Comes in infinite forms (this is hommoe in archaic Greek) and can get you in a lot of crap if not well-understood.

This is probably why we don't teach it in proper cultivation of younsters ... we love to see them make fatal errors in their lives ... like the Roma Citizens watching tempers flare in the arena ... things have't changed much ...

Do you suppose there'd be better ways of controlling the populations of young, beautiful, untested soles than putting them on trial without IT (intellect)? The ID rules the garden without intellect ... but manking hates a thinker ... so what's God to do but cram them in an isolated corner of the Cause Moes ... recesses of God' sol'?

Relax ID is just a metaphor for that intangible feel that comes over you when incidental to a Piscine naked sol' under the bridge ... oh the overcoming fabric of shadows, when the Light's go out down in GEO Gaia ... that's blind passion before the coming to senses ... positive thing-heh! That's a Hebrew letter with a line Tell ... as story overhead, writ in blood as an odd things to longer stickers ... trying to fathom out their conflicts! All part of a much bigger veil but man generally doesnt believe such non-physical manna of things ...

Love is an emotion. According to some psychologists, it is a mixed emotion, consisting of joy and anticipation: joyous anticipation of the beloved. But this applies mainly to romantic love and maybe some other types of love.

According to the ancient Greeks, there are eight types of love. Godly love, for them as for us, is Agape. Agape is universal, unitive, and unconditional love, and probably the hardest type of love to master. Agape is the love that overcomes us when we have experiences of universal at-one-ment, hence the saying "God is love." 

Agape, to me, is regarding everything and everyone as divine: feeling, thinking and acting as if everyone and everything were an inseparable part of the greater divine totality known as "God."

I've always wondered if love should be "catagorized" into different kinds of love. Parental love, spousal love, love for a friend, love for mankind or God, etc.... Deeper love, not so deep love.

In the end, isn't love in it's purest form without qualification what real love is? (just asking)

You'd think someone called Crazyheart would have all the answers on this one, eh?

While I'm reluctant to do a scripture dump after recent events, my stock answer to this question is to point the questioner to 1 Corinthians 13. Yes, Paul was talking about agape here, but realistically it applies to all forms of Love. He said it better than I could ever hope to and it's perhaps closer to my heart than any other passage in the Christian scriptures.

Beyond that, I'd say that Love is a deep, caring connection to another being (and God or The Kosmos could well be the Being in question). Lust and warm fuzzy feelings can play a role, but I don't think that they are Love. Lust is an ally (at least where eros is concerned) while warm fuzzies are probably more of a symptom of Love than Love itself.

Mendalla

mendalla, I only have the questions. I look to the cafe for the answers.

When my husband was ill with leukaemia, I had an "aha" moment about the nature of love.

Each time he needed chemo, he was hospitalised for a month at a time.

I would phone him at the hospital when I awoke each morning, race around doing the household chores and paying the bills etc for the rest of the morning.

I would then drive to the hospital and sit with him until his supper arrived.

My mother visited me one morning and said, "You look exhausted. John's white cell count is improving - how about you rest and I'll visit him?"

'No, Mum. I know this sounds strange - but there's nothing else I would rather do than be with John in that depressing hospital ward."

Mum smiled. "It's not strange to me - that's what love does to us. If you'd had children of your own you'd know this already."

That's what love is...............

the highest form of Love, is not a feeling or an emotion, but spiritual, it is a choice, when Jesus went to the cross, I'm sure he had a moment of not wanting to do it, He said Father if you can take this cup form me, yet not my will but your will be done.

That instance Jesus put his feelings and emotions aside and made a choice To Love

Ah Crazyheart, must be the week of Valentines for you to ask such a question.

From my favourite author:

That was very interesting, Neo, especially

Love is a hard thing to cultivate - such is the inherent selfishness of human nature; it is a difficult thing to apply to all conditions of life, and its expression will demand of you the utmost you have to give, and the stamping out of your selfish personal activities

CrazyHeart ...

It is an odd thing isn't it ... like opening a space for one to think about it ... a gap in warped space of chaotic com passion ... par allal courses on the matter of Black Holes thing-hehs.

Speaking of heh's .. I like BB's nue Avatar .. could be translated as àhuh ... but then Hebre is so ambiguous ... evan made King J'aimes pissed in his self-centred mode of illiteracy ... yet hies taken as authority. Peculiar thing in an emotional expression eh ... w/o th'aught ... space to think ... the O ... !?

What could we weave into that as create Ure ... it needs as is Torah ... equivalent to a primitive mind ... allowed to evolve according to that age old slip (graft, scion) meison ... what did you learn out there while pounding iron ... is that ph'un?

