I wrote previously about the Greek names for types of love: Eros, Storge, Philia, and Agape. And I’ve written about the distinction between the emotion and the deeper love in life itself.
Recently, Ryan Hassan wrote about the five types of love in the Tao Te Ching.
As Ryan observes, the first 3 are not healthy forms of love, the last 2 are.
1) Possessive Love: according to Lao Tzu, this is the lowest form of love. It relates to Asmita, the possessive self. This is about things we possess. When it relates to a person, we’re seeing them as an object to have and control. This feeds the ego and can be selfish and manipulative.
2) Codependent Love: this is based on seeking to fulfil our needs from outside of ourselves. We need a partner to “complete” us. When mutual, we become co-dependent. This is very common today.
3) Romantic Love: this is higher but idealizes the partner. In the face of reality, it cannot be sustained. For many new relationships, the key transition is the shift from romance into reality. Can we love them as they are rather what we hoped them to be?
As Ryan observes, these forms of love contradict and interfere with actual love.
4) Subjective Love: This is love without expectation or conditions, and with some vulnerability. It is honest. We can love even if they do not. It is harmonious and supportive. It lacks fixation, seeing the other as an object, or as something to control.
If we’re on a healing path and have softened our attachments and taken responsibility for ourselves, this flavour of love becomes possible.
5) Become Love: Lao Tzu called this pure love or the Great Integrity. It requires a loss of identification so love can flow freely and we’re no longer seeking outside of ourselves. Then we can recognize our very nature is love. This is universal love, the flow of life itself, the flow of the Divine.
As noted, Subjective and Become are healthy expressions of love but not so easily reached. Can we sustain them in the face of daily life, conflict, and compromise?
Davidya
Hi D, I think Become Love is the ultimate in sustainability, meaning it pretty much is sustaining itself in every moment. We simply have to align and/or attune ourselves to it. It’s always here, now, completely available to us.
Hi Sharon
It is a wonderful state of being. However, it can be disrupted for a time by higher stages such as through the Brahman shift. And just by life in general. Hard to be what nothing around you is supporting.
Yes, attune to it, but only if its truly present. Making a mood of love isn’t it, nor is it sustainable.
This is so great. A blog on love and identifies the different types. A lot of people don’t know what real love is and they fall on either 1,2,or 3, or combination of all 3. I think to evolve and truly experience love one has to be transformed inward, otherwise the so called love we experience is subject to change. After my experience in India by joining the 10,000 World peace Assembly last December, I have experienced love of myself, and because now I have love of myself, I am able to give love to others. (Can’t give what I don’t have)
Agreed, Lynette.
Experiencing real love, without conditions, for the first time can be astonishing.
And yes, for love to blossom, we have to be able to hold an open and undefended heart. And that takes healing and a deep grounding in being. It begins within.