And don't forget - movies!!!

Romantic love is oft talked about but what about that unconditional love that we are supposed to receive from family and partners. Sometimes the idea is more tragic than truth.

I find that "ideals" about love are tragic and dangerous. We can pit ourselves against an ideal that we cannot live up to, and then find ourselves being "down on ourselves" -- actually, practicing self-hate which makes us, in tern, less able to give love. For it may be true, that we cannot love yourselves, we may not be able to love anyone else.

I agree. Love is born of acceptance and often we are unable to accept ourselves and find accepting others impossible.

Love is made easy by acceptance, but where it comes from don't think we can tell (and hope we never know). The issue of "acceptance" can become a complicated one, too- very often people accept less (in the way of romantic love) than they are capable of achieving. Suppose it depends on the way one is constituted...

Good point. However, even when someone is achieving less than their potential r (oops) to accept them is to love them or, I suppose, vice versa.

Yes, I believe that's true. And I would never demean the value of any kind of love. And would tend to agree, too, that the concept of "idealistic love" which endures in the popular imagination can be emotionally destructive...Do believe in, though (and can attest to) the existence of high spiritual/intellectual romantic love- and know it, too, to be a most rare state of being (the "old, high way" of it Yeats spoke of)...

the old high way or old highway? Semantics can be so much fun! and as to the rest... I concur. Another question for you... should we ever EXPECT love? And please don't give me the "only if you love yourself", I got that much. But from parents, friends, spouses -- should we expect it or just be grateful when it exists?

My first instinct was to say that expecting a thing devalues it, innately- but then realized I don't believe that at all (must be some errant 80's est-like voice rattling around in my head)...Yeah, assuming one is a person capable of giving love, one should expect to receive it- don't you think?

And it is, of course, the "old, high way of love..." (it's from "Adams Curse", one of his most beautiful poems)

"Expecting" sounds so selfish but yes, I agree, occassionally one should expect love in some reciprocal sense.

Do you give love unconditionally?

Not if you're expecting a return, therein lies my problem. That, and the fact that my head and heart can't interface.

Interfacing head and heart is over-rated...Just be glad that you have a functioning heart, and are able to experience love, even it's sadness, because beauty dwells even there, if you'll just see it... And didn't mean to sound as if I ascribed to the Ayn Rand school of human relations- just meant that very often- in every context of love, in fact- I've seen situations where people subsist in relationships that are terribly one-sided...Seems to be awfully depleting, and ultimately destructive, to participate in such a relationship, and would think one would be entitled to expect at least some form, some level, of reciprocation...(?)

WER, you have pointed out a mojor flaw in the utopian love theory. If you give love unconditionally, you should not EXPECT a return. But, if you are involved in a relationship where unconditional love was a premis, then you should get that return (whilst not expecting it). It is difficult when happiness is contingent upon the way someone else treats you. It shouldn't be, but it is. I agree with nick here. Just be grateful that you have the ability to gove and receive love. It is hard to give when you haven't received in awhile, so just do what you can. Loving someone else should always bring some happiness regardless of whether or not the love is returned.

As in the act of loving being it's own reward?

And what about when giving love causes pain to the one being loved?

Yes, Paul. Well, if it causes pain (and I'm assuming not physical) then the recipient is unfortunately unable to receive. No one but the receipient can change that. Loving someone harder who doesn't want/know how to be loved just won't work.

AKA, "Pepe LePew syndrome"...

So how does one walk away?

Carefully. In a way that preserves a friendship if possible.

Does that really happen often? Former lovers maintaining friendships, I mean? Never happened for me- not from acrimony, necessarily (sometimes from acrimony, though)- more from a sense of self-protection, I think (derived, perhaps, from the practical implications of rubbing elbows with overly-informed, semi-hostile, potentially dangerous people)... Think the most important aspect of walking away is the road one takes to do it; The high road requires honesty, self-possession, and at least the pretense of sensitivity...Doesn't guarantee your safe-passage, but does permit you to retain your self-respect...

Honesty with yourself or with the other person?

With both I would think, I get along pretty well with most of my x's.

With both. And the honesty should include whether or not a friendship is desireable. Frequently I found myself looking for a friendship with an ex that I had no desire nor energy to maintain. I felt maybe guilty or sorry or that if we had a tether to each other, the change wouldn't be so difficult. I was usually wrong. The emotional energy needed was more than I could take. Look at the decision carefully, with compassion and love in your heart but be honest with yourself and another. And once you make a decision, do what is right for yourself.

That kind of honesty usually taxes ALL of my emotional energy...it's unfortunate that doing the right thing must be so depleting...

I suppose the bright side is that you are frontloading the emotional energy drain. Because if you were to continue with someone who wasn't meeting your needs and possibly taking more out of you than anything else, you'd be on slow emotional drain for a long time.

Yes, it costs less paying cash...on the installment plan, it's the interest that kills you...

with love the law of conversation of energy does not apply. sometimes a little goes a long way; sometimes a lot does nothing at all.

very good point.

Americ, If we accept that we are to love everything unconditionally, do we love our hate? If we then love our hate and our love... does the duality disappear, and what replaces it. Hint: This could be a trick question.

confusion!!! Welcome Steven! Unconditional love, IMHO is a misnomer in most contexts. We spoke early on of receiving unconditional love versus getting it. If you give unconditional love and expect something back, it really is no longer unconditional. And concerning hate... hate is a passion, love is a passion. Is it not conceivable to believe that somehow they are borne of similar emotions?