What else is the infinite character to do inspace with no respect ... like light bloody laughter over the line tail ... lamb-ish pas ova ... igniting thing ... it carries through the flood ... moor aL poeL! Length of Light burried with great care as DNA'ght ... that's the headless Knight in detail ... not a clue just searching ...

What is love? Howard Jones asked that very same question.

According to Extreme, Cupid's Dead (wicked awesome song) So much for Valentine's Day.

In my opinion and from my experience, godly love, a.k.a. Agapé, is far more than just a feeling of benevolence toward that which one loves.

Agapé is universal, unitive love, which includes the awareness, consciousness, and conscience of universal at-one-ment as well as the universal compassion which such an awareness necessarily entails.

Agapé is the most diffcult type of love to muster, and cannot really be commanded and obeyed on command. It is, however, a natural outcome of an experience of universal at-one-ment, also known as "grace." Such an experience is, I think and feel, what Jesus meant by the "kingdom of God."

Seek ye first the kingdom.

-Jesus

Am'n Arm ...

A general emotive power that infuses the cosmos, quite different than what is sealed up here in this mote of space.

It is a given surrounding, that touches on the ancient word of a'don's (Grace) or even appo line to the Roman God that believes it all belongs to a mortal god ... a hick up in space? Like a RIP'Ur to amuse another dimension?

Let's call it a Lateral Cross given to that foot ball'r that thought the game was his ... light of love fallen requires some cross giving ... like dark light given from energy falling into a Black Hole ... Cosmological scion? Is the mind a sectant mover ... athe Letic?

Does such Cross require some depth of under standing?

That's dirt on the sol' space ....

On the Cross of Lorraine, Jesus was crucified on one beam, Lucifer on the other.

My wife got out of our warm comfy bed at 5:30 am this morning to drive me to work through the ice and slush of Toronto.

That's love.

o ya, well my wife brought me a slice of cheese cake with cherry pie filing on top in bed

now thats love

Could be bad conscience?

oh you had to spoil my moment

Tyson, Howard Jones, I was thinking the very same thing! I played that song on the stereo yesterday...

I think MikePaterson also put it very well in my one sided love thread in relationships.

I appreciated your post Pilgrim. I can understand that.

Sorry to hear that brother. That's the kind of thing that could lead to divorce. Every good wife knows cheesecake should be served with strawberries on top. Gotta hand it to your wife for creativity though. Where'd she find a bed small enough for a piece of cheesecake? Toys R Us?

For me, love is not mainly a noun (an emotion or a state of being). It is a verb, an action.

My mom loved me, I her, yet she was abusive. Love was something I had no faith in. I liked people, was attracted to them, but always had walls up. In fact, I once confessed I thought I was incapable of love. It, I was told, required those very things I felt unable to give. Trust, vulnerability.... One day my therapist told me, "you love well" and I felt shocked. Me? When he told me that the act of loving is an act and thus a verb and I had been loving, I was loving.... it was my very nature to be loving... I was floored. Then, he smiled and asked, "can you not love?"

So, love for me is not about just lust or relationship.  I love many people, even people I barely know or have not met yet. Love for me is not longer made up of turst and respect. I love those I am unable to trust and those I know are absolutely untrustworthy. I love those for whom I feel little or no respect.

My wife, well, she is the one who chipped away and hauled the rubble from every wall I ever built on the partnership realm. She came into my life at its most vulnerable (illness) and I had retreated from all people. She simply would not go away. She said she knew I was shutting a door and she would sit outside it and wait. So, she did. She had more endurance, resolve and determination... than I did.

So, for me, love of that "soul-mate" kind is about being able to be laid bare, not just body naked, but soul. Not one iota of anything to protect you, you are safe and if you are not (because time can bring anything) you would not have changed a thing.

Sole-mate; in alternate meaning a sense of singularity, in entanglement ... connected, network ... something that we are not often aware of in anthropocentric realm (real) versus the virtual realm of mind. Looking at IT from the irrational side .. it doesn't exist and we have separated ourselces from the beyond (myth). That's my story and I'm sticking tuit ... well-rounded square heh!

How does one get out of theis-elf? The magi of word it passes all things, even the resistant Wahls! High cool minds, Hebre sol' ... travelling ...

Haddaway's early 90's dance take on the question.

Awesome song... but not embeddable, darn!

"What is love?

Baby don't hurt me no more.

I don't know, when you're not there, I give you my love but you don't care.

So what is right and what is wrong? Give me a sign.

What is love?"

