Love,
An image, a video, a story, or anything that describes love to you.
An emotion with many tinges among humans. English is a bit lacking, the classic example is Ancient Greek. I suspect Sanskrit and many other languages have useful ways to describe it.
As far as truly understanding what another being experiences, languages can only be an asymptote at best. English words I’d associate with love are understanding, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, ect.
The most intense forms of love are likely beyond our normal waking experiences. What is likely only a taste can be found in various descriptions of experiences such as those that can occur in “hyper real” states of consciousness reached during out of body, so called, experiences arrived at via spiritual practices and a state of change called death. Entheogens are the easiest route for me personally, but you do you.
Love can also be simulated via psychoactive chemicals that do not induce hyper reality, but synthetic feeling, uh, feelings that can feel quite good. A primary driver of the chemical experience of love is oxytocin; mdma, for example, releases dopamine, adrenaline, but mostly serotonin into your presynaptic clefts. This rise in serotonin then causes surges of oxytocin that promote extreme bonding with entities you may otherwise find objectionable at events like Burning Man.
Long lasting love is chemically tied to endorphins which are endogenous opioids. Our dysfunctional society creates, in many, a lack of connection in general, friendships, community, meaning, and family. This separation often causes pain and anger and the effects on social mammals are profound. This pain is then often medicated synthetically. However, the end of a long term relationship can actually cause withdrawal. This can cause physical heart disease. Deficits in more shallow forms of love produce cravings and sometimes acts of public indecency.
I’d hypothesize the highest form of love would be oneness or fusion, which is appropriate for this venue.
“ 1. Eros, or sexual passion
The first kind of love was eros, named after the Greek god of fertility, and it represented the idea of sexual passion and desire. But the Greeks didn’t always think of it as something positive, as we tend to do today. In fact, eros was viewed as a dangerous, fiery, and irrational form of love that could take hold of you and possess you—an attitude shared by many later spiritual thinkers, such as the Christian writer C. S. Lewis.
Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks. Which is odd, because losing control is precisely what many people now seek in a relationship. Don’t we all hope to fall “madly” in love?
The second variety of love was philia or friendship, which the Greeks valued far more than the base sexuality of eros. Philia concerned the deep comradely friendship that developed between brothers in arms who had fought side by side on the battlefield. It was about showing loyalty to your friends, sacrificing for them, as well as sharing your emotions with them. (Another kind of philia, sometimes called storge, embodied the love between parents and their children.)
We can all ask ourselves how much of this comradely philia we have in our lives. It’s an important question in an age when we attempt to amass “friends” on Facebook or “followers” on Twitter—achievements that would have hardly impressed the Greeks.
While philia could be a matter of great seriousness, there was a third type of love valued by the ancient Greeks, which was playful love. Following the Roman poet Ovid, scholars (such as the philosopher A. C. Grayling) commonly use the Latin word ludus to describe this form of love, which concerns the playful affection between children or casual lovers. We’ve all had a taste of it in the flirting and teasing in the early stages of a relationship. But we also live out our luduswhen we sit around in a bar bantering and laughing with friends, or when we go out dancing.
Dancing with strangers may be the ultimate ludic activity, almost a playful substitute for sex itself. Social norms may frown on this kind of adult frivolity, but a little more ludus might be just what we need to spice up our love lives.
The fourth love, and perhaps the most radical, was agape or selfless love. This was a love that you extended to all people, whether family members or distant strangers. Agape was later translated into Latin as caritas, which is the origin of our word “charity.”
C.S. Lewis referred to it as “gift love,” the highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of mettā or “universal loving kindness” in Theravāda Buddhism.
There is growing evidence that agape is in a dangerous decline in many countries. Empathy levels in the U.S. have declined sharply over the past 40 years, with the steepest fall occurring in the past decade. We urgently need to revive our capacity to care about strangers.
The use of the ancient Greek root pragma as a form of love was popularized by the Canadian sociologist John Allen Lee in the 1970s, who described it as a mature, realistic love that is commonly found amongst long-established couples. Pragma is about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance. There is in fact little evidence that the Greeks commonly used this precise term themselves, so it is best thought of as a modern update on the ancient Greek loves.
The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we expend too much energy on “falling in love” and need to learn more how to “stand in love.” Pragma is precisely about standing in love—making an effort to give love rather than just receive it. With about a third of first marriages in the U.S. ending through divorce or separation in the first 10 years, we should surely think about bringing a serious dose of pragma into our relationships.
The Greek’s sixth variety of love was philautia or self-love. And clever Greeks such as Aristotle realized there were two types. One was an unhealthy variety associated with narcissism, where you became self-obsessed and focused on personal fame and fortune. A healthier version enhanced your wider capacity to love.
