“Where two or three are gathered in my name…”
– not merely a number, but a revelation of Being-in-relation.
If the modern self is imagined as a solitary project, the eternal self is not.
We do not exist alone. We never have.
The idea of relation is not an optional feature of human life, nor a later addition to a self that is first isolated and then socialized. To exist at all is to be in relation; not just biologically or emotionally, but ontologically.
And nowhere is this more deeply manifest than in love.
But what is love, truly? And what does it reveal about the structure of identity?
In a culture where love is reduced to desire, sentiment, or self-fulfillment, we forget its original and eternal function: to recognize the other as eternal, and thus to recognize oneself.
The Illusion of Autonomy
Modern culture celebrates the self as autonomous — defined by choice, not by necessity. We are told to find ourselves, assert ourselves, and protect ourselves from others who might limit or define us.
Even relationships, in this context, are often viewed as conditional or transactional: we “connect” to others who affirm us, reflect us, or meet our needs. The other is valuable insofar as they support the project of the self.
But this vision of autonomy is ontologically false. There is no isolated self. There never was.
The self exists only as appearing-with others. To appear is not only to be seen, but to be-with. And to be-with is not a loss of identity, but its very ground.
This is not sociological. It is metaphysical.
To be is to be in relation to what is not oneself, and to recognize in the other not a threat, but a confirmation of Being.
Love as Recognition
If desire seeks to possess or merge with the other, love recognizes.
Recognition is the act through which the eternal structure of the other becomes visible; not as a projection of my need, but as a presence in its own right.
To recognize the other is to say: You are. Not “you are mine,” or “you are what I want,” but simply and profoundly: you are, necessarily, eternally.
This recognition does not dissolve difference. It intensifies it. But no longer as alienation. Rather, as glory.
In love, I no longer seek to become the other, nor to make the other become me. I see the other as appearing from the same eternal foundation as myself. Not because of me, but with me. Not subject to me, but sharing the same destiny: the unfolding of Being.
This is the true meaning of intimacy. Not fusion, not domination, but the eternal joy of mutual appearing.
The Eternal Other and the Face of God
In Judeo-Christian thought, the face of the other has always carried divine weight. To see the other, especially in vulnerability, was to glimpse something unrepeatable, sacred, and infinite. This intuition is not merely moral. It is metaphysical.
The other appears as eternal, not because they satisfy my emotion, but because they cannot not be. And this necessity awakens in me the echo of my own eternal structure.
Thus, to truly love the other is to affirm the eternity of Being itself.
Love is not the triumph of the will. It is the collapse of self-centered becoming into mutual recognition.
It is the revelation that Being is not solitary.
Even God, in Christian theology, is not monadic, but Trinitarian: a unity of eternal Persons in relation. This is not mythology, but metaphysics. To be is to be-in-relation.
And so human love, when purified of projection and possessiveness, reflects something eternal: the structure of Being as relational, the mutual joy of appearing, grounded in necessity.
The Healing of the Self through the Other
This relational vision of identity stands in contrast to the tragic model of selfhood, where the other is a mirror of our brokenness, a source of conflict, or a means of escape. Such models are rooted in the metaphysics of becoming, where no identity is fixed and no relation can truly endure.
But if the self is eternal, and the other, too, then every genuine relation becomes an unveiling. Every act of recognition becomes a healing.
We are not healed by returning to ourselves alone. We are healed by appearing together, in the light of what we are: eternal, necessary, and distinct, yet never separate.
This is the deeper meaning of love. Not sentiment. Not strategy. But the unfolding of eternal identity through the recognition of the other.
Looking Ahead
Having explored the relational foundation of identity and love, we now turn to a more challenging question: If the self is eternal, why is it so often afflicted by loss, regret, and the fear of death?
Next: Article 5 — Memory, Loss, and the Illusion of the Vanishing Self
It Is What It Is 
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