We speak of love as if we know what it is and where it comes from when the truth is that for most of us, love is a mystery. At the same time, there is nothing we want more. As the Beatles sang, “All we need is love. Love is all we need.”

This universal longing for love leads us to search for someone or something that will satisfy our hunger. The problem is that most of us don’t fully understand what it is we’re seeking. No wonder our experiences of love so often prove to be transitory and elusive!

Like many people, I’ve spent much of my life in pursuit of true love. I even made a career of it. Over the years I explored many different kinds of intimate relationships and many different spiritual paths and practices. On occasion I tasted love that was deeply nourishing, yet something was still missing, and I didn’t know what it was. The inner restlessness that first started me on this quest would not be satisfied until I’d gotten to the bottom of this mystery called love.

As a therapist, seminar leader, and relationship coach, I’ve watched clients encountering the same dead ends, blind alleys, and misperceptions over and over as they sought to find love with each other. I’ve made the same mistakes myself, not once, but many times as I tried one strategy after another to find the love I so desired.

We tell ourselves, “If only I can find the right partner, or get the partner I have to give me what I want, or make myself or my partner be different in some way, then I will feel loved.” Even though I knew better, it was a long, long time before I stopped trying to find love outside myself.

After working with thousands of people who are love-sick, love-starved, or love-intoxicated, I have to conclude that most people are just as confused as I was about how this powerful force called love operates. We’ve been taught that love is one thing, but the reality is that what we believe love to be has little to do with genuine love. We’ve fallen for a Disneyland version of love that effectively distracts us from discovering the real thing.

This book invites you to let go of the idea that love is a means to an end. Instead of seeing love as something that will make you happy if you can get enough of it, consider the possibility of love as way of being, of love as a state of consciousness. As such it is independent of any particular person or set of conditions. In other words, love is unlimited, impersonal and unchanging. It cannot be lost nor can it be hoarded. This kind of love is both a choice and surrender to something beyond your ego.

A romantic epiphany can catalyze a deeper exploration of love, as it did for me, but the fantasy of finding completion in another human being inevitably leads us astray if we refuse to grow beyond this stage. Love is by nature completely unselfish. When people come together in an open and defenseless way with no agenda, love can be shared. Any desire to find in the other a solution to your needs, or an escape from confronting your own sense of separation, your own fears and anxieties, translates into attachment, dependency, and manipulation, not love.

Genuine love is an energy that arises when your sense of identity expands beyond the individual self. Love leads to an awareness of union with something larger than yourself. Call it the Divine, call it the Absolute, call it Existence, or the Universe, call it whatever you want, but know that ultimately, nothing less will satisfy the heartfelt longing for love. From this perspective, you do not deserve love, you are love. This kind of love is contagious – when you come into contact with someone who carries this energy, it sparks that awareness in you.

I remember sitting by a stream in a beautiful wooded valley over twenty years ago trying to recover my composure after a highly emotional dispute with my husband. The issue we were struggling with was one which popped up again and again without ever finding permanent resolution and I felt hopeless about our future. As I sat there contemplating what to do, the words came to me, “We have to become more conscious.”

Before I had a chance to even wonder what this meant, I noticed that the sound of the water flowing through the streambed had become very loud. The light filtering through the trees suddenly grew almost blindingly bright and the rocks in the stream glittered with dazzling sunbeams. The trees began to glow and I could feel the movement of sap and the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide taking place. I had the peculiar sensation that I was one of the trees, with roots reaching deep into the earth.

Suddenly I felt a strange and wonderful shift in perspective. I was no longer a woman sitting on a patch of dirt, full of troubled thoughts. I was the stream, and the rocks, and the earth, and the trees. I was all of it and none of it. I sat there for some unknown amount of time until an increasing chill in the air brought me back to myself.

The argument that had seemed so important a few minutes ago now seemed insignificant. The frustration that had felt so oppressive was replaced with a deep inner peace and joy. Slowly I got up and walked back to my husband and our friends and tried to communicate what I’d experienced. They didn’t entirely understand what I was saying, but they did feel the change in my energy and love prevailed for a time.

This experience changed me forever, but I still had much to learn about how love moves in the world. This book is a distillation of all I have discovered in over thirty years of messy first hand experience and intensive psychological and spiritual study.

The first law of love, namely that love is its own law, is the basis for all the rest. It helps us to know the difference between “laws” that are in harmony with nature, and those that are not. We imagine that love follows dozens of laws invented by men and women, when the truth is that love is not subject to man-made codes or societal customs.

Rather, love is governed by a small number of universal laws. These laws can be found at the heart of all spiritual teachings. They are not specific to love. In fact, people often want to take exception to these laws when it comes to love, because to apply spiritual law to human love challenges many beliefs and assumptions.

These “laws” of love are not commandments. They aren’t laws in the sense of being a written code of behavior, with prescribed punishments for breaking each one. We could instead call them principles, or characteristics, or qualities. I use the word law to suggest that it makes no difference whether you know these laws or agree with them. Their power is unaffected. In this sense, the seven natural laws of love are more real than any man-made law.

I did not invent the seven natural laws of love. I simply discovered that they govern the movement of love in the world just as surely as the laws of physics govern the interactions of matter and energy. Not because some authority says so, but because this is how things work. Our knowledge of physics grows as we make new discoveries. As our knowledge of physics becomes more refined, we find that it corresponds more and more closely to ancient spiritual teachings about the nature of reality. And so it is with love.

Don’t take my word for it. Instead, I invite you to explore with me whether these seven laws do apply to love! If what I say doesn’t seem to fit your own experience, investigate for yourself. My intention is not to create yet another system of fixed beliefs, but to open the gateway to allowing more love to be felt in this world.