by Meg Blackburn Losey, Ph.D.: Love. What is it really? Is it just an emotion or something more? As human beings we spend all or most of our lives just looking for love, fantasizing about it, feeling that we need and want it, that it will be our answer to who we are. For some of us, we look to love to find our value, our fullness, and a myriad of other untruths. Love has become idealized to the point where many people no longer know what it feels like to truly be loved, or what loving another person is really about.

Love, in many ways, seems to have lost its depth. It has become about things and stuff, even commercialized. Love is far beyond the romanticized, idealized perceptions we have developed.

To this author, love is a way of being—spontaneity unconditionally born of the innocence of an open heart. Love is every particle of which we are created, and each of these wondrous particles are borne of the light from which we were made. Inherently, we are love. Love is us.

As I move about the world, traveling from one place to the next, it is my observation that we don’t seem to honor people outside of ourselves. Even the people we say we love the most. We don’t honor people in general, and we often don’t know how to love ourselves.

I wanted the children to talk about love, because they have that innocence we have lost. The responses from the children on this topic were nearly unanimous. Not surprising really, but the wisdom that came with their common thread directly targets the heart and soul and succeeds with a direct hit! It was here, with this question, that the children really got onto familiar and comfortable ground with me and their true selves began to shine through!

Here is how I put the question to the children:

Q: “What is love as it applies to our lives? In other words, what is REAL love and how can we as ordinary people bring that into our world?”

Nicholas: I love this question about love. I like to answer from the perspective most people can relate. Love is what we feel when we feel our hearts gush. Now I did not say make mush. Simply, the feeling when our hearts feel joy, tenderness, and harmony at the same time. It is the feeling we have when we feel in our hearts a complete opening of love when a baby is born.

Real love is like the tickle on your toes, you know it when you feel it. It is like an undeniable sensation of splendor. It leaves you feeling tickled pink.

Q: How do we get there Nicholas?

Nicholas: We can bring this REAL love feeling into our lives through first being aware of our heart energy. It comes in many forms and reminds us throughout the day to tell us it is there.

When our heart speaks, all we need to do is listen. Talk to it, ask it how it is. Be prepared for an answer. This answer is a mighty lesson for us to follow. Regular dialogue, such as telling your heart how much you love it and listening, opens up this channel. Of course there are other ways beyond the context of this question.

Q: One of the ways that children like you find healing and balance is through nature. How can we apply this love of nature to “real life”? How can we respect the integrity of nature while living in an industrialized world?

Nicholas: God wants us to be in alignment with each of our purposes. If we stray from this purpose, we create such subliminal deviation from planetary mission.

We are at this place in history due to invention, which is God given. Yes we need to be in harmony with this. If humans truly listen to nature, they would not suggest anything that goes against love for all life. Again, people like scientists can experiment, yet it needs to be in harmony with God’s original intent.

Grandma Chandra: Love is an emotion experienced by humans. REAL love comes from Source or Creator.

Q: How can we experience the difference?

Grandma Chandra: We can experience this by opening our crown chakras to receive this love and send it out through our heart chakras to all Beings.

Q: Jude how do you remind yourself to experience real love as opposed to the idealized type?

Jude: When I need to be reminded what the REAL feeling of love is, I do a visualization exercise. It is not that I do not know the feeling, but to get it into my being in the easiest way possible I use my ability of visualization. I close my eyes and I think back to when I was alone and depressed as a junior in college.

I was alone in my dorm room and didn’t have a significant other to spend my time with. Love with another person seemed unobtainable at that time in my life. So even though I was not supposed to, I went out and got a kitten! I think back to that very first day when I went out searching for the right kitten; it had to be a free one. And there he was, the last one left in the litter. I knew that he was supposed to be my companion and the love that I was missing at that time.

To get that real love feeling all I have to do is to think back on that day and visualize what it felt like when I first held him in my arms and looked down at the tiny fury gray face that I called Spaz. It was that “awww” feeling that touched my heart that day, and that was also the feeling of true unconditional love. That is real love. Nonjudgmental and totally unconditional.

