Types of love

QUESTION: Masters, I understand that definitions of love are different. Can you please help me (us) understand the difference between “loving someone” and ‘being in love’ here on earth? Obviously I have issues with this and appreciate any advice you can give to help me to understand my mistakes more deeply and to grow from them. ~Kim, United States

ANSWER: Loving people is a spiritual state in which you totally accept them. It is also called unconditional love since you allow them to be themselves and utilize their freedom of choice to learn their lessons – even if you do not like what they are doing or would never do the same things as they. It is exclusive of any hormonal or emotional bodily responses. It is either a thinking/reasoning action or a nonphysical spiritual vibrational response.

Being in love is an emotional physiological sensation of a human body reacting in a positive/negative duality. It is a choice between not loving and loving. In the case of this human love, one can “love” someone else only to the extent that one loves oneself.

A third possibility, again only possible in a duality, is infatuation. This occurs when one does not love oneself or, having never experienced any type of love, creates an imagined visual visceral reaction to a person with whom one desires to be able to have a relationship – perhaps someone seen only infrequently or never even met, such as an actor. It can take the form of following the person, watching his/her movies, carrying pictures around, or any one of a number of things.

Love, in its various aspects, is a part of a lot of life lessons for souls on Earth. It is difficult for a soul to fully understand love while still dealing with a human existence. There is no right answer to what you should know or be able to feel or understand. Go with the flow of the energy, as we say – you will draw to you what you need to experience. Stay in the moment, feeling, observing, and learning.

Turn away from judgment, where you see things as right or wrong. Turn to evaluation, where you look at each event in your life for what you have been able to learn from it. Is it something you feel you would like to do again, or is it something you know you don’t need to repeat? That is all you really need to do with your lessons.