Monday, December 5, 2011

3 Kinds of Love: Fall in Love, Real Love and Spiritual Love. Only Two of Those are True Love

There are three kinds of love: Fall in Love, Real Love and Spiritual Love.


Bing Crosby Grace Kelly - True Love


Fall in Love is easy. People do it all the time. Most people will do this, perhaps,  dozens and dozens of times during their lives. Fall in Love usually starts in puberty when a youth falls in love with some star they've seen in magazines or on TV... Or they "Fall in Love" with a classmate that they've never really gotten to know. Fall in Love is "love" of someone, or more specifically speaking, "falling in love" with the "image" of someone. It is not falling in love with that true person. It is falling in love with who you think that person is, or wish them to be.

But don't think that Fall in Love is childish or silly. It is not. It could be the first step to Real or True Love.

Too many people today get married merely when they Fall in Love. That's why divorce is so high. People marry when they Fall in Love and then, once reality sets in, and they really get to know their partner, they decide that they weren't really in love at all, so they divorce. 

They divorce because building Real Love requires a lot of work and acceptance of one another's fault's and shortcomings. Building Real Love is not an easy process and takes years of give and take.

A very good friend of mine once told me that he could tell that my wife and I have True Love. He said that one big part of True Love is that it is not physical or involving animalistic tendencies or imagination. True Love involves and requires great sympathy. Sympathy for each other and all the things that we have to suffer through in life.

I think he is right. In a weird sense, I feel sorry for my wife. We have a wonderful life together and we have a wonderful son. We have a home, food and a job... But we are getting older. We are going to die. Perhaps she could have married someone better than me? Perhaps I stole her youth and took away her chances? It's a bizarre notion for most people to think this way, I believe, but it is this sympathy for your partner that is a strong bond for True Love.

Real Love is what, hopefully, our parents have for each other. Of course, it takes decades to build.

The last real love is Spiritual Love. This is the love between a person and their god or a mother and her child. No matter what happens, Spiritual Love cannot be broken. Whereas the other forms of love can be broken, Spiritual Love lives on even in death. A child could be a terrible criminal yet that child's mother will always love them. That is Spiritual Love.

It is the very lucky and fortunate few who marry when they Fall in Love, then they work to build Real Love and, one day, are blessed with Spiritual Love. 


From the above you can surmise that Real Love and Spiritual Love are the two forms of True Love.

It is this True Love and Spiritual Love that blesses far too few of the dying today in our society.

Building True Love and Spiritual Love is a long process that can require years, if not decades. 

I hope you have it. It doesn't come easy. You must work to build it.

If there is any lesson to be learned from my father's experience, then please remember this, and start building True Love today. For it is from True Love that Spiritual Love is born.

True Love requires that you open your heart and accept your partner for what they are and not what you imagine them to be. 

For tomorrow and your death will be here before you know it. As one of my good friend's always says, "Dream as if you will live forever. Live as if you will die tomorrow."

For married partners or those living together, True Love can be yours. Dedication, even in death, can create Spiritual Love.

It is yours to create.



2 comments:

Mr. Nobody said...

Hello Mike,

I think this is one of your most interesting articles that I have read. Thank you very much!

The mention of three kinds of love kindled a memory of this article, "On Love" by A.R. Orage:

http://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/On-Love-A.-R.-Orage.pdf

Two snippets:

The conscious love motive, in its developed state, is the wish that the object should arrive at its own native perfection, regardless of the consequences to the lover. 'So she become perfectly herself, what matter I?' says the conscious lover. 'I will go to hell if only she may go to heaven'. And the paradox of the attitude is that such love always evokes a similar attitude in its object. Conscious love begets
conscious love. It is rare among humans because, in the first place, the vast majority are children who look to be loved but not to love; secondly, because perfection is seldom conceived as the proper end of human love— though it alone distinguishes adult human from infantile and animal love; thirdly, because humans do not know, even if they wish, what is good for those they love; and fourthly, because it never occurs by chance, but must be the subject of resolve, effort, self-conscious choice. As little as Bushido or the Order of Chivalry grew up accidentally does conscious love arise by nature. As these were works of art, so must conscious love be a work of art. Such a lover enrols himself, goes through his apprenticeship, and perhaps one day attains to mastery. He perfects himself in order that
he may purely wish and aid the perfection of his beloved.

[...]

Love without divination is elementary. To be in love demands that the lover shall divine the wishes of the beloved long before they have come into the beloved's own consciousness. He knows her better than she knows herself; and loves her more than she loves herself; so that she becomes her perfect self without her own conscious effort. Her conscious effort, when the love is mutual, is for him. Thus each delightfully works perfection in the other.

[...]

What do you think of it?

Thanks again Mike!

mike in tokyo rogers said...

Wow! Mr. Nobody!
That is awesome! I just downloaded the entire thing! Everyone! Do yourself a favor and download this. It is only 9 short pages. Awesome stuff: "On Love".
But, gee... Here I thought that, for once, I had a pretty original idea... Oh well. Thanks! This is great!

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