“Love is not just a word, an emotion, or even an experience. Love is All. It is a transcendence; an eternity of bliss; a perfect understanding of Oneness. Love is communion with the Spirit that defines every one of us, and every piece of consciousness in the Universe.”

I wrote this definition in my book, Be The Guru: A Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming Your Own Spiritual Teacher, during a time of deep inquiry and meditation on the concept of love. It was as if my body was taken over by the essence of that Love and the words typed themselves. Although I didn’t conceptually understand what I’d written at the moment, the essence of these words rang so true within me that I’d taken them for granted and had been teaching them ever since.

It wasn’t until a reunion sleepover with my BFFs last month that my taken-for-granted definition was challenged: “Why isn’t love just an emotion? Don’t tell me you just know it’s not. I want a concrete answer!”

My friend’s question took me by surprise. Although I could feel with all my being that love was way more than just a word or an emotion, I couldn’t put it into words. I couldn’t come up with examples. I didn’t even consider you’d require examples to understand such a concept. In my world, if something feels right, it is right.

Love Heals. Fear Doesn’t

Having come up with no satisfying answer to the question we ended up leaving the conversation as it was and went off to sleep; until my friend woke me up at three in the morning – The answer had come!

“Love is not just an emotion because love can heal any other emotion.”

That was genius! Think about it. If you’re feeling the emotion of despair you can only heal it with a more positive emotion. Hope can replace despair. Even frustration can replace despair, as it is a more positive emotion than it. If you put emotions on a scale, with love being the most positive one and fear being the most negative one, then any emotion that takes you towards love is, by definition, a more loving emotion than the one you were previously on.

In other words, when you’re feeling bad and then you feel better, you’ve used the power of love to move up the emotional scale, and heal your negative emotion with a more positive one.

Conversely, negative emotions can’t heal loving ones – they simply take you further away from love, and therefore, your health. Negative emotions deteriorate your emotional, mental and physical well-being. That’s why they’re called negative! They make you feel grumpy, lethargic, and when left untreated they manifest into physical illness.

There you have it! Next time you go out preaching that love is not just a word, not just an emotion, and people ask you why, you have a line that’s certain to convince them.