The Virtue of Love Love is a vast topic and a vast experience, encompassing the whole of the aim and purpose of humanity. A consideration of love as a virtue takes one small, but as I hope to show, tremendously significant aspect of love and develops the practical means for concentrating that aspect and making it fully conscious. The virtue of love has nothing to do with being in love or falling in love, or wanting to love and be loved. It even goes beyond the ways in which we daily love someone. With the virtue we shift from the soul level of feeling to the level of spiritual action in the world in our relationships with others. How do you do love is the question posed to us when we encounter this virtue. Love is one of those big words, in league with words like soul or spirit, words than cannot be defined because they are symbols and as such embrace worlds of meaning. Unlike the words soul and spirit, however, everyone wants, needs, longs for, and has some notion of what they think constitutes love. When I ask a group of people what constitutes soul or spirit, a good number do not know how to speak of such things. When I ask them what love is, they all have some notion. However, when I ask the group to define the Virtue of love, few are able to speak with clarity. Everyone knows that love is powerful but we know very little about being conscious within the power of love. We still live as if love happens to us. A consideration of the virtue of love shows that while love does happen to us, we can come to attune to its presence in such a way that our relationships with others come to be ways of serving the soul of others and of the world and of deepening into the mysteries of our soul. The experience we typically speak of as "loving someone" cannot be called the virtue of love; it remains too mixed with our own individual needs. Besides, this kind of love, strictly speaking, consists primarily of the emotional reaction to another person rather than the action of loving in an ongoing way that is for the sake of the other person. The virtue itself remains hidden and obscured unless deliberate work takes place to make it conscious. We have to do a good deal of inner work to come to the experience of love as the essential defining quality of what it is to be human. A human being is one who loves. Not only does love complete us in our humanity, it is the redeeming gift we are able to give to the world. Love is always relationship. It is a relational phenomenon; it is not something that I have alone and then proffer it to others. Nor it is something that others possess and can offer me as if it were a subtle commodity. The great task presented by this virtue is to develop the capacity to concentrate on, to learn to perceive, to live within the between space of the relation itself. Love never involves only a lover and a beloved. There is the third part of love, the relation itself that exists between the lover and the beloved. Becoming sensitive to this dimension, the charged field of the love, takes us into the virtue. Relation doest not exist in me alone, and it does not exist in the other alone. It is a soul space that exists between those in relationship and also encompasses their inner life. This soul space that exists between those in relationship also involves their mutual relation with the spiritual dimension of love. Love occurs between myself and another person or a task or a place or a creation such as a beautiful painting, a deeply moving book, an inspired concert. This is the horizontal dimension of the love relationship. But love is also inherently spiritual. Through love we are always in connection with the divine worlds. The virtue involves the skill of being simultaneously present to both of these dimensions. The "between" spoken of here defies all dualisms. The division between inner life and out world dissolves in the midst of the phenomenon of the virtue of love; as well, the spiritual and the earthly come into living confluence. It is not possible, while experiencing the actual soul of relating to know whether what we are experiencing is something inner, outer, or both. The virtue of love depends on our capacity to be able to live this soul space without becoming overwhelmed by feeling and shutting down our hearts. We often shut our hearts either when the magnificence of love gets to be too much for us to hold, or when it seems that the force of love has been taken from us, though when this happens it is often because we have mishandled the mystery. How many of us have experienced the actual relationship, something that goes beyond what I feel about another person and what another person feels about me? The relationship itself is a reality, able to be experienced in certain moments and certain situations. The virtue of love senses this interactive field and compels us to relate to others through the medium of this soul space. When this space is ignored we feel suffocated in our relating, or abused, or not cared for. At best, when this space is ignored we live in relationship as simply comfortable but without any sense of what we are doing together. It is the love itself, however, that suffers when the medium of the soul space between people is disregarded. How do we know when we are sensing the field of relationship? When we are with others in the ordinary circumstances of