Love makes the world go round

I love my family, I love people, I love New York City, I love our planet, I love our Universe, I love life.

This is where it all begins, with the love we feel and the love we have for everything, which is another way of saying of life itself. There is an intimate relationship between love and gratitude, and I'm not sure we can even really separate them, and why should we bother, as what we love we are at the same time wholly grateful for.

When we’re in a state of love and gratitude, the world ‘goes round’ very smoothly in a vibrant flow. Nature gives us the beauty of flowers, birds, mountains, trees, animals, oceans and people. Studies have shown that when we’re in Nature, our sense of well-being flourishes, which is yet another way of saying “we’re in love with life.” The same hormones and neuro-chemicals that are released and bathing our blood, tissue and nervous system as when we’re in love.

In beholding beauty in every way it manifests and expresses itself, the way love does, one organically feels a sense of joy, a humbling respect and awe for the grandeur, power and magnificence of Nature.

This in turn generates a sense of coherence, well-being, good cheer and goodwill all at the same moment. It’s one grand gestalt, a deep, subjective sense of Oneness and connectedness with all and everything.

Call it the deep, abiding appreciation of Nature or love of the Divine, by being alive, we get to experience a beautifully awake world that sees the good in one and all, even in a world of intense tumult and turmoil. Shambhala Training, which is a secularized version of Tibetan Buddhist practice designed by Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, refers to the idea of Buddha Nature as our fundamental “basic goodness”. This suggests that we humans, despite our shadow, are basically good. The entire Universe, too, in all dimensions, by definition, is also “good”.

If ultimately we create our own reality, shouldn’t we embrace the idea that it is our nature to live by gratitude and love? If you were to pick a form of heaven, wouldn’t it look and feel like it is flourishing with these uplifting emotions? Yes, I suggest that gratitude is an emotion!

Another way of putting it is that we can live as though God is real and with us moment by moment. Even still, anger and upset, anxiety and depression definitely arise in all of us. Why? The reasons are many, of course. While we can always plumb the depths of an individual’s pre- and postnatal life to understand the particulars of the formation of their psycho-emotional life, we won’t do this deep dive as I have in other articles. By saying that “love and harmony are the Nature of the Universe” is not Pollyanna-ish, as we recognize that negative emotions arise in every human with regularity.

For our purposes here, I suggest that these other emotions arise, of course, due to our primarily early childhood programming, but are largely triggered when we see how our state of integrity is disintegrating and compromised. They arise when our natural enjoyment of gratitude and love is disrupted by any number of causes. The sooner we get back to their embodiment, the happier we are.

According to both Jewish¹ and Buddhist² traditions, it is our obligation to be happy and share it with others.

We’re not naïve here. There’s a place for all emotions in our humanosphere. God knows that there are so many reasons that many people feel anger, indignation, sadness, disappointment and rage due to injustice, ignorance and violence across the planet. This is largely due to the “compromised and disintegrating integrity” mentioned previously, which leads to hell.

I suggest that fundamentally, gratitude, awe, humility and love are the bedrock of the experience of which, right here on Earth, leads to Heaven.

Even when we’re feeling angry, anxious or depressed, we can be grateful that we are alive to feel these emotions.

Our bedrock biology loves love

One of the major reasons I believe that these ebullient emotions ³ are our fundamental Nature, our bedrock, is because the human body is primed and wired for the release of the hormones and neurotransmitters which both establish and sustain these states of well-being, even ecstasy and bliss.

These feelings are rooted and reflected in our very physiology. Endorphins flow as do serotonin and oxytocin. These hormones and neurotransmitters are designed to uplift and nurture our spirit, to create a deep sense of peace and well-being. After all, oxytocin is known as “the love hormone”⁴. When it is in active circulation, one feels that they love everybody.

It’s quite a skill to feel anger at someone at the same moment you’re feeling overwhelming love for them. These positive emotions lead to deeper breathing, inner ease and greater release of both negative emotions and nitric oxide all at the same time. This, in turn, dilates our blood vessels, leading to more thorough cellular nourishment, promoting vitality itself. Over time, it also reduces blood pressure.

This is the power of the mind and the emotions over the body and their establishment and sustaining of physical health. In short, being in love with life is one of the keys to a healthy, long life.

Positive feedback loops form a healthy contagion

When people are kind to each other⁵, it evokes the same in others. There becomes a wish to be kind and to extend it outward. Whether it’s a warm smile to a stranger or holding the door open for someone as a simple act of courtesy and kindness. When we do these simple things, everyone feels better. What is this about?

