useful and beneficial…

{It removes a lot of the display and trumpetry of “true love” and makes it more human and accessible. It also removes it from a purely romantic setting.}

…just don’t fix on a narrow definition or judge ‘true love’ or romantic settings, as a suggestion. Leave that part neutral and open for unfolding other aspects in yourself. I also have to watch not to judge consumerism, image, status and society’s ideals.

It is for me to live what I feel to be absolute truth, which is that we are all the one being, whose nature is love, and anything felt as emotion is filtered down and distorted from there. I look beyond the transient emotion to the deeper and constant emanation of love as my bedrock.

{Do you also think that the stories we construct in our head (our defense mechanisms, I guess) to protect ourselves from reality also get in the way of experiencing this love?}

Yes.

{Because they are artificial constructs distancing ourselves from our core, and therefore from the source of love?}

Precisely.

{Maybe you seeing misused authority as a block to love also stems from this?}

Yes. Any original quality (emanating from the source of love) which is misused blocks the awareness and experience of pure, self-existing love.

{The person misusing authority is not comfortable acknowledging their vulnerability, and therefore distanced from the truth of who they are?}

That is one scenario. Many things distance us from our one true self.

{I am currently in therapy and am struggling with lowering my defense mechanisms that have been in place for very many years now, and this is discussion has given me a little more insight, even though applying it is a whole different ball game.}

All on the planet are in therapy of some type, whether known or not, though many block their own healing process. The therapy of Nature brings homeostasis. I relate to your lowering defense mechanisms, as for some fifty years, since early teens, those buggers also arose often from me, as automatic reactions. I can honestly and humbly say that my defense mechanisms have lowered considerably over the past few months.

Yes, applying head knowledge is a whole different ball game. Knowledge is embodied through action. One way to apply love is to emanate love in all situations, by giving, by bettering, by understanding. As soon as I analyze a truth, it is no longer a truth, because everything changes. I can only know a truth by living it in the moment. Life gives ample opportunities to give love, to those whose hearts are open. And it brings challenges along with opportunities, to make stronger vessels of those who are so dedicated.

The Whole Human blog post on Soul Mates might speak to you – http://www.wholehuman.emanatepresence.com/realizations-blog/soul-mates-ch-12-of-the-impersonal-life

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Gary R. Smith.