Here, we find ourselves as love. This is a love that’s not dependent on states or feelings. It’s the pragmatic love of the left hand removing a splinter from the right.
– from a previous article, The Importance of Love
Most people think of love as a feeling. We experience love for a partner, family, friends, ourselves, animals, and so on.
And yet, love is not always dependent on a feeling. We can have love for people without feeling it. We can be annoyed, and yet care for someone and act from that care.
Even in daily life, we know that love doesn’t depend on fleeting feelings. (Although moments of feeling love can certainly enhance and feed that deeper love.)
This is even more so when we find what we are. When we find ourselves as capacity for the world as it appears to us, as what our experiences – the world of phenomena as we experience it – happens within and as. Here, we find that the world to us is one, and when we notice this it takes the form of love.
This is a love not dependent on states, feelings, or emotions. It’s the pragmatic love of the left hand removing a splinter from the right.
And, of course, any love – whether from a feeling or the pragmatic love from noticing what we are – can be covered up by our painful beliefs, identifications, hangups, emotional issues, or trauma. I have written about that in other articles, including how to explore and work with it.