Quantum physics posits that on a meaningful level, we are all one organism, one community of cells and microbes in a larger organism called the Universe, a notion that Dr. Bruce Lipton ⁶ has been discussing for decades in his books and lectures. When we talk, smile, feel and emote, we are directly and indirectly influencing the whole. In quantum physics, this is called the Butterfly Effect. It may be hard to measure that effect, but it is measurable.

Indeed, this is a way to have a massive influence on the whole of humanity and even on the entire planetary ecosystem. Small but certain, small perhaps, but measurable.

Roger Nelson’s Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University attests to the measurable effect of an emotional field that is generated as a result of some kind of significant event.

It is this circularity and contagion that cellular biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton, has additionally discussed at length, including in his books The Honeymoon Effect and in his most recent book, Beyond Darwin. We are all connected through the quantum field, which is in and around us, connecting all elements and sentient life.

It’s like we have one enormous, coherent nervous system that affects and influences the world around us for the good.

Yes, we’ve heard it a million times that love makes the world go round, so that it almost sounds trivial, but it couldn’t be less true. When it’s blended with trust and integrity, could it be that we would have a different, kinder, more compassionate, less confused and more coherent, harmonious world?

We’ve perhaps heard it so many times because its simplicity defies the tendency we have to obfuscate, create complexity and confusion because we just refuse to accept simplicity, the essence of the principle of Occam’s Razor, in which the simplest answer is also most often the best.

The circularity of love and kindness

Not only do we all love receiving love, but we also love giving it. It is expressed through kindness, caring, compassion, humor, play, affection, caress and sometimes through “making love”, a beautiful phrase indicating meaningful and caring sexual engagement.

Remember that virtually every song, opera, sonnet, film and play revolves, in one way or another, around love. It may be heartbreak or unrequited love, but these are all about love in one form or another. Of course, there are many forms of love⁷ though, let’s not kid ourselves, romantic love is by far the most cherished!

Though our world is agog in wars, an environment that is insulted and exploited every minute of the day and every kind of violation of peace and the dignity of others is perpetuated daily, our nervous system bounces back to find peace, integrity, friendship, joy and love every single day everywhere in the world.

Music plays by the fountain, people of all backgrounds, all colors, shapes, sizes, cultural identities, just absorbed in the music and dancing, laughing, eating, enjoying.

This goes on even in Gaza, Lebanon, all over Iran, Africa and the Middle East. Children and adults want to play, and virtually nothing stops them. Why? It is our nature to play and to, in effect, celebrate life and being alive.

Everywhere, most people are courteous, kind, helpful and go out of their way to help others. Some risk their lives for those we call strangers. Good and loving people abound everywhere. Emotional intelligence can be found wherever you look.

It should be obvious that it is primarily our political leaders, private equity partners and captains of industry who spoil the punch for us all. Most people simply want peace, the ability to work and feed their families, and to celebrate the joys and rituals of their respective cultures.

Yet we are interrupted by the sickness of a small group of people who hold themselves above others and cause unspeakable trouble for the rest of the species and the larger ecosystem. Their selfishness and narcissism are palpable and pathological.

We like to match our athletic wits with each other, we like to make each other laugh, cooperate, collaborate and make each other feel good.

The human body system is designed to enjoy pleasure, challenge and to feel good. The endocrine system is designed to release hormones like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins through play, laughter and love. These are released at moments of sympathy, empathy, compassion, attraction and affection.

People are ready, without notice, to help each other, protect each other and uplift each other, friends and strangers alike. These instinctive impulses to smile and share, open a door, help an elderly person, feed each other, are the bedrock of our species, and no doubt many others as well.

We are part of the animal kingdom. The animal kingdom plays.

I was in my first year of Bard College and, with a group of fellow students in my anthropology class, drove up to Toronto because our teacher was giving a talk at an anthropology Conference at the York Hotel. Despite the pleasure of meeting famed anthropologist, Margaret Mead, at the Conference, I also heard, for me at the ripe age of 18, the idea that animals, after eating, sleeping and mating, play. Elephants spray each other with water for fun, splash about, laugh, nudge each other, and so do virtually every other animal in the Kingdom.

At an early age, I learned that we are wired for joy, love, caring, nurturance and well-being.

What gets in the way are reptilian-brain instincts of fear, seeking control and a drive toward insatiable acquisition, commonly known as greed. And even with these, there is a touch of intelligence behind each one as they preserve our survival momentarily.

But that’s the rub: momentarily. Our pre-frontal cortex, our power to reflect and design our way of being, allows us to quickly let go of the instinctive impulse of that reptilian brain and to embrace our consciously evolved humanity in which ubiquitous love prospers as it should.