What is love?

[earthdreamer]

As a young child I absorbed some Christian teachings and I actually wrote a little diary entry (age 7, hilarious handwriting!) about a boy I didn’t like. ‘I don’t like Eliot. But I love him in God’s way.’ Love was the concept I internalized, trying to reconcile my bothered conscience.

A concept that I heard in 7th grade when I was 12 years old also appealed to my conscience. ‘What you dislike in another person is what you dislike in yourself’. I still find it useful to temper judgmental feelings that arise.

I struggled with my religious convictions as I recognized hypocrisy in fellow church members and a growing cynical attitude within my view of the social world. But I loved the friendships I shared and I loved my family and animals and nature, and many teachers, so the world was not intolerable 😉

I searched for romantic love as a young adult but I wouldn’t really connect that search with love so much as personal exploration. Through art and reading, music and relatable peers, my search for ‘truth’ and the nature of ‘reality’ was my soulful journey. Ultimately I decided I was ready for ‘Real Love’ and I was blessed to find my partner for that ( ongoing ) experience.

Nowadays I am still inspired to feel Love’s upliftment by my parents example. 62 years together and my dad’s well of love and patience is relentlessly tested by my mother’s disease, Alzheimer’s. Truly, without love, life would be hell.

So it seems to me that Love holds lessons, or creative potential, forgiveness and understanding, until my last breath (and maybe then some).

Happy Valentines Day 2024, y’all 💗🙏💗🙂🌷💗

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by earthdreamer (here)

Happy Valentines Day 2024, y’all 💗🙏💗🙂🌷💗

Bumping this!!

[mountain_jim]

Posted by earthdreamer (here)
As a young child I absorbed some Christian teachings and I actually wrote a little diary entry (age 7, hilarious handwriting!) about a boy I didn’t like. ‘I don’t like Eliot. But I love him in God’s way.’ Love was the concept I internalized, trying to reconcile my bothered conscience.

A concept that I heard in 7th grade when I was 12 years old also appealed to my conscience. ‘What you dislike in another person is what you dislike in yourself’. I still find it useful to temper judgmental feelings that arise.

I struggled with my religious convictions as I recognized hypocrisy in fellow church members and a growing cynical attitude within my view of the social world. But I loved the friendships I shared and I loved my family and animals and nature, and many teachers, so the world was not intolerable 😉

I searched for romantic love as a young adult but I wouldn’t really connect that search with love so much as personal exploration. Through art and reading, music and relatable peers, my search for ‘truth’ and the nature of ‘reality’ was my soulful journey. Ultimately I decided I was ready for ‘Real Love’ and I was blessed to find my partner for that ( ongoing ) experience.

Nowadays I am still inspired to feel Love’s upliftment by my parents example. 62 years together and my dad’s well of love and patience is relentlessly tested by my mother’s disease, Alzheimer’s. Truly, without love, life would be hell.

So it seems to me that Love holds lessons, or creative potential, forgiveness and understanding, until my last breath (and maybe then some).

Happy Valentines Day 2024, y’all 💗🙏💗🙂🌷💗

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)
What is "love"?

I don't think it can be explained in words. Perhaps only in deeds.

Like these.

https://x.com/TheFigen_/status/1892987330601820366

[rgray222]

I used to think love was the most important virtue/emotion in the world but over the years I have changed my opinion. I think that relationships are the most important thing in 'this world'. Relationships give life purpose and meaning. Good relationships foster love for friends, family, romance and community. Good relationships keep people civil with each other, they keep people tuned into life and society. Good relationships bring about a solid understanding between different races and cultures. But on a much broader scale, good relationships can prevent war and bring people together. Maybe in the afterlife when we are not restricted by our physical bodies, and our minds and emotions connect us all, love might be all we need in the collective (heaven).

[Rawhide68]

This subject deserves attention, more now than ever I feel.

The reason I post this now is this wonderful, thoughtful, and scary quote from MLK

“I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.”

Martin Luther King Jr

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

A great quote, and I agree with it heartily. Jimi Hendrix did too, see my signature:

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
~ Jimi Hendrix

[Harmony]

I really enjoy the feeling when I read the following Ram Dass quote:


“The greatest thing you can do for another being is to provide the unconditional love that comes from making contact with that place in them that is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being here, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow.”

— Ram Dass

[rgray222]

I am not sure why I felt so strongly that this video needed to be on this thread. I suspect someone or many someones need to hear and see it.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hjM4SWoJ59E

[Vangelo]

Posted by Harmony (here)
I really enjoy the feeling when I read the following Ram Dass quote:


“The greatest thing you can do for another being is to provide the unconditional love that comes from making contact with that place in them that is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being here, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow.”