IMHO, unconditional love has no conditions at all. Not even giving it or receiving it. It just is. It comes from within and emanates outward. If you have ever felt it , you know that it can't be given to anything. It is unconditional and it refuses to be controlled for the ego's benefit. As to love and passion in the traditional sense, I think they are different intensities of the same thing. They get confused because they are generally triggered (and judged) in different ways.

But...really...what is love? Is love just this feeling between lovers? Why?...I hear rumors that Love is transcendant; that it holds the universe together; that it is the beginning and end; that it gives meaning to human life. (i wonder about "meaning"...perhaps...it is time to open a new topic on meaning... truth, love, meaning -- philosophy is rich.

Perhaps it should suffice to say that love is justification...(the only justification)...

Maybe that should be more like ultimate justification, because revenge, death penalty, etc. are all justifiable and rarely are they all done in a loving manner.

I believe the meaning of love is in the eye of each beholder. It is different for everyone . If love had the same meaning for everyone, where would the diversity of life be? I would guess that philosophy might narrow considerably. For if we did not each see things differently... there might be nothing to get philosophical about. Perhaps Love is simply the fuel that we all create our different realities/perspectives with. When we get close to it... it feels good.

Steven said: "When we get close to it... it feels good." But sometimes when we get close things get very complex and they just "fall apart". I am not sure that love is either postive or negative.

i think love is always very complex and part of being in love is getting close how are you going to know if it is really love , if you don't get involved and find all of the positive , as well as the NEGATIVE??????????

To change sides... If it does feel good, why do we need to know that it is love? Maybe we destroy the possibilities by labelling...

From my experience, wer, I think if I feel compelled to question what it is, I've pretty much answered the question for myself, implicitly (but my vision would be considered quixotic, by many...guess it is a "personal truth" kind of thing...)...

Wer said; "Maybe we destroy the possibilities by labelling..." I think everybodies label is different, but I would certainly agree that if someones label is confining, then their possibilities are confined without trauma (positive or negative), to bust it up.

Perhaps, love, is unbounded, or unbounding. Take this "being in love". The best thing about it is that it rips off all our normal boundaries. We, for a moment, experience the world in mystic union. We get a glimpse of total enlightenment, perhaps....

We get a glimpse of total enlightenment, perhaps.... Perhaps we get a glimpse of what it would be like fulltime...if we loved everything as much as we love that new relationship. Back and Forth, Back and Forth. Limits no limits, back and forth. We'll get it sooner or later. You know, just let go.... aaahhhhh, before you die.

Perhaps love,as well as its discovery and desire for it, is a seed which exists in all of us. That seeds purpose, to emerge into questions and experiences that make us grow from the shell of who we "think" we are, into the greater vision of "all that is".

I think that sometimes love is very painful because love makes us grow beyond ourselves like a worm during into a butterfly or a snake shedding its skin love makes us drop the shell of our ego not is not always easy with great love can turn into ecstaty (sp?)

Has it ever struck you that love is the only rule without exeptions in life? I mean, it is ALWAYS rewarded, either with assent or with an inward, secret contempt.

death and love seem to be the only 2 rules without exceptions, and they are both intimately linked, imo.

so is change...... welcome riette!

hmmm...never considered contempt a reward... maybe I should re-contemplate my life...

Contempt IS a kind of reward, Wer. For if the person you love loves YOU not, he does you a favour (perverse as it may seem on the outside) by making it known, and sparing you future heartache. Is contempt not kinder than a Judas' kiss? It is good to be here!

Ahhh Riette, some of us believe ignorance is bliss! And a reward unto itself! (Welcome again!)

How can ignorance be bliss? In what way? I'm quite ignorant about some things, and it kills me! Just the very idea that someone else might know something I don't. Do you think it a form of vanity on my part?

Sorry, submitted too soon. I would never want to be ignorant of my lover's feeling for me, never! Sure it will be bliss, but sooner or later one will find out if the person does not love us. Will it not hurt so much more, if you have had all that time to grow accustomed, akin to him? No, I'm all for a swift, painful stroke to the heart at the early stages - I can recover from that, but from a long ongoing love affair where I am the desperate one? I don't know, but I think it should be unbearable.

just a figure of speech that some of us prefer to default to occassionally!

HA-HA! Caught you!

No, actually - I think you caught ME! Damn.

*laugh*

The way you behave sexually, is an expression of your inner personality. It is not a thing apart. It is a powerful force because it is blended inextricably with emotion, with what we call the love-impulse. It has the greatest power for good in our lives when we understand it. It has the greatest power for inflicting suffering if we abuse the physical or neglect the emotional aspect. --Frank S. Caprio, M.D.

Well said, Frank! It is so true though. I find it a shame that one does not hear about the pain that love can inflict when one is young. All you see in the years before reaching adulthood, oh, from a YOUNG age is Hollywood films, where the pain is portrayed almost as pleasure, and all you read and hear talk of love as the ultimate happiness. No-one ever tells you of how hellish love can be, how hurtful. Then you meet the 'right' person, thinking that your life will be sheer bliss from now on . . . . My God! When I think back about the first year or two of my relationship with my husband, I shudder, and think that I would never want to go through it again. If something were to seperate us now, I wonder if I'd have the guts to start a serious love affair again. I don't know. When one loves and be loