A Planet In Love
Awareness, Spontaneity, & Intimacy
THE OBSTRUCTION TO INTIMACY
The human Ego convinces us that we are separate from “the world”. An isolated self or unit of one. This sense of separation—self-awareness or ego-consciousness—has certainly had a profound, advancing impact on our specie’s evolutionary history. However, from an interpersonal perspective the capacity to define ourselves as a separate self is a major impasse to loving intimacy.
In May of 2025 I went to see my favorite musician perform in downtown Minneapolis. One of the openers—who I had never heard of—was Jacob Allen Jaeger. His solo performance included two microphones—used interchangeably—as well as the harmonica and different guitars. His voice reminded me of the singer M. Ward. The song that really blew me away was titled “Planets In Love.”
Maybe it was the two craft beers and a side of THC I had before the show, but the title of the song really hooked me: planets in love. Hmmm… I fixated on the literal concept of the Earth being in love: a strong emotional attachment and excitation with another planet. The question that has excited and plagued me for the last month is, “What would Earth—and more so humanity—look like if it was in love with another planet?”
A PLANET IN LOVE
How would we each operate if we shared this collective love for something other than ourselves (Ego)? Would thousands of years of human egoism extinguish like the flame of a birthday candle?
When we are first in love with someone it encapsulates our every waking moment. We passionately think about the other person and search for ways to connect with them. Most of us take better care of ourselves when we are in love. The rat race of daily life becomes obscured by the emotional stirring inside. We long for contact with this object of our longing.
We also seem to operate at our absolute best when we are in love. There is a sense of invincibility. Not in the physical sense, but the perspective that nothing can withstand this inner desire. Love is propulsion and it propels us to act in spontaneous ways. The most obvious is a striving for human connection. The vast majority of human beings require human connection. It is only the 1 to 4% of the population (i.e., psychopaths) who denies the feeling of the other that is necessary to connect. Unfortunately, the richest 1% of the planet seem to embody this malady (i.e., the denial of feeling) as they continuously strive to dominate Nature and maintain planetary supremacy.
The adult human needs social recognition and stimulation, but the infant requires physical affection to develop and survive. The unscientific term for this is “love.” We grow because we love and we love because we want to grow. What if the whole planet was in love? What if there was an Other whom Earth needed to embrace? Would we promote peace or violence? War or love? Greed or generosity? Compassion or sadism? More yin energy or yang?
LOVE-HATE & YIN-YANG
In the preface to The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich, MD states that at the deepest part of human nature we are rationally hating animals:
If one penetrates through this destructive second layer, deeper into the biologic substratum of the human animal, one always discovers the third, deepest, layer, which we call the biologic core. In this core, under favorable conditions, man is essentially honest, industrious, cooperative, loving, and, if motivated, rationally hating animal. 1
This “biologic core” is the source of our being. The Taoist calls this universal life force Qi. Technically, sexual energy. We know what we like and what we don’t like. Love is when two people become one; not one in the same person, but not-two separate people either. The two are a functional unity.
Conceptual designation is not the same as “reality” itself. The Taoist “world” is best understood as an interdependent, impermanent, field of energy. A system for qi: the yin-yang system. Yin is feminine energy (e.g., love) when supported by the masculine yang (e.g., hate). Yang protects the receptive yin. Borrowing from Wilhelm Reich, MD, yin and yang are simultaneously identical and antithetical: a functional unity. There is no yang without yin and vice versa. Yin and yang are not two not one. On a relative level, yin and yang are two. In an absolute sense one. What is called “emptiness” (no-self) is yin and Ego is yang.
Western culture is fixated on expansionism using an economic model of infinite growth (greed). This requires immense masculine (yang) energy. The fury of yang acts to protect yin, but there is no yang without the supportive or receptive yin. If Earth was in love we would focus our energy in a more nurturing way to support—not perpetuate—masculine energy. War is intense yang energy (destruction) supported by a rationalized ideology (yin).
There is no love without hate. The less we love and the less we are loved, the more we hate. If racism, xenophobia, and war grow from the seeds of hate, what are the seeds of love?
AWARENESS, SPONTANEITY, & INTIMACY
As a psychotherapist, psychological well-being in the form of intimacy—in contrast with sadism—is the avenue I pursue with patients. The psychiatrist Eric Berne, MD measured well-being based on three human characteristics: awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy.
For example, I had to assess my time and plan for the May concert well in advance, e.g., book a hotel, buy tickets, etc. This requires awareness. However, I did not plan out the evening in Minneapolis other than the concert. I structured my time by ensuring it was unstructured time. Instead of an itinerary, I grabbed my camera and left my hotel to walk around and take pictures (spontaneity). I didn’t make it a single city block when I spotted the headliner of the show walking down the sidewalk! We made eye contact and I walked right in his direction. He saw my expression and jokingly ducked behind a light pillar. So I sardonically shouted, “I’m not the paparazzi!” These candid exchanges were from the here and now and it was a true form of intimacy despite us not-knowing each other.
In his final days, Berne was focused on human loving. The quote below is from a book he finalized on his deathbed in the hospital. In the book Sex In Human Loving, Berne understood mindfulness long before it was a Western self-optimization tool of our new capitalist spirituality:
Living right now is seeing the trees and hearing the birds sing, and it is necessary to see the trees and hear the birds and know that the sun is out, in order to see people’s faces and hear their spirits sing and know that the sun of their warmth is there; and that is the way to attain intimacy. That bright here and now of the open universe out there is what should be, before going indoors and living in the closed here and now of each other. For those things to happen, it is first necessary to have a clear mind and to forget for the time being all forms of tedious shuffle: shuffling papers and shuffling people and shuffling things in your head. 2
Berne is advocating the momentary suspension of Ego. The result is that in the moment we return to the aware, spontaneous, and intimate beings we are (buddha-nature). Collective yin energy—in the face of planetary self-destruction—will make our planet a planet in love.
p. xi, Reich, W. (1980). The mass psychology of fascism: Ideology as material power. Ed. Mary Higgins and Chester M. Raphael (3rd edition). New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. (orig. pub. in 1933)
p. 203, Berne, E. (1971). Sex in human loving. New York: Simon & Schuster.