life there is a felt separation between ourselves and others. They are "over there" and we are here, where our body is. What goes on between us is mainly functional or perhaps social, but the main interest is self-interest. The spiritual tone, the rhythm of the words each person speaks, the subtlety and nuance of the interaction goes unnoticed, or is noticed only at the edges. In this kind of interaction, there also exists a strong sense of the linear character of ordinary time. Our time together feels more like "doing time". What holds people together in this kind of situation are the mutual tasks not the mutual love. A first signal of entering the field of love is the felt change of time. When the connection with someone has more of a heart quality, then it is possible to sense the field. Time takes on a different quality. More duration is experienced, and sometimes it is almost as if we have entered a timeless realm with someone we love. In linear time, one event follows in sequence after the previous event. Things happen in a string, one after another. In the interactive field, time begins to feel more "friendly." By this term I mean that there is a desire to linger with the other person. There is a deliciousness to being together, and if we have to leave and go our separate ways, it is as if a liquid exists between us that stretches and the field is carried with us wherever we go. The field is felt as a subtle change of consciousness and feeling. There is a break in our ordinary consciousness; a door opens and we begin to feel there is something between us. If you want to consciously cultivate the field of a relationship you have to find this time quality by being attentive to the moment when there is a break in ordinary consciousness. A break in ordinary consciousness is something different than a momentary pause, a blank spot, though if we are able to really notice those pauses and enter into the very space of the pause, that pause is the crack opening the door to friendly time. Ordinarily, in our connections with others, our consciousness is full of these breaks, which we take to be quite normal and natural, though if they are too long we begin to feel uncomfortable. We feel comfortable when our consciousness is experienced as seamless to us. Our attention may move from one thing to another, and we may lose consciousness of what we are doing from time to time, but on the whole there is not an experience of our breaking into a different realm. This sense of our consciousness as continuous is an illusion. The illusion serves a purpose; it makes it seem like consciousness serves our every need, whim, and purpose. When a break occurs, if we can really be present to it, we discover, in a flash that consciousness is a gift that is being given to us. And there are many gifts; ordinary consciousness is just one of them. To receive the gift of a different mode of consciousness, there has to be a break. Sometimes such a break gets extended in time and we find ourselves living a kind in a kind of liminal state in which nothing makes sense. The extension of this break often means we are looking for what we left behind instead of what is trying to come in. If we follow the break in consciousness, we make connection with the interactive field where love does its work. The interactive field is a fluid medium. It exists between whatever content goes on between myself and another, and when attended to, it amplifies and can be felt even more than the content of what we are doing with someone. When we feel this medium, we begin to know that it is the intervals that occur in our connections with others that are most important. The content of what we feel, think, speak, perceive, imagine is important, but primarily to us. We thus identify consciousness with a content, and even identify love as a kind of content - a content of certain kinds of feelings. The intervals are taken to be inconvenient interruptions. The intervals, though, are where love thrives. An interval in consciousness is not the same as going unconscious. It is consciousness with a different timing. The work of consciously entering a field consists of becoming aware of the intervals and not just the content of what goes on between myself and another person. The virtue of love consists of working more and more into the intervals, to the point that whatever content occurs, now emerges from the depths of the intervals. The virtue concerns listening for the intervals when we are with someone, and gradually breaking through the tyranny of the content of what we may be talking about or doing. The content, of course, is still important, in itself, and also as the way to launch ourselves into the field. Staying in the field and not immediately needing to re-focusing attention back on the content, is love in action, the virtue. The play of content and interval, given equal significance, takes linear time sequence and bends it into an active spiral, a vortex. We may, for example, find that we begin to enjoy repetitions, things said one way and then another. We find joy in the rhythm of our interaction. We enjoy lingering in the moment. We hear more deeply and have intimations of the deepest soul being of the person we are with. We experience a movement between us that has force; we are together in a force-field. This field can be felt in a