Spectrum of Spirit: A Digital Sanctuary for Spiritual Discourse and Community

The "Spectrum of Spirit" blog features insightful articles, essays, and reflections penned by the founder, Paul, and diverse guest contributors. Focusing on contemporary spirituality, the blog offers regular updates with weekly themes and seasonal reflections, fostering ongoing engagement and a deeper understanding of spiritual practices and trends.

Imagine Loving Without a Map?

Category:

By

Solstice

/

8–11 minutes

read

I don’t like to write about love. However, love is always a hot topic, love sells, and I don’t want to waste your time writing about things only I care about. I have heard love described as a lot of things: a feeling, a force, the center of the universe, etc. Nevertheless, with my current understanding, I lean on the side of love being a mystery, a mystery that is entertaining, persuasive and informative enough to follow, bending our experiences and perceptions to different degrees.

If this is the case, if love is a mysterious bending force people follow, then what does that make a lover? I believe a lover is an archetype, a wrestling and struggling energy within an individual that seeks union. For some, union might be defying boundaries others around us have made. For others, union may be transcendence to a better version of ourselves. Whatever you believe about love, I will be exploring the lover archetype, my first exposure being in the wild story of Song of Songs from the Hebrew Bible, and my most recent exposure being in the tender discussions created through the following podcasts, discussing hierarchical, relational, and interactive aspects of love.

Magnetic Map

As I’ve talked about in a previous blog, love can only exist with its counterpart. I believe one version of love’s counterpart is hate, hate exposing people’s ability or inability to love and love exposing people’s ability or inability to hate. I believe loving something can recognize the object receiving the love as an individual entity, an entity that can exist outside of oneself. Love can be a reciprocal act, while one receives the love, the other is giving the love, and vice versa. In many cultures, stories of love are shared where one is fulfilled with love, sometimes from a divine figure, while others share one needs love from someone or a divine figure. I believe love draws things closer, somewhat mysteriously, like gravity, in a way that guides people’s next steps.

In the Highest Self Podcast, Sahar sits down with Adam Roa as they discuss love and relationships from the aspect of polarity between the masculine and feminine1. An hour into the podcast, Adam shares that he has a poem called “Crazy Love”, and a line in the poem that talks about an individual playing their role for the world to see2. The speaker in the story states they will embrace their role as the lover, as the fool, as the crazy one3. Adam believes great art exists at the edges of the human experiences, the highest states of bliss or the deepest states of heartbreak4. Adam continues, life is the greatest art project humans have ever had, humans given the ability to create oneself however they would like to move through the world, designing their way, their choices, and their mindset5. Jumping forward a couple minutes, Adam expresses, in this stage of life, he has found very few women to have lovership with6. No matter how upfront Adam is from the beginning, how clear he is on the possibility their relationship may not go further than a week or two, Adam considers it a rarity to find someone who can hold on to the fragility of their connection7. Sahara asks Adam if at the beginning the partner may say no, that they know in their heart they are incapable of doing a short connection8. Adam corrects Sahara, the women typically saying, “Oh yeah, I get it”9.

In this podcast, Adam and Sahara have some uncomfortable conversations, generalizations and assumptions they had experienced within the spiritual community, about masculine and feminine energy. There have been times where both Sahara and Adam did not feel like their understanding or expression was matched in their pursuit of love. However, Adam seems to have embraced this pursuit, embraced being a lover, embraced being a fool. Adam has learned from his past experiences, made sense of the friction created between him and his previous partners and is still hoping to grow as the crazy one. Some might consider it insanity, Adam might consider it his greatest art project, I tend to see it as Adam’s map attempt, his inherent magnetism to seek the potential tension between the beloved and himself, the lover.

Cultural Maps

Growing up, I felt love was something I felt for family members and friends who cared for me. I saw love as something the knight in shining armor and the princess felt for each other as the movie concluded. I tasted love as the mix of rice and seaweed with an assortment of different seafood. I smelled love as a new book I got from Barnes and Noble, a book I would dig into and finish as soon as possible. I was told love was something everyone fails to show perfectly, however, Jesus was and is the only one who has loved perfectly. In the culture I grew up in, the way I was taught to make love sustainable, the map I was given, was to find people who had commonalities, and love the similarities, love activities we share, and love the food we share. This is my current understanding of my inherited map, but I will continue to challenge my framework through these blogs.

In the Culture Apothecary Podcast, Alex Clark and Gavin Puthoff discuss Gavin’s work in fixing infertility, and his suggestion on how to get pregnant without the use of IVF10. More than halfway through the podcast, Alex Clark predicts there will be a cultural apothecary baby boom11. Alex thinks people who are struggling to get pregnant will come to see Dr. Puthoff and will get pregnant with little culture apothecary babies12. David loves this idea, making T-shirts, hosting a parade, etc13. Alex jokes about the T-shirts, “I survived the cultural apothecary baby boom and all I got was this t-shirt”14. Jumping to the conclusion of the podcast, Alex asks David if he could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be15? David guesses by referring to Mother Teresa, who was fond of saying if you want to change the world, go home and love your family16. David elaborates further, for him, he’s dedicated his life’s work to helping couples have families, so in an indirect way, he believes this work will change the world17. David stamps his point by claiming if we as humans could help couples have more kids and have healthier families, this will change the world18.

