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Field Guide

Oceans of Love

A field guide to agapé, eros, and other loves

Michael Sawyer

Oceans of Love — Michael Sawyer

Love is not one thing. It is an ocean — vast, layered, tidal. This book is a field guide to navigating it.

"They say if you are widely interested, you will be widely regarded as interesting. Similarly, if we love broadly, we will be broadly loved."

Drawing on philosophy, psychology, and the ancient wisdom of agapé, Michael Sawyer maps the forms of love onto a sailboat — the hull, the masts, the sails — and charts a course toward the open water of the heart.

The Psychology of Love

The book maps love to the OCEAN model of personality — five root qualities that compose who we are, and how we love.

O Openness
C Conscientiousness
E Extroversion
A Agreeableness
N Neuroticism

Each form of love maps to a dimension of psyche. Know your type; navigate your sea.

The Sailboat of Love

"A sailboat of a certain size has a certain momentum. If we want more momentum, more attraction — we're going to need a bigger boat."

The Hull
Self-Love
The foundation. Without a strong hull, no mast can stand. Self-love is not selfishness — it is the vessel that carries all other loves.
First Mast
Maternal & Paternal
The parental loves — maternal shielding the vulnerable, paternal encouraging strength. Ideally both are present in all parents.
Second Mast
Fraternal & Social
Brotherly and sisterly love, expanded outward — to tribe, to nation, to species. The civilizing instinct made personal.
Third Mast
Eros
Sensual love between partners. Desire, arousal, union of bodies and minds. The most personal of the masts — and the most ancient.
The Sails
Amoré & Agapé
Amoré is the jib — focused, directional, assertive. Agapé is the spinnaker — vast, unfocused, ecstatic. Love without object. Love for its own sake.

From the Book

I define all types of love as the cooperative overlapping of perspectives. When you and I share a we-identity. Not exactly that two become one — more like we retain our individual identities while simultaneously tapping into a shared perspective.

If we became fully one, we would no longer be individuals who could co-relate; while if we remained as individuals, there would be no transcendent experience of union.

Agapé is an unstructured, unfocused love — or you could say its focus is the entire universe. Its emotion is enthusiasm. En theos means in spirit, radiant, non-localized.

When agapé is in full bloom, the heart chakra is wide open; and like a spinnaker, it powerfully drags the rest of you along behind it like a ragdoll.

Contents