THIS WEEKS BLOG IS THE SECOND ON LOVE  - OUR BIGGEST CONUNDRUM
Love embraces and facilitates the other antidotes to the Three Karmal Sins  

The other antidotes are Awareness, Truth and Being in the Present Moment (spiritual practice.) 
These are shown as the upper three points of the Hexagon while the lower points indicate the lower chakras below the diaphragm where the Karmal challenges reside. 
The Hexagon is the symbol for the Heart Chakra. The Chakra system is a simpler energy model than the Tree of Life shown in last week's blog.

The Chakra system. Love, compassion, empathy, forgiveness are qualities of the fourth, Heart Chakra, whereas awareness and truth manifest in the Chakras above it. 

The Karmal sins are focused in the third "power" Chakra below the diaphragm.

The Ancestors have stressed that love is a decision rather than an emotion or feeling and this takes some scrutiny. It is a koan worth meditating on, whose meaning I have not yet fully encompassed. 

We have to contend with ego, desirous attachment and judgment especially in the love connection as well as everything else in life. We are confronted at all times with the hypnosis of materialism and by the world of appearances we live in. Our motivations often end up one way or another being similar as our drive to have a nice house, a fancy car, an impressive degree etc. We start to look at a potential partner much in the way we may shop for something to match our own persona.  

Most of us want something physically compelling in our love life to match what we have been told is the ideal by the media and the movie industry. We have been bombarded with these images since birth. We are looking for a persona to match the persona we think we are or want to be. Hence, when we find one, we project the qualities we would like to see in this person onto this person - frequently with erroneous results. We discover a year, later or sooner, that we have been lying to ourselves - this so called phase of “romantic love” - we actually know at a deep level is going to be short lived. Our prospective long term mate falls short when we tune into appearances rather than essence.

 Maybe our decisions are best made at a spiritual rather than a physical level embracing some of the principles above. Much is now being written about spiritual partnerships. Certainly it is a good idea to become friends first and be sure we are with a person who has a similar life trajectory to our own. This does not not mean they need to have exactly the same one. We often exclude suitable partners because they do not have the same belief system  politically, religiously or otherwise. Their general intention or context for life should be similar to ours. The content and details can differ and may also make it more interesting.  Hopefully we will learn to honor, embrace and love the differences.

We might have more success if we regard relationship as a vital part of our spiritual life and strive to go beyond Maya or persona and look to the fabric of the soul. This requires time in an era of social media where surveys show that if there is an attraction, sex usually happens by the third date. Sexual energy can cloud the emotional and spiritual. If the chemistry is good the romantic phase will last longer but will still eventually dissipate.

Ancient wisdom recommends that ego and attachment to the object of our desire should be put aside and we should rather think in terms of “what can I do to make this person happy and more of who they are for its own sake” and vice versa (rather than what’s in it for me.)