Love may mean different things to different people, but a general model includes a boy and girl who feel some mutual, perhaps mysterious attraction, and proceed to fall in love - of some type.

Most who fall in love, agree that some type of surrender and service is part of the package; a surrender of a me-first mentality plus a willingness to serve the needs of the beloved. When both parties in love are equality committed to the mood of service and sacrifice, love flourishes.

But what happens when one party is unable, or unwilling at some point, to meet or serve the needs of the other? Usually, the contract of love breaks, and one falls out of love, perhaps as quickly or as slowly as one fell in love. The attraction that once bonded the lovers fades, and the agreed  conditions that supported the love dissolve to point where one feels no impetus to invest any more energy into the relationship. Such is the state of conditional love; a shadow form of love without conditions.

There are exceptions to this dynamic, wherein one is able to give and receive unconditional love, when one has been blessed with an unconditioned, spiritual vision of reality.

Attraction sparks the beginning of love; surrender and service gives love wings.

Love for a person rather than an object, involves perceiving attractive attributes such as beauty, knowledge, strength, fame, wealth and detachment, qualities which attract one's mind and more.

A person with some degree of any, or all of these qualities, is attractive. As if by gravity, we are drawn to such personal opulence which can be seen on both the material and spiritual planes of reality.

However on the material plane of conditional life, an attractive person's opulence is limited and temporary. Conversely, on the spiritual platform, there are no limits. The Source of all-attractive opulence is unlimited and eternal when in a relationship the Supreme Person - who is the All-Attractive giver and receiver of unconditional love.

Because we, as sparks of spirit were created in the image of God, the form our love takes on the spiritual platform, is the same as that of our Creator - one of unconditional love, and service in love.

Having been created for the purpose of expanding ecstatic spiritual love, without spiritual vision and  practice, the surrender to and service of another materially conditioned soul has it limitations.

Ignoring both the divine existence of the Creator and the divine spark within each material body, the material conditions prohibit full expression of limitless unconditional love because of the shadow nature of material existence - where everything changes and is short-lived.

If we realize we are of the Supreme, for the Supreme, we will see symptoms of the Divine in everyone and everything. By surrender and service to such divine vision, one's unconditional loving nature will manifest automatically and proportionately, to one's deepening loving relationship to the Supreme Person.

Love allows for free will; love cannot be forced by us or God. When we choose it, it will manifest because it is already there, just slightly covered over, like dust on a mirror or smoke covering fire. The dust and smoke just need to be cleared in order to reflect and blaze, love of and for the Supreme - which divinely extends to everything and everyone.

Ancient scriptures describe that God has innumerable inconceivable attributes, and has names describing those qualities such as the All-mighty, or All-Compassionate, with a primary name for  Godhead noted as  Sri Krishna - the All-Attractive source of divine love.

We normally exist in the realms of duality; the push and pull of Yin and Yang; pleasure and pain, light and dark, union and separation, clarity and delusion.

Some think that without polar opposites, neither pole has meaning; that one has to know darkness to know light, or that pleasure cannot be appreciated without pain, or that love needs the shadow of hate to define itself. But in a higher sense, some things stand alone.

Although there is some measure of truth in the relative experience of duality being necessarily co-dependent, another model also exists where two can harmonize as one, through loving exchanges free from any shadow opposition, or hurtful polarity.

The higher model is experienced through Transcendence; by re-connecting with the Source of love, who expands both impersonally by His energy, and as the universally cognitive Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Just as the Sun radiates dual energies of both heat and light, so according to revealed knowledge  the Source of Creation radiates both material energies and eternal spiritual energies. The living entities seen within creation are of the eternal spiritual nature - it is as spark of conscious spiritual energy which animates the temporary material forms which house the spirit. Matter fades, spirit endures.

How the creation is manifested and for what purpose, is also found in revealed knowledge - with the conclusion being that creation is a type of cosmic playground, bullies included, meant for evoking the dormant spiritual love in each heart into action, by consciously re-connecting to one's universal Source, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who creates the conscious universe and resides energetically everywhere, including the heart of all living beings.

The Supreme expands without limits, for the purpose of expanding love. As God has complete free will, as emanations from the Supreme, each emanated spark of spirit has a spark of free will also, which allows the soul to choose union or separation from it's source. One can face the sun and move freely in it's light, or one can turn away from the light, wherein one's shadow instantly created - and the beginning of shadow reflections of karmic bondage are created with each action performed with one's back to the light.