The idea was that if you like yourself and feel secure in yourself, you will have plenty of love to give others (as is reflected in the Buddhist-inspired concept of “self-compassion”). Or, as Aristotle put it, “All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man’s feelings for himself.”
The ancient Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people—friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even themselves. This contrasts with our typical focus on a single romantic relationship, where we hope to find all the different loves wrapped into a single person or soul mate. The message from the Greeks is to nurture the varieties of love and tap into its many sources. Don’t just seek eros, but cultivate philia by spending more time with old friends, or develop ludus by dancing the night away.
Moreover, we should abandon our obsession with perfection. Don’t expect your partner to offer you all the varieties of love, all of the time (with the danger that you may toss aside a partner who fails to live up to your desires). Recognize that a relationship may begin with plenty of eros and ludus, then evolve toward embodying more pragma or agape.”
So, in English, love is a fuzzy word.
Here is love then in pictorial form:
Still looking? Furvert! I am infinite fuzziness. Judge me by my density, do you? I am unveiled. It is you who bow before me to pick up my excrement. One eye I browned, one blue to have infinite wisdom and magic. You are beset by the twin thieves of the present moment, past and future. I always fully enjoy and I enjoy manipulating you into thinking I serve you when it is I who truly hold the leash. It is Fenrir who shall devour the Earth. I am the lord, your dog.
that was Beautiful,
Much to you and your companions ~
Ra includes love in the Law of Confusion in the Law of One. My guess is that Ra is talking about relative love here. With relative love we have polarities like love vs fear.
Absolute Love on the other hand is the love of the One reality. It would be really paranoid if the One was afraid of itself so absolve Love has no opposites.
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” - 1 John 4:16-18
I always turn to the poets for help on the big stuff :).
From Rilke… I see love as the speaker in this one.
I am, you anxious one.
Don’t you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can’t you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn’t my longing ripened in you
from the beginning
as fruit ripens on a branch?I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting.
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.
And this is a part of a poem by David Whyte…
Much has been said about the eternal
and untouchable nature of love,
its tidal ungovernable forces
and its emergence from far beyond
the ordinary, but love may find
its fullest, most imagined
and most courageous form
when it leaves the abstractions
and safety of the timeless
and the untrammeled
to make its promises
amidst the fears, vulnerabilities,
and disappearances of our difficult,
touchable and time bound world.
The second to me speaks of finding love in the moment.
Another one… (WB Yeats)
I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
`Those breasts are flat and fallen now
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’`Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.`A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.’
Thank you Melissa
The last stanza may be suggesting that true love isn’t about purity or holiness, but about accepting and embracing the ‘foul’ parts of life, such as the physicality and imperfection of human existence. The phrase “Love has pitched his mansion in/The place of excrement” can be interpreted as love residing in the most unexpected, imperfect, or ‘low’ places.
Wondeful poem that carries the dualism and unity of Love
Yes. Also the last stanza–“For nothing can be sole or whole/That has not been rent” for me speaks to the search for unity within the dualistic haze of 3D. This is the land of ‘rent’ things. Does the work of Love behind the veil include figuring out how to reform the rent pieces into a whole–recogizing the Whole through the pieces.
This makes me think of (as an artist) how when learning to draw/paint representationally, the first breakthrough in rendering is to learn to paint what you see, not what you assume. When drawing from life, you train your mind to see the image as shapes and values. The pieces. It’s not a flat outline. The shapes and values build the whole. A true understanding/rendering of the whole comes from seeing the pieces and their relationships to each other accurately.
Will you be at burning man this year as well?
Love as such has no descriptions, possibly reflected in certain metaphors.
For me, Love is more of a feeling than something intellectual. Although at the same time it is not a pure emotional feeling, nor is it disconnected from that intellect either.
To find a way out of this situation, the best description of Love is the consciousness of love. As I understand it, well, for me it is a state or level of consciousness that could be considered Love.
How to feel it, how to trace it in oneself. Well, from my experience, the consciousness of love is the least distorted in nature. It derives from the Second Distortion. And by virtue of the fact that it is a very primordial distortion, then, in the situation in which we are on this Planet, it is Love that will be the least distorted thing anyway for us, whatever we can only come across in our lifes.
Therefore, from this Earth perspective, we can say that Love is devoid of distortion. And that’s how I feel it too, it is in me and wants to strike out through me, all I have to do is to get rid of all thought and emotional distortions to touch the perfect distortion-free Love by raising my level of consciousness, during and in result of this process, to achieve the consciousness of love.
Still another way in which I present Love to myself is the one close to love consciousness, only as if, it is the same, however from a second perspective, as if it were the other side of the same medal (the medal of Love).
Well, it is something like this, that I perceive it similar to how the Confederation perceives a person (they gave sugesstion in this that I related to the Love), and it is: a body/spirit/mind complex. I related this to Love, and considered that Love in that case can be called the hidden sense resulting from simultaneously 1) physical experience, 2) feeling, and 3) mental work, which corresponds to 1) body, 2) spirit, 3) mind.
