Love, the expanded concept

The dictionary usually provide a definition of love that goes something like this; strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties or attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers

I want to explore love from the Hebraic perspective of love. Love is more than the emotion, love generate the emotions - thus, there is more to love than a set of emotions.

A friend of mine once said, "People should have the freedom to love. Obviously there are situations in which the power imbalance can be abused. A moral society should have safeguards to protect the vulnerable."

I agree that people should have the freedom to love. In order for us to help instill that freedom, we need to improve our concepts of love, then increase our conversations on the subject of love. For example: love is more than an emotion.

True love is about the genuine concern for a person's physical, mental, spiritual and emotional well-being. When we see and experience such in ourselves and in others, it should, and often does, create an emotional sense of pleasure. And while there are situations that can diminish that joy and well-being - the intelligence (knowledge of the situation and how to bring things into balance) can and will, empower the human being with the ability cause love to be overt and an acceptable norm of society. These are the bases for a moral society. These are also the safeguards that protect the citizens of this planet and make them to be less vulnerable to situations that would, otherwise, diminish the peace that love brings to humanity.

Another friend shared this with me, {Here's a short acknowledgement from an onlne app titled 'Bible'. Did you know that the word love is used 413 times in what is falsely labelled as the Old Testament? Otoh , it's used in the NT New Testament 223 times." ... "Seems like that "Love" , when focused on another human being (regardless of age or gender)" and that other human has the same feelings of "love'" toward you, then that "Love" controls all of the 'conditions' numbered by the previous posting (included below)....and "Love" brooks no opposition from all the reaches of the intellect.}

Often times when people think that they love each other, they feel as though they are not on the same page. The most common reason for this is a lack of proper communication. A relationship is about showing that you care. Everyone experiences love differently, usually because of how we conceptualize love. I believe that we all can learn to identify the roots of love, give and receive love in more meaningful ways, and grow closer to others than ever before. Your Language of Love, knowing what love is, and how to explain it, can help you use love to connect to others.

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Spiritual tolerance

Spiritual tolerance, basically, is the practice of loving and accepting people as they are.

Often times people can, inaccurately, believe that others should believe the same way as they do, or follow the same spiritual path that they are following.

In actuality, we all need to follow our own spiritual path. No two paths are exactually the same. Some may join a spiritual comunity, some call it a religion, but, within that community, no one is following the exact same spiritual path because we all have to walk our own unique path to enlightenment.

We may have a favorite color, lets say blue. Another person may like red. One day we may have on a blue shirt and another person may have on a red shirt - we do not say anything that would cause them to become down in spirit. In most cases, we do not critize the other person for wearing a different color shirt than we do. If we see a person wearing our favorite color, we might compliment them on their color choice and uplift their spirit.

The same should be with any other spiritual practice. Always be found uplifting the spirit of others. We just may find that we have a lot in common to share along our spiritual journey.

Sherwood Lummus