On Love

I believe in love. I don’t just mean that I believe it exists, but that I have come to see it as the very core of being itself. This conviction has grown out of both my earthly experiences and my mystical ones. In daily life, I have seen how love sustains families, friendships, and communities. In spiritual practice, I have touched something beyond words, and what I encountered there, too, was love. None of this is surprising. After all, many of the world’s great spiritual traditions place love at the centre of their teachings. In one form or another, they all point to it as the ultimate answer.

That said, it can be useful to test even our strongest convictions by looking at them from another angle. The alternative perspective I would like to explore is that of the skeptic’s. Specifically, the claim that love is not some transcendent force at all, but a disguise for more basic, often biological, motives. Parents love their children because their genes continue through them and, in many cultures, because those children will one day return the care. Romantic partners offer affection, companionship, sex, and economic stability. Friends provide favours, support, and a safety net in times of trouble. Even devotion to God can be read as transactional—faith offered in exchange for comfort, forgiveness, or the promise of eternal reward.

It is not a flattering view of human life, but it has a certain explanatory power. Almost every bond fits into its framework. Almost.

As is often the case, the edge cases, or those that don’t neatly fit into a theory, have a lot to teach us. There are relationships that resist the skeptic’s reductionist theory, exposing its limits. Stepchildren are one of the clearest examples. A stepparent has no genetic obligation to care for the child. A skeptic might argue that affection develops because of household stability, or out of a sense of duty to the new partner. But these explanations are thin compared to the reality of what often happens. Many stepparents grow to love their stepchildren with a devotion that is deep, enduring, and protective—sometimes even at great personal cost. At this point, the neatness of the skeptic’s framework begins to crack. If love were only a transaction, why would so many give themselves so fully when there is no obvious reward?

Pets make this point even clearer. Historically, animals were kept for practical reasons: dogs guarded, cats hunted vermin, horses carried us. In those cases, affection was intertwined with necessity. But today most pets play no essential role. They cost money and time. They chew shoes, scratch furniture, and break our hearts when they die. And yet we invite them into our homes, we nurture them, and we grieve them like family. From the skeptic’s angle, this makes little sense. The explanations—companionship, stress relief—simply don’t capture the depth of the attachment.

Both stepchildren and pets highlight a kind of love that is not compelled by biology, not tied neatly to survival, not reducible to mutual advantage. It is love chosen. By giving ourselves to those who cannot demand it—whether a child who is not our own by blood or an animal who depends entirely on our care—we enter into a form of love that feels freer, less entangled with instinct, closer to unconditional.

This is where the deeper truth emerges: love in these cases is not compelled, not calculated, but chosen. And in choosing to love, something spiritual unfolds. Many traditions teach that higher beings—angels, guides, or presences beyond our sight—help humanity evolve. Ra, in The Law of One, extends this pattern to animals. Pets, Ra teaches, are on their way to becoming self-aware. By interacting with humans, by being named, cared for, and loved, they move closer to that threshold. In other words, our love plays a part in their ascent.

I find the parallel humbling. Just as we are lifted and guided, perhaps we lift and guide others. When we love stepchildren, we may be offering trust and stability that reshapes their lives. When we love pets, we may be nurturing in them emotional and even spiritual capacities that carry into their own mysterious journey.

Love, therefore, is not always instinct or transaction. Sometimes it is simply chosen, and in those moments it reveals its deepest character. It becomes a force that changes both the one who gives and the one who receives, thereby aligning us with the divine.