This article is intended to help us identify four different levels of love, and to help us see where these different levels fit into our overall process of integrated mastery. For the purposes of this article, we are going to be defining love as simply the creative force or impulse that lies behind and within our lives, and that drives us forwards in our journey, whether it be on a biological, psychological or spiritual level.
First level: biological or procreative love.
No need to say too much here, the biological impulse toward mating, procreation and reproduction shared by humans, animals and plants alike, in its many varied formats!
Second level: Emotional and or psychological love.
This is the love that is shared as a process of daily give and take between individuals and groups of individuals. In its most complex forms it is found in human love, but it is also shared to a greater or lesser degree in the more complex and intelligent members of the animal kingdom.
Third level: Soul level love.
Here love is expressed benevolently within an individual as “the attitude of the soul toward life”. Someone who has a stable realization of this form of love has his or her creative energies firmly and constantly focused on nurturing and service towards the greater and higher goals of any individual or group that s/he has a relationship with. Ideally this is the form of love that we are trying to establish as the basic context for our daily actions and experiences in life. With our inner being centred around soul level love, any act of biological or emotional love that we engage in will be guided by the benevolent perspectives of the soul.
Fourth level: Universal love
This is the level of love that we contact when we are able to set aside our individual identity, and allow our “small self” to merge with a sense of the Universal Being or Consciousness that lies behind all life forms in existence. Typically this is contacted at first in deep meditational states, but over time we can stabilize the experience in our consciousness so that it starts to pervade our awareness as we go about our daily actions. This level of love is paradoxical (like all spiritual experiences) in that on one level we could call it “impersonal love” as it dissolves our sense of individuality and does not favour any one person over another. However, when we contact universal love, there is also a sense of finally having come home, and in this sense it is the most personal and intimate of experiences.
Ideally in our own inner growth we are aiming to centre our basic identity at level three, soul level love. With ourself in this position we can then act as mediators of universal love to the lower levels of emotional and biological love.
What follows below is a brief poetic meditation form on these four levels of love that can be used as a way of developing a sense and feeling of how they (the four levels of love) interact with each other. This in turn will enable us to start to orientate our own experience of love toward the soul and spiritual levels.
I would recommend that you simply read through the description below on a contemplative way, allowing yourself to explore the four different levels of love imaginatively. Then once you have done this you can then spend some time in meditation focusing on the parts that move you most. However this can also be done as a more systematic, four stage meditation where you focus for a few minutes on each level, spending equal time on all the levels.
Meditation on the four levels of love.
Seated comfortably, spend a short while simply relaxing your body and mind, and disentangling them from the business of your daily life using breathing meditation or any other form of centring meditation.
Now, from where you are sitting, allow your awareness to expand and spread across the surface of the planet. Sense the biological life around you; human, animal and plant. Sense the power of biological, procreative love within yourself and in nature that sustains physical life forms and causes them to grow and sustain their species.
When you feel ready, turn your attention to the humans in your area. Contemplate the complex patterns of emotional and psychological love that exist within their (and your own) minds and relationships, the continuous give and take, ebb and flow, the pleasure and the pain, the elation and confusion, the power and the vulnerability.
Now see within your mind’s eye sitting next to you there is a being who has realized soul level love ( this could be an actually figure such as the Buddha or a Saint, or an unknown figure that appears intuitively to your consciousness). As you observe her/him you sense a continuous, benevolent flow of positive, loving energy gently pulsing from the core of their being. Anyone whom the energy of this being comes into contact with benefits from exposure to their energy, whether they know it or not. Without trying too hard, this soul realized individual next to us benefits others simply through their loving presence and manner.
After focusing on this person for a while, now imagine yourself AS that person; see yourself as a soul realized being, gently radiating your love to those around you. You are someone for whom love is their basic attitude towards life.
Finally, allow all thoughts, feelings and images in your mind to dissolve into the Universal mind and heart, like a tiny drop of water dissolving into an ocean. As you allow yourself to relax and move deeper into this infinite universal consciousness, feel within it the primal creative impulse of universal love. Feel that you are in a space within which exists all possibilities, all creative potentials. If you like you can combine your breathing with this experience; as you breathe in feel the creative impulse of universal love flowing into your being, and as you breathe out, feel this impulse flowing outward from your being into the hearts of all living beings.
Read Toby’s previous article on “the challenges of meditating on love”.
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