Soul Healing, Spiritual Empowerment
Healing through the 7 Types of Love
Healing through the path of love is the key to expanding your consciousness, shifting your vibrational frequency, and liberating your Soul. Your Soul is on a human journey to express, live and heal through love.
In Greek Philosophy, they described the 7 Types of Love we experience.
- Eros – Romantic, Passionate Love
- Ludus – Playful, Fun, Flirtatious Love
- Pragma – Committed, Practical, Companionate Love
- Storge – Unconditional, Familial Love
- Philia – Intimate, Affectionate, Friendly Love
- Philautia – Authentic Self-Love
- Agape – Selfless, Universal Love
Deep connections are Soul contracts for Healing.
Regardless of the relationship on Earth, these connections are grounded in unconditional Universal Love on a higher plane of existence. They are here to teach greater lessons about yourself, life and love.
I have come to understand that we must experience, consciously integrate and express the 7 Types of Love for our human selves to embody the wholeness of Source Love. Each serves its unique purpose for our experience. No one type of love is more important or less important than another.
With every experience of love, we have an opportunity for our Souls to evolve. Patterns and experiences can be repeated through many lifetimes and karmic lessons until we choose the path of love. Through each type of love, you can expand into a higher state of consciousness or allow your unconsciousness to direct your focus and energy. There is no right or wrong way to learn. Love’s lessons will always be available to you through any path you choose.
As you read this article, self-reflect on your experiences of the 7 types of love to support you on your healing journey.
Eros – Romantic, Passionate Love
Thanks to Disney movies and romance novels, this is what most of us imagine when we think of love. It’s the magnetic attraction that draws people together and the stage where everything feels wonderful. Many long-term partnerships will start in Eros before expanding into other forms of love, such as Pragma, Storge and Philia. The driving force behind the intense energy of attraction and “chemistry” is primarily rooted in your attachment style, which was formed in childhood.
Healing through Eros Love
When you desire more passion in your current relationship or wish to attract a loving partner, this is an opportunity to consciously create passionate love yourself. Moving into your patterns of attraction and desire with an open heart and mind is a beautiful opportunity for healing and expanding your soul.
If you have an unhealthy pattern of attraction you wish to change, reflect on your childhood experiences of love with your primary caregivers.
Where in your childhood did you see the behaviours/qualities you find attractive in your romantic partners? What did your child self believe they needed to do or be to receive love?
If you desire more romance or passion in your current relationship or desire to attract a passionate romantic relationship, reflect on the feelings and energy that can be felt in the Eros stage of a relationship.
What does the confidence from feeling desired and having someone to desire feel like?
How does the excitement of getting to know someone new feel?
Focus on feeling that energy in your body to cultivate it into your present reality.
If you desire more passionate love for yourself and your life, reflect on how it feels to love and be loved with a passion.
Visualize opening your heart to the feeling of passionate love. Can you bring that feeling of passion into your self-love practice?
Set the intention to experience more sensuality, passion and pleasure in the simple everyday joys of life, like singing alone in the car, enjoying a hot shower, or hopping into bed with fresh sheets.
Ludus – Playful, Fun, Flirtatious Love
The primary focus of Ludus is playfulness and fun. Like Eros, many long-term partnerships may start in the honeymoon stage of Ludus before expanding into the higher levels of love.
Ludus may be long-lasting or return throughout a long-term partnership. For example, when a couple who primarily lives in Pragma (Practical) and Storge (Familial) love has a night out away from their children, they can shift out of parent mode and become extra playful, fun and flirty with each other. Ludus love can also exist in the affection and laughter between friends without a romantic connection or between casual partners without commitment.
Healing through Ludus Love
Your inner child is a big fan of Ludus and is excited to give and receive love this way; this is a large part of why we enjoy the honeymoon stage so much. Bringing this youthful energy into your life, no matter your relationship status, will bring you more laughter, lightheartedness and joy.
You can do this by prioritizing connecting with and nurturing your inner child. After taking some time to connect, reflect on these questions:
Are you giving your inner child a chance to express themself in your life and relationships?
