I look at love as coming in two flavors.
1. Love as a projection of my own unconscious and undeveloped qualities in myself. (see Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html ) With this ‘deficiency’ love we are driven by neediness to possess these qualities by possessing the person that serves as the screen for our projection. I saw a lady yesterday at a gathering of friends, recently divorced, with her new boyfriend. She was aglow and giddy. The bounds of ego identity had opened and she no longer felt alone in facing the world. I will be looking at how this evolves. The giddiness will eventually hit a wall of reality and maybe a more mature love will develop where the projected qualities are realized inside of her.
2. What the poet Rumi calls ‘a love with no object.’ This represents Maslow’s highest 6 level of development. Very few reach this level of ego transcendence. Here we do not love so much as we are love.
“A love with no object is a true love.
All else, shadow without substance.
Have you seen someone fall in love
with his own shadow? That’s what we’ve done. Leave partial loves and find one that’s whole.
Where is someone who can do that?
They’re so rare, those hearts that carry the blessing and lavish it over everything.” Rumi

If you look out at the world and find some things you love and other things you hate, what that shows is that you have both 'love' and hate within yourself. Yes, it's all projection.

If you see some people whom you love and others whom you don't love, what that shows is that you have both 'love' and unlove within yourself. It's projection.

If you love some things about a person but criticize other things, what this shows is that you have both 'love' and anger--within yourself. More projection.

"Love" is total, but those common instances above are signs of partiality: the contradiction of 'partial totality.'

People cannot understand the assertion that "God is love" because they themselves don't understand love. Hence they project a partial and judgmental, conditional reflection of themselves...and "worship" that (theists), or dismiss that (atheists).

Richard Foxe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> People cannot understand the assertion that "God
> is love" because they themselves don't understand
> love. Hence they project a partial and judgmental,
> conditional reflection of themselves...and
> "worship" that (theists), or dismiss that
> (atheists).

Well, actually...this atheist dismisses it ("God is love") because there's no evidence a "god" exists, and because the stories people tell about the "gods" they claim show anything but "god is love."

:)

Hey, don't knock being head over heals. Sure it's a delusion, but what a fabulous delusion. Maybe nature gave it to us like it gave us the ability to get high.

Maslow has a lot of good ideas, but not all of his ideas are good. Only what works for you. His theory on needing to be needed turned out to be hogwash for me. Maybe that's what happens when you intellectualize something that defies intellectualization.

It seems to me all love is a projection of ourselves. As we discover ourselves and remove the self-induced barriers, our ability to project love grows. Where does it end? Is there an end? Are there limits? What if there are no limits? We could be infinite love believing we are finite. Playing the finite game.

Maslow has two states of seeing the reality.
1. Deficiency mode – I need something more to be fulfilled. He said that we generally move from physiological needs, to safety needs, love and belonging needs and then self-esteem need. A person could be stuck on any one of these levels of need, for example looking for love in one person after another. Inherent in being in deficiency mode is the belief that okness comes from outside one’s self and will be obtained in the future, except for brief states of addictive pleasure. It is addictive because the hunger for my own soul can never be fully met from a source outside of me. I will always need more and develop a tolerance for my drug, whatever form it takes. Anxiety and quiet desperation are hallmarks of looking outside for fulfillment as I worry about getting what I need or losing what I have that I need. He estimated that 98% of people are stuck in this deficiency mode.
2. Being mode – I need to express my authentic self in this moment. I am joy, love and peace. I breathe in confusion, selfishness, depression, and anxiety from my surroundings and breath out love and peace. My soul need to be poured into this moment. At the highest level of this mode the bounds of my identity have expanded to encompass with love the entire universe.

I think I like Rumi's concept of love over Maslow's. Maslow's is as unpredictable as any object of love may be.

While being love is constant, and unfettered by surroundings.

Idealized, yes. Unattainable, probably. Something to aspire to? Better that then not being or becoming IMO.

Wasn't self-actualization Maslow's highest goal? It seems like Rumi was able to bypass much of those other levels, through his poetry at least.

In this, it is like philosopher Franklin Merrill-Wolff's "Consciousness Without an Object" as the definition of what we essentially are. It is said our core identity is love, but putting it 'out there' in the form of an Object (which is separate from ourselves as Subject) divides the consciousness, as we fall into the subject-object mode of consciousness, and blocks awareness of this.

Maslow added a stage after self-actualization called ego transcendence. He also wrote about peak experiences as follows:
"Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his/her daily life by such experiences." Abraham Maslow
Peak experiences can happen to anyone such as when you are up a tree for hours due to a flood and reach a point of surrender or with the birth of a baby. With ego transcendence one would live on the peak of unconditional love and peace. Me, I keep falling off the peak.
***
From http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/p/peak_experiences.html
Peak experiences render therapeutic value as they foster a sense of being lucky or graced; release creative energies; reaffirm the worthiness of life; and change an individual's view of himself or herself.
Maslow cautioned against seeking such experiences for their own sake; echoing the advice of the mystics who have pointed out that the sacred exists in the ordinary.
Maslow further believed that domestic and public violence, alcoholism, and drug abuse stem from spiritual emptiness, and that even one peak experience might be able to prevent, or at least abate, such ills.