What is Love?

What is love? The experience ranges from a sentiment that comes and goes to a consciousness that is profoundly spiritual.??

It being Valentine’s season, my experience of love in this past month is as a potent, powerful social force. It has been able to connect me to the consciousness of communities in islands. It is like a force that breaks through stagnation and makes things happen. It’s pretty amazing.

This caring for others has been able to connect me to the caring in other individuals and has been able to facilitate a network of energy that is one plus one equals 100.

I recently put up an organization called I LOVE: Investments in?Loving Organizations for Village Economies. It is building the country from the bottom up. It is working with government, the private sector, scientists and all like-hearted individuals to empower and uplift our communities on the ground. It has and continues to be a profoundly joyful experience.

My other experience of love is as consciousness. Going deep into the stillness of meditation, love is a connection to the divine.?Last week I was feeling a pain in my heart — sadness — and it felt quite raw. While a perception of a situation triggered it, the rawness of the “wound” felt much deeper than the situation warranted. Allowing myself to feel what is there, the latter part of my meditation bathed me in a space of light — healing penetrating light. It was love — profound, top-down, spiritual — a connection to the divine. The divine giving to me, and me receiving, and I was so very deeply touched.

Love is profoundly, deeply spiritual.?Love is what life is all about. Love is the essence of all religions.??I have read and watched videos of people who have gone into the light and come back, and what they speak of is love, that they don’t want to come back to Earth! Heaven is love. So why do we have to die to go to heaven? Why not bring a piece of heaven into our lives, in this country???

I just came from Kinatarcan, an island in Cebu with gorgeous white sand beaches and 80 percent of the people are earning less than P200 a day. Near a bonfire with friends and staff, we lay down on banigs. I had a jacket and a good blanket and looked up at the stars. Wow. The sound of waves gently moving to the beach, a starlit sky one can’t ever see in the polluted skies of Manila, fresh air — that to me was a piece of heaven. Love, that’s what I felt. Infinity above, the nurturance of nature around me.??

Then I meditated in a newly finished earth dome — no square corners —just a dome made of earth painted white. It had lights that looked like butterflies. In the stillness I felt like I was being lifted up.

Love is a connection to the divine. This makes us care and feel for others. This enables us to connect to nature, to people, it is the absolute essence of life.??We are primed to love. It is our simplicity, our sincerity, our ability to feel for others, to give. I feel this so deeply when I go to the grassroots. Our people are primed to love. It is our human capital. We need to shelter this, nourish this. Poverty is a bane on this because when one can’t get enough to eat, to live, it affects one’s ability to give.

Materialism also kills the spirit of love, because matter becomes the goal of life. It’s not about giving and sharing; it’s about getting and getting to the point that one gets dead and cold inside.???

So, in this Valentine’s season, let’s go deep inside ourselves. Feel the stillness and love that is there. Let it hold you, nurture you, and let that be the foundation of your lives, whatever you may do.

You can’t bring money with you when you leave this world. And even our physical bodies are not going to last forever. However, the spirit of love that should increasingly become an integral part of our lives will be with us for eternity.??

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I can be reached at hellogina@gworld.ph. We are having a slew of ecotourism tours where we are spreading the love on the community level. Kinatarcan will be open by April. If you are interested, contact me.??