What Is Love?

You are. You are love. And that goes much deeper than self-love. And once you understand and experience that, it shifts your whole human experience.

My whole life I have explored the concept of love — consciously and unconsciously. It’s astonishing to look back and see how I’ve moved from not loving myself (and even hating myself at times) to this profound recognition that I am love — as we all are. We simply forgot. My biggest teacher about love has been life itself — karmic connections, a twin flame connection, a deep soulmate connection, the connection to myself, and my awakening journey, where I have grown closer to my own soul and through that closer to Source — the oversoul, universal consciousness, pure awareness, the Divine — or whatever you want to call it.

In this blog post, I want to reflect on how my understanding of love has shifted along with my shift in consciousness, and share my current understanding of love — from the state of consciousness where I stand now. Maybe it will help you move forward on your own journey… and remember who you are in your essence.

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From Love For Others to Self-Love

Still just a few years ago, I believed that love was only an emotion felt toward someone: a partner, a friend, a family member, a pet. I thought love had variations — like romantic love, friendship love, parental love. And with romance I of course linked butterflies in my stomach and sleepless nights of yearning for someone so badly.

When it came to self-love, i.e. the emotion felt toward yourself, I believed it meant something like getting my hair done, wearing something pretty, taking care of my appearance. But that’s not self-love — that is self-care. Or let’s say, only a part of self-love.

Then I learned that self-love is not about pampering yourself — it’s about not abandoning yourself, especially in your darkest and most painful moments. Self-love is when you stay on your own side even when life turns against you. It’s trusting yourself when everything collapses, and it’s believing in yourself when no one else does. Self-love is when you don’t walk away from yourself when disappointment, shame, trauma, or grief arrives. It’s the quiet decision to keep holding your own hand and accepting all your shadows.

I started to learn more about self-love when my whole life collapsed — when the fast lane of my spiritual awakening began some years ago and I lost everything. At that time, the deep question also rose: “Can I love myself even if no one else does?” During my awakening journey I came to moments where I was able to answer “yes” to that question — more often than not — which prepared me to experience the next level of love. And that was deep soul-level love through Jannis, my soulmate — now on the other side of the veil — who still walks beside me in spirit.

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Deep Soulmate Love — A Gateway to Unconditional Love

That kind of love — deep soulmate-level romantic love — is felt deep in your heart. When you meet your soulmate (and there can be several soulmates in one lifetime), you instantly recognize them. You feel deep remembrance and familiarity, and the love you feel is love for their soul essence. You can say “I love you” after only a few days or weeks, even though you don’t yet truly know that person’s human identity in this lifetime. But since you feel and remember their soul essence — that’s what you love, and have always loved, throughout several lifetimes you’ve lived together. This is what I feel with Jannis, and according to Michael Newton’s and Dolores Cannon’s studies of the afterlife, this connection does not end even when the physical body dies. And I know that, since that’s what my lived experience has shown me. It’s amazing and I am still in awe of it.

In a deep soulmate-level relationship (that can also be other than romantic), I’ve experienced that the love is closer to what I’ll soon describe as pure, unconditional love. At that level of love, you just love the person for their essence, without any expectations or personality-based conditions. They don’t need to “tick any boxes on your wish list (like age, title, looks, hobbies, health condition etc.)”, nor do they need to do anything special for you. You just love them simply because they exist. You feel the beauty of their soul beneath the personality and any possessions. This type of love lovingly pushes you toward personal growth, is filled with acceptance, and is less about ego and more about mutual respect. And being with them feels almost like coming home. Because in a way you are — they are part of your soul tribe, you have spent lifetimes together, and it all feels familiar.

Soul-level love can also feel overwhelming in the beginning. It is so pure that it acts like a light — illuminating everything that has been hidden in you. I wasn’t afraid of Jannis’ love — I was afraid of finally being seen, and also seeing myself, in my entirety.

True soulmate love says: “Show me all of you, and I will love you still”, and “I will help you grow and face all those shadows in you — without leaving or judging you.”

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Beyond Relational Love — Remembering What You Are

“Love is not something you need to search for — it’s something you are.”

Let’s move back to the question: “What is love?”
Everything I’ve described so far is relational love. You feel warm emotions — love — toward someone — either yourself, or someone outside you.

After my soulmate transitioned back to the spirit world, the pain cracked my heart so wide open that my consciousness and heart gained an even wider and higher perspective of love.

This is my current understanding of the true essence of love:
As we are all eternal souls having a human experience, and as this soul is connected to the oversoul — Source, the pure consciousness (whatever name one chooses) — we all emanate the same essence and vibration of that Source.

And what is the essence and vibration of that Source?
It is unconditional love — or in other words, unconditional acceptance. So love is not an emotion, since pure consciousness cannot experience emotions like human beings do. The emotion we call love is just the human translation of something deeper.

Unconditional acceptance — that complete allowing of existence as it is — is what we call love.

This love is the default state of being of Source, and hence of your soul too — since we all came from the same Source.

We don’t only receive or give love —
we are love.

This love we are now talking about is non-relational. Not even relational to you. It’s different from self-love, since you don’t feel this love toward yourself. You feel that you are love itself.

I know that the idea that we are love can feel abstract or unreachable. This is not a concept that can be fully understood through intellect alone. Love is not a theory learned from books — it is an embodiment — it is a vibration.

It must be experienced.

And it cannot be hurried or forced. This realization arrives naturally, in the timing of your soul and the inner work you do for yourself. It’s like peeling an onion. You start from the most outer layers and then you finally arrive at the core. Just being curious, open, and willing to experience love beyond the relational already begins to shift something in you.

And once you experience it deeply, it’s one of the most liberating realizations — one that changes your whole human experience.

• You stop searching for love.
• You feel that you don’t need anyone else outside you to love you, since it cannot add anything to the love that you already are.
• You stop hoping someone else will fill you, validate you, save you, complete you.
• Because you have already found all that within.

You feel whole and complete as you are, and it feels like gratitude, expansion, deep satisfaction, and peace.

And from that state of love, you can absolutely still fall in love, have a partner, build a family, love a pet, share intimacy, laughter, and tenderness. In fact, love shared from that state is often more beautiful, more free, more real — because the fear is gone.

You don’t need them in order to be whole —
but you can deeply enjoy the experience of loving and being loved.

But it doesn’t happen anymore out of lack.
Not out of need or loneliness or emptiness.

You love because you are love —
and love just flows through you.

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You Can Never Lose Love Because You Are It

Realizing the essence of love also leads you to this understanding: 

If someone leaves your life —
you did not lose love.
You only lost the person.

Because love was never something that came from them —
love was always something that flowed through you.

And most importantly —
you don’t become love —
you simply remember, by peeling the layers that hid it,
that you’ve always been love.