SPECTRUM OF LIGHT
LOVE
Agape Love: Divine love for man; impartial, spontaneous, altruistic, self-sacrificing.
Benevolent intent to do good, kindness, charitable acts of service.
Brotherhood and goodwill.
A strong liking or interest in something.
Deep and tender attachment or devotion.
LOVE
WHAT RESEARCH SAYS
Without loving relationships, humans fail to flourish, even if all of their other basic needs are met.
Research from major institutions such as Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Harvard, the Centers for Disease Control, and Berkeley Center for Science of Greater Good (BCSGG) are adding to the vast body of findings that underscore a bright line between condition of the spirit and the condition of one’s overall health and well-being. Research shows that when an emotion is triggered it activates body chemistry and a physiological response. Anger has an especially detrimental effect on heart conditions. Forgiveness, kindness and gratitude have positive impact on blood pressure, cholesterol, sleep, stress, anxiety, and immunity to name a few.
Those elements that strengthen the spirit, such as love, inspiration, grace, forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, healing and trust, are burden lifters that have physiological responses resulting in numerous health benefits. “There is enormous physical burden to being hurt and disappointed,” says Karen Swartz, MD, director of the Mood Disorders Adult Consultation Clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Chronic anger puts you into a fight or flight mode, which results in numerous changes in heart rate, blood pressure and immune response. Those changes, then, increase the risk of depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other conditions. Forgiveness, however, calms stress levels, leading to improved health. (Johns Hopkins Medicine: Forgiveness: Your Health Depends on It)….”being kind to others registers in the brain more like eating chocolate than like fulfilling an obligation to do what’s right.” (Zaki, 2012; BCSGG). “Coronary heart disease rates are lower in happier people—22% lower per one-point increase in happiness.” (Davidson, 2010 BCSGG)
10% of the factors that influence health are contained in the formal healthcare system.
When we increase love in our lives, we increase health, joy, meaning.
EMBO Reports - The Biochemistry of Love: An oxytocin hypothesis, C. Sue Carter and Stephen W. Porges
The old saying that ‘love heals’ has some truth to it. The intricate dance between two neuropeptides both regulates our ability to love and influences our health and well-being.
Love is deeply biological. It pervades every aspect of our lives and has inspired countless works of art. Love also has a profound effect on our mental and physical state. A ‘broken heart' or a failed relationship can have disastrous effects; bereavement disrupts human physiology and might even precipitate death. Without loving relationships, humans fail to flourish, even if all other basic needs are met.
As such, love is clearly not ‘just' an emotion; it is a biological process that is both dynamic and bidirectional in several dimensions. Social interactions between individuals, for example, trigger cognitive and physiological processes that influence emotional and mental states. In turn, these changes influence future social interactions. Similarly, the maintenance of loving relationships requires constant feedback through sensory and cognitive systems; the body seeks love and responds constantly to interaction with loved ones or to the absence of such interaction.
Although evidence exists for the healing power of love, it is only recently that science has turned its attention to providing a physiological explanation. The study of love, in this context, offers insight into many important topics including the biological basis of interpersonal relationships and why and how disruptions in social bonds have such pervasive consequences for behavior and physiology. Some of the answers will be found in our growing knowledge of the neurobiological and endocrinological mechanisms of social behavior and interpersonal engagement.
Love, Support, Kindness by Dean Ornish, MD Lifestyle Medicine
The following is an excerpt from Digital Magazine (love and support):
Medicine today tends to focus primarily on the physical and mechanistic drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. However, there isn’t any other factor in medicine—not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery—that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes than loneliness and isolation.
Love and intimacy - our ability to connect with ourselves and others, is at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for his or her patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it—yet, with few exceptions, we doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training.
There is a deep spiritual hunger in this country. The real epidemic in our culture is not only physical heart disease, but also what I call emotional and spiritual heart disease. The profound sense of loneliness, isolation alienation, and depression that are so prevalent in our culture with the breakdown of the social structures that used to provide us with a sense of connection and community. It is, to me, a root of the illness, cynicism, and violence in our society.
We are creatures of community. Those individuals, societies, and cultures who learned to take care of each other, to love each other, and to nurture relationships with each other during the past several thousand years were more likely to survive than those who did not. Those people who did not learn to take care of each other often did not make it. In our culture, the idea of spending time taking care of each other and creating communities has become increasingly rare. Ignoring these ideas imperils our survival.
Awareness is the first step in healing, both individually and socially. Part of the value of science is to increase the level of awareness of how much these choices matter than we make each day. Not just a little, but a lot, and not just to the quality of life but also the quantity of life—to our survival. When we understand how important these issues are, then we can do something about it. These include:
Spending more time with friends and family
Communication skills
Group support
Confession, forgiveness, and redemption
Compassion, altruism, and service
LOVE
WHAT SCRIPTURE SAYS
JOHN 3: 16-17
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him might be saved.
I CORINTHIANS 13
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
EPHESIANS 3: 14-19
The apostle Paul said, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
ROMANS 12: 9-10
Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another.
EPHESIANS 4:32
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
REFLECTION
What does it really take to change our world? What would our world look like if we began to lift love to another level, looking at people through the eyes of 1 Corinthians 13 - those in our families, in our circle of friends, in our workplace, in our neighborhoods and communities?
