Love is the most essential need of the soul. No person can experience happiness and bliss if he is not loved. Just like body needs regular doses of food, love too is required for the soul at regular intervals. Just as we need a balanced diet for good health which means that the food must contain nutrients like protein, vitamins, carbohydrates or fat, we also need balanced love. Since we are comparing love with food in the spiritual world, we need to know the different nutrients of love.
The different types of nutrients of love are described as following
1. Lust: Lust is the most common form of love. It is most condemned yet it is so important that often people consider love as a synonym of lust. Lust represents the sexual love which arises due to the attraction in the bodies of masculine and feminine and it is present is all animals. The physical intimacy is essential for procreation of the specie. Yet lust is hated by puritan as it is the only form of love which is purely physical and material.
2. Affection: The most respected form of love is often called affection that a mother displays to her child. This form of love is unconditional and natural. We all shower affection to the children without any expectation of return. It is due to affection that every parent gives the most valuable part of his life to his children.
3. Respect: When we come across a person who has more virtues, more knowledge or he shows some superior ability, a feeling of respect is automatically generated in us. We respect such people because we wish to become like them. It is by respect that we can get many virtues from the respected human beings and make ourselves a better human being.
4. Friendship: Friendship is the purest form of love which exists between the equals. It is the love that lasts longest and the friends help people to grow together by learning from each other by sharing their thoughts. Friendship is neither material nor spiritual as it relates to meeting of mind.
5. Worship: Men have learned many thousands years back that the affairs of the world runs based on certain rules and principles. He had been trying to learn these rules though different branches of knowledge. He has also understood his limitation to know the Absolute due to limitation of his mental faculties. He has thus devised a method of worship and prayer to invoke the invisible and Absolute calling such reality as God. It is through worship that a man connects with the invisible world and learns about the past and future by invoking the God within.
6. Faith: One of the most mysterious natures of man is to have faith on others. Since in the material world, everyone is different, no one can know what is going on in the mind of others. However through faith, a man learns to trust others as much as he can trust himself. Faith is perhaps the most important ingredient of love as without faith, love cannot exist. A man with faith can connects with many other people and they can work as one person.
7. Compassion: This form of love encompasses the entire humanity and indeed all living beings. Compassion may also includes plants and other things like river, soil etc. It is by compassion that we feel emotionally connected to everything that exist in this universe.
Often a man tries to get happiness by getting only one type of love. However, he soon feels the desire of others. The kings are known to have clamored for respect even after their physical and material needs had been satisfied. The quest of the priests for satisfaction of the lust is reported everyday. People like Bill Gates donate most of their money for getting respect from others. We work every day to get respect and affectation from people.
It is necessary, therefore, to have a balance love which has all the nutrients as described in this article. One must not ignore any form of love nor must one ever think that one form of love is superior to other forms of love as only when we get all types of love, our love is complete. Similarly, all deep relationship between two human beings often evolves in the way that the main love evolves into all form of love. Thus our beloved soon become our good friend. We also respect for her and develop compassion and affection for her. This process goes on till the person become our true love.
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