To understand the difference between love and infatuation, let’s delve into each term.
Despite the countless books, stories, poems, and movies about love, there remains a lack of clear understanding of what love truly is. This is perplexing. How can a phenomenon so extensively explored and discussed remain elusive in its definition? Human beings lack specific receptors or sensory organs that can definitively identify love, as we might with other sensations.
Some might argue that love is simply a sensation resulting from hormonal and biochemical processes in our bodies. However, considering the immense focus on this phenomenon, it suggests that there might be more to love than just these physical processes. So, what exactly is love?
Love is often connected with the act of loving.
To love means to feel love, and this feeling originates within ourselves. It implies that love is an internal experience, something we feel inside, rather than something directed at someone or something external.
However, the term “love” is often intertwined with desires and actions, such as wanting to do good for someone, caring for them, or even possessing them. It can also be confused with the concept of liking something, as in “I like coffee,” which is clearly different from “I love a person.” This confusion often means that the meaning of love changes depending on the object it refers to and is not related to “love” itself.
So, What Is Love?
Love is a term that society frequently uses but rarely defines clearly. Suppose we consider love as an abstract sensitivity, a feeling that induces a state of exaltation or elevation in a person. This idea may bring us closer to understanding love. Let’s explore the circumstances under which people experience these elevated states.
Situations Where People Experience Love:
1) Interaction Between a Man and a Woman
2) Sincere Interaction Between Friends and close people
3) Spontaneous Occurrences.
At first glance, there may seem to be no common ground between romantic love, friendship, and spontaneous love. However, a deeper look reveals a natural and consistent element in each scenario: the act of opening up. In romantic relationships, when a person lets another into their life, they open up. Similarly, in genuine friendships, individuals open up to one another. With every person in our world, such openings happen spontaneously and multiple times in life. Some people notice these moments and develop them, while others dismiss them and continue to suffer. These openings involve not only an opening to each other but also an opening to life. If this opening happens for each person in different situations, it means that it is available to everyone. At the moment of this opening, a person begins to feel love.
If this happens in a relationship between a man and a woman, it is called falling in love. This experience is often visible to the naked eye and is accompanied by extremely pleasant feelings that can make people “lose their mind”.
In a friendly environment, such an opening results in a similar feeling of exaltation, though it lacks a specific name. This can sometimes lead to unconventional relationships, as people may not fully understand what they are experiencing.
When this opening happens spontaneously without any specific external trigger, it is called falling in love with life. You’ve likely heard stories of people suddenly crying at the beauty of the world for no apparent reason, regardless of their location or the events around them. Everyone I’ve spoken to has described experiencing such moments in their lives.
However, when we try to change our partner and they attempt to do the same, this state of falling in love fades away. Why? Because these actions cause each participant to close off from the other, and the feeling of being in love disappears. The same happens in friendships: if one person tries to change the other or does not accept the other’s changes, they close off, and the friendship is lost. When we experience this state spontaneously and then attempt to change the world instead of accepting it as it is, or when we stop noticing other parts of the world, we close off and lose this state as well.
So, it turns out that Love is a feeling you receive from Life itself (God, the Absolute, the Universe, the Source, or whatever term you prefer). Falling in love is merely a term describing a moment in a relationship between a man and a woman where both participants begin to feel Love. In this sense, love and friendship act as catalysts for the feeling of Love. So, what serves as the catalyst in the third case?
To explore this further, consider an additional scenario I initially omitted because it isn’t easily observable—something I’ve witnessed during training. It would be misleading to claim that love appears from training alone, but let’s delve into what happens. When a person trains their attention, they start actively using it. The more we use our attention, the easier it becomes. The more we use it, the more vivid the effects become. According to my observations, when we consistently use our attention and remain aware of where it is directed, we start experiencing the same state of love—this feeling of love without an object of attachment. It’s as if you’re fully living through our attention, opening up, and feeling love.
Thus, I conclude that love is a deeply personal experience for each individual. It’s like feeling infinity, a personal sense of infinity. When we attach our love to another person instead of ourselves, we make a significant mistake. We become dependent on that person, wanting to make them suit our comfort, leading to the loss of love. Instead, we should simply feel loveб even if the other person acts as the catalyst.
What to do with Love is to just live it and that’s it, which means directing some of your attention into it and enjoying it. Different people, things, or events can be the catalyst for us to open up and begin to feel love. Each person has a different feeling of love, and it is unique.
In order not to lose this state of Love in yourself, you have to remove the idea of sharing it, remove the thought of it. Otherwise, pride grows, and we lose this state. Even the thought that I give my love to someone can cause us to lose this state. We will discuss this controversial expression in more detail in the 20th exercise in the appendix.
So it turns out that when a person feels Infatuation, they feel Love? Yes, exactly so. And it is important to realize that this is purely your own personal feeling, unrelated to anyone else, even though the other person may have been a catalyst for it.
That is, Love is not limited by Infatuation—it is a much broader term. But Infatuation is a simple way of knowing Love, a simple gift that everyone has. Almost every human being has experienced Love as Infatuation.