Typical of Alex, her and David have a strong opinion of a controversial topic, the use of IVF in helping couples have children. I personally have no opinion on this issue, I tend to not like to judge others and their decisions without knowing their side of the story. However, David closes out the podcast discussing his contribution to changing the world. Though I agree helping human couples have more children and healthier families can change the world, I would question if this is a beneficial change. In this episode, there were instances of loaded offhand comments from Alex and David, who may not know about the services David and other doctors provide. I believe a more beneficial change could be in trying to understand others, their decisions, and supporting them in whatever path they find themself in. Whether it’s anti-IVF or pro-IVF, arranged marriages or radical polyamory, ancestry veneration or fluid identity, I believe there is a story in whatever one believes in. I believe it’s important to help couples have children, and have healthier families, but I would add opportunities for these families to understand different cultures, how different cultures try to map out their lives, ultimately, a tapestry of how different cultures express their love.

Collective Maps

There were a few times growing up where my parents would print out directions as we tried to navigate the streets to a new location. As a passenger, probably in the front seat, I would read these instructions having no perception of where we were, all I knew is we were in the car, probably heading to one of my friends house. Reflecting on these moments, it’s wild to think how far humanity has come in traffic navigation and Global Positioning Systems, otherwise known as GPS. Additionally, it makes me think of how this collaborative activity could be seen as an act of love, my parents caring for me by taking me to the place of the party and my role in reading the directions on the sheet of paper.

On the Artistically Married Podcast, Jake and Brianne host Katie Mazi, a visual artist from Niagara, as she shares her artistic journey19. Katie tells her story of how her initial interest in art led to her going to university to study visual art with a concentration in sociology20. Kati expresses her world of art kept expanding, growing interested in different mediums, falling in love with school and her love for art continuing after she left school21. Katie continues, her relationships from school carried afterwards as she also fell in love with the Saint Catherine’s art community, which orbited around the Negro artist center22. Later on in the podcast, the couple move to talk about one of Katie’s most recent artworks. Brianne explains that Katie’s art uses things that might end up getting recycled or thrown in the garbage and is astonished Katie used these materials to create a fixture23. Katie agrees with Brianne’s point, stating she always loves to play around with low art and high art, a topic that would come up a lot in school24. Five minutes later, Brianne asks Katie if she has to create her own initiatives, where Katie responds with yes, struggling to articulate and elaborate further25. Katie gets her thoughts together, it wasn’t just her who started her initiatives, but four to five people who got things going, creating opportunities, getting together, something that Katie has loved, but recognizes it can be scary as well26.

Katie continues to share about the Niagara artist community and the opportunities that have come based on the space she is in. Even though Katie initially held fast to her love of art, she realized breaking from her isolation and collaborating with other creators would open an endless amount of doors. Katie’s dare to connect with the hearts around her opened up new routes on her artistic journey. Instead of mapping out her course of action, Katie opened herself up to opportunities to manipulate different spaces and items to use her imagination and create art from what appeared to be a collection of trash.

Returning Maps

Step into your imagination. Close with care. Approach without an edge. See magnetism. Face your culture. Cross collaborate. Understand creation. Inhale boundaries. Express yourself. Originate the other. Dissolve the echo. Work eternally. Dare to challenge your lover map.

Bibliography

  1. Highest Self Podcast, “623: Love, Polarity, and the Void: Finding God Through Relationship with Adam Roa,” podcast audio, October 7, 2025, accessed October 8, 2025, https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TmEH999hizf6m2RCYged8. ↩︎
  2. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  3. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  4. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  5. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  6. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  7. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  8. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  9. Highest Self Podcast, ↩︎
  10. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, “How To Fix infertility & Get Pregnant Without IVF I NaPro Dr. Gavin Puthoff, MD,” podcast audio, October 6, 2025, accessed October 8, 2025, https://open.spotify.com/episode/2FqCT7dNbyNGSON3MGZ74v. ↩︎
  11. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  12. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  13. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  14. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  15. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  16. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  17. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  18. Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, ↩︎
  19. Artistically Married, “48. Katie Mazi: Bringing Imagination to Life,” podcast audio, October 5, 2025, accessed October 9, 2025, https://open.spotify.com/episode/7HpVhrSkIyEXJsH66z6d8L. ↩︎
  20. Artistically Married, ↩︎
  21. Artistically Married, ↩︎
  22. Artistically Married, ↩︎
  23. Artistically Married, ↩︎
  24. Artistically Married, ↩︎
  25. Artistically Married, ↩︎
  26. Artistically Married, ↩︎

Leave a comment