The loving mind state

Love is a state of warmth, relaxation, joy and tranquility.

Love is focused kindness.

Why are people afraid to love?

Mostly, people do not allow themselves the possibility of experiencing love.

That is because they try to arrive at love through their rational minds.

The rational mind is good at making quick decisions involving shallow thinking.

Shallow thinking is very useful for everyday tasks such as planning of daily activities.

If we try to apply the same thinking with the goal of achieving a loving relationship, we will fail.

When we ponder on how to select a partner, how to choose a goal to pursue or how to begin a friendship using our rational minds, doubt inevitably arises.

This is because love is a feeling state, not a thinking state.

For one to enter a loving state, one needs to stop thinking and start feeling their way around.

Deciding what to love is an important life decision and takes some deliberation.

Interestingly, a loving relationship does not necessarily mean a romantic relationship.

I argue that any relationship which is respectful and from which both parties draw meaning is a loving relationship.

In the West, we categorize relationships under umbrella terms such as a business relationship, a romantic relationship or a friendship.

Using information coming from our emotional body is useful when choosing whether to enter a new, longer-term interaction with another individual or pursue a new life goal.

For a loving relationship to occur, two people need to find out what their reciprocal life values are and if there is sufficient overlap between them.

This feeling brain takes a long time to make a decision.

The rational mind, on the other hand, can produce a response in fractions of a second.

The degree of conviction in an idea that the brain produces is directly proportional to the period of deliberation.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that if we have thought and meditated over something for a few months, our drive and resilience to achieve it increase.

The caveat is that recruiting neurons to a new task over the course of this deliberation process is energy consuming and sometimes painful.

Let me leave you with a personal quote:

"Love is the fruit of long-term, concentrated deliberation."

Much love to you all,

Peter