...There are various kinds of love existing between humans, and also between spirits and humans...
This is an interesting message – both for what it says and what it doesn’t say. In it, we find a great definition of one kind of love: A bond of affection created or brought into operation by the Law of Attraction. This is a definition of love that any human can readily understand, and is frequently what we mean when we talk about love between humans.
But the implication in this message is that all human loves fit this description, and this, to my understanding, is not true. My understanding is that there are types of human love which transcend the Law of Attraction -- unless we say that a person could be "attracted" to all of humanity, or all of Creation. There also seem to be types of love which "fall short of" the Law of Attraction.
This brings us to the concept I mentioned in my last post: octaves of love. In my understanding, love seems to have different levels of manifestation, each level having its own definition. These various levels differ in such drastic ways that I'm not sure there's a single definition of love that could cover all the levels. These "octaves" range from the most basic biological attraction -- sex -- all the way to this sublime "thing" we call divine love.
Padgett's "bond of affection" describes one octave of love -- a very common one, though not particularly elevated. In Peck's discussion, this doesn't even rate as love -- he calls it cathexis. But while Peck was being an idealist, I'm trying to approach this question as a realist. This "cathexis," while certainly not the highest level of love, is perhaps the primary driving force in humanity, and so should not be excluded from our definition of love.
For the same reason, I think we need to include "sex" in our definition, simply because much of humanity considers sexual attraction as "love." In some popular music, the singer seems to know of no other kind of love.
Rather than dismiss this as "unevolved," I want to acknowledge and honor sex as a vital part of human reality. So, perhaps we could say that sex is the lowest "octave" of love, and that cathexis is the next octave above that. But then there are more octaves above these; and this, I think, is where the Padgett messages get foggy. They of course go on and on about how "eternal" the Divine Love is, and how happy it makes us, but beyond that, descriptions of the octaves beyond cathexis are a bit sparse.
And then (OMG)... we're thrown the curveball of Soulmates.
I, frankly, have given up trying to understand what soulmates are about. From my observations, it seems that the concept of soulmates is, for mortals, a source of confusion and self-deception, exclusively. We're told in the Padgett messages that knowledge of our soulmates is taken from us when we incarnate, and that this knowledge doesn't become relevant until both halves have left the earth life, and are preferably both well progressed in the spirit world. From this I surmise that the whole concept of soulmates is really beyond our comprehension. But for many people it seems this concept is almost the Main Attraction of the Padgett messages.
I can't blame them -- the concept of a romantic love that never dies would be the holy grail of every hopeless romantic that ever lived. But my guess is that the soulmate love is far more than any "romantic love" that we could conceive of. In other words, it's got to be more than just "endless cathexis."
Anyway, there you have a basic outline of the idea of "octaves of love." And I think this helps explain why love is so hard to define -- the definition seems to shift with each octave. The bass drum, the cello, the piccolo, the triangle: they all play "music," just very different types of music...
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