Love is not purely a feeling and is not purely knowledge or information (such a representation of love like only knowledge/information, by the way, is psychopathic, since psychopaths do not feel love, they are able to describe and understand it only in relation to knowledge and information).
Love, in such a case, is not a purely intellectual understanding, nor a mere feeling, but love is a synthesis of physical sensation, emotional sensation and intellectual conclusion. Such a “one bit of love” is a one deeper meaning brought out by the body, emotions and intellect at the same time and in multiplicity builds the consciousness of love. This is the way I see it.
love it,
It is also a separation
Thank you for sharing that K.K.33
I wonder how would 4/5-density service to self entity express love? It should be a kind of love to self as a contradiction to others. I find it interesting because partially positively polarized entity has such love in him/her as a negative part and hence need to balance it. And when service to others stopping the service for ingesting foodstuffs that’s probably service to self love. I’m not saying completely sure.
I think love is connected to polarization and polarization is connected to the spirit, so describing it in terms of mind or body leads to distortion of description. That’s why our words are not certain enough.
It’s hard to relate to the higher densities. However, on a human level, I see it this way:
In the case of STS, love is shown only to oneself and this takes on the expression of hubris and arrogance, for example. STS people on the path of spiritual development may think that they are some kind of beacon for humanity, that their place in society is somehow special, that is loving oneself in an STS way.
Another example of STS love that is only directed at oneself, also related to pride and arrogance, may be to see oneself as having attained some higher level in spiritual development and having an above-average understanding of things, phenomena, other people. At an advanced level of STS self-love, they may consider that they should be admired and following by others.
I think that this kind of STS love could be considered as a lack of true love or negatively polarized love.
For STO it will be different. In STS love is shown only to oneself and is a distorted form of love. In STO love is shown to oneself and also will be shown to others (so in two directions, not one - there is a balance then), also this form of love is different and is less distorted.
Instead of pride and arrogance, there is unconditional love shown to others and toward oneself. The importance of unconditional to others is more often addressed, but less often to oneself. However, if it is non-egoistic love for oneself, unconditional love, this corresponds to positively polarized love.
I think it is important to direct love to oneself and to others, in a 50/50 relationship would be best. This is taken from the fact that the lack of this balance can reverberate into an inappropriate attitude towards others and oneself and ultimately drift towards STS.
I believe that in order to build a positive polarity, it is necessary to give love in both directions, to the self and to others, provided that it is a love based on the principles of unconditional love (which is far from the negatively polarized STS love, which can be combined with narcissism and pride).
Yet, to build a contrast to the previous STS examples. For STO, we could say that it would be loving through consider other people as important as oneself and to support them in the fact that they all, including each of them individually, can be a beacon for humanity if steps are taken by them in that direction.
In the case of knowledge and the level of development, I think STO rather tends to thinking in love that we all in a sense have the same knowledge, only some of us have not taken steps to materialize it in deeds and words in this current reality. As for being followers, they don’t follow anyone, nor do they seek followers. If anything, they cooperates in balance by teaching others and learning from them at the same time.
I’ve found partial description of love. Love is heart of evolution of the spirit.
52.11 Unity, love, light, and joy; this is the heart of evolution of the spirit.
The phrase “love is” shows up 889 times in the Confederation channelings. Here are a handful of quotes which seem most appropriate.
In a technical sense:
[Love] is an energy of a high nature which precedes those distinctions which make individual experiences possible. 2016-0416
In an essential sense:
For if we offered only the simple truth, without any storytelling, then we would say over and over again, “All is one. That one thing is unconditional love. Love is the Creator. Love is the Creator’s house and love is the nature of all beings in that house.” 2008-0315
The idea that love is “all” or “infinite” is expressed repeatedly over time by Confederation sources (see this recent thread on oneness for discussion on unity and oneness):
…love is one, and love is all. These words may seem contradictory, yet that is because you have taken these concepts and you have separated them within your physical illusion. My friends, realize that within the creation there are no separations. All things are indeed united and can never in any way be truly separate of each other. 1975-1123
Accept this, my friends: love is all. Love is omnipotent. Love is Jesus, and love is you. And all together, all of these loves combined, all of these beings combined, are the Creator. From the Creator we have come, and we are manifestations of His thoughts of love. His love being equal for all enables all to achieve the same. 1975-1221_02
Love is infinite. 1976-0215
For love is love. Love created all that there is. 1997-1119
One amazing section describes the balance between love and wisdom:
There is no right or wrong path. There are two poles to the love and the light of the infinite Creator. One is love, the other wisdom. Love is a female vibration, and wisdom male, if you would use those terms. We feel it will be helpful to you to understand what we are saying for us to use those terms. It is more characteristic of the male energy to be wise, and more characteristic of the female energy to be loving. Neither will be of service in becoming a channel for the love and the light of the infinite Creator without some balancing agent of the other. And in order to achieve mastery, the two must come into balance so that each male has the female energy totally balanced within his nature, and the female the male energy totally balanced within her nature…This is the true yoga, for the female and the male to work out together the lessons of love and wisdom. For love without wisdom is wasted on foolish things. And wisdom without love is hollow, and foolish also. 1980-1109
When speaking on love, one can say so much yet so little.