This mirrors my experience of the meaning of love, SG.

Have you seen the video of Brene Brown's that Inanna posted in the "Choose Life" thread?

I'd be interested in your comments.

So I've been itching to answer the question, What is love to me? Not sure what to say, surprisingly. I always figred that was so simple a question, why ask it? But when I try to put it in words, lets see what I come up with...

For a start, I agree with Mendalla, love is a deep connection to another person. It can hit pretty quickly. To be in love: it is pain and glory, it is the most important thing we experience in life, both to love someone else, and to be loved, which may not happen all in one person at one time. Love is caring, love is longing, love is giving, love is waiting, love is delighting in someone else's successes and joys. Love ties your joys to someone else's. Love is a bond.

Love can make you sick, destroy your resolve, your common sence, your peace of mind for certain. But it can also give you strength and confidence, stability and security.

It is also important that we love ourselves. Take yourself by the hand and go together with love and respect into the future. Look after yourself.

1 Corinthians 13 (New International Version, ©2010)

Who is the speaker in this passage Jon? In part 12, does "then" refer to after death? I like the mirror bit. The passage could certainly be written in verse, as a poem. It's very nice. If you have specific observations/advice for me, I could use it, over in my relationships thread.

Here's one of mine from way back when.

The Battleground

Love, a bitter contestant with hate;

an inseperable friend of sorrow,

infects and destroys

in it's vain attempt to create peace.

The heart, a battleground of emotions

who leave the dead to decorate,

is a dark void where meaning is to be,

but is not, when the battle is lost.

The blood of the dead runs in my veins,

powerful and furious,

until the body is done,

and another season has begun.

nov. '91

And to balance that out...

I Have Love!

Can we together be, you and me,

and I will say to thee, "I love you endlessly!"

Can we a life have, in this time,

and I will be with you, in sickness and in health.

May '96 (originaly written and rhyming, in German.)

It's the same Bible passage that I cited (I just linked to it rather than posting it). The speaker is Paul (I believe Corinthians is regarded as the authentic work of Paul rather than one of the pseudo-Pauls) so it reflects his faith and what he seeks to promote in the church of his day. Some would likely take the "then" to refer to a post-Judgement world or afterlife, but to me it is more about when we truly become aware of the love around us and respond with love of our own. When we achieve that state, then we can "see face-to-face" and "know fully as I am fully known". The coming of the Kingdom, if you like, but not necessarily some kind of supernatural thing. More of a spiritual one.

Mendalla

I must have missed the link. I think I was rushing yesterday for some reason. Anyway that is my all time favorite scripture. My dad read it out loud at my wedding. I've always understood "then" to be when in Heaven. During life we only have a partial understanding of things, in Heaven we will see and know fully.

I thought it might meant enlightenment. If it means aware of the love around us and responding with our own love, then I experienced that long ago and still am.

Sorry Mendalla, I didn't check your link, just read your own words. Anyway, it's a nice quote and I wrote it out in my pearls of wisdom book. Now I know who to put as wrote it. Did Paul have a surname? Paul of where?

crazyheart,

what is love?

He's generally known as Paul of Tarsus or St. Paul.

Mendalla

And then there is his brother, Shemp Metatarsus, and their cousin (who isn't talked aboot very much), Moxie Metacarpal.

inanna what did it say in Love Story ? Love is never having to say you're sorry. Did I get that right?

Thank you, inanna, this infection makes me slow. i thought you were asking me the question. Thank you for posting your blog from a way back.

the use of "then" in the passage would not refer to Heaven as we use the term.  It would more likely refer to the eschaton, the time when the REign of God is made real and present.  Paul appears to have fully expected this to happan during his lifetime, that the REsurrection was the firstfruits/first sign of it happening.

Eschaton, that's a word I've never heard before. Sounds like world wide enlightenment. Thanks. Actually, sounds a lot like LOVE   : )

Eschaton is a fifty-dollar word to refer to the end times, the coming of the Reign/Kingdom of God.  Doctrine about the eschaton is eschatology

Does love have to be accepted for it to be love? Or is that an obsession?

Of course not. I can love someone without the love being returned. If I truly love that person, I'll let it end there, though. Obsession happens when I pursue the other without regard for the other, which reveals it as a selfish kind of thing that may not be love at all.

Mendalla

Thanks for that question Waterfall. BTW, I've got that movie coming from the library. Thanks for that answer Mendalla.

Gesundheit.

Oh and thank you for reminding me that the library is an excellent source for old movies!

You're on the right track, there :3  Spread the woid...

I'm gonna remember that one for Scrabble too! ; )