very bodily way. It is as if there is a current of energy between us. It is not like electric energy more. It is much more gentle, as if you could feel light. It is more like an illumination than a electric current. Yet, this gentle force is strong and steady. The practice of the virtue of love requires learning to give greater and greater intensity of attention to the intervals in our interactions with others. Doing so is an assault and an insult to our ordinary consciousness, which thrives on content, knowing, and efficiency of operation, even when we are being kind and feel treated with kindness. Perception of the soul space between myself and another requires not-knowing, but rather full presence. We know this field through the whole of our body, not with our mind. So, to the mind, what is happening is completely puzzling and even frightening. If fear begins to come the thing to do is move consciousness from the head to the heart region of the body. Then the fear will stop and the subtle currents can be felt. Stepping into the field is like stepping another world. Perception alters. It is if a soft mist enters the room where we are, diffusing the sharp edges between things ever so slightly. Accompanying the barely perceptible blurring of bodily boundaries is a sharpening of the individual interiority of each of the people so that they each become more centered in themselves while at the same time are more open to the other person. In the intervals in an encounter with another person through love, we find that our visual perception of the other person changes. The feeling aspect of perception, which usually lies in the background in our encounters, now comes to the foreground. The physiognomy of the individual becomes more apparent. It is as if we can see the soul of the other person shining in the countenance of the face. We intimately feel what is being expressed through the face and gestures of the other person. We perceive physiognomy all the time, but unconsciously. Ordinarily, we focus on the body of a person as a content and are not aware of the light as it reflect the features of a person's face. Field perception consists of becoming sensitive to the interplay of the persons features with the light. It also concerns becoming sensitive to the light emanating from the person. In the light of love, people shine. While perception in the interactive field of love takes on the character of wholeness, the capacity to focus simultaneously on the content of what is going between us and another and also on the perceptible soul life of the other person, do not take this description as saying that everything becomes confused or indistinct. Much more precision of perceiving exists in the field of love than with our usual ways of perceiving. We usually see categories and not the essence of the person. We see, for example, our friend, our sweetheart, our wife or husband, but seldom see their essence shine because we do not concentrate on what goes on in the interactive space of love. We feel so separated and alone because, relying on concepts rather than our heart, the unique character of each person does not come through. It does come through in the field. Ordinarily, we look at other but we do not see them. To see and to be seen cannot be underestimated; when seeing and being seen takes place, it is like a blessing; or we could say, it is a healing. When we see the other person through the field of love, we see the other person in his or her potential. We perceive who that person can be; the virtue of love perceives the potentially present as actually present. This is a real perception and not just our hopes, wishes, or guesses concerning the future of the person. To be seen is to be seen in our potential, in our coming-to-be. Enacting the virtue of love through perception of the field between myself and another person is not angelic perception. While the spirit of the other person becomes as if perceptibly present, it does so along with the pain, vulnerability, and woundedness each of us are. Without these tensions between seeing the spiritual perfection of the others along with their well-wrought pains of life experience, we are not in a field of force. The virtue of love is the effort to be within the field and it is also the effort to retain the full presence of the soul being of the other person as an after-image when we are not with that person, or during those times when the interactive field is not strong. By the term "after-image", I mean that the soul being of the other person continues to have an effect on us when we are not with the person or when we return to the person and the field does not seem perceptible. This is the extended aspect of the virtue of love. The virtue, then, consists of shifting our attention to what goes on between myself and another person, and it also consists of allowing something of the soul life of the other person to live within me. I am speaking here of something more than a fond feeling or memory. The depth of soul of the other person continues to resonate within my soul. The word "resonate" comes from the Latin verb "resonare", meaning to "return to sound." When we sound an object such as a bell, the bell continues to ring or resonate the original sound. There is another kind of resonance called sympathetic resonance. When a bell sounds and continues