A quick exploration of forms of love, which can be put into three general categories: the love of existence, selfless love, and possessive love.
Possessive love it the easy one. This is the one where we believe in a thought such as “I need her”, which comes out in all sorts of (often subtly) possessive ways, including despair and drama. Whenever there is any belief in any thought, possessiveness is included (I want this, not that).
This is the form of love we see in movies, read about in the magazines, hear about in the news, and what most of us know a lot about from our own lives.
Then there is selfless love, which is what is expressed through a human being when Ground is awake to itself, yet still functionally connected with this particular human being. It is Big Mind awake to itself, as a field of awakeness and form, inherently absent of any I with an Other, lived through a human self.
It can take a yin (gentle, receptive, empathic) or yang (forceful, cutting through) form, and it can focus on temporary or more thorough relief (making it easier for people to be who they take themselves to be, or aiding the Ground to wake up to itself in other humans beings).
Selfless love is also expressed in more or less skillful ways, depending on the maturity, development and training of the human self. Even here, strategies may, at a conventional level, backfire if there is a lack of maturity, development, skills, and understanding of the situation.
And finally, the love inherent in existence itself. This one takes many forms.
First, that anything exists at all is love. It arises within, to and as consciousness, as love.
Then, that all the awful things happening to living beings, from a conventional view, are not really that awful from the view of consciousness, or Big Mind. It is all temporary, ephemeral, a play within and for God. There is no separate self in any of these beings, only the one seamless consciousness as both the experiencing and experienced.
And that anything happening, any situation, is an invitation for Ground to wake up to itself. Even within this one there are many forms. For instance, whenever there is a belief in a story (so Ground does not notice itself) there is discomfort, and this is an encouragement to change and, eventually, to see what is more true for us than the story.
And also one that is a little less general: that there are more explicit invitations for Ground to wake up in our world, in human cultures. Forms of invitations we recognize even when we are absorbed in stories.