What is this thing called love?

[onemoment]

All these descriptions of love - of another to be in love with, of unrequited love - it is all story. And, if there need be 'another', then what of self love?

We all have something to say of love as most of us have felt it even if we deny having felt it when things are over.

So, I am thinking specifically about that feeling of love. At the moment when the feeling is there, what is it's true basis? Is it a feeling located in the body? Is it the story of romance or does it exist separate to the story? Where is the feeling of love located? Does it have a location in the body, or does it expand out of the body, such as when you feel there is no separation between you and that 'other'?

I can agree that romantic love is a lot of rot - 'live happily ever after with that special other'. And we can argue about whether the feeling we had when we were 'in love' was actual love. But what about the feeling? What is that when it is looked at without thought or mind? (Please don't give me the chemical imbalance story or any story that's been told before - give me the story of the immediate experience.)

 

[Jozen-Bo]

What is love?

Baby don't hurt me...don't hurt me...no more!

 

[Jozen-Bo]

There are two kinds...

Conditional love and unconditional love.

The first is shallow and weak, while the second is great and wondrous.

 

[Jozen-Bo]

I love being the 64th poster in a thread!

 

[onemoment]

Love needs no words to be felt is the point I am trying to make. It can be felt as love of self, love towards one unrequited, mutual love, of children, a good laugh, great sex.....

The words of Sri Nissargardatta Maharaj: The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite. What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless, through and through, it dissolves, and only reality remains. This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dream-like, misty, irrelevant.

 

[lightgigantic]

All these descriptions of love - of another to be in love with, of unrequited love - it is all story.

to be more correct, it exists in a social context.

If one has an idea of the absolute without a social context (IOW god is essentially not a person, but an energy that has no source or something), then they might view it as a "story".

Taking this angle becomes problematic when one tries to introduce a notion of "love" into such a paradigm.

(after all, in a state where the object of knowledge, the process of knowledge and the knower are non-different - aka the final word of the radical homogenized impersonal vision - there is certainly no room for love)

And, if there need be 'another', then what of self love?

then as signal points out, there needs to be a reflection, which would be something "other" than the self.

We all have something to say of love as most of us have felt it even if we deny having felt it when things are over.

So, I am thinking specifically about that feeling of love. At the moment when the feeling is there, what is it's true basis? Is it a feeling located in the body? Is it the story of romance or does it exist separate to the story? Where is the feeling of love located? Does it have a location in the body, or does it expand out of the body, such as when you feel there is no separation between you and that 'other'?

actually one feels there is a connection between one and another... and it is the constant intrusion of separation that grants love its potency.

I can agree that romantic love is a lot of rot - 'live happily ever after with that special other'. And we can argue about whether the feeling we had when we were 'in love' was actual love. But what about the feeling? What is that when it is looked at without thought or mind? (Please don't give me the chemical imbalance story or any story that's been told before - give me the story of the immediate experience.)

Sounds like a request for offerings of an explanation of consciousness.

The rot of love is simply when it is lodged in a temporary state of being and/or applied to temporary things.
If you have an object of love that doesn't deteriorate and a state of being to offer that love that also doesn't deteriorate, there is no problem.

If you have neither a state of being or an object of love you have no love.

 

[lightgigantic]

Love needs no words to be felt is the point I am trying to make. It can be felt as love of self, love towards one unrequited, mutual love, of children, a good laugh, great sex.....

you can however use words to establish clear distinctions in the quality of love, however ... and also establish different understandings between the same use of the word "love"

For instance there are certainly different tools of literacy at work when we make the statements "I love my child" and "I love a good laugh".

The words of Sri Nissargardatta Maharaj: The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite. What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless, through and through, it dissolves, and only reality remains. This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dream-like, misty, irrelevant.

Its one thing to say that this world is built on temporary values.

It is something else to say that once one completely realizes this one ceases to exist (or one comes upon a state where the knower, knowledge and the object of knowledge are nondifferent)

And it is something else yet again to suggest that ideas of "love" can somehow take shape in such an environment

 

[onemoment]

lighgigantic: And it is something else yet again to suggest that ideas of "love" can somehow take shape in such an environment

I am not talking about ideas of love. Bob Adamson, a contemporary speaker of this same 'thing' Nisargardatta is talking about refers to it as a 'loving to be'.

Ideas of love are the 'ripples' of the mind, love is the infinite mind - that's kind of what I am trying to say.

And further, as he points out, there is no way to this through the mind and the only way to test its validity is to see if in fact there is a 'me' when there is not mind.

The only boundaries between things is the boundary the ripples of the mind 'appear' to create. And these ripples can only ever 'take shape' in that preexisting presence of reality - no matter what these ideas are or in what language or from what scientific perspective. There is only this environment and it is only in this that anything can appear at all.

 

[Challenger78]

So emphatic you so obviously are that it is bullshit, Challenger!!!!!

ummm.. what?

To what feeling of love are you eluding? To that story in the movies that ends in eternal happiness ‘together’ or in community? Or to that feeling of bitterness when love doesn’t last, when you believe that you were obviously deluded to think you were in love ‘with that bitch or bastard’? Is that what love really is?

They're one and the same. The togetherness is false, and always will be. Belonging is a means of imposing others standards on yourself. Love is an extension, in which you believe that all is beautiful, but are only deluding yourself to the extent of which others, and you have tried to control each other. Praise, and gifts, as well as romance is just a means of getting someone to do something for you and vice versa. It's a compromise. I'm not sure if that makes sense. So maybe I'll stick to "Love is bullshit".
Trust, another component of love, is just a predictable pattern of behavior which you extrapolate to hypothetical situations, and then call it trust.

