God is love. We are of God and therefore our inherent nature is love. The closer we get to this inherent nature, the more we become it, we find that love is manifested naturally and the love we have for others is a consequence of this divine love. It’s a tuning into a frequency. Also true love between men and women, is an opportunity for us to know divine love. The process of loving and knowing love is symbiotic between man and God.
A
In the long run
All love is paid by love,
Though undervalued by the hosts of earth;
The great eternal Government above
Keeps strict account and will redeem its worth.
Give thy love freely; do not count the cost;
So beautiful a thing was never lost
In the long run.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox-
Hi Jerry
The question I see here is if we are attached to love or a conception of love. As you know, all the ancient traditions initiating with a conscious source are concerned in one way or another with acquired attachment only because it is the result of imagination. Its fetters are unreal but take the place of reality and therefore depriving us of awakened life.
The highest earthly quality of love between a man a woman as I understand it is based on type. In ancient times the matchmaker was a person who understood human being itself divided into essential types and qualities within these types and sanctioned marriage in relation to type. Personality was secondary. This took into consideration the idea that a man and a woman were two halves of a higher whole that could reblend at a higher perspective or “become as one”.
As we are though, we are governed by acquired tastes and the attraction is largely based on external qualities reflecting cultural norms. This puts us into this unfortunate position that though we may be attracted to each other through our essential types, our personalities deny each other and establish relationships doomed to failure since relationships based on image gradually lose their image ending the attraction.
Not to appear sentimental here since for me this seems to be just common sense, the healthy male female relationship begins with the essence of the following quote:
I visualize this as a triangle with male and female (yang/yin) forming the base. The apex of the triangle is human potential or the highest we can know of God created by the blend of the male/female principles reconciled by this higher calling. It is this gazing at the image and expecting this image to fill desires created by image that IMO the problem comes in.
This natural attraction forming the base of the triangle is a combination of earthly love and sexual attraction. It is the basis of a healthy developing bond While sharing earthly love, both have an attraction to love of a higher quality, not of the earth, as a direction leading to the apex. But since our lives are so dominated by acquired taste, such relationships are an extreme rarity and we remain attached to image.
I’m not clear on what you mean here, JT. Is a love that is not shared (returned) an illusion?
Maybe the best opportunity there is. But only, it seems to me, if approached with the idea that we are loving to love, loving simply because we love, loving because maybe we have no choice. This, as opposed to loving in order to seek love in return, for that, it seems to me, is not divine love, love as God would intend. Yet is representative, is it not, of most “loves�
“Give thy love freely; do not count the cost;
So beautiful a thing was never lost…”
Beautiful, Bess. Yes, this is what I’m thinking.
I would agree with this, Nick. But the external qualities can’t be denied, nor should they be, should they? Our personalities are to a large degree our creative spirits, our canvases, the way in which we are manifested to the world. We can make a connection with anybody on some level, but where does it go from there? At some point our creative spirits have to mesh. Our personalities, the characteristics that make us unique and special, have to connect. The differences shouldn’t be denied, should they?
Yes, we know in a place inside of us that this love exists and we long for it all our lives. We long for it and so…as is our human nature we search for it. Outside ourselves. We demand it, we expect it. But love is based in freedom, no expectations no demands.
A
Hi Jerry
I would agree with this, Nick. But the external qualities can’t be denied, nor should they be, should they? Our personalities are to a large degree our creative spirits, our canvases, the way in which we are manifested to the world. We can make a connection with anybody on some level, but where does it go from there? At some point our creative spirits have to mesh. Our personalities, the characteristics that make us unique and special, have to connect. The differences shouldn’t be denied, should they?
We contact external life through our senses. There is no reason to deny them. If anything we should try to become more sensitive to sensory impressions. However, they become dulled and interpreted through thought and emotionial patterns gradually acquired as we become enculturated. This is where the problems begin and life now lives us.
If our sensory perception, emotions, and reason functioned in harmony and we acquired true conscious “presence” in the moment, then our personalities would serve the needs of our essential selves making the above possible. But the human condition is such that our personalities live our life for us. Its as if you go into your car and it drives you around as opposed to you driving it.
If this is true, what does this personality really create? Can a machine create? If not how can a mechanical personality really create. Instead it reacts. Yet if our personalities were tools for conscious interaction in the world, then we could create and things like war would be impossible. But the acceptance of mechanical life denies the development of this quality of consciousness or self awareness. Human relationships would be based on real essential psychological needs and a deeper quality of love would become natural. But since we are governed in this way, collective humanity accepts war as a periodic recurrence and human relationships continue to suffer as they do.
Hi Jerry,
A loving of, is you as desire to share intimately. That is genuine. The illusion (and all of the pain) lies in the expectation that it could, should, or will be returned. “The weddings of the soul occur as they occur” If we see that the ultimate expression of ourselves is love, then we are the energy/desire of intimate love. We may choose a particular person as the focus of this energy/desire/love, and it can be genuine and ‘real’, but the reciprocal sharing of this happens as it happens.
We are love, Jerry. We are even intimate love. The pain of unrequited love lies in the illusion that it must be returned.
Love doesn’t always come coated with chocolate. Damn the luck.
JT
A
This thread is about the love that God intends us to have, and I would agree with Angel on the above statement if the world was utopia. The fact is, real relationships are filled with expectations and more demands than you could ever imagine. No expectations? Try getting married on the freedom of love alone and not have a dime. Yes, the freedom is there but so are the demands of real life. Going to the grocery store doesn’t feel like a demand until you can’t do it. True love has no demands - or does it? Don’t we demand respect? No expectations? Well, I expect my man to come home at night and not screw other women’s brains out - or is that just too much for little ol me to ask for?
