Mind over Matter of the Hearts: Welcome into My Love

I was talking to a girlfriend the other day, about what us, women mostly -not always, but mostly-talk about: men, relationships, love and Love with a capital "L".

My friend, a sexy, intelligent, beautiful inside and out, yet (or perhaps "thus"?) single, was describing the man of her dreams, the man, who would win her heart, mind and soul, the man, whom she she would, she said, "Welcome into my Love"

We noticed and laughed about the apparent Freudian slip; of course, she meant "the man I would welcome into my life", but long after I hung up with her, I could not get this notion out of my mind: I mean, we welcome men, women, friends, children, pets and even appliances into our life, but, how many of us welcomes anything, anybody "into our love"?

Come to think of it, how many of us have ever met love, how many of us known love, how many of us welcomed love into our life? Furthermore, and perhaps it is an even more rhetorical, but important question: how many of us invited and welcomes LIFE into our LOVE? In other words: do we give life to our love, or do we give love to our life? Sadly, I assume it is neither; most of us think of love as something that will, one perfect day, "find us", enter our life, and stay forever, cherish us, honor us, sustain us, till death do us part, love will stay with us, until the end, we hope, but many of us, most of us, do not have the commitment, the courage and the wherewithal to stay in love, let alone stay and live with love.

We seek love, we crave love, we fall in and out of love, we love love, and most of us, except certain psycho or sociopaths would agree, that we can't live without love: yet, , many of us never "met" love, many of do, and live without.

Since the beginning of time, philosophers, poets, scientist, theoreticians and every day people tried to define, explain, and sometimes control the concept, energy, feeling, this "thing" we call "love". Depending to whom you listen to, love either does not exist, it is "in our mind", it is in our heart, or, at the other end, it is what makes the world go round, love all there is.

Some would argue, love is nothing but a chemical reaction to certain hormones, designed by evolution for the survival of the species: it is "love" that makes us hunt for a partner to have over for dinner (hopefully followed by desserts, vine and various acts of procreation), instead of having her for dinner. It is a rush of certain chemicals that makes us -especially women- feel good, "in love" after the physical act of procreation (a.k.a. sex), and it keeps us, unlike some spiders and other species, from consuming and digesting our partner, immediately after consummation of our love affair. "Love hormones" keep us from eating our young, and from kicking them out the nest before they can fly.





Love is an emotion, a thought process, and our notion of  Unconditional Love, strongly conditioned by our culture, society, and personal experiences, others argue: it is all in our mind, a construct of our thought processes, a matter of perception, and thus, it can never be truly shared or communicated: even two people deeply in love with each other are not "in" the same love.

Love is an action, others will say, it is a behavior, mostly learned, a conscious act. We "make love", we "act lovingly", we "share love" we "love others" and others, hopefully will love us back.

Do we have a choice over love? Can we control with whom, where, and why we are going to fall in love with? Are we responsible for "staying in love", do we "fall" out of love, or do we walk out on love?

Some say, you can not truly love others, until you've learned to love yourself. Others say,that you can not love yourself, unless you experienced at least once, even if for a short period of time, how it feels to be loved. Truly, some people who never experienced love as being accepted, cared for, safe, might even confuse being controlled, or even abused as being loved, and they end up abusing themselves and others in the name of "love".

Personally, I tend to believe that love is as much an instinct as it can be constructed, learned and practiced mindfully. I believe, love is a word of action and a state of mind that can be developed, cultured, an experience we can create, and a choice we can make.  a conscious choice. As long as we have a mind, body and soul, we can choose to evolve toward a conscious, mindful and soulful experience, feeling and action of love: all we have to do is to open our heart, mind and body, to welcome love into our life and to welcome life into our love.