Romantic love vs Spiritual love

To riff on the boundary issue, there seems a paradoxical polarity- To be incarnate is to require a boundary between self and other, yet between bounded selves are profound similarities. Every cell has a membrane-(mem-brain)-and Bruce Lipton brilliantly articulates its role in receiving identity from the non-local fields, while confirming each cell's genesis in the same DNA template.
Rupert Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Fields fit here. Field dynamics include resonance, a coupling, genitive of similarity. Co-presently, the energetic aspect of field as informed energy imports chaotic flux into all field phenomena. Resonant interactions always introduce unpredictable change in patterns: field-born information mutates through interaction.
I often return to the notion of identity-as-signal, and cannot escape concluding the necessity of monitoring the effects of all interactions-social and physical, on signal coherence. An organic entity undergoing signal de-coherence is in trouble, and I presume the same applies at psycho-spiritual levels.
Our socio-cultural context also depends on field coherence, and is in critical flux, due to dissonance with its planetary substrate, the Gaian Mind. Trouble, times ten to the 9th.
What, then, to do? Re-dial the last sane moment we collectively knew? Search, vigorously, for a corrective reference signal and apply all available techniques for re-attunement? Close all open applications, shut down, and re-boot? Love thy Neighbor as Thyself?
Terence McKenna often said that the career of Life was progressive conquest of dimensionality, from fixed slime to free-swimmer, unitary awareness to shared culture, immersion in present moment to embedment in history. Each step adds a dimension to awareness, extends the bandwidth available to consciousness, as separate marks on a two-dimensional page are unified on a three-dee sheet. The quest of IONS and many others to robustly extend understanding of consciousness in all dimensions is THE Big Deal of our day.
It IS all about relationship! One long, strange trip, from Singularity, to multiplicity, and vectoring back to Singularity, the hermeneutical circle of transformation and enrichment. FIAT LUX.

Jeffery DeCelles

This could very well be humanity's most important subject Rod.
Not the "Romantic vs Spiritual" aspect...
but more precisely, what the two aspects both imply.
Which is, in a word, ((((((((Relationship!!))))))) ha-ha-ha

I remember writing a paper about why life is only and always about relationships.
Whether we seek love, friendships, partners, or just associates; our consciousness has a relentless drive, when it comes to finding ways to connect with others.
We'll connect in deep, meaningful and real ways or, through the desparate facade of pretense.
But the fact remains, "People need people!"

There's a line in Neale Walsh's "Go With Soul" monalog that tell us we all seek what our soul desires.
Narrated by the great Ed Asner, he bellows, "what the souls is after is...the highest form of love you can imagine".
For me, my soul's quest is for a sustainable sense of being one, with everyone I encounter.
And it doesn't even matter to me if they know we're one.
Maybe because my experience with such a mind-set has visibly seen people react and even shift their perspective, positively, to my subtle expressions of connection.

Don't misunderstand me, the temporary pleasures of romantic love are undeniably nice and long may they last.
(The party ends when we become prisoners of our fear of losing him/her.)

Also, sometimes spiritual love can be as fleeting and exclusive as romantic love, especially if we pick and choose who we should and shouldn't feel connected to spiritually.

And the same is true for Brotherly love, if we get trapped into trying to stay in good favor with those who please and disappoint us.

Perhaps that's the main reason I've decided to cultivate my awareness through the daily practice of meditating on approaching others, mindful of our eternally connected consciousness.

Because so many things compete for our attention, I often have to return my thoughts to being mindful of the way our consciousness spans a timeless cosmos, as one.

We all exist simultaneously, inside of one collective, entangled consciousness, although our present consciousness is yet, still too rational, mechanized and primitive.
So, for now, we can only theorize and consider our oneness for fleeting moments at a time.

I'm thinking that's really okay because, all of life's dreams just may have began with one such simple thought, passionately considered for fleeting moments.

And just look at life now, as we consider the highest missions of love to be our constant quest.

Journey Well Fellow
Kingdom Of Lights Travelers for Jesus Christ

Good theme to explore, Rod. I agree, the word "love" is grossly overworked in contemporary English. Drawing from Marshal McLuhan, I note that all language is a form of technology, and that culture is largely a linguistic construct. Visual media can been understood as an extended form of language, using multi-sensory input.
As contemporary English-speaking cultures limp along with our impoverished descriptive capacities in the "love" arena of experience, I note the fact that most of us have had an experience of the states denoted by agape, philia, and eros. I'll refer to these subjective experiences as "gnosis".
A gnosis of eros may include sexual impulse, though my understanding of the old Greek usage implies a broader sense of the general passion to create, linking to artistic drives. Quite personal, though somewhat transcendent.
A gnosis of philia also implies a passion, with association to the joy of discovery: a "bibliophile" seeks books to fulfill some tropism to knowledge. A further step towards the transpersonal, and ideal.
A gnosis of agape seems, to me, a step still further along this continuum of personal transcendence, reaching for broader sensation of connection, potentially to all. Extended far, this includes oceanic, unitary consciousness.
I have great hope in the ongoing elaboration of more sophisticated forms of communication technology as agents for facilitating increased "bandwidth" of emotional gnosis. Modern media offer unprecedented capacity for immersion in evermore subtle expressions of human experience. PAX-JED