"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." -Albert Einstein

Did you know that simply thinking about love releases endorphin from the hypothalamus of the brain into the bloodstream? Chemical magic happens that makes us feel good. Successful authors who write about love go to great lengths to be original-watch out for those cliches! Don't sound too syrupy or corny! But aren't there times when corny is pleasantly wistful, and cool is often flippant and mean spirited?

Romance
Today romance has a hard time keeping up with gross and violent in competing for ratings in American society. And I'm old enough to remember romance like 'you and the night and the music.' Though romance novels are not my personal preference, you can't argue with the most successful author of the genre alive today, Nora Roberts. The Romance Novel is one of the largest and still flourishing niches for writers like Roberts who create them to the delight of millions. Unlike bodice-rippers, they are love stories with guts, mystery, history and suspense. Publishers pamper these authors. Their fans adore them.

Women in particular want romance in their lives. Equating it with love, when they don't have it they look for it in fiction. And, as medical science confirms, when those endorphin are on the march, they send powerful euphoric messages like shooting stars across the universe. Nevertheless, fiction isn't reality.

Love
Consider the spiritual expression of love like this quote from Lebanese-American poet, Kahlil Gibran: "Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself."

The poet sparked an idea for a short story I wrote about three people in the Sahara Desert. Two are lost in a failed marriage; the third, a young hitchhiker, becomes the catalyst for reawakening their love. Granted, it's a romantic setting, but without spiritual guidance from an unlikely stranger, the misfortunes that befall the couple in an unforgiving environment, would destroy rather than renew them. Each has to discover who they really are on the inside before they can begin to trust and love, and trust love.

The movie, "Endless Love" was endlessly forgettable, but the title is truth itself. Romantic, spiritual or familial-love is endless. Love exists only to express itself. In a crowded room, two people in love are aware only of each other (see South Pacific). When we love our pet we feel the animal's love in return. When we love an infant, we feel that baby's love in return. When we give love we get more than we give. Clearly, something miraculous is happening here. Called the reward pathway by scientists, a neural network in the middle brain reacts immediately to happy feelings like quenching our thirst or having good sex.

According to research anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher at Rutgers University, "love activates a region of the brain rich in dopamine, associated with rewards. Fisher and her colleagues found that "love is a long-term all-consuming and powerful unconscious state, not necessarily cognitive." Here's where Fisher and I part company. How can a research scientist have such limited vision? Margaret Mead must be turning in her grave.

Love is Consciousness
Love with a capital L is more than lust or sex or the physical neural network. Love is absolutely long-term and powerful. But love is not unconscious. Love is consciousness itself. Everything you have just read is an explanation by way of thought forms expressed in written word forms. That's the best we can do in the world of form. But Love is the all consuming, omnipotent consciousness that has no form. Love exists everywhere and in every thing. "Within You and Without You." You have only to stop, get off the roller coaster and look around. If you can't go to the Grand Canyon, feel Love in the stillness of the natural world near you-the tree in the backyard, the leaves fluttering in the wind. Love is absolute.

In the silence of prayer or meditation, when we commune with God, or the higher power, or whatever name or Deity we are comfortable with we are having a deep personal connection with Love. This is pure consciousness. It might be a wisp of a moment, or expansive as the sea. It is what we are absolutely.

The more aware we are of this sacred presence within, which is our essence, the more expansive it becomes. Those who live in this state all the time are the messengers of love and peace in this world, the new earth. Trust.