When a friend challenged me to come up with a definition of love that was as specific as I could make it, it opened up a great many new areas and levels of development that I could never have anticipated. As a follow-up to the reader survey on “what is love,” I now offer my own thoughts.
Love is usually defined primarily in two ways — something you feel, or something you do. I can recall that in my Protestant upbringing, “feelings” were scoffed at as fleeting and transitory (and not without some validity); love was defined as a conscious decision to act in a certain way toward others out of religious obligation. Outside conservative religious circles, love is often viewed in more subjective, feeling terms; something one falls into or out of. While both these paradigms have valid points to make, love may involve all those things, but also transcends them.
After going through the process of figuring out how to correctly process love by fixing things that were off kilter and blocked in my energetic system, and noting the dramatic differences after doing so, I concluded that love is a type of energy. This energy expresses itself in a variety of ways, along a spectrum, in the physical world. This spectrum can be defined as ranging from the more generalized “love for your fellow man,” to the total and mutual giving of one’s self to another person. Connecting the two ends of the spectrum into a continuous circle, are the forms of mysticism that focus specifically on the divine as the object of love with the goal of union.
It’s worth noting that the more traditional / conventional conceptions of love don’t necessarily involve the heart chakra at all. The traditional religious view is rule-based, and geared toward providing something secure and certain. Security issues are a function of the root chakra, and one’s rules of engagement (whether defined by the individual or imposed by an institution) are held in the solar plexus. As for the “love is a feeling” camp, sorry guys — emotional processing is mostly done in the navel chakra, and sexuality is another function of the root chakra. That last bit is worth emphasizing, since confusion between sex and love is so rampant, with often disasterous results. Love and sex can of course be combined, and that’s definitely an experience well worth having — but it should be understood that they involve two separate areas of processing, and two completely different types of energy. Trying to substitute any of these things for love, rather than having them informed and empowered by love energy, is to hinder the heart chakra’s ability to do its job. Love is not “safe” — to love freely and boldly, to go through life with an open heart is the epitome of courage. The heart reaches out with its love-energy to whoever and whatever it will; imposing rules on this process only serves to block and stifle it.
After reaching my conclusions about what love is and isn’t, I began contemplating what we can say about the specific properties of this energy. After some consideration, I realized that it does indeed have several functions and properties by which it can be identified and discussed.
The energy of love is processed and exchanged in the heart chakra, which is made healthy and open by first practicing self-love. As to where this energy comes from; whether it is produced by the self or is “channeled” from the divine — I lead toward the view that this energy is freely available and permeates creation, but is tapped into, exchanged and directed consciously by conscious beings with the necessary processing ability. I was recently watching a short film on quantum physics which stated that if you break things down far enough at the subatomic level “there are no objects, only relationships.” How a relationship can exist without two or more objects to exist between is something I’m still trying to wrap my head around (in reality it’s probably some sort of Zen paradox that requires getting your head out of the way entirely 
) but what I do know is that love energy is relational — it naturally forms relationships; it may be accurate to say that love energy IS relationships. Based on this I theorize that there may be an underlying field of this energy we call love that permeates the universe, and is literally the “glue” that holds all things together at the quantum level. Definitely something to think about and investigate further, methinks!
Love is magnetic.
This can be understood on a few different levels. Love energy attracts what is consistent with itself, and repels what is not. In practical terms, it attracts people who are consistent with who you are, and repels those who cannot or will not accept and process that loving energy. I have experience on both sides of that coin. Before I was able to get my heart chakra fully open, up and running, just being in the presence of various people I can think of who are very open in that regard had a noticeable effect that was almost uncomfortable. While these are people whose company I enjoy, I noticed that being in close proximity would put me on edge, like being near some sort of vibrating love-battery. What I now believe was happening was that their heart chakra was putting out this energy and trying to connect with mine, as heart chakras do — but it was running up against my blockages and faux-defenses, thus mostly having nowhere to go. This was creating a conflict between wanting to connect with this energy and enjoy the company of the person behind it, while getting a distinctly uncomfortable sensation from having something tapping and vibrating against the walls that I didn’t realize I had up.
After I discovered and dynamited my heart-fortress, I was able to really get a feel for what fully open connections with others are like, and witness the unmistakeable tractor-beam-like pull that this energy has on others who are open to it. In the past I took it for granted that I was seen by others as unapproachable; someone who has to take the initiative if I wanted to connect on any level with another person — this has changed drastically since getting my heart chakra in on the act. Now, other people approach me first just as often as not. Before more recently I had always seen socializing and connecting with others as something that took a lot of work, time, energy and effort; a “luxury” to be pursued and maintained after “essentials” were taken care of. Needless to say, for me there was a lot of frustration and anxiety tied up in the whole subject. Now, it’s like all the “effort” has gone out of the process; it’s just natural and fun. 
