Originally published via email to my community on 9th April 2020.

About 2400 years ago the wisest man in the world went to a dinner party. His name was Socrates and he was wise, according to the mystical voice of the Oracle of Delphi, because he knew that he knew nothing. The Oracle was supposedly impressed because after being inundated with idiots who claimed to know everything, she recognised that it takes wisdom to admit to ignorance.

The story of the dinner party is set down in a book called the Symposium. After some delay, where Socrates stops off to talk to his Inner Guide, the group start to discuss the matter of love. It is then that Socrates tells the story of his encounter with the Wise Woman Diotima, who, it is said, initiated him into many mysteries.

Diotima the Wise Woman suggests that love is important because we subconsciously believe it to be the route by which we can attain immortality. For example, through the love of a couple a child is born so that the hopes and dreams of the parents can live on. Similarly, the love of an artist or musician for his or her projects is a desire to be remembered long after their death. In both cases this sub-conscious urge to permanence is expressed through six rungs on a ladder. With each rung, each step, as the ladder is ascended the thing being loved and the nature of that love becomes more abstract, more general and less personal. This is the story of Diotima’s Ladder of Love, starting from the bottom.

Step One is where we feel and express love for a particular person or thing. This is when we say that we love this or that, or him or her and that we love no other. Though often held up as the ultimate to which humanity can aspire it is, considering what comes later, a selfish attempt to grasp a universal energy entirely to oneself. This is a limited love often tinged with fear.

Step Two occurs when we feel love for more than one person or thing. This is the love of parents for all their children or someone for all their pets without preference or favour. It is the ability to love more than one person, thing or place equally. This step brings the realisation that love is not a competition of who or what you love more. It is a bigger love than that experienced on step one, though it is still bounded by personal likes and preferences.

Step Three, going higher now, is a love of all people or things, regardless of their appearance. This is where we are able to love the ugly, the broken, the messy, those we do not like and those who do not conform to what we want them to be. It is love despite someone’s behaviour, and though it is bountiful it is still limited to people and things. Some will be able to connect with this; others will find this rung impossible to grasp.

Step Four, says Diotima, is a love for things bigger than individuals or families. It may include the love of traditions or cultures. It may, for example, be a love of monarchy, or nation regardless of what those things give to you. Some will think that this kind of love is no love at all but tell that to a French person who loves France, or an Israeli who loves Israel. It is easy to think of this rung as unimportant, yet the love of, for example, the institution of the British Monarchy, can be for some a very real thing.

Step Five is a movement further into the abstract, bringing the love of knowledge and the love of learning - the joy gained from understanding where you have been wrong and adapting, changing, gathering more experience and new learning. It is felt when one can joyfully proclaim “ah, I am so glad that I now know that” no matter how hard the lesson was to swallow. To arrive here is to have prioritised knowledge and learning over everything else, including human relationships. Some may doubt how this can even be a thing, but I can assure you that it is. It leads to the final rung.

Step Six is the Love of God. In this state we hold no hate for anyone or anything, in any place or at any time. It is an appreciation of, and reunification with, the fact that everything just is. On this rung of the ladder one is free of all earthly desires, dreams, lusts, wants, hopes and fears. Here we see all that there is, and we are filled completely with love for it. This can probably only be experienced during intense, and short lived mystical, visionary moments. It’s got the flavour of the Christ about it.

Now, as we can see, this description extends the idea of love way beyond feelings, romance, compassion, empathy or sentimentality. Its ultimate destination is to love everything and everyone, without reservation or condition, for all time and forever. This may sound impossible, but a mere awareness of it can be very illuminating.

All this is relevant to our times because we live, I believe, in a time of great fear. I would in fact suggest that the main enemy is not Corona, but fear itself. The decisions taken in the face of Corona, from the deliberate destruction of the world economy, the near total abandonment of civil liberties and the collapse of even sane people into the arms of a Big Brother State will impact lives for decades after Rona has left the building. We are not witnessing any kind of ascension into 5D consciousness nor any unfoldment into a utopian Age of Aquarius. Quite the opposite in fact. The world is being transformed by fear, not by love and this bodes badly for all of us. Yet, by looking at exercises such as this maybe we can improve things for ourselves. I think we should try because our governments have absolutely failed us, and if we move formally into a system of global government then that failure will be compounded to the power of 10.

If you believe that Love Rules (or even if you want it to be true) then this Ladder of Love provides a structure within which you can expand your own capacity to express and receive Love. For that, I believe, it is invaluable in these times.

So tell me, where are you on the Ladder of Love?

Which form of love can you connect most easily to?

Could you stretch out to the rung above that?

What would you have to do to move from one rung to the next?

What factors keep you from experiencing a greater love, higher up the ladder?

Is it possible to skip rungs?

Can you really experience the sixth rung while ignoring, say, the fourth?

Let me know what you think. Take your time, re-read if necessary. Ask me questions if you want. All rungs are valuable, it’s not a competition or a judgement.