Emotional Love is Not Essential Love
In this journey of breaking the idols that masquerade as essence, we come to the sphere of action, movement, and physical activity. Some people, usually in reaction to the feeling that emotional love is selfish or useless, come to conclude that real love is action. They assert that love, compassion, truth, harmony, and so on are the particular actions that an individual takes, that the presence of the emotion, or the expression of the affect, does not mean that there is real love unless there is an action that is useful. This is very tricky. There is truth in this assertion, but this truth can be misleading because it is partial. It is true that the emotion of love or the expression of it does not necessarily indicate the presence of real essential love. Most of the time, the emotion or its expression is conditioned by the personality and its unconscious underpinnings. Hence, it is selfish love, which is self-seeking and useless. Also, as we saw in the last section, emotion and essence are not the same. Emotional love is not essential love. It is a discharge process, whereas essential love is a real presence.
Essential Love Acts by Its Mere Presence
The essential aspect of love can be present sometimes without overt action. Action might certainly result and very often does, but it is not necessary for the experience. When essential love is present, then it is our nature. We are present. It is the presence of a certain aspect or facet of Essence… Love, here, is being. It is Being… Essential Love acts by its mere presence, but in a subtle and invisible way… The presence of Essence, in any of its various aspects, is its primary action.
Experience of Essential Love on at Least Two Levels
We see here the experience of essential Love on at least two levels. On the first level, it feels like a sweet and fluffy presence, like cotton candy. There is sweetness and appreciation, lightness and pleasure. Then essential Love can move to the next level, the diamond level, when our understanding of Love and the issues around it becomes precise and specific. This gives Love itself a precision and an objectivity that then make it feel clear and crystalline. The cotton candy loses its fluffiness and is replaced by objectivity and clarity. It becomes a presence that has clear and crystalline qualities to it, but it still retains its sweetness, lightness, and appreciative quality. This can be felt as the purity of Love.