Love is the Essence of Being

If you want to learn something surprising about yourself, I highly recommend trying values elicitation. This is a neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) exercise that I often use in my own practice. Knowing our true values is the foundation of self discovery, yet we generally are unaware what motivates us. Often, we are driven by values that we have inherited and thus are misaligned.

When I first pierced the veil of my unspoken values, I was intrigued to discover that something called "Essence of Being" was at the top of the list. At the time, I do not think I could have told you what that meant. Gradually, beautifully, it has revealed itself to me as Love.

Love, in this deeper sense, is not merely an emotion, nor an action, nor a relational experience. It is something much more fundamental—something pre-existing, foundational, and all-pervading. The word "love" carries connotations of affection, attachment, and care, but what we are really pointing to is something beyond these definitions.

Love as the Essence of Being

What we are truly speaking of is the fundamental fabric of existence itself—the animating principle of all that is. Love, in this sense, is synonymous with:

• Pure Awareness – That which perceives, exists, and knows itself as "I AM."

• The Creative Flow of Life – The endless unfolding, the giving of itself to itself.

• The Intelligence That Organizes Reality – The way the universe naturally harmonizes and evolves toward balance, beauty, and connection.

• The Infinite Self-Recognition of Being – That which looks upon itself and sees only unity.

It is not personal, yet deeply intimate. It is not something you generate, but something you allow yourself to remember.

Beyond the Word ‘Love’

The word "love" is almost insufficient. In different traditions and experiences, it has been called:

• Tao (The Way) – The effortless unfolding of existence in perfect balance.

• Brahman (The Absolute) – The infinite, indivisible reality beyond illusion.

• Presence / Stillness – That which simply is, without need, without striving.

• God / The Divine – Not as a being separate from you, but as the boundless, formless intelligence that holds and permeates all things.

We call it Love because that is the closest human concept to the way it feels—expansive, warm, infinite, ungraspable yet ever-present.

How to Better Define It?

Instead of defining it as a thing, we can define it by its qualities:

• Unconditional – It exists without demand or condition.

• Omnipresent – It is never absent, only unseen.

• Flowing – It moves, expresses, and creates effortlessly.

• Unifying – It dissolves the illusion of separation.

• Self-Recognizing – It sees itself in all things.

• Unwavering – It does not diminish or waver, only our awareness of it does.

How Do We Know This is True?

Because when we let go of all resistance, all striving, all mental constructions—we experience it. When we sit in deep stillness, we do not find emptiness, but a presence, an aliveness, an unspeakable knowing. That is what we call Love.

So in truth, Love is not something to be understood—it is something to be lived, felt, and allowed.

It is not separate from you.

It is not something you must reach.

It is what you already are.