Hmm. I didn't notice my little poll. But that's okay if you really don't feel like doing it.
This kind of goes to T/F differences, as in the inaccuracies associated with "Feeling as being without Thinking." When you hear music, do you hear just the bass, and just the treble of a song, or do you hear the bass, mid-range, and treble frequencies all at once, and allow them all together to define what you are hearing?
Again, because what I have felt of it has been positive and reassuring, and I equivocate both of those phenomena as "good."
I guess there are some of us who are programmed with a lotta love; that have innately this huge drive to love others and love more and love a lot. So you can imagine in this world how that would not work out too well. If we fall into a problem, what do we do? We might eventually turn to guidance from books or a therapist or some motivational speaker or religion, etc. Well, the whole mantra of most of those things is currently......LOVE> Loving better, loving the right way, the 4 steps to love, letting go and expecting love to be all and be enough, etc. So you try to fix the very thing that was already out of balance by focusing on it more, which works for a while.
But since love really is not, and most here are saying they know it is not, a Universal Truth (like gravity or some other hard science concept) it cannot sustain one, because at its core, it really is just a biological drive to keep us alive, it doesn't have the makings of a world view (which the popular media and self-help gurus and even therapists try to make it out to be).
These entities seem to turn love into a religion.
When it's experienced too much, it can cause problems in its host, just like feeling any other emotion too much can cause problems (depression). Lol. I'm not talking about nymphomania either, although I think that would be just one step further along this continuum.
So, I'm speaking out about that. Perhaps some can't feel love enough. That would suck too because to find a mate in this world, you usually have to be able to do that. To stretch and find the self-sacrificing place to nurture young enough so that they can experience healthy developmental growth, you need a healthy dose of love, or something else....perhaps consciousness and fortitude in that would be enough. Who knows. But some feel love too much. And I feel strongly that this in not just some developmental dysfunction, or reaction based on cultural experiences, although I really couldn't say for sure. But I know other people (F types usually) whose loving promotes many problems, whether that turns into manipulation out of love, or too much sexual loving which causes many problems, or too much self-love, among other expressions of too much love. Perhaps consumerism stems from here, and narcissism regarding plastic surgery all come from this obsession with love, either because of too little or too much.
You might have a nice balance about love. Many do not. And I think to focus so much on it, or to even use it as a healing tool, is questionable until we really identify what love even is; or to assume it's all good.
Yes. Thomas Jefferson was big on this, much like Aesop, ethical parables without the guilt of religion, without "good and evil." But, allow me to play devil's advocate, why would definitions of friendship and citizenship be better if love were completely factored out of them? Why is that better?
Not saying we can abandon love. Just questioning how much is needed and what weight we should give it. We know we can be good people, at least individually, without religion. Can we be caring without a love religion?
So, yeah, you've done it, and I have too, and how did it turn out for you? Good? Bad? Surely different than you expected. To me, that sort of thing is a waste of time. I value my time, and therefore I value my efforts at implementing love with the time I have to live, out of respect for myself, and respect for those who I love.
This, to me, reflects the concept of giving what you receive, and expecting to receive what you give. That's not really what love religion says, or mainstream religions, or even unconditional loving, or a relationship coach would say. They would say to give your love freely and don't worry about what comes back. Give what you can, when you can, fully. But yes, I think to survive for many in this world this does not work, because those who have more to give (myself) end up deficient with no easy way to fill back up; which weakens us over time. So a more pragmatic approach to love is obviously definitely needed in our culture. We seem to only see the takers; the selfish, and indeed, I think the selfish outweigh the giving by many. So it is incumbent on the givers to protect themselves in some way. The current love lingo thrown around just doesn't work or do anyone any real good.
It is proven that many participants of arranged marriages DEVELOP ROMANTIC LOVE later in their livevs. The experience is totally different than Western "free-spirited" romances, but it is not without similarity of implementation of love by humans.
Yeah, and that's pretty amazing and a result of an amazing love biochemical process. But my point was that the aren't so focused on LOVE that they starve themselves of living as humans until they find perfect love as painted in our current world. Some might not be very capable of finding that kind of love. Should they forego living with someone, or childbearing just because the fairy tail love eludes them? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm just questioning the wisdom of centering all that we are around love.
According to the inmates of Cell Block Four, you do:
They've only been together for a few days, and already in counseling.
