“Love Is Not A Feeling”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert
Most people think “love” is simply an emotion. A feeling. That’s what most people are taught.
Most people teach that love ❤️ is “feeling good,” or “expressing good feelings” about others. A feeling that comes and goes.
I want to suggest a different perspective on this often referenced concept.
I’m not suggesting that the above definition the way most people think of love is incorrect. But I am definitely stating that it is limited.
Incomplete.
And that incompleteness I think leads to disempowering the potential effects of this powerful idea. And worse, arguably sometimes creates suffering in our lives...in the name of “love.”
Love ❤️
I choose to define love in the way one of my early teachers taught us to love. Jesus said,
“Love is accepting the other person for who they are.
Not who you wish they were.”
That is not simply a feeling. Not a fleeting emotional response. It is definitely not merely a “feel good” feeling. And, it is not conditional.
It is an act. An act that can become a state of being.
What was he teaching us?
He was saying that, sure, we may all have expectations about what we desire in another person. How we hope they would interact and behave with us. How they might treat us.
But that is not ultimately up to us. It is up to them. It is molded and shaped by who they are, what their personality is, combined with choices they make in how they interact with each of us.
We do not control that. They do.
And our acceptance of who they are frees them up to be themselves with us in a way that makes them feel welcomed by us. Not judged by us.
And that increases the likelihood (nothing is ever guaranteed) that they may make choices in dealing with us that are in alignment with our needs at that moment.
That is — provided their intentions are similar to ours. And if we each desire a mutually beneficial outcome. Where we both can be happy and fulfilled.
But what if their expression — how they behave towards us — is not in alignment with what we want or need? What if it is hurtful? This is where most people’s understanding of “love” falls apart. This is the crucial missing (or forgotten) component of that ancient teaching.
We walk away.
That was and still is the advice.
We see the other person “for who they are, not who we wish they were....” And if what we see is harmful to us mentally, emotionally, or physically, we need to separate from them. Walk away.
And that is not only acknowledging who they are (in that 2,000-year-old definition of “love”), but it is also expressing our love for ourselves — “self love.”
That is love and the expression of love the way I was taught to frame it many years ago.
I have sometimes been successful in the application of that approach to love. And other times not so much.
None of us is perfect. So we need to be not so self critical, not so harsh in our self assessments. But we do need to aspire and attempt to move in the direction of this type of love: “as acceptance.”
That is:
If we want to truly pursue a sustainable level of contentment and happiness in our lives.
So today, as best I can, I continue to aspire to live that degree of love that I witnessed on a daily basis — for those three years 2,000 years ago.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.