There are a lot of great points in these posts - i'll comment only a couple (gotta get shit done before a forecast big rain comes!)

A biologist would argue that the single cells came first and this all evolved into what we are now, so any notion of love or a top-down driver for survival is backward, that it's all a result of some grand hormonal, chemical scheme devised by our biology to keep us reproducing and safe.

I argue that although part of that model may be true, there is some driving energy behind it all that is top down, or, better put, an emanation, from inside reaching out.

I agree. DNA is a huge part of our existence - the key part. As the story goes (& it's really only a story), there was a big bang (no-one talks much about pre-big-bang, curiously), then as a result of these hurtling elements, the earth somehow formed, which, by chance, created conditions (water, atmosphere) for the first biological life to form. The thing is, after all these incredible alignments, it's still not good enough to simply create biological life - you need to create life that wants to exist/extend. Which is where DNA comes in. Without DNA you could go to all that trouble of creating the first cell, but if that cell takes a look around, says 'yeah, no, there's nothing about this that makes me wanna continue on' - you ain't got jack-shit.

Entwined/coded into this DNA desire to extend, is love (as i think you're proposing). If you look at baby-anythings, they are filled with wonder, the sheer exuberance of life. It's a cuteness that we can all relate to - this is a form of pure love-energy.

For example, i brought three new pullets in recently (already 4 mths old, so not babies - about the same as your students in human-years). Been observing their Plato's Cave life-stages from: inside the shed (over two weeks), to venturing out to the fully-enclosed outdoor recreational area (another two weeks), to finally daring to explore the outside world - with its expanded wonders but also dangers. (the doors were open from 9.30 to 5.30)

But even that world, which is the entire universe in their minds, its only a microcosm of a greater outside world - that none-the-less impacts their existence - though they're not aware of it. Same thing happens with us. It's a layered thing.

At each stage i can see the happiness of discovery (esp stage 2, outside) - running around in circles play-chasing each other with this giddy delirium of joy. This is the love-energy that exists innately in us all.

The reality is, that painter never did exist as an independent being. It never could. Nor could we. Yet we perceive ourselves as being somebody that somehow landed on this earth and is somehow subjected to what it throws at us. But it fact we're a product of it that perceives.

Yes, that's an ancient philosophical concept - our reality is a version of individual experience in a sum of the parts deal - they're fundamentally entangled as a dynamic.

Love, or flow, IMO, is that energy that is somehow connected to that primal, per-aware (pre-aware?), what, leap? Spark? Movement? Shift? Vacillation? Frequency?

And, yes, that energy somehow finds its way into money so we can eat, and the downfall, the separation, the illusion, the fear, it drives what we call modern life. Damn.

I always thought the biblical story of creation was a pretty good one, metaphorically speaking. The idea of the void (pre-existence), a state of grace (pure love), then The Fall - to a state where we're not sure if we're running away or chasing something - but imbued with this desire to unforget - reconnect to love/to be loved, occasionally succeeding.