Love Is What’s Left Over When Falling in Love Falls Away

My definition of love goes beyond the admittedly delicious lust and excitement that you experience when you first become infatuated. Ultimately these inflamed passions fade away, and what remains is authentic love, or the balance you’re seeking. And what is a prime example of this? It is to love as God does—to extend the caring that defines your very creation outward, whenever and wherever possible. Love of this nature leads you to forget about your own ego, and want what you desire for yourself even more for another. This is how the act of creation seems to work. Your Creator doesn’t ask anything from you in exchange for giving you life— it’s given freely and abundantly, and no one is excluded. You don’t have to repay God for giving you this life or the air you need in order to live or the water you drink for your very existence or the sun that sustains you. Without any of those freely given ingredients, you wouldn’t continue to live. This is the love that God offers you. To balance your life with more lovingness, you need to match your thoughts and behaviors with those of your Source, being love in the way that God is. This means noticing when you’re inclined to judge yourself or others as though you or they are unworthy of love. This means suspending your need to be right in favor of being kind toward yourself and others, and deliberately extending kindness everywhere. This means giving love to yourself and others rather than demanding love. This means your loving gesture of kindness is heartfelt because you feel love flowing from within—not because you want something in return. A tall order? Not really, unless you believe that it’s going to be difficult. Lovingness is a feature of your natural state, and your ego isn’t part of that state. Ego dominates because you’ve separated yourself from your God-self, the loving self that came here from a place of perfectly Divine unconditional love. You’ve carried this ego idea of your own self-importance, your need to be right, for so long that you’ve deluded yourself into believing that the ego-self is who you are. Talk about being out of balance—you’ve opted for a belief in pure illusion! By allowing this illusion to be the dominant force, you’ve created, through your ego-centered self, a heavy imbalance in your life. The result is that you want to feel love—the real thing, the love that is the very essence of your being, the love that you are—but you feel emptiness instead of lovingness. Why is this so? Because the emptiness can only be filled with love by opening your heart connection to the spirit of love that originates you know not where, but can be felt within you. It’s your empty space; no one else’s. Therefore, only you can fill it. Your objective is to ask love within you to make its presence known, to have an awareness of being so full of love that this is what you have to give away. That’s all you have to do—ask and receive. By doing just that, you’ll attract more of what you’re giving away. What Love Looks Like Through the Eyes of a Child Here are some jewels describing what love is, from the perspective of a group of four- to eight-year-olds. As you work to reset the “love balance beam” of your life, consider these refreshing thoughts on what love is. When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know your name is safe in their mouth. Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs. Love is when my daddy makes coffee for my mommy, and he takes a sip before giving it to her to make sure the taste is okay. Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken. During my piano recital, I was onstage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one. I wasn’t scared anymore. And my favorite: Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen. There you have it. Look within and around. Listen. Love is what’s left over when falling in love fades away because love is an endless source. Give it away. Share your French fries. Give someone the best piece of chicken. Wave and smile to the Universe, and you’ll soon know what Victor Hugo meant when he observed, “Love is the reduction of the Universe to a single being.” Not only is love what’s left over when falling in love fades away, but love defines the Source from which we came. Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetically describes the end of life as a return to pure love: Guess now who holds thee?— “Death,” I said. But there The silver answer rang— “Not Death, but Love.” And so it seems that love is truly all that’s left over when this body falls away as well.