Q: So once we have love, how do we bring it to the world?

Jude: It is not until you can have those two in perfect combination that you, at least how I see it, will know the feeling of true love. To bring it into the world faster and in more frequency we need to stop judging others, to stop placing conditions on the love we receive and give to others, and to be completely open to all the different types and forms love can come in.

Love is not perfect, however, if you live in and about love you are closer to that perfect spark that is the Creator and the place that we originated from—that pure, true, real, and Divine love.

Q: Do you feel like there is a way that everyone can get to the place of unconditional love?

Jude: There is no way at this present point that the majority of the world will be able to awaken to this love, unless there is a earth-shattering event that causes us all to forget color, religion, and differences. We need to celebrate the likeness that we all share in the human race and then, and only then, will we become one with the Universe, and the Earth.

When your heart vibrates and pulsates its language through your body as the heat from the breath of life itself, then you will know the true feeling of the real and only universal love.

Weston: Love is the epitome of embracing perfection. It is when you are being yourself, because then you have acknowledged your perfection, and honestly perfection can’t be anything less than itself because it comes from God, the Creator.

Love is not just a romantic notion. That kind of love is purely emotional. Love is really a way to be. A state of being. When you deny your true selves, you deny the truth of who you really are. Who you are is much greater than what you think. You are forever; borne of creation, contributive to the One that provides constancy of all life.

Q: So how do we get there?

Weston: When you have become love, you have accepted your place amongst the One. And that is contagious. When you live as love, what happens is that other people begin to respond to you. They see and feel your light. And they can’t help but to light up too. The problem is some people think that showing their light leaves them vulnerable, so they don’t do it. The truth is that showing your light means that you have shed your vulnerabilities, and that is when you are in truth.

In order to truly love you have to be love.

Tristan: Love comes from our hearts. Sometimes I feel upset and angry, and that energy gets stuck in my body, so I am not in a good mood.

Q: So when that happens, how do you get back to love?

Tristan: When I mediate or do Qigong it helps me remember the loving energy I have inside. Maybe these things could help other people be more loving too.

Peter: Real love is that you don’t hate anything and everything is good. Just be positive and avoid negative thoughts.

Q: How about you, Christina?

Christina: Real love is a feeling of joy and connection with everything and everyone. Real love would be unconditional love, when there is no judgment and every aspect of life is accepted and appreciated and beautiful. To bring it into your life, just be grateful for what you have and what you are going to have. Try to turn everything into a positive; for example, if you can’t get work done around the house, realize that you have a home, and many people around the world who don’t.

Jasin: We are love. Everything is love. It applies as everything. We don’t have to bring it because it is already in us. We are bringing it no matter what. The cord that connects us when we are sleeping is like a satellite. We collect love when we are sleeping and when we wake up—we send it out. We are doing it no matter what.

Joseph: Love affects us by bringing joy and happiness when we send unconditional love to even those we dislike. It spreads more love to our world, helping it become more peaceful with more truth and honesty and love. So that’s pretty much it.

Q: Scott?

Scott: I’m stumped on that one.

Ahn: To bring love into this world is first loving ourselves, and when our love cup is overflowing we are able to give love, and because nobody can hold love, love is forever flowing; it will flow all around mother Earth and father sky.

Q: Gabriel, what is real love?

Gabriel: Love is when you see the inside of things where they matter. We all need to learn the inner beauty that is in us and how other people’s beauty speaks to us. What people are trying to say is reflected back to us when we love.

Lindsay: I think you like asking all of these unanswerable questions….Real love? Again it’s a feeling you can’t put into words. Its a picnic on a summer day, it’s those amazing cookies your grandmother bakes, its those big, pick-you-up hugs that only your dad can give, and those sweet, tender hugs from your mom, its your very first kiss, and your very last dance. Love is everywhere and everything. Love isn’t just a romantic mushy moment between two people. It’s drinking coffee at five in the morning with your partner, or eating s’mores over an open fire.

We are not ordinary people. We are extraordinary people. And that is why we can feel and give love so freely. Its one of those gifts that everyone has. The ability to love is, and always will be.

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