These lower forms of love obstruct the release of pure love. If consciousness is caught in the rhythm of the lower, it cannot emancipate itself from the self-created ruts, finding it difficult to get out of them and advance further.
The emergence of higher love from the shell of lower love is helped by the constant exercise of discrimination. Therefore, love has to be carefully distinguished from the obstructive factors of infatuation, lust, greed, and anger.
In infatuation, the person is a passive victim of the spell of conceived attraction for the object. In love there is an active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love.
-Discourses 7th Ed., p112