According to the dictionary: from the Latin amor: strong affection that drives us towards the object of our desires; inclination of the soul and heart; affection; passion; exclusive inclination; theological grace.
In the New Testament: So faith, hope and love endure. These are the great three, and the greatest of them is love. (Corinthians 13:13)
According to etymology: the Greeks had three words to designate love: Eros, Philos and Agape. Eros is the healthy love between two persons that justifies life and perpetuates the human race. Philos is the sentiment that we dedicate to our friends. Finally, Agape, which contains both Eros and Philos, goes far beyond “liking” someone. Agape is total love, the love that devours those who feel it. For Catholics, this was the love that Jesus felt for humanity, and it was so great that it shook the stars and changed the course of the history of men. Those who know and feel Agape realize that nothing else in this world has any importance, only loving.
For Oscar Wilde:
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
(Ballad of Reading Jail, 1898)
In a late 19th century sermon: Pour your love generously on the poor, which is easy; and on the rich, who distrust everybody and cannot see the love that they so need. And on your neighbor – which is very difficult, because it is towards him that we are most selfish. Love. Never lose a chance to give joy to your neighbor, because you will be the first to benefit from this – even if nobody knows what you are doing. The world around you will become happier, and things will become easier for you.
I am in this world living the present. Any good thing that I can do, or any happiness that I can bring to others, please tell me. Don’t let me put things off or forget, because I shall never live this moment again. (Henry Drummond The Supreme Gift, [1851-1897])
In an e-mail received by the author: “While I kept my heart to myself, I never had a single morning of anguish or a single night of insomnia. Since I fell in love, my life has been a sequence of anguish, losses, confusion. I think that God, by using love, managed to hide hell in the middle of Paradise” (C.A., 23/11/2006)
For science: In the year 2000, researchers Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki, of University College in London, located the areas of the brain activated by romantic love by using a series of students who claimed to be madly in love. In the first place, they concluded that the zones affected by the sentiment are far smaller than they had imagined, and are the same as those activated by stimuli of euphoria, such as in using cocaine, for example. Which led the authors to conclude that love is similar to the manifestation of physical dependence provoked by drugs.
Also using the same system of scanning the brain, scientist Helen Fisher, of Rutgers University, concludes that three characteristics of love (sex, romanticism and mutual dependence) stimulate different areas of the cortex, and further conclude that we can be in love with one person, want to make love to another, and live with a third.
For a poet: Love possesses nothing and does not want to be possessed, because it is enough in itself. It will make you grow, and then throw you on the ground. It will whip you so that you feel your impotence, it will shake you to rid you of all your impurities. It will crush you to leave you flexible.
And then it will toss you in the fire so that you can become the blessed bread to be served at God’s sacred feast (The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran [1883-1931])
(next Warrior of Light Online Wisdom)
Love will always be coupled with sacrifice. For if we only love to be happy with this perfect person, then the truest essence of it~~being unconditional will negate that fact.
A meditation on love and its various incarnations
We risk everything for a chance at real love…
Love makes the world go round. Life will never be the same. Until it is. Sort of.
Love isn’t pure after it’s been tainted, cause love can alternatively flip the world upside-down.
Loving couples can fall headlong into possessiveness, jealousy and rage; trapping you in the tangled emotions founded in that space between love and goodbye.
And how do you choose between family and the love of your life? But, why should you have to?
Emotions can be raw and messy, and as relationships change, who gets the better part of the bargain?
Love reflections for anyone with an appetite for love………..
To quote Mr. Coelho ” Love simply is”
Amo ergo sum – I love therefore I am.
I believe love – agape – is the meaning of life. When all love dies in our heart, all the rooms of our soul turn dark. Love is the fuel of life. Love is what brings us faith, love is what gives us hope. Love for humanity, love for life, love for the family. It is what fills us with strength and it is what makes us capable of making a change for the better. In ourselves as well as the world.
Amor: desejar de verdade a alguem aquilo que lá no fundo vc desejaria somente a si mesmo.
is it allowed to expose one’s personal experience to anyone? (as from your exercises written and publicly revealed at the pilgrimage?) esoteric rituals are strictly not to be told to anyone so casually, as i have been told. with all due respect, i would like to know if you’re actually allowed or have you already been excommunicated. as an apprentice, i’m beginning to wonder whether it is right to read your book, or i shouldn’t because it might alter my belief. it might be an angelic facade of something bad, and be unconsciously misled. please be kind enough to tell. thank you.
Whilst in deep despair last year after the loss of my father, I understood the meaning of agape. I called upon God to explain why I am here… My own mind answered me the God is Love. That is to say, that the entity which we perceive to be God is manifested in Love. The only thing that matters…
Estimado Sr. Coelho,
Quiza, la mejor manifestacion en este mundo es el amor de una madre hacia su hijo/a. Lo da todo, arriesga todo, no espera nada para si mas la sonrisa de felicidad y satisfaccion del hijo/a. Digamelo a mi… y cuando creo que no puedo amarles mas, me despierto la manana siguiente, amandoles aun mas.
Love…….. always and in ALL ways.
A few of my favorite definitions, collected over the years:
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear….
the one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
–1 John 4:18
“If we can be brave in love, we can be brave with most other endeavors. Wholeness in life comes from this Courage to Love, and all the wonders and difficulties we experience in Love.”
Shelly Durrell
Healing the Fisher King
“To fall in love means that one must submit, however temporarily…to a state of being not subject to control or governance.”
Chela Sandoval
Methodology of the Oppressed
This last is my favorite, as it explains, I think, why loving is the scariest thing most of us will ever do in our lives. It is hard to step out beyond the boundaries of the known world–like an explorer insisting on a round world when the only available map depicts it as flat. So too is it alarming to the very core of one’s soul to let go of the obsession to be in control, to let go and just be…in love.