This Valentine’s Day, Let Your Love Flow
Courtney A. Walsh is credited with penning a wonderful open letter which reads, in part:
Dear Human: You’ve got it all wrong. You didn’t come here to master unconditional love. That is where you came from and where you’ll return. You came here to learn personal love. Universal love. Messy love. Sweaty love. Crazy love. Broken love. Whole love. Infused with divinity. Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up. Often. You didn’t come here to be perfect. You already are. You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous. And then to rise again into remembering. February 14 is a day designated in our culture to celebrate Love, and yet there are so many facets to the jewel of love that it is easy to focus on one at the cost of the others.
The Greeks had names for differing qualities of love. Unconditional, selfless, all-encompassing pure Cosmic love was called Agape.
Just as white light is refracted into the colours of the spectrum when it enters a prism, so Agape love refracts into many manifestations of human love when it enters a physical body and brain.
Last August a Quantum Moment fairly slammed me with Agape love and it has taken several months for me to gain any objectivity. The ability to comprehend and describe it is an ongoing effort. This February, using the Greek labels, I am doing my best to honour all the varied expressions of Love as they manifest in my life.
I am able, daily, to celebrate Storge, which is the love that exists between parents and children. My life honours me with adults who respect and love me and for whom I feel the deepest Storge love that I can imagine. It echoes and reflects the depths of what I feel for my mother and my late father.
In 2007 I became involved with
womenforwomen.org, and I sponsored a “sister” in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her name was Florence and her family included nieces and nephews as well as children of her own, their parents having been killed in the civil war. My small monthly donation doubled her household income. Florence moved through the Women for Women program and her life has been enhanced and enriched by her participation. New “sisters” have been recipients of my sponsorship since then, yet I continue to identify with Florence, and I carry her picture with me. I feel deeply for the women who need this kind of support. It is Pathos-love that informs the choices I make. I feel symPATHy for Florence as she navigates life in a war zone, and emPATHy for her personal experience.
Philos is the categorization of shared humanity between brothers or friends. Philadelphia is the city of Brotherly Love. The word philanthropy has its roots in philanthropia: the love of all mankind. It is fellow-feeling. It is community orientated. It is caring and goodwill. Philos is expressed in my life in my relationships with clients and family and friends and neighbours, and it exists alongside the Pathos in my relationship to my sponsored sisters in DRC.
Eros is that part of love which is particular to physical life. Eros appreciates beauty and visible attributes, and might include expressions of physical love. Eros assists us to identify Soul Contracts. We cross paths with dozens or hundreds of new people in a week or a year, bodily reactions guide us to those with whom we have Cosmic business in this lifetime. My late partner and I both experienced “love at first sight” when we met, and that initial reaction was largely Eros. It opened the door to seventeen years of shared and individual personal growth. Our life together recombined the facets of love. In the moments when my partner transitioned out of physical life, I was engulfed in Agape.
The final Greek category was Mania, which can be obsessive preoccupation or zealous feeling. Mania is possessive, and is maybe best illustrated as being applied to things rather than people. We “love” cookies or sport-teams or the colour blue. When Mania enters relationships, individuality may be discounted, and some of the crazy and broken loves may manifest. We grow and learn.
My immortal Self volunteered to live in a physical body for this human lifetime. While here I experience the ways that Spirit and Light and Love are altered and expanded by interacting with a physical body. This is not a task that can be accomplished on a day or in a year. Exploring the spectrum of love is a way of life, and the rewards are indescribable. It can be started on any day, and February 14th is as good as any.
Jo Leath has been supporting clients through change and growth since the 1980s. For a consultation, in person or by Skype click here For a free printable labyrinth click here
Jo Leath has been practising Numerology since the early 1980s.
During her career she has studied synchronicity and various ways of accessing Cosmic Wisdom.
She is a Certified Labyrinth Facilitator with Veriditas: Worldwide Labyrinth Project.
Jo meets clients in person and online, and is sometimes a featured reader at metaphysical stores in various cities.