to resonate, another object with qualities of the same pitch as the bell will begin to vibrate with the bell. A type of sympathetic resonance characterizes the functioning of the soul space of the virtue of love. Imagine walking along the ocean shore, holding hands with your lover. As you walk, the rhythm of your steps together begins to match the incoming and outgoing waves. As that happens you both feel intimately together with each other--- and with the world. This is the resonance of the soul. And if we contemplate the phenomenon just a bit we see that soul is not in me and in you separately. We are in soul and soul is in the world. When we are in soul, then we feel the innerness of our life, but also feel something of the mysterious qualities of the world. The interactive field of love brings in the world as our partner. We feel more connected with the beauty of the world and can sense it directly. We notice more, perceive more intently, feel the hallowing of the world. A vital aspect of the virtue of love is to work to become sensitive to the ongoing reverberation that occurs when we have felt a field of love between ourselves and others. To do so, it is necessary to understand that the soul is not something akin to a bell that picks up the similar vibrations from another soul. Thinking this way about the soul would be too materialistic. The description of the bell resonating is an analogy only. It helps attune us to the way soul functions. Except with soul and world soul we have a picture, not of something that resonates, but a pure resonating medium. Think of soul this way - as pure resonance, not as something that resonates. Think of the action of love as intensifying or sometimes changing the pitch or the tone or the rhythm the resonating medium. Think of the medium as the flow between all things, the great force of attraction. Soul, then is not a subtle thing that resonates. Soul is resonance. We know when we are in soul when there is the quality of resonance. Our perceptions, feelings, thoughts, sensations, reverberate because they are being carried on waves of love. We come close here to developing the physics of love, but that is the only way to feel .something of the force of the virtue of love. Love is a real force in the world not just good feelings. It has the power to change the world. Shifting to the language of resonance and away from the language of sentimentality helps sense the force of love. We often use the language of sympathetic resonance to describe soul phenomena without realizing we are doing so. We speak of "being in tune" with someone, or "being on the same wavelength". Something about a connection with another person feels just right. It clicks. Or there is the experience of dissonance. We look for experiences of resonance and flee from those of dissonance, though dissonance too belongs to the language of the virtue of love. The dissonances are necessary. They, in relation with resonance, give love its force. When we experience the interactive field of active love, this experience continues on in resonance. But it is more than a matter of memory. Something more happens than having inner pictures and feelings. Engaging the virtue of love enacts a process of soul-making. Soul is not present without out interactions of love with others. These interactions can be small or large; I am not talking only about the love of our life, but rather the ongoing practice of the virtue of love even in everyday encounters. The love that exists between individuals continues as reverberation and that is soul-making, not memory of something that happened. Living in this current contributes to each others soul and to the soul of the world. It does not contribute as a kind of addition to what is there, but as a creative re-configuring. Our lives and the life of the world is transformed by love. In the philosophy of Aristotle a distinction is made between potentia and actuality. Things can exist in potentia --- the word means "coming into being". The soul belongs to the realm of potentia, a domain of coming-into-being. Thus, soul is always connected with imagination, dream, creativity, possibility. The virtue of love makes activates these realms. Potentia is not on the way to becoming something real. It is of the soul's nature to be vibrating potentia, intermingling every moment with whatever is around, picking up the vibrations of the milieu. Soul lives in sympathy, antipathy, empathy, telepathy, and sometimes even in apathy. The key part of these words, the "pathy" refers to the soul's pathos, a word that means "to allow." Soul is the allowing of all sorts of resonances to flow through, chief of which is love. Practice of the virtue of love begins with giving attention to the rhythmic elements of our interactions with others. Attend, for example, to the way you speak - the tones, the nuances, the rhythms, the space, the undertones and overtones - more even than to the content of what you say. Such attention changes the way we are with people from social nicety to acts of healing. How we are with others takes on equal importance with what we are doing in terms of content. The work of the virtue of love is to be present to these subtleties with utterly clear consciousness. You will find that if you try to allow a more diffuse consciousness of the heart of exist alongside