What do they need from you to feel expressed, loved and free?
What do they like to do for fun; how often do you do those things?
What type of parent are you to your inner child?
Do you speak to them with love?
Are you critical or encouraging?
Are you rigid or relaxed?
As your inner child feels safe to be seen, heard, and loved, they will begin to express themselves freely in a playful, loving way.
Pragma – Committed, Practical, Companionate Love
Pragma is a more practical, committed and companionate love based on long-term interests, personal qualities, and compatibility. Many partnerships that begin in Eros will evolve into the more mature stage of Pragma’s love as they commit to sharing a life together. This commitment can include the decision to live together, buy a house, or have children. Sexual attraction and romantic love, while still important in a romantic partnership, become secondary to the more grounded stability this love provides.
Healing through Pragma Love
Pragma love is a powerful healing space, providing you with a container for your Soul’s expansion. Feeling safe and secure in a relationship gives you a mirror and supportive companion as you heal your unconscious wounds together.
Throughout the cycle of the Pragma relationship, friction points arise and occur in cycles. This cycle can manifest as repeatedly having the same conflict without a proper resolution. At the friction point, both partners are provided with an opportunity for spiritual healing and expanding consciousness.
When one or both partners are unconscious of the healing purpose of their partnership, the relationship can end out of conflict. The lessons their Souls intend to learn through the human experience will be presented through different paths or partnerships.
When both partners are committed to healing and expanding consciousness together and can shift their focus from their partner and turn into themselves, they will grow stronger in love as a couple and as individuals. They will elevate together into a higher frequency and understanding of giving, receiving and expressing love.
The points of friction, or opportunities for transformation, are often deeply challenging energetically and emotionally. As you move through these stages, connect with your Higher Self and Spirit Guides to ask for guidance and assistance.
Some relationships are Soul contracts to be life partners, while others are divinely fated to come to an end. If you are committed to healing and expanding your consciousness through the points of friction in partnership, you can trust that you are following your Soul’s path in the container of Pragma’s love.
Storge – Unconditional, Familial Love
Storge love is the unconditional love and bond within families and relatives. It’s the love parents feel for their children and children feel for their parents. It’s also the love shared between siblings and other extended relatives. It is a strong bond that forms naturally and can endure sacrifice, conflict and distance.
Healing through Storge Love
Healing through storge love is an opportunity to heal ancestral karma, end the cycle of trauma in your family lines, elevate your vibration, and create harmony and balance of the divine feminine and masculine energies on earth.
Children mirror us in pure, innocent ways. They are some of the best teachers, helping us learn the Soul lessons we came here to learn and heal through. A reciprocated healing can occur for both parent and child when we become conscious of the opportunities to heal the trauma within our family lines.
Every trigger is an opportunity for healing and expanding consciousness. When you become triggered by a parent, there is an inner child within you seeking connection.
When triggered by your child, get curious about their behaviours and your reactions. How are they similar or different from your own experiences in childhood?
Most parents want what’s best for their children and will do whatever they can to give them a better childhood than their own. Often, when this happens without consciously healing the wound that created the desire to do things differently, unconscious trauma still directs the energy between parent and child.
Take, for example, a parent who was neglected as a child. They may become overly involved in their child’s life to show them how much they care, to the point that they hinder their child’s sense of individuality and autonomy. The intention may be from love, but the energy is a projection of fear.
The best thing you can do as a parent is to keep your heart open to learning through all the lessons Storge love has to teach you. To help you heal and open your heart daily, I’ve created a Heal Your Heart guided visualization as part of my Mind, Body, Heart and Soul Meditation Collection.
Philia – Intimate, Affectionate, Friendly Love
Philia is the love you share through soulmate friendship connections. They get you, and you get them. You can share Philia’s love with a romantic partner you are best friends with, but often they are non-sexual relationships where you connect on a deep soul level. This type of love, like Pragma, provides you with a safe and nurturing place to grow.