— Ram Dass

Thank you Harmony for sharing this Ram Dass quote. It does a great job of describing a phenomenon I am familiar with called "Witnessing". I will borrow this quote because I often have a difficult time trying to describe what witnessing is to others.

I have been lucky enough to have seen the extraordinary healing power of this phenomenon. The really amazing thing about witnessing is that both the witnesser (the person witnessing another) and the witnessee (the person being witnessed) benefit from the experience.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Vangelo (here)

Posted by Harmony (here)
I really enjoy the feeling when I read the following Ram Dass quote:

“The greatest thing you can do for another being is to provide the unconditional love that comes from making contact with that place in them that is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being here, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow.”

— Ram Dass

Thank you Harmony for sharing this Ram Dass quote. It does a great job of describing a phenomenon I am familiar with called "Witnessing". I will borrow this quote because I often have a difficult time trying to describe what witnessing is to others.

I have been lucky enough to have seen the extraordinary healing power of this phenomenon. The really amazing thing about witnessing is that both the witnesser (the person witnessing another) and the witnessee (the person being witnessed) benefit from the experience.

~~~

Years ago I read an account of Healing at Lourdes which I've never forgotten. (I seem to remember clearly that it was in Michael Talbot's inspired and important book The Holographic Universe — in the library here — but I've never been able to find that particular section.)

The story was reported by researchers into remarkable Lourdes Healings. They found that there had been many such inexplicable, 'miraculous' Healings — but in almost all cases, these had occurred when the Lourdes visitor had been asking for Healing for someone else.

[RunningDeer]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Years ago I read an account of Healing at Lourdes which I've never forgotten. (I seem to remember clearly that it was in Michael Talbot's inspired and important book The Holographic Universe — in the library here — but I've never been able to find that particular section.)

The story was reported by researchers into remarkable Lourdes Healings. They found that there had been many such inexplicable, 'miraculous' Healings — but in almost all cases, these had occurred when the Lourdes visitor had been asking for Healing for someone else.

FYI: This copy of The Holographic Universe is easier to read because it's not a photocopy of the book.

[Michel Leclerc]

In one of Saikaku Ihara’s stories about love between samurais, the fight between two sword-fighters is given up by one of them saying to the other: “Kill me, because you are more beautiful”.

The feeling of love is the realisation that the beloved‘s death is more unbearable than one’s own.

The readiness to sacrifice one’s own life for the other ensues. The ultimate spiritual experience of being is to die for the one whose physical experience one wishes to never end.

Bodhisattva, fresh incarnation.

All forms of love arise, derive, from this. Motherly and fatherly love for their children is of this nature. Giving up one’s life so that another concentration camp inmate may live. Jesus’ final resolve in the olive garden.

The man who jumps into the water and drowns to save his dog.

[Vangelo]

Posted by rgray222 (here)
I used to think love was the most important virtue/emotion in the world but over the years I have changed my opinion. I think that relationships are the most important thing in 'this world'. Relationships give life purpose and meaning. Good relationships foster love for friends, family, romance and community. Good relationships keep people civil with each other, they keep people tuned into life and society. Good relationships bring about a solid understanding between different races and cultures. But on a much broader scale, good relationships can prevent war and bring people together. Maybe in the afterlife when we are not restricted by our physical bodies, and our minds and emotions connect us all, love might be all we need in the collective (heaven).

The Witnessing phenomenon I described here is very much about relationship. The act is quite simple but the connection is quite intense and pure. It is called witnessing because it requires the witnesser to see the other person without filter or bias. For me, this is about being in a state of unconditional or unadulterated love with that person (i.e. in relationship with them).

The witnessee is just being themselves in whatever state they may be in (i.e., anger, chaos, joy, wonderment, etc.... Bill's comment here about someone receiving the miracle of healing reminded me of 2 things. The first is that, the witnessee does indeed heal but it is a small, incremental healing as opposed to a miraculous healing like those that occurred at Lourdes. The second is that it is also about growth and expansion. The best example of witnessing of this type is when a very young child is in a state of fantasy and comes to an adult (or even another child) and shares their fantasy with that other person. Witnessing occurs as the adult suspends judgement and is with that child without interruption and judgement of what that child says or does (this is such a beautiful thing to watch). Witnessing is not occurring if/when that adult interferes with that child's fantasy. In those cases, the adult is usually trying to correct the child to see the reality as defined by the adult. Unconditional love is not present and the relationship that was sparked between the adult and the child is broken.