To be successful and balanced, we all need love. The definitions of love take several forms and each may be expressed differently. There are three common types of love. They are eros, philia, and agape.
Eros is the term used to discuss romantic love. Philia is reciprocal loving. Each can be presented as quality love. For in loving to be quality, it must be again. This form of love is necessary to share both time and pictures. Agapic loving is that which is given without the expectation of receiving.
It is not predicated on the behavior of the recipient.
Agapic caring presumes that the beneficiary of the love receives it whether or not it is deserved by the conventional standard. Agape is an understanding, redeeming love that does not seek love in return. Whatever the form or function loving relationships take, love is necessary to a healthy life.
Loving is operationalized through acting, thinking, feeling, and physical aspects (total behavior) of a shared quality world. In the shared quality world, there are usually many more shared pictures than we use. As we live our life, we accumulate our loving pictures. These pictures prepare us for our perception of loving. The accumulation of more pictures than we currently need (negative entropy) is necessary for those moments when loving is threatened.
It is the building of a reserve in the quality world. These moments include disagreements, selfishness, loss, pain, and problems. In terms of love and belonging, each of us can acquire any number of pictures. The more we believe it, the truer it is. The world of love is socially constructed around what we believe. Loving relationships are the perfect model of the concept of constructivism.
The question is what type of love exists? One can transition from loving behavior to love behavior. When one encounters problems in the relationship, one can move from agape loving to philia. Here, the relationship is based on reciprocity. The loving system will always seek homeostasis. This is a balance of love within or outside of the relationship. Ideally, the system will seek balance in a healthy need fulfilling manner. If the balance is unhealthy, intervention is necessary. Whether or not the love system is healthy or ill, balance will be the outcome. The system will not judge the behaviors but acts to achieve balance. It is up to the perceptual system to interject judgment into the type of balance achieved. Self-evaluating will determine through the valuing filter if the behavior is healthy.
When one is in love, one acts lovingly. According to Glasser, “To either love or allow ourselves to be loved is not enough, we must do both.” Love is and isn’t at the same time. It is everything and nothing. It is the all but it fails to meet the any. Love is the joining of extremes. It is a union of opposites. It is both presents and problems. This evidences a commitment to the process and practice of love. The most significant practice of acting lovingly is to be open to love. Those who love are connected beyond space and time. Loving is a total behavior.
The feeling, thinking, and physical aspects of love are evidenced through our behaviors. These are the visibly present manifestation of the spirit of loving. Total behavior infused with spirituality is holistic.
Spiritual loving is the transformative component of perfect loving. Perfect love has no beginning and no end. One cannot remember the moment of transformation to perfect love, that is when it began nor can one predict its end. Perfect loving is timeless, with no beginning and no end.
Perfect loving includes mind, body, and spirit. The total behavior of loving includes thinking, feeling, physiology, and doing. It is love that is both convergent and triangular in the practice. Spiritual loving is needed fulfilling.
Spiritual loving is pure love. This is the love that is beyond the physical and the mental. It’s love based on the existence of the perfect within the imperfect. The struggle toward perfectibility is the physical attempting to be congruent with the spiritual. The spiritual is that which lasts forever, while the physical is temporary and limited.
Spiritual love is loving without boundaries. Its residual exists on this plane, but it is in reality on a higher plane. It raises the level of consciousness of the participants. It widens the sphere of influence and concern. One must choose to be aware of the other’s behavior as well as the choices made in an attempt to control others. All behavior is our best attempt to control our perception. The perception which is focused allows us to focus this control in a need-fulfilling way.
Perfect loving is comprised of complementary loving relationships that seem to provide a perfect model. Loving and belonging are evidenced by total behaviors. It is the basic need that connects each one with another. The more interconnected one is with another, the more involved they are. Involvement is expressed in the process of communing. Communing is the coming together of those with like minds. Communing is the operationalization of faith in a loving relationship. This coming together reflects consubstantiation. Consubstantiation means that we are of the same substance and therefore we can commune with each other utilizing intuitive knowing. Intuitive knowing is required to express faithful loving. “Faith is the veneration, love, and trust you give to the source of the ultimate meaning of your life”
Choosing to love perfectly requires that each of the needs is fulfilled. In addition to fulfilling the needs, the authors posit that special attention should be paid to loving as a form of Wellness. Wellness leads to loving perfectly. Perfection requires focusing on loving. To be perfect in loving, one must aspire to be perfect in behavior. To be perfect in behavior, one must focus on total commitment to self as well as to the other. In the final analysis, love is two plants into one flower.