"You told me you loved me."
i don't think i would want love to be a universal truth, i like that it is real subjective and personal.
but as a force to live your life by, as an ideal to guide you- i think it is a good one, for me.
i think i didn't always used to live by love, or maybe i did but i didn't know it yet. but i think it is probably what i was always looking for when i was younger, not somebody to love i mean, but the love inside myself.
but i do think love is one of those things that disappears or falls apart when you look directly at it, like a mirage. so you kind of have to live with it naturally and let it just do it's thing- trying to understand love seems like it kills it for me.
whereas something like integrity feels like it intensifies and becomes clearer when i focus on it.
STs just hit it right on. Yes, I am perceiving that it's like that very much. That you really just have to enjoy love in the moment, because to ply it with intent, ruins it; to manipulate it or expect it to do something, bastardizes it. To focus on it just isn't right. To make it a religion just isn't right. To make our lives centered around it just isn't right.
I don't think I could sustain love as a universal truth, intellectually. Is there any reason why that particular emotion should be given a seat before any other emotion? It seems like an unwarranted step. Pleasant feelings when bonding are everything that matters? Maybe not.
As for compassion, just because I feel a certain way about a person or an animal does not mean that everyone else -should- feel that way and cherish those feelings. There are no virtues in emotional dictatorships. I dislike seeing animals in pain, and in fact.. I'm a vegetarian, partly for that reason. But I can't demand anything of people, nor formulate ethics based on my sensitivities - I think that would be nearly solipsistic on my part. I get strong desires to nurture that which is vulnerable, in fact I would go as far as to say that I dont feel "love" unless there is vulnerability and sensibility involved. (might be some weird Fi thing or something with me) - a feeling which stands in very sharp contrast to all the rhetoric about "loving yourself" and the rest of the ego-driven nonsense. For me, love is raw felt-meaning, -against- what my ego might be telling me.
I have wondered about this too. It's like a quick and natural way to incite a love response is to feel someone's need. I've wondered about that in the context of sexual loving relationships; that sometimes those that are needy are attracted to those that are giving, and vice versa; those that are giving are attracted to those that need. It's, of course, not a balanced relationship what could last very well, but why are some so attracted to that? It must be because that is a quick way to elicit a love response, which in turn, feels good.
Love exists as a necessity just like water and oxygen. Without love hate manifests whether loving others or thy self. Those realities manifest into self destruction rather than self expression.
Now as a universal truth, you are talking in the context that this is a natural phenomenon that everyone shares. And the truth is no, as temporal beings we are born of this world to experience those feelings that are expressed through our emotions and thoughts.
What this means is that whether we want to accept a loving attitude - a positive interface in existence or a hatful attitude - a negative interface, depends on peoples resonance, health and experience. The energy that creates receptivity for or against love as a conduct to growth, on a personal level, is to transcend the barrier that guards the natural use of the heart.
From a pseudo religious spiritual experience the entity that manifests outside of our space is a source, whether of warmth or hostility depends entirely upon the imagination of the human mind. And that manifestation changes in accordance to how receptive we are to experience love all around us. This does exist, except it is an individualistic artifact entirely subjected to personal experiences and beliefs and such. None more so apparent than the need to fill emptiness and loneliness, this then becomes a sexual urge, a biological agent. For the alchemical expression of love transforms, brings us closer to the meaning of unconditional love.
As those years in the womb when the energy expressed was entirely from love. Those beginning years of innocence is, and they'll tell you, the most truthful kind of love a child born can have are adopted from the attitudes and experiences of those closest to them.
Who can say, am likely the least likely to understand.
You raise an interesting point with the love/hate thing. Are we more likely to hate if we love less?
In considering love as a biological, chemical process that has aided in our evolution through time, I asked my son what he thinks about love. He said he thinks love is getting stronger in us because we are not as barbaric a society as we used to be; that in all the ways we measure love, it used to not measure up like it does now. I'm not sure about that, but maybe he's right. We seem to go out of our way more to protect our children for a longer period of time of their growth. We seem to hold more dear the sanctity of relationships, no matter the paradigm we believe in. We seem to understand the concept that healthy self love exists and try to understand it. We join together in love when we have a crisis, but that does dissipate after a while.
I have to wonder if some of us that love too much or don't love enough are just along different time continuum in that evolution of love. Perhaps we are developing more affinity for love as a human race; perhaps that is slowly being selected for over time. Those that hate, are killed, those that love procreate; to use a very simplified example. Those that don't fit in, are ostracized. Those that do, are embraced.
If only we could plug our tails into our computer monitor and unite all our good wills together, Avatar style, how awesome would that mind-meld love be?