In the real world, just the pressure of three screaming babies not getting anything for Christmas because you can’t afford it would put me over the edge and make me wonder why I ever thought love used to be so free? Free and easy. That is what love is, until reality throws you a curve and you wake up one day and realize that there ain’t nothin free about it. I am expcected to make money. I am expected to be a decent parent. Yes, I am expected to have sex when I don’t want to do it. I am expected to be faithful with the same man for the rest of my born days. I am expected to remember to take out the trash and give my dog his freaking heartworm pills. Free? Yup, that’s me. Free as a damn jailbird.
Too much information? I thought so.
[size=75]I could use a little chocolate, JT, to sugarcoat that last one one over.I prefer truffles, if you please. [/size]
While everything you say is true Bessy, certainly, I was under the impression we were talking about Divine love. Relationships and indeed life are filled with all kinds of expectatins, demands, indeed repressions and especially so when the love of God is cut off, caught up as we are in our daily grind. It is easy to forget about Divine love when we are having to put food on the table. It is precisely this challenge, the journey through that leads us into a deeper more meaningful love. It is this love that bonds us, that gives us the strength to continue.
Love is like water, it never forces its way, it simply IS, it flows to the depths, never hankers to be first, always hopes to be last. Because in the end, the only thing that remains is LOVE.
A
I believe on paper you are so right. But, it is hard to be so poetic in this real world of the “daily grind.” When you see the world from the poetic and romantic side, all of this sounds sweet and dreamy. Hey, I was sweet and dreamy too once until life came at me like a swinging anvil on a metal chain and knocked me down. God, I wish I could live that way where nothing is painful, and everything is godlike and calm with no frustrations and no axe to grind. I am not a resentful person at heart and yet my life has (as it turns out) not been an easy one to bear. It is about love in the longrun, but through the twists and turns of life the sweetness of love is buried in the mire of trashday and far too many bills and personalities to juggle. I wish you love and luck in your peaceful journey, but if I were you, I might stay away from anything that resembles reality. Because I have one and it isn’t all that perfect. Actually, I may close my eyes today and pretend to be in that utopia, but my dog just threw up on my white carpet and I had better run before the stain sets in too much. 
(I say this with the greatest regard for you, Angel)
Bess,
First of all, “life came at me like a swinging anvil on a metal chain†is a wonderfully visual analogy! I mean, that’s just great writing, folks. That’s the kind of stuff we need more of around here!
Secondly, I think what liquidangel might be trying to suggest (correct me if I’m wrong, liquidangel), is that the demands of family and home and work and, well, life, are different issues than the demands of love. Love, true love, ought not have demands or expectations. That is to say that love is there or it is not there. One doesn’t love, or shouldn’t, to demand love back or have expectations of its being returned. Yes, you can make demands on your husband, and he can make demands on you, but do you (or should you, is how I think I want to word it) love him for the reason of getting loved back?. That’s the issue as I’m seeing it here. And if the answer is yes, then I’m wondering if what you have is what I would call a “true†or “divine†love.
I agree, Nick. Of course the problem comes in trying to make the determination as to what’s really driving what. This is a tough thing.
Yes, JT. That is in fact the source of the pain, I am thinking. Yes. And the illusion that it must be returned cheapens it, tarnishes it. True love would be a love that, as liquidangel I believe, put it, has no demands, no expectations.
But I do have a love that is somewhat untarnished. I am simply throwing all of the sweet chocolatey morsel stuff out the window because as lovely and wonderful as it all sounds on paper, it simply isn’t a real relationship. Real relationships are build on getting through the muckity muck and having glimpses of the good stuff left at the end. Sometimes in a relationship you have to give 150% for many years because the other person is closing down for some reason. With true love, it doesn’t matter and the love is always there. Tenderness may subside, anger may become the mainstay of your evenings together and lust (what the hell is that) is a thing of the past. I don’t think you can love only to be loved in return. If you love, it is enough… but when it isn’t returned for many years you become numb, and you say a love has no expectations? I say hogwash. (I say that with my tail between my legs cause I like you Jerry)
And no, I don’t think I have, or have ever had that kind of divine love. I could only have wished.
I don’t disagree with you here, Bess. But I think what happens is that over time one’s opinion about the object of one’s love might change. One reaches a point where one realizes that if the love is not returned, it might just mean things weren’t meant to be, that there is a disconnect of sorts between the two people. And then the love dissipates, or rather the person doesn’t feel connected to the love anymore. It’s still there, as love always is, asking nothing in return, but it now is not experienced in the same way as before. But while it was being experienced - if it was a true love (and this is my point) - it was experienced without expectations, without demands. In other words, you wouldn’t stop loving the person because you weren’t getting your expectations met, you would stop loving because you would realize the person (or more accurately perhaps, the relationship itself) is perhaps not worthy of the love.
Clear as mud?
Clear as Norm. I might have to read it a few times, hon.
Jerry writes:
Yes, in its purest form this is true, but alas, we fail this understanding constantly. Understanding and practice meet far too infrequently. As that experience called love, we wish to share. Having found that person with whom we would share our love, that person becomes the totality of our experience as desire. If our experience (of this person) is not reciprocated, then there is pain. Is it the pain of expectations not met? No, it is the pain of having had expectations in the first place.
Still, it it the most common of human failings; and I question whether it is even a failing. It is one thing to have this deep understanding of what is pure love. It is quite another to go home, throw something in the microwave, and spend the evening in front of the blue glow of the television - alone. No small part of us as desire is the act of sharing intimately and completely. It must be so, or we would have no need for any form of companionship. We would be perfectly contented to celebrate the dance alone…
Are we really so transcendent that we can not say, “love me, as I love you.”?
JT