Earlier this week I attended the workshop “What is Love?” offered by Diane Winn and Tom Searcy of Through Eagles Eyes at the Center for Spiritual Growth in South Bend. Tom Searcy opened by identifying love as one of the most practical, powerful, and useful energies that there is. He noted that having a loving relationship with self and others makes one happier, healthier, and more abundant. And that love is more than an energy, it’s a verb. In other words, we demonstrate the energy of our love through our actions.
It’s an interesting perspective because I think most people, if asked to define love, would identify it first as a feeling. But if love is just a feeling, what happens when we don’t feel it? What do we do when the baby’s crying, and we’ve been up all night? When our significant other doesn’t seem so love-able? Where does action arise? From the feelings of the moment? From our commitment to our values? In the moments when we are most challenged by our circumstances, it becomes more important than ever to act from (and indeed, to act on) our internal commitment to the ideals (and to the people) that we hold most dear.
Pose the question “What is Love?” to someone of my generation and you’re likely to be met with a rendition of the Haddaway song featured on the popular Saturday Night Live skit starring Will Ferrell and Kris Kattan. “Baby don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. No more.” All kidding aside, those words are a strong indicator of popular fears about love. It’s a strange phrase, isn’t it? Aren’t fear and love antithetical?
Emotional states have vibratory energy. According to Dr. David Hawkins, different emotional states vibrate along a scale of consciousness. On Hawkins’ scale which is (1-1000), love has a vibration of 500, while fear vibrates at 100. A few key points on the Hawkins scale of consciousness look something like this:
- 600 peace
- 540 unconditional love
- 500 love
- 400 reason
- 200 courage
- 100 fear
- 50 apathy
In the Hawkins paradigm, one must move beyond science, beyond reason, to achieve a love vibration. He draws a distinction between Love and Unconditional Love: mainly that love encompasses a set of demonstrable qualities (goodness, purity, humble-ness), while unconditional love signals more of an overall paradigm shift. Hawkins specifically associates unconditional love with compassion and devotion as a way of life that facilitates healing on many levels.
Now, whether you subscribe to the Hawkins paradigm or not, it’s worth considering the ways emotions affect our personal energy levels, as well as how they impact those around us. In terms of personal development, it’s well-understood that we must love ourselves before we can begin to love others. But how do we truly love ourselves? I think it goes back to svadhyaya, or self-study, which I discussed in an earlier post. In that sense, love is a process.
Hawkins asserts that movement along the scale of consciousness can be facilitated by exposure to different energy vibrations. If you want to move up the scale, say for example from reason to love, exposure to a higher vibratory energy can precipitate a shift. Thus, it would seem that we each have, to some degree, an opportunity: Have you ever noticed that some people can make you feel good, really good, just by their mere presence? And that spending just a few short minutes with certain other individuals can leave you feeling really lousy?
I think it comes down to this question: “What kind of world do you want to live in?” There’s a reason people so often quote Gandhi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It’s easier said than done, but well worth the effort.
Recommended reading:
Power vs. Force, by David Hawkins
