It’s All About Love - Part One

This is the first of two blogs I want to offer on love. Today we begin with the place of love in the universe (as astounding as that might sound!) and next month, we move from the cosmic to the personal when we will reflect on love in a human context.

It is one thing to say that the most important thing in human life is love. While some might think that this is a sentimental overstatement, the point is at least arguable. It is, however, quite a jump beyond this to suggest that life itself is all about love. But this is exactly what the eminent geologist and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin, argues. 

Love is one of the big themes of Teilhard life’s work.1 He describes it as the mysterious energy at the heart of all cosmic life — an energy that is the glue of existence, holding everything in the universe together. It is love that holds atoms together, keeps planets in their orbits, and keeps us attached to the surface of the earth as we spin through space at 1,040 miles per hour. So much more than a mere emotion, love is a deep personal energy of attraction that, in the words of Ilia Delio, is the mark of divinity on all cosmic life.2 

Even more remarkably, Teilhard argues that, even at the cosmic level, this force has a personal quality of attraction. Love-energy, he suggests, is the power that works against entropy, binding everything together in relationship as it is drawn toward union. Love unites as it differentiates. This is the mystery of love.

Imagine the first moments after the Big Bang, when all the hot molten bits of the matter that form our proto-universe begin to cool. Already fragments have spread across millions of miles of space, and second by second that distance increases. But, then – and this is the great surprise – the trillions upon trillions of atoms begin to move toward each other. Hydrogen atoms begin to clump with other hydrogen atoms and eventually fuse into helium atoms. Others combine in different ways. But always, in response to some great force of cosmic attraction, part-wholes come together to form larger wholes. And so it has continued ever since then. 

Teilhard’s word for this force of cosmic allurement is love. If this sounds like too personal a term, you have got the point. Evolution, according to Teilhard, is oriented toward the wholeness that is achieved through unity in love. Yearning for wholeness through love is at the heart of a deeply personal cosmos. 

Love is the deeply personal presence of the passionate love-energy at the heart of the universe – and at the heart of its continuing evolution. Love is the fire that breathes life into matter. It is the force that continues to draw together and unite in ways that enhance differentiation. Love really is the foundation of everything that exists. 

The Relational Nature of Everything

Love-energy is intrinsically relational. Union and the creation of more and larger wholes is its end. Sexual energy is the energy that comes from being sexed – that is, separated from the whole. Our longing for wholeness is intimately tied up with our sexuality. Sometimes we are more aware of a longing for union, and sometimes we are more aware of a longing for wholeness. But the two are one, and they come together in sexuality. We are wholes longing for more wholeness, and somehow we intuit that the wholeness we seek lies in union.  

This same energy draws everything that exists toward wholeness and completeness. Every atom, every cell, every plant or animal, every planet and star, everything is pulled by the same primal force of allurement toward the larger whole within which it belongs. Everything that exists is sexed – that is, cut off from the larger whole and being drawn by the passionate, vitalizing force of eros toward it. 

We ache in every cell of our body, aware at some level of consciousness that we are little pieces of a larger whole. But this ache is also a deep and fundamental source of energy. It is the engine that drives everything else. It is our core longing and our most basic source of energy. It is life surging through us, calling us toward union that preserves differentiation. And the name of that ache is eros.  

The whole universe is under the thrall of love-energy that moves everything within it toward connections that express themselves in greater wholeness. It is more like a choreographed but continuously evolving dance than a mechanical clock. Everything within it is evolving in ever deepening patterns of interdependence. 

Reality is inherently relational. Everything that exists dances within networks of connections and layers of attractional bonding. As expressed by the poet, Wallace Stevens: “Nothing is itself taken alone. Things are because of interrelations.”3

In her book, Relational Reality, Charlene Spretnak reports that the picture of the physical universe provided by recent science matches exactly what we now know about the human realm.4 Everything and everyone is connected to everything and everyone else. Everything that exists does so as part of a network of relationships. But even more importantly, everything and everyone is constituted by their relationships. In short, being is being-in-relationship. Being is interbeing.

Love offers an opportunity to awaken and to heal the wounds that keep us in cryptogenic deep freeze. It offers us a chance to de-centre the ego. It offers us an opportunity to embrace parts of self that have been previously rejected – particularly as we notice ourselves projecting them onto those we most deeply love. It offers us the chance to journey with another in such a way that calls forth who we really are. And by doing these things, love offers us the chance to align with life and the developmental and evolutionary currents within it – which are ultimately so much stronger than our pitiful attempts at dog-paddling against the natural flow of the river of life. 

Open yourself to love. Receive it and pass it on to others. Just as with each breath, draw it in and then release it. This is the way we align ourselves with the flow of love-energy and the way we stay open to the flow of life.

Notes:

1.  Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy, Harcourt, New York,  (1972).

2.  Ilia Delio, Being as Love, (March 19, 2019) www.omegacenter.info/being-as-love/

3.  Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 189.

4.  Charlene Spretnak, Relational Reality (Topsham, ME: Green Horizons Books, 2011).

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2021 © Dr. David G. Benner

• Might it be true that “Love is the deeply personal presence of the passionate love-energy at the heart of the universe – and at the heart of its continuing evolution”? If so, what are the implications of this for my knowing and sharing of love?

• What would change in how I live my life if I truly believed that my being is being-in-relationships?

• How can I participate in the evolutionary unfolding and movement of all of creation toward increasing wholeness, interdependence, and the unobstructed flow of love?

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For more on the heart and what it means to live heartfully, see Dr. Benner’s book, Human Being and Becoming (2016).

Human Being and Becoming

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