When you felt that love in the moment of ‘delusion’, was it really bullshit or did you feel it to the core of your body?

Love in itself is an altered state of being. Hence, values such as core, and self, are altered. In essence your whole self being irrevocably biased.

See, that love we feel is pretty special.

But if only it would last, then we would know that it was real.

The reality of it is that it belongs to us – to the ‘me’ if you want to get personal. We feel one with the other and that connectedness or belonging, one with the other, does not just stop there, it extends out to the everything and everyone, to ourselves - we can all guess when a person is in love. But then it stops.

So we say to ourselves, it could only have ever been ‘bullshit’. The ‘love’ in the commonly told story of ‘love’, is bullshit, as you so aptly and emphatically put it. Who in their right mind will not agree with you that that ‘love’ is bullshit except for the deluded and naive?

That ‘love’, that story about what love is, that’s the bullshit though. Be as cynical as you like about it, that feeling you had, when you thought you were in love or were naïve enough to trust that it was real, when you were a kid and excited about life perhaps, that was amazing, yes?

But in the story, what’s not amazing is that it appears to be transitory, changing. And it’s not fair that it doesn’t last, so you can’t trust it, for that sense of belonging and not caring if you belong or not, because it is a forgone conclusion, can only be real if it lasts.

So what, the films, which are based on various aspects of the human condition, one of them "love", are all wrong. That people seriously consider them rubbish ?

The majority of humanity seems to love those films. And since majority rules in defining abstract values such as morals and yes, "Love", It would point to the conclusion that Love. Is. Bullshit.

But I am here to tell you that it does last, that it is there always if we would only trust that it is there always and dare to feel into it despite the hurt we have felt about ‘love’ in the past.

It is because we think it is related to a story that we do not see that it is always there. We tell a story about it all being bullshit, and it stops us from seeing that what we want is already the basis of all life. We felt that when we were kids whether we remember or not, and if we just drop the stories we tell about ourselves, life is truly wonderful.

There is no good. There is only the delusion that the biological drive to procreate can be quantified in noble terms.

The only way in which humanity has advanced is the degree to which we delude our baser instincts. Everything is an expression of our primal roots, from War to Love.
The hurt we feel isn't hurt. It's a cleansing of our minds, to the reality that we have deluded ourselves from.

 

[onemoment]

Challenger78: The hurt we feel isn't hurt. It's a cleansing of our minds, to the reality that we have deluded ourselves from.

So you are saying that hurt is reality? That's rather sad.

All I can say to you is '..; there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'

In other words, without thought, there nothing that can be seen as good or bad. If you have a preconceived idea of what is there with the stillness of mind, in the openness, then you will only see what you think is there - preconditioned supposition, based on the so many hurts you have felt. Makes me want to reach out and give you a hug, you poor darling.

 

[draqon]

love is this thing that kills the old self and make us a new sort of state of existence, of two in one.

 

[onemoment]

Dragon: ...of two in one

Are you sure that it is 'of two in one' and not of 'everything in one'? Isn't there, with love, a sense of belonging with all those about you, of being where you should be, no questions asked?

 

[draqon]

Are you sure that it is 'of two in one' and not of 'everything in one'? Isn't there, with love, a sense of belonging with all those about you, of being where you should be, no questions asked?

yes...but its through her that I get to be everything.

 

[draqon]

carry me away wind, in her hair flowing through eyes of universe

 

[Oli]

So you mean lust, actually?

No.
Not lust.
Actually.

 

[wynn]

No.
Not lust.
Actually.

Then what?

If two really love eachother, then why couldn't they get together?

 

[Oli]

Then what?
If two really love eachother, then why couldn't they get together?

Existing obligations perhaps?
Circumstances?
Have you ever seen "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"?
There are, for some people, higher duties than personal "satisfaction".
Others just say "The hell with it, I'm going for what I want and fuck everybody else".
But doing those duties doesn't stop the love, it just makes it hurt.

 

[lightgigantic]

I am not talking about ideas of love.

er ... yes you are

here, I will highlight them in bold for you

Bob Adamson, a contemporary speaker of this same 'thing' Nisargardatta is talking about refers to it as a 'loving to be'.

Ideas of love are the 'ripples' of the mind, love is the infinite mind - that's kind of what I am trying to say.

In a funny sort of way, perhaps you could describe philosophy as "the means of discussing ideas that are beyond ideas" (IOW what is actually "real" or essential). Philosophical discussion has to meet certain criteria in order to be productive since all involved parties tend to be convinced of their stance.

Therefore I suggest that we take the word "love" to see in what sense the word is understood.

For instance if someone kicks me in the teeth and I ask them why, the response "because I love you" appears incongruous.

Similarly, a departure into a discussion of love (or any state of attraction) that doesn't involve two distinct categories ("myself" and "whatever I am attracted to") seems doomed from the onset.

And further, as he points out, there is no way to this through the mind and the only way to test its validity is to see if in fact there is a 'me' when there is not mind.

Its not clear how one would come back from such an experience (of the knower, knowledge and the process of knowing being non-different) with a positive.

 

[wynn]

Existing obligations perhaps?
Circumstances?
Have you ever seen "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"?

Yes. I thought the story was silly. I liked the colors, though.

There are, for some people, higher duties than personal "satisfaction".

How can that be?
Isn't performing your duties the highest satisfaction?
And if it isn't, then why perform those duties?

 

[wynn]

And further, as he points out, there is no way to this through the mind and the only way to test its validity is to see if in fact there is a 'me' when there is not mind.

Have you tested its validity? If yes, how?