Since my next post is going to be on how I’ve been using this effect deliberately and making it work for me, I shall say no more on that for now.
Love energy is the ONLY truly binding influence that holds relationships together. Those whose heart chakras are blocked or closed off, and thus not able to process or generate this energy, tend to try and substitute any number of things for it, such as money, sex, manipulation or control. In fairness, most people who substitute various things for love-energy have no real idea that this is what’s happening; they’re simply acting on what they know. I now know that I used to equate things like shared interests and a similar life philosophy with love, before I learned what a heart chakra was, what it did, and how to get mine healthy and functional. Now I recognize that while those things have their place, if the heart chakra is not part of the arrangement, there will be little to hold the relationship together through any kind of trial except possibly the fear of change.
As part of its magnetic properties I strongly suspect love energy is also a key to the Law of Attraction. It is the attracting force that works to bring us together with the object of our desire along the path of least resistance. If you’ve done all the usual work to hold a positive mentality, and still aren’t seeing much evidence of the LOA in your life — you may find your answers in the state of your heart chakra. Speaking of resistance…
Love is transformative.
Love is a catalyst for change in everything it touches. Whether you’re attracted or repelled by it, it’s going to get a reaction one way or another. For those who are conscious of it, it demands that a choice be made: you can move toward, and with love, or you can move away from it, with your thoughts, words, actions and choices… but either way you’re going to keep moving! 
It is for this reason that I would say love is the major driving force behind human evolution. The heart chakra’s natural tendency to reach out for a growing network of connections drives us, not only to enjoy interaction with others for its own sake, but to pursue one’s true calling, and to seek out a rich and ever-growing variety of experiences and learning. Contrast a heart-based natural love of learning, connection, experience and abundance, with the dominant paradigm, where you might spend the first few decades of your life learning what you’re forced to learn in a rigidly structured environment, and then you “graduate” to a job that dictates how you spend most of your time, as well as how you dress and express yourself during that time and possibly beyond, because you fear where you might end up if you don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not meaning to disrespect anyone who is “doing what you gotta do” to survive, especially having been in that position myself. That goes double if one has a family to figure out how to support. This is something I’m pretty sure everyone experiences at some point in their path, and it does have value in that it can help one to develop their will power; you’ll certainly need that to keep doing what you’re doing if your heart isn’t in it. Ideally that phase would be used to develop the Will to the point where there’s enough courage to detach from that paradigm; the problem is that the drive for survival based on will alone is designed as a trap that one could easily get stuck in with no visible way out, for quite a long time. This system we take for granted is one of fear that ultimately stifles human evolution. I do, however, challenge anyone who finds themselves in this position to work on opening your heart chakra, and see what direction your life soon takes you. This segues nicely into my final point…
Love is the antithesis of fear.
A lot is said about love being the opposite of fear — I’m here to say that you can take this very literally. The two energies cannot coexist in the same place at the same time, and at this point I’m finding that when they encounter each other, love always wins. Feelings of fear are usually held in the abdominal area — I’ve found that if I’m feeling anxious or fearful, I can literally direct my heart chakra to pump some love energy into the area, causing the anxiety to evaporate immediately and be replaced by feelings of peace and well-being. Pretty neat trick, and one that can be done regardless of what circumstances look like. Remember, since love energy is key to decreasing resistance on the Path, when it’s allowed to flow freely it doesn’t particularly matter what circumstances look like.
That said — it’s easy to say that “love conquers all,” but in reality this way of being takes a lot of practice and self-discipline for most of us, and I’m definitely no exception. If your habit is to indulge the fear, then fear will have a stronger hold over you than love will. If your mentality and energetic system is dominated by fear, anxiety and worry, then it’s going to take some time and effort on your part to root out and dissolve it all. We all have a conditioned fear response to certain things, and it takes time to learn a new response, so that when faced with that stimulus, the heart chakra activates rather than the reactive fear response. The first step is a conscious decision to permit fear no place within your being. Once that decision is made, love can begin to do its job. This takes courage and self-determination, but the fun thing about it is that love itself makes things progressively easier as you go along, by growing and attracting an increasing amount of support and positive reinforcement. Making that first leap is the hardest part; after that the process requires courage and vigilance to maintain, though it doesn’t seem fitting to call it “difficult.”
We often hear statements like “God is love,” “love is all there is” and “love holds the universe together.” If we understand love to be a type of energy with certain special properties we can interact with, it stands to reason that these may not just be sentimental cliches, but rather an integral part of our spiritual, social and even physical reality. Learning to process, direct, exchange and manage this energy would thus be the key, not just to managing our relationships, but also achieving full mastery of ourselves, and becoming conscious creators of our reality. In the next post I’ll share a technique for using this energy to make your days run smoothly and positively; maybe even get a few fun surprises!
–Palehorse
If you enjoyed this article, please share it on one of the social networking sites below.
Popularity: 28% [?]
