Love Paradigm

What is love, and how do we experience it?

First, Consider the Earth from space. We maintain a delicate balance to sustain life. Slight changes even in the distance from

the sun could eliminate life as we know it.

Earth Alone

Life requires very specific conditions that are self-regulated and recycled in our closed system. Living Earth is a lonely outpost in the

known universe, yet we are connected to everything else.

Earth Isolated

So, now, what is Love? A progression of my thinking about the idea of love

Started with a conversation about religion many years ago that put forward love as the only important feature of religion.

My undergraduate studies in psychology led me to discover the classic book “The Art of Loving” by Erich Fromm. This book revealed to me a new way to think about love – not as an emotion, but as an art.

Writing “The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings, Gatherings, and Conversations” with Craig and Patricia Neal reminded me of Fromm’s work because The Art of Convening seemed like a perfect instrument to engage in one of the most important practices of love the Fromm recommended: meaningful conversation.

Taking some other literature about love and considering what Fromm’s “practices” actually accomplished, led me to think of love as an experience that is enhanced by being in a state of inner and outer balance.

Further exposure to the concepts of the Standard Model in Physics and interviews with subjects claiming to have had a profound experience of love led me to think of love as the sub-atomic particles that everything in the universe is made from.

Starting with Fromm

In “The Art of Loving” by Erich FrommLove is not a feeling or sentimentLove is an art that requires knowledge and

effort4 categories of practice that can increase our

capacity to love are:Disciplined self-careConcentration, including meaningful conversation

and deep listeningPatience in the face of obstacles“Supreme Care” – desire to increase our capacity

to love.

What is Love? Another book, “Love and Will” by Rollo May

Posits 4 kinds of Love (ancient and modern models) Sex, lust or libido Eros, drive to procreate, relationship Philia, friendship or brotherly love Agape, devotion to the wellfare of others

When I considered these divisions, they didn’t seem to be consistent with the way that Fromm developed his thinking about love. I decided that these divisions, while accepted by many, were distractions from the way I was learning to understand love, but May’s work is quite interesting and probably useful in understanding some popular thinking on the subject.

What is Love?

When I read the article “Selfless Self-love” by Jan Bransen in the 2006 copy of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice It brought to mind the idea of love as being neither selfish nor

selfless. This view counters many religious contexts that encourage a selfless model of love.

Bransen viewed self-love as an extension of and necessary to the love of others. Real love would be the balance on a continuum between those two polarities.

This suggested to me a vision of love as a state that was not only balanced on the selfless/selfish continuum, but existing as a state that was balanced between a number of polarized continuums.

What is Love? My developing Love Paradigm Theory

Considers that the capacity to love has to do with the ability to experience ourselves as one with another person, and ultimately one with everything that exists.

It requires a balanced state of being to achieve this ability.

Self-reflection and knowledge help bring about this balanced state of being.

It is in this balanced state that we are able to connect with others in an experience of oneness.

Certain practices enhance our likelihood of achieving and remaining in this state of balance that enhances our experience of oneness – which I assert is the experience of love.

PracticesWhat, specifically, are those practices that

can bring this balance? According to Fromm, some are:Meditation, prayer or quiet contemplationDisciplined habits of self-careMeaningful conversationDeep listeningPatience in the face of slow progressDesire to increase our capacity to love, to

improve ourselvesSo, the love paradigm looks something like…

Neither selfish nor selfless

Love Paradigm Model

A Model of Love

Neither chaotic nor regimented

Love Paradigm Model

A Model of Love

Neither passive nor aggressive

Love Paradigm Model

A Model of Love

The capacity for love dwells in a place of balance.

Love Paradigm Model

A Model of Love

And it is from this capacity to love that we can connect to others in an experience of oneness.

Love Paradigm Model

Love Paradigm Theory in a Nutshell Life itself requires specific conditions that are

delicately balanced to support it. Likewise, an ability to experience love, or the

connectedness of all things - a state of being in love - requires a delicate balance within ourselves.

In order to achieve that balance we can engage in enhancing practices like meditation, disciplined self-care, deep listening and meaningful conversation.

We increase our capacity to experience love by doing these things whether we intend to increase it or not.

Theme of Study Description Part 1: Development of a cogent definition of love as a way of being

and practices/exercises that can be used to achieve that way of being.

Part 2: How might the practices used to achieve a way of being “within love” affect movements for positive social change.

Disciplines examined: Psychology Philosophy Religion (religious studies) Biology (effects of certain practices on brain function) Rhetoric (Words and dialogue as practice of love) Literature (Meaningful story, myth and entertainment exemplifying love) Physics (What could the Standard Model have to do with love?)

Some Reading

A Sampling of Readings The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm (1900-1980) is

central to my thinking Psychologist, philosopher, humanist taught at Columbia,

Yale, and New York University. Author of many other books, including Escape from Freedom, Man for Himself, The Heart of Man.

I And Thou by Martin Buber (1878-1965) Love and Will by Rollo May (1909-1994) The Psychology of Meditation, 1987, anthology edited

by Michael A. West, Research fellow at University of Sheffield

Closing Summary Love is a big subject. I have tried to develop the

Love Paradigm Theory to narrow the scope of my investigation and define my terms.

The experience of love, according to the Love Paradigm model, is the experience of oneness with another person or, ultimately, with the universe.

For a person of imagination, the rationale for my study could be extended almost infinitely, so part of the challenge I face is to work within natural or imposed boundaries.

Why does this matter? Perhaps the network created by the experience of love is a way in which we may strengthen and enhance our

experience of life itself.

A Final “Why?”