What I’d Like My Kids to Know About Love

To My Kids…    about this crazy thing called love.

Guys…  I’m not sure if your adolescence will be anything like mine. I know there’s a lot of different ways to guide your life that are all unique and beautiful in there own way.  I hope at very least I can give you a feeling of being loved and valued as you grow up.  And I also hope I can impart some life-learned wisdom to give you a head start on your journey.

I know when I was an adolescent, I was very confused about love. It made little sense to me. I heard one thing from movies and the media, another thing from my friends and another thing from church—and none of them made a lot of sense. I really didn’t believe much in love growing up… I saw it as a farse, or set of nearly random emotions that only the simple-minded fell pray to. I’ve always been very thoughtful and analytical, and at very least I understood at a fairly young age that the “love” I wanted in order to make my future marriage work needed to be stronger than the sorrow-filled “love” that made my parent’s marriage an ill-ending disaster. Love, to me, was a commitment. You loved by staying with and being committed to someone. I understood that there was a huge difference between love as a verb and love as a feeling or noun–but because of my lack of understanding I think I shut my heart and actions down to some extent in a misguided effort to avoid pain. In retrospect I wish I would have gotten involved in a lot more foolish flings. Put myself out there enough to have a broken heart a few times.  And had fun making out and being more sexual. I hope that my advice will help you find the right balance and harmony to make your love life a happy one.

 

What is Love

Love is not the same as romance, although that is an aspect of it. It is definitely not synonymous with sexuality. It is not simply a friendship or family bond, although that gets closer to the meat of it. It is not simply a feeling, nor are there different unrelated types of love (Eros, Agape, Phileao, Storge). All descriptions of it are mired in arguments of semantics or opinions of definitions. So I’d like to start by laying a scientific framework I read about in a book called ‘The Law of One’.  It’s probably the most powerful framework I’ve come across in respect to the idea of love.

As I’ve searched through a lot of religious and philosophical material to find the best cohesive, scientifically viable definition for love,— Fractal Theory combined with the Chakra philosophy make the most sense. I’ll try and quickly summarize them as a foundation for a discussion on how to have a beautiful love-filled life.

In short, fractal theory or the law of relative relationships teaches that everything in the universe evolves or is created to follow a similar pattern wherein the small is relatively a copy of the large. In particular it means that you can learn about yourself by studying the planet, or the solar system or the atom. Plato called this microcosm and macrocosm, but some form of this framework of parallelism exists in every global religion.

The reason why this matters is because using this framework we can compare Love (n.) to Cosmic Energy. By Cosmic Energy, I mean the energy in the cosmos that all matter is made of. Thus just as everything in the universe is made of energy… all things are made of love.  This is why God is often called ‘love’. Additionally we can compare and define Loving (v.) as the focus and use of that energy. Every “living” sphere in the galaxy lives because it has created a system of absorbing and giving cosmic energy or love, and the same is true for you. The Chinese called this cosmic energy Chi. The Hindus called it Prana. The Christians call it God’s Spirit, and Mormonism sometimes equates it with Spirit and sometimes with priesthood. Jesus and all the great pillars of humanity come to symbolize it and show its possible uses. Regardless of what we call it, in your adolescence you will decide on a delicate balance of receiving and giving that same energy or love. It will be your focus and use of love or your energy that makes you who you are, determines your joy, your happiness and your eternal identity. You can decide whether to be a sun, or a black hole, a thriving planet or a near-dead rock, a rogue asteroid or a communal pillar of the Galaxy. You can decide to focus your energy or love on yourself or others—or to shut it down and not love much at all.

 

Here’s a few points concerning love that I hope you can understand and remember.

-With the act of loving (giving or receiving energy & attention), comes emotion. Do not confuse the emotions of love, with love, loving or being in love.  But realize that the emotions of love are a measuring stick to let you know how much–and what types–of love you are giving and receiving. Think of it in regards to physics. When a system gains energy it creates heat. When it looses energy, it manifests cold. The same goes for your body. When you gain energy, you will experience emotional ‘heat’. That heat can be interpreted as passion, anger, sexual attraction, excitement or other types of love. When you lose more energy than you are gaining you will experience emotional ‘cold’. That cold can manifest as loneliness, depression, indifference, hate or certain types of love.

-Sometimes the most rewarding relationships… are the hardest ones. The ones where you feel the least feelings of love, but are challenged to be loving and giving in new and different ways.

-The increased feelings of the emotions of love that come with new relationships do not mean you love that person more than your existing relationships.

 

A Short Overview of the Chakra System

The ancient Hindus came up with an amazingly effective system of describing how the human body uses love, energy or “spirit” to affect our emotions, actions and personality. In this system, each individual finds a unique balance of dispersing their energy to 7 bodily energy centers which each have unique functions. Comparing this system to the modern understanding of biology, many have noticed that these ancient centers seem to correlate with the way in which our nervous system disperses its energy to the endocrine glands–which are in charge of translating the nerves energy signals to chemical hormones which in turn govern the bodies feelings and emotions.

The hormonal balance which dictates your emotions of happiness are said to be the result of a combination of your own decisions, the decisions of your ancestors (as passed through DNA), and the configuration your spirit brought with you from your pre-mortal existence (past lives). Each energy center or endocrine gland controls specific hormones which govern your biology and emotions such as testosterone/estrogen (which govern sexuality and physical size),  epinephrine/adrenaline (which govern your anxieties, fears & risk taking proclivities), pancreatic polypeptides like glucose/insulin (which govern your energy levels) ,  serotonin/melatonin (which help govern joy/depression and chronobiology) and many, many more. (For more information see my more detailed article on chakras/endocrine glands).

Knowing exactly what these hormones are and what they do, is not as important as understanding that your emotions are a result of the “directions” your brain sends to your endocrine glands to tell them what balance of hormones to stick in your blood stream. In other words it is important to understand that your thoughts and behaviors have a direct influence on your joys, feelings of love and emotions. At the same time, it is important to realize that many of these things are controlled subconsciously, and just like taking control of the usually subconsciously controlled speed of your heartbeat— can take great meditation, intelligence and practice. This is one important function of religion and spirituality. With religion, great masters have sought to institute ways of life which bring balance; and systems of ritual which allow you to take conscious control of otherwise subconscious biological processes. Whether it be singing in church or in your car, taking the sacrament or doing yoga and meditative breathing, or going to the temple or losing yourself in nature I hope you will learn to intelligently use the tools you have been given to manage your energy or love pathways which regulate your chemical balances and thus your emotional and spiritual well being. I pray you will not be tempted to synthetically regulate your hormonal system with drugs or tobacco—since all of the euphoric feelings drugs will give you can be gotten naturally—without the devastating addiction and toxic side effects.

 

Bonding

Other than regulating your own chemical balances, the most important thing you will do with love in your life is bonding. The same is true for any planet or atom.

 

 

 

The internal energy configuration of these bodies dictates what they will be attracted to and what they can or will bond to. Oil will not mix with water and inert gasses will not bond to much of anything. On the other hand, what Florine wants, Florine gets.