the content of what the interaction is about, there is a tendency to go toward a kind of hypnotic state or a light trance. We have to work to be aware when this is happening. The recovery from sliding into a light trance, however, does not consist of moving back into focused consciousness to the exclusion of resonance. Rather, when there is a feeling of slightly losing the content, then move consciousness, quite deliberately, to the region of the heart. Living in the heart of love requires this kind of practice. Centering in the heart means that our interactions have a quality of reverence and we can begin to attend to our speaking with someone as a listening rather than the kind of push-pull speaking that usually goes on between two people. The virtue of love has nothing to do with sentimentality. Finding the way into the interactive field and living in soul resonance also means that we are better able to hold experiences of dread, anxiety, anger, anguish, and confusion that happen between us and others. These emotions are usually considered a hindrance to a good relationship. When these qualities are excluded from our relating, or only come up when there are problems, then the virtue of love cannot operate with the vigor required. These forceful qualities give love its transformative and moral force. Without these qualities the interactive field disappears. The virtue of love is not confined to our relationships with others. Try to imagine the interactive field as extending to other occurrences than our interpersonal connections. Maybe you hear a remarkable concert that continues to live within you and changes your life. Maybe you read a book that does something to you that goes far beyond the content. Maybe you undergo an experience in meditation. Maybe you study a virus in a laboratory and enter so deeply into what you are doing that you step into a field. These can all be experiences initiating the virtue of love. When such moments occur, and they occur far more often than we realize, it is of importance to recognize them as a strong impetus to change. Love comes and invites us to change, to enter into our potential, to feel intensely the process of coming-to-be, even though we do not know where our unfolding will go. This same love invites the person or the event we are involved with to change too. The other person enters potential. And so does the world when approached in this manner. We simply have to suspend judgment concerning what is happening and allow the experience of this between realm to float vibratingly as if it were a undulating current in the center between ourselves and others. I have drawn attention to the virtue of love as soul-making that transforms us. What is the direction of such transformation? The virtue transforms conflicting pairs of opposites that we feel in relation to another person. We may feel both love and hate for someone, despair and desire, daring and cowardice, anxiety and calmness. We begin to realize that the other person does not cause these conflicting feelings. Rather, the other person makes it possible that we discover these conflicting feelings within ourselves. The virtue does not take away such feelings, but something new comes into them. Let's look at an example. Recall a time when someone you know, someone you love, said something to you, perhaps something complimentary, but when you heard the compliment you felt a conflict. Maybe the person said: "Oh, your friendship means so much, I have grown though my contact with you." But when the person said that, you felt a bodily tension and a desire to withdraw as what the person was saying felt odd. You sense that perhaps the person was using you for their growth. You feel both gratitude for the complement and a desire to withdraw. A conflict of feeling. If you we are able to stay in the field and live in the resonance of the virtue of love, the conflict changes into a sensing of the dynamic flow between the opposites rather than remaining in conflict. The conflict indicates that there is engagement at the soul level. The tension, when felt with love, loosens into the flow of the field instead of the tension of polarities. This loosening is felt in the region of the heart and is not a cognitive knowing. The loosening can be felt in the body as the constriction of the tension eases. More is involved here than mere relaxation. The boundaries of the body expand and perception opens and the world appears more vivid and alive. The engagement with soul in this way opens to an engagement with the soul of the world. The virtue of love does even more than transform conflicting feelings. The true aim of the virtue is to release the power of love into the world. Sensing the field and how it changes our experience of time and our perception of the world and how it transforms us is the preparation for its more mysterious work. We are invited to get close to the activity of love in the ways described, not only for what it brings to us, but so that we can be more consciously present to the force of love and release it into the world. This act of release can be an active, conscious practice. When we experience the field, we build it for a while, stay in it, let it amplify, and then consciously give it away to the world. Then the virtue is more complete.

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