How Supreme expands the material and spiritual energies is revealed in ancient Sanskrit texts. It is also reveled that the individual sparks of spiritual consciousness that populate the material universe such as you and I, are of the same spiritual quality as the Source we emanated from - but we are quantitatively different - as a spark's potency is significantly less than the raging fire from which it emanated. When one's actions are performed with love in service of the Supreme good, one becomes godly, but not God. In spirit we are one with God, constitutionally equipped to participate in a loving dance with the Supreme, if we so desire. It takes two to tango. This truth plays out both in our earthly circumstance, and continues intact even after one's spiritual liberation.

Across all spiritual traditions, saints and sages have described the divine feelings of ecstatic love that manifest within and without, as they traversed the path of transcendent spiritual enlightenment on the way back home, back to Godhead. Occasionally revealed in the heart during a state of trance, or in a continual state of transcendence called "samadhi', one consciously experiences that material duality dissolves into a non-dual spiritual plurality wherein three aspects of spirit abound in oneness, namely: 1. you, as an eternal spark of individual consciousness 2. the Source of all forms of consciousness and all that is 3. the personal energetic exchange; a dance serving the mellows of love exchanged between each conscious spark and it's energetic  Source, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Such loving exchanges even when performed through one's earthly body, manifest one's eternal spiritual form, function, purpose over time, allowing one to actively enter non-dual timelessness, fully endowed with a loving purpose manifested.

BHAGAVAD GITA (APPROXIMATELY 3,000 BC) Chapter 6, text 20-23

"The stage of perfection is called trance, or samādhi, when one's mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga (connecting with God). This is characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact."

“What you seek is seeking you.”

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

“I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.
The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.”

“Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.”

“Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.”

“For ages you have come and gone
courting this delusion.
For ages you have run from the pain
and forfeited the ecstasy.
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul...

You descended from Adam, by the pure Word of God,
but you turned your sight
to the empty show of this world.
Alas, how can you be satisfied with so little?
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul...."

It is said "Absence makes the heart grow fonder". Although not an absolute truth, it sometimes applies.

In a material sense, sometimes the tendency is to take another person's presence for granted until a day comes when separation happens by time or circumstance, at which time that person's value is more clearly recognized, fostering a desire for re-union.

In a spiritual sense, the conscious spirit is suffering separation from it's spiritual Source, while living covered over by material elements and conceptions. For one truly seeking re-connection, the path is usually one of glimpses in stages to that state of grace, where the presence of the divine is felt within one's field of activities. Once felt and nurtured in the heart, nothing compares to that deepest awe and personal love of the Divine's presence; taking the form of loving reciprocation with the ever-present and all-pervasive Supreme Lord who is looking to reclaim His willing dance partner.

In post-graduate spirituality, it is described in sacred texts that the pastimes in the spiritual realm contain inconceivable oneness yet difference, in each soul's union with the Supreme. Such pastimes are laced with ecstatic varieties of union and separation - rather than static monism with no varieties of flavor or 'Rasa" - the mellow of loving exchange. Thus even a lover's lament during separation until the next union on the spiritual platform, is supremely sweet. Absence makes the heart grow fonder..

This concept is only dimly reflected in our mundane realm as sometimes it may hold true, and at other times, continued separation from unwanted elements is required. But saints and sages have confirmed through their own experience - a higher reality exists wherein there are only unlimited grades of increasing sweetness flowing from the Supreme Lord, which cannot compare to any flickering thrill offered on the separated material plane of misguided exploitation.

More references: Bhagavad Gita (The Song of God)  Ch 7, Text 4-9, Ch 10. Text 8 - 11

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego—altogether these eight comprise My separated material energies.

Besides this inferior nature, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is a superior energy of Mine, which are all living entities who are struggling with material nature and are sustaining the universe.

Of all that is material and all that is spiritual in this world, know for certain that I am both its origin and dissolution.

O conquerer of wealth [Arjuna], there is no Truth superior to Me. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.

O son of Kuntī [Arjuna], I am the taste of water, the light of the sun and the moon, the syllable om in the Vedic mantras; I am the sound in ether and ability in man.

I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me. The wise who know this perfectly engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts.

The thoughts of My pure devotees dwell in Me, their lives are surrendered to Me, and they derive great satisfaction and bliss enlightening one another and conversing about Me.

To those who are constantly devoted and worship Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.

Out of compassion for them, I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge the darkness born of ignorance.