Tonight, September 4th, when I looked for prior posts on the subject of love, I found that one of them had been published elsewhere and wasn’t available on my website. I’m correcting that oversight to complete the record. It started this way:

“This post is for Tony iWiz of Ozzi and Mark Henry Smith. Tony had the courage to post an article Men in LOVE, asking Is It Real or Mother’s Love. Marko posed his questions about truth and love in his comments to TIME for a FRESH START.

“I’ll hassle Tony from a woman’s point of view on his post. But since love is a human thing, not just a guy or gal issue, I decided, in addition, to post an essay from the collection written in the year 2000.”

ESSAY 38. LOVE

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. – Moses, Deuteronomy 6:4-5

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. . .This is my commandment. That ye love one another, as I have loved you. — Jesus Christ in St. John, The New Testament

In Taoism, we say the heart is the seat of love, compassion, joy and happiness. This is what people are looking for. But they are looking outside. We don’t know that joy and happiness is seated INSIDE our heart. We’re running around the whole world. Going to the amusement park, night club, theaters, all kinds of places in search of happiness, peace, joy. But the peace, joy and happiness are within us. — Mantak Chia, The Inner Smile

THE FRONT

Roots of love mean to be fond, or to desire. Webster’s first definition is a deep and tender feeling of affection for, or attachment to. It can be an expression of one’s affection. It can mean a feeling of brotherhood and good will towards other people. It can be strong liking for or interest in something (a love of music). It’s a strong, usually passionate affection, partly based on sexual attraction. In theology, love refers to God’s tender regard for mankind, or mankind’s desire for God as the supreme good.

Love is the ultimate mystery. It sparks and keeps the life process going, more to be accepted and honored than psychoanalyzed. Plato described seven stages of love. Each is a rung on an evolutionary ladder which leads from a child’s love for parents, to erotic love, to friendship, and eventually the pinnacle of divine connection. These seven steps correlate exactly with the seven energy centers of yoga anatomy.

Plato traces the attraction between males and females to jealous gods who severed a complete, content person in half at the navel. Ever since, each part has chased after the other, longing to become whole again. Unfortunately, rather than seeking to integrate male and female energies internally, most Westerners persist in externalizing this desire for reunion.

In contrast, I Ching-related healing arts provide methods for restoring inner wholeness, attaining the ultimate level of Platonic love. The new law Christ taught fulfills the law of Moses.

Further, the Old Testament command to unify the three levels of soul, heart and might into a single-minded love of One God resonates with yogic practices which coordinate upper, middle and lower tan tiens, the Chinese equivalent of Sanskrit energy centers.

These methods give people of every faith practical means for actualizing their religious ideals. Put another way, only by integrating and harmonizing the levels of mind, body and emotions can love of God be actualized and the universal law be fulfilled.

Healing gender, race and religious splits calls for fluency in the complete energy spectrum of love. Even in grimmest times, love is the omnipresent, underlying bedrock. In Rocky IV, for example, Sylvester Stallione scripted an I Ching-worthy East-West reconciliation of opposite cultures. A nature-trained David not only defeats a technology-mutant Goliath with love and relentless grit. He wins the hearts of a hostile crowd. His victory message to international TV viewers: “If I can change, and you can change, we all can change.”

Those who turn love into a commodity exploit what people out of touch with their true selves crave most. There’s a push-pull between those greedy to get what they’ve been fooled into thinking they lack and those who exploit this misconception.

The ultimate Tai Chi push is to persuade someone they’re incomplete and not-okay. Further, you’ve got a life-changing product that can fix them. If they buy it, do what you say, turn over their power and money, you will transform them, make them okay.

Those grounded in reality, however, know better.

The question then arises, what happens when one becomes focused and centered. Does all interest in the external world and motive to accomplish cease? Actually, it’s the opposite. As one becomes more secure from within, fear-built barriers come down. New, more authentic motives arise to replace artificial desires. As one pares away the illusion of need, the native impulse to serve with generous compassion arises.

THE BACK

Hate is the opposite of love. Where love grows upwards from childish attachment through degrees of maturity to altruism, hate descends to the depths of destruction. It obliterates connections, shatters hope, and in the end destroys those it consumes.

Fear-based insecurities generate a host of love perversions. Possessiveness, envy, jealousy and rivalry are variations on the theme of illusory insufficiency. In all cases, it’s the result of looking outside for what can neither be bought nor stolen, as love is the timeless, abiding state of one’s innermost life.