For countless generations, human beings have striven to define and understand the many aspects of love. Some view love as the driving force behind many of their decisions, their triumphs and losses, and their everyday lives, while others resist the pull of romantic inclination or fervent platonic relationships. Within their respective cultures, religions, and personal views, these individuals may be drawn to love for reasons that are steeped in spiritual importance and a deep emotional connection with a higher power. In this essay, I aim to explore, personally unpack, and begin to suggest the importance of love in spirituality using scriptural support and references, logic, feelings, and ethics. We will explore romantic love as men and women, partial but complete images of God, come together to forever share a mutually self-giving love; siblings, fellow creatives called by one Father; and how together we fulfill some part of our existence, approach a greater end in love.
Who are we in love? Are we different for those we love romantically, platonically, as family? What does our love mean to our world if love is that important to our spirituality? This text is to serve a supplemental purpose – in this update, there is more to cover than in the last text. Here, I will be delving into the spirituality behind romantic love, while following Plato’s analogy of a bond in family life to guide us from a normal relationship into its spiritual dimension. Beginning with humanity made in the images of the womb-like Trinity, identifying the principles of romantic love in song and tracing out what it means for us. From song, we will branch into muses – identifying romantic partners as muses whose presence will reveal us to ourselves, like a coloring partner.
What is love when it is experienced in a spiritual context? While love has been defined, redefined, analyzed, and philosophized about for centuries in literary, artistic, and psychological contexts, love untouched by the physical or the mental deserves its own unique definition as well. Love is frequently thought of, within the spiritual world, as that which bonds the soul to the divine. It is experienced through many mediums: the love between a worshipper and their God, and, by extension, as the love of the God for the worshipper; the love between family members; the love felt for nature and its inhabitants; and the love that comes in the form of cosmic consciousness. Whether it is experienced towards one or turned in upon oneself, it is more than just a thought. To speak of love in a spiritual world is to talk of sensation. It is to frame an experience that is far grander than our own selves.
In translating these wild feelings of love, the worldly romantic and modern-day psychologist go on to give us mental explanations involving desires, the subconscious, “the experience of feminine and the experience of the masculine,” just to name a few. But love in spirituality, as with everything else, is not a thought born of any of these categories. Rather, it is the truth of our being. It is the essence of our spiritual selves, which is born of a longing, a longing for imminent unity with that which we conceive of as divine. It is a blend of sacrifice and emotion that must be given form to be complete. It is ritual clothing an inkling of the divine in hues that we can experience, offering “taste to the tongue” for “the eternal, the absolute, here and now.” And to present this bondage, this union of man and divine, we tell stories with a quintessential storyteller: love itself.
Love is still a mystery. The most important thing about it is the only thing that we know for sure: a life without love is, in essence, nearly inconceivable since life and love are incredibly interdependent. Just as love is a fundamental part of our nature, it is also central to spiritual paths and spiritual growth practice. In the first place, who would want to be a part of—or even cultivate an aspiration for—a spiritual practice that did not open our hearts to love? What is a spiritual reformation if it doesn’t aid us in loving more than we already do? In fact, to the degree we honestly provide up a desire (not necessarily a conviction) to grow and to live for a complete sense of purpose and meaning, and to collaborate in the shared advancement of the whole of life—as shaped and summated in love—it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make any kind of sense out of seeking for spiritual enlightenment, philosophy, or purpose in life.
Spirituality is a byproduct of love, and love is vital to spiritual development. The two grow together and cannot be separated. In all spiritual traditions, love is the starting point. It is the alpha and omega. If love fails, all else fails. As long as love rises, everything else rises. Regardless of whether or not we characterize ourselves as spiritually inclined, religious, or simply human, we all unconsciously feel an inborn yearning to grow and deepen ourselves. It is built into our nature. Love and life are one and the same. Everything is at its best because of love. The sacred art of joyfully spinning together is what we call enlightenment. Every day, in every way, the liberation of love—to allow our spirit and destiny to unfold when it comes from the inside and moves to the outside—is a commitment to transform the universe so it is more completely one of love for all of us.
Much of the literature on relationships and self-help advice focuses on the practical aspects. While this is helpful and necessary, how does spiritual wisdom intersect with our relationships and what do we do if we are stuck over a recurring issue? Spirituality is about overcoming the individual desires and ego and seeking a higher purpose. This can also be applied to relationships. Rather than focusing on me and my ego, why can’t I get my way? Try looking at it in another way and rather than seeing yourself as an individual or part of a couple, see yourselves as part of the larger, spiritual whole.
Once you make the shift away from your hurt or frustration and turn toward your spirituality, everything begins to change. You begin to let go of your ego and the anger or hurt starts to dissipate. Remember, hurting our spouse is merely hurting ourselves. The logical part of us knows this, but we still get angry. If you can turn toward understanding or even love when your ego has been bruised, it is just the beginning of what is possible. You will have learned a new way to try to resolve conflicts with your spouse. When we hurt a loving spouse, the purity of innocence leaves us too. We find ourselves becoming defensive. We feel we have to protect ourselves from more hurt. We are afraid, we want something to change, and we want it quickly. When it doesn’t seem to be happening, the resentment grows and the wounds are driven even deeper.
Forgiveness, both seeking it and giving it, is an essential component of love, especially spiritual love. It is not just wiping the offense from the internal database of your brain, it is more a heart issue, not fueling your life with resentment, building up grudges which are bound to make us feel righteous and comfortable, if lonely in all too many ways. Religious figures of all stripes often spoke of this idea, that of the beseeching parent who cries out to their people to pull back to their hearts if they wish to be forgiven, reminding them, from within her own passion, that the act of forgetting is essential, that it creates the clearing where peace enters into our lives. Compassion is part of this process.
Whatever religion one is, compassion is a powerful spiritual love that figures within the mix of egoism, to be sure, but also allows us to forget the self, maybe just a little, enough to exalt the life of another person. Compassion, like forgiveness, both in its giving and its receiving, is an orientation toward life that allows people to be who they really are, perhaps because they really gain it from us. And maybe we gain it too because, at the heart of it, compassion is also being able to put up with the people one is connected to because, as I would say, relationships really are “for the birds.” Many people would argue that much of what I have written in this short paper falls within the realm of therapy, ethics, the philosophical mind-body problem, or the intellect. I would argue that still, there is a spiritual component to love. And at least for people, if not the other creatures, love at its best is a spiritual endeavor.
When we take our relationships to a spiritual depth, we deal in love, and the very first act of loving has got to be the act of loving yourself. Not in the selfish, over-empowered mindset that suggests that only the self is important, but the sheer respect and exaltation of divine energy blossoming in the form of the self. With it. Without it. It is important to remember and re-establish the importance of cultivating self-love and self-acceptance if the media is to be taken at its word. I think few would disagree that you would be hard-pressed to find one of us not trying our natural best to understand why our relationships are more like minefields than a garden in bloom. I am not suggesting for a moment that any of us genuinely realizes that spiritual growth encompasses enlightenment, or the ability to live in perfect peace and harmony full time. All I have wanted, while examining the spiritual side of living, is to figure out when it became a sign of weakness to show warmth and love as a feeling that exists for the self and the other?
Why is it considered a psychological catastrophe to cock a lop-sided grin at a friend? I ask because I don’t have the answer, not because I think I have a magic key to this puzzle that has dimensionally confounded and delighted us since birth. At least not yet. Still, eventually, I uncovered a key. I can’t make enough of loving myself. As I have come to realize, loving myself is not only hunky-dory but lovely. It’s basic and so is my ability to see some good in everything and in everyone. It’s made me extensive and at ease with past thoughts and attitudes I once planned to hide. Loving yourself turns out to be the easiest means to practicing tolerance with others.
In this section, I discuss the healing that is needed in order to grow into a new way of being as lovers. When two people begin to step into the mystery of cultivating something profound in a space as human and holy as love, they are by nature and need drawn to healing – not just physical and emotional healing, but spiritual healing as well. If we desire to draw closer to ourselves, one another, the Divine, and to grow into a fuller, deeper, more transformative experience of love, we must be willing to grapple the interior. Sacrament equals vulnerability, and I don’t see that you can put the two in small enough boxes to pretend they don’t touch when we’re talking about love.
This necessitates both an understanding of our personal histories and how our needs and dissatisfactions play out in our present. Even if we have been living in denial of a gaping black hole within us for decades, we are already precious children created in love and born in love and capable of both giving and receiving it. It is healing ourselves of the hurts, misfortunes, and inevitable events really that propels us into a deep, dynamic, very human kind of love – the only kind there is that can respond to, actually relate to, the gift that is divine love.
In conclusion, as love and religion – the spiritual mainstay from which revelations of the sacred spring – continue to shape the lives of humans, holding on to the belief that love is a single thing from which the sacred has been extracted will have the unfortunate effect of leading us to miss the continuing presence of the divine in our lives. Separating the experiences of sacredness and divinity at the heart of both love and religion, then, will have the effect of rupturing the lives of those who seek their fulfillment through love. Love will appear transient and heading toward its own demise, thereby serving merely as a vessel or as a detour on the road to nirvana or heaven. We believe that it is finally time to interpret love from a completely different perspective, freeing love from this rationalist and moralistic approach. We need to begin to also think of love in terms of its wild, irrational, and intensely private sacred aspects.
When someone says that love is a religious experience, they are right. That lover does encounter their beloved as a god, and all of the joy and the terror that comes with such knowledge is the edge of our eternal journey. The spectacular, everyday action of washing the dishes can become a religious moment of cleansing, of practicing right, of being merciful. If we take some time to understand what that means, we might see that it is not a virtue but a reality. And if life is a gift, it is a spiritual one, and it is all bound up in love. So when all is said and done, we can tell those who study science to begin asking about the other side of love as well. They can develop experiments to answer nature’s many mysteries. But while they are at it, they might think to look around, because they will find those answers all around them.
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