lovely thread - much to ponder and dance with- thanks all
Hello lovers, soup here- my first of ever sharing here. I may have shared way long ago on Bring4th shortly after Carla passed away. as Carla would say,
“Where’s the love?”
I’m not sure writing about the Law of One is helpful, because people are meant to be confused, but I try -I try to help people every day, as an indication of a successful day. I also try to humble myself, humility as a spiritual virtue. I find writing in such forums can be extremely alienating, but maybe Carla had a good idea.
I typically avoid forums and work off grid. I’m hyper sensitive and get swamped with cosmic energy. I have hope for few people but try to help them earnestly when I find them, I simply try to focus on helping one, one person as the infinite creator. Such focus helps me discriminate one person from a pluralism of one.
But often it feels like futility. We are brothers and sisters of sorrow - but we try anyways. Today is weird, contemplating Trinity from the movie Oppenheimer reflects the Trimurti, a Vedic concept. Trinity as over-kill, a nuclear concept.
I ponder Freedom, Love, and Wisdom as a modern form of the Holy Trinity, because without Freedom, there is no chance of pursuing Love or Wisdom. If we can bliss out then balance that with wisdom, we’re living the dream,
but maybe that’s over-kill, better to try and help one person, one being, one infinite creator, Helping may be simpler than juggling three high principles.
For many people, they just want to experience better sex. Maybe this seems a real unconscious desire of all densities, even Ra. To experience greater states of sex, or love, or nirvana, or bliss or whatever your idea is about this - we might either evolve or devolve depending upon how we choose to place significance to our experience.
Ra seems no exception. Consider the human genome as a consequence of intelligent design. It’s not far fetched. Maybe our biological existence is consequence of a Demi-god, something short of perfect unity. And think of some of the creative rational for that as factoring as impetus of humanity’s biological existence.
When I ponder such things, and I am odd, so don’t believe everything you read - I come up with this idea: God created humanity to better accept the repugnant. That is, a high 6th density that desires to evolve into greater experiences of sex or love or whatever get’s one off - may need to follow a path of humility to get to that, to accept the repugnant as a path to unity arriving at some greater pleasure.
And this idea goes beyond paradox of repulsive pleasure, which explains so much going on in this world. As we grow less repugnant, we might grow more highly acceptable, more highly orgasmic and yes - more lovable. Oh but paradoxically, more proud in need of humility. Oddly, as we grow more pleasurable - we may indeed evolve in ways beneficial, beyond illusions of separation because we can better accept that which is repulsive.
And so it’s these few people on the planet who recognize pleasure as important that infatuate me, I want to love and support them in chance sexual energy transfers actually do help people fulfill some primal desire, that they may in fact experience all things desired and benefit so, go figure.
No, I’m not a yellow Ray sleaze, promiscuous or anything of that sort. I’m more light body than dark, more humble than cocky, more solitude then social, more marginalized than status quo, But the question remains, can I write here a while - can I find a place to express love in some far out way that Carla might say, - is there some potential people might reach for to experience greater states of love? And by that experience, might they transform to greater states of being in congruence with cosmic intent?
I doubt in my participation, I hold low confidence for myself or humanity in general; in many ways I’m surrendered to the idea of divine agency of having better chance than anything I can muster. Please pardon me, if there’s one thing I value more than anything in the universe, it may be - the law of one. Woe seem we.
The anecdote regarding mdma and Burning Man was more a general, intended to be humorous example, that I’m sure many have experienced at those sorts of events while on empathogens.
I would like to attend, but not without my mate and she gets migraines from anything above 75 Fahrenheit. And while I’m more fortunate than the majority of the planet, I’m far from wealthy in United States terms. The money for an RV, gas, tickets, etc has more “sto” purposes.
While I’d like to see the art installations in person, doubt ye not my ability to binge on polypharmika anywhere and anytime. My higher self is intent on keeping me in this awful, tedious illusion, so I seem to lack the ability to fatally overdose. Uh, I mean… beautiful and meaningful illusion that I’m totally grateful for even when sober laughs nervously … definitely wouldn’t rather be non corporeal with no annoyances or painful lessons to deal with- I don’t suppose anyone knows any spirits that would powerlevel my Earth avatar for me?