Healing through Philia Love
If you have a deep soul-level friendship, healing can occur when you reflect on how you support each other through your relationship.
What about your friendship makes you feel safe to be yourself?
What qualities about them do you admire?
Where do you also embody those qualities?
How do you show up as a supportive, loving friend in the relationship?
What challenges do you both share?
What childhood experiences do you share?
If you desire to attract an intimate friendship, healing starts by paying attention to the types of people and friends you have already attracted into your life.
What are the qualities you like about the people you surround yourself with?
What don’t you like?
Where do you see both of these qualities of like and dislike in yourself?
What do you wish you wish to attract in an intimate friendship?
Can you envision the feeling of having a deeply connected friend?
Focus on feeling that feeling.
How can you start showing up for yourself as the friend you desire to attract?
Philautia – Authentic Self-Love
Philautia is a love that comes from the Soul, the true authentic love of self. It is self-love in the purest form, accepting and loving all parts of who you are, including the parts you’ve rejected.
Much of what we know about self-love is rooted in the unconscious narcissism of the Ego. True self-love is less about pampering, self-care, and the image of confidence; it’s more about learning about yourself and bringing every perfectly imperfect piece of you back into wholeness with love.
Healing through Philautia Love
Open your heart to the fragmented parts of your personality that you unconsciously reject. Through healing the inherent human fear of being unlovable or unworthy, you can expand your consciousness through Philautia’s love. Every part of you is worthy of love, even the details your Ego sees as ugly. Where our human self can only see from a limited perspective, your Higher Self can see things from the highest perspective of love.
Connect with your Higher Self and affirm:
“I see myself fully and clearly through the lens of love. I am a divine being of pure light, and I call back all fragmented parts of myself into this light now. I call on my inner strength and power to heal and learn through the lessons of life experience and invite every piece of me into my heart with compassion and love. I expand my mind, body, heart and Soul through the ever-evolving journey of discovering my whole authentic self.”
Agape – Selfless, Universal Love
Agape love is the highest frequency of love, the selfless Universal love of all. This doesn’t mean that it is any better than any other type of love; it simply means that we must ascend to a higher state of consciousness to truly understand, embody and emit this frequency freely.
Agape is the love that comes from knowing every one of us is interconnected and part of a whole. It is the origin of love at its Source; the love of God, nature, a stranger, and even those who cause pain, suffering and destruction.
Healing through Agape Love
To achieve healing and expand your consciousness through Agape love, practice sending love and gratitude without self-interest. Agape love comes from seeing the “God Self” in ourselves, others, and everything.
There is a continuous stream of Universal love flowing through you at all times; it is simply about releasing any blocks that resist this free-flowing energy. As you heal and expand your consciousness through the different expressions of love, it will become natural to feel Agape, Universal love in your daily life.
Let’s use a familiar and concrete example of the opportunity for healing when giving money to someone in need.
The conscious intention and energy exchange are even more important than the actual currency exchange. Consider the differences;
- You can give with the energy of gratitude for the blessings of abundance you have and a desire to expand those feelings outward.
- Providing money to someone in need with the pure, warm and light energy of a Soul seeing another Soul and choosing to show them love and support.
- With or without giving money, you can choose to send love from your heart into theirs and silently pray to the highest Source to continue guiding them through the challenges they face on their path.
- You give money out of guilt or obligation because of someone else’s less fortunate financial situation.
- Giving because it will boost your sense of “goodness” or “pride” by doing something that you believe makes you a “good” person.
- You can give because giving money will help more good things come back to you.
Without judgment, acknowledge the energy you are most familiar with. Set the loving intention to allow the light of Universal love to continue guiding your daily thoughts, energy, beliefs and actions.
To increase your receptivity of the Universal love that is always available to you, practice opening your Crown Chakra each morning, visualize sending love daily, and see the Soulful light within everyone you meet.
While there are infinite possibilities and potential ways to heal through the different expressions of love, it is my sincerest intention these words have served your Soul on your healing journey.
With so much love, Megan xo
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