Is romantic love important?
QUESTION: Masters, I want to know if romantic love serves no purpose at all. Does it not, sometimes, let a person know what love from Source feels like? Doesn’t a new mother’s love for her child give her a glimpse of divine love? Is it the sense of attachment that comes parceled with these versions of love that make it so different from the love from Source? Or, do they sometimes create the same magical bloom inside the human heart? ~I N, India
ANSWER: Romantic love serves the purpose of enabling souls to have life lessons involving a relationship with another soul. It is distinguished from Source love in that it is rarely unconditional and is measured by the thinking process and the emotional reactions it generates. The romantic love between two people always comes with conditions, such as exclusivity of partners, personal habits exhibited in the marital home, sometimes even religious beliefs. Unconditional universal, or Source, love is 100% positive acceptance of the way things are.
Romance involves living with another, both parties’ belief systems, and the contracts made between them before coming to Earth. Woven into the fabric of the relationship are lessons such as control, betrayal, abandonment, trust, and all the characteristics defining oneself: self-love, self-confidence, self-worth, etc.
The human heart is not the only place in the physical where love is felt. The heart is a mechanical organ that pushes blood through the body, nothing more. It is more romanticized in speech than involved in love: heartbreak, heart-felt, it warms my heart.
The love a mother has for her newborn is all one way—from her to the child. She does not get any reciprocal feelings from the child. Also, a mother’s love for her child usually starts out as unconditional, but if the growing child does not meet the mother’s expectations, the love is no longer unconditional.
You can only love another to the degree and extent that you love yourself, so even in the presence of Source love, if you don’t love yourself as a creation of Source, you cannot feel Source love. In romantic situations you will be able to love your partner more when you love yourself more. So the degree you feel romantic or Source love depends on you.