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Feb 14 • General discussion
Consumed by Love: From Eros to Agape
Eros, Philos, Agape
Eros - “Desire awakens us.”
Philos - “Friendship anchors us.”
Agape - “Divine love consumes and transforms us.”
There are three Greek words for love.
1) Eros carries both light and shadow. It belongs to duality. No one can escape Eros. Everyone needs its presence, even though, many times, Eros makes us feel apart from the world, trapped in solitude. Eros shows its most beautiful face when it is united with Philos.
All of us seek Eros, and then, when Eros begins to transform into Philos, we sometimes conclude that love has become worthless. We fail to see that Philos is precisely what can lead us to the highest form of love: Agape.
2) Philos What is Philos? Philos is love in the form of friendship. It is what we feel toward others, the steady warmth of companionship. When the flame of Eros stops burning, it is Philos that can keep a couple together. It is the love of the beloved, not only as desire, but as presence.
3) Agape is the highest form of love. Yet Agape cannot really be discussed; it has to be lived.
Agape has two manifestations:
- Love that consumes
- Love that is enthusiasm
Love that consumes is the purest. Agape is total love, the kind that consumes the person who experiences it. Whoever knows and experiences Agape learns that nothing else in the world is important, only love. This consuming love makes everything else, absolutely everything, lose its importance. You live to be consumed by your love: love for God.
Agape is the love that consumes, as if that phrase best defines this strange and holy kind of love. It is the longing of the soul, the yearning to live together with God.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that when Christ spoke of loving one’s enemies, he was referring to Agape. It is impossible, he suggested, to like our enemies, those who are cruel to us, those who try to make our day-to-day suffering even worse. But Agape is much more than liking. It is a force that suffuses us, fills every space within us, and turns our aggression to dust.
Agape in the form of enthusiasm is what most of us experience when we first touch Agape. For the ancients, enthusiasm meant trance or ecstasy, a connection with God. Enthusiasm is Agape directed toward a particular idea or a specific thing. We have all experienced it. When we love and believe from the bottom of our hearts, we feel ourselves to be stronger than anyone in the world, and we feel a serenity based on the certainty that nothing can shake our faith. This unusual strength allows us to make the right decision at the right time, and when we achieve our goal, we are amazed by our own capabilities.
Enthusiasm normally manifests itself with all of its force during the first years of our lives. At that time, we still have strong links with divinity, and we throw ourselves into play with such will that dolls take on life and our soldiers actually march. When Yeshua said that the kingdom of heaven belonged to children, he was referring to Agape in the form of enthusiasm. Children were attracted to him, not because they understood his miracles, his wisdom, or his Pharisees and apostles. They went to him in joy, moved by enthusiasm, an enchanting power that justifies everything.
Agape is divine love: the oneness that arises from twoness.
We are two in form, one in being. Love is what lets that oneness become lived reality without erasing difference. Agape is unity that honors the other as other, and chooses their good as inseparable from your own.
Agape’s essence is self giving love without needing anything back. It “consumes” by burning away ego, fear, and separation, not your true self. What remains is simple unity: love as a way of being, often felt as quiet strength and peace.
Parts of this article are excerpted from The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho.
Helmut
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Consumed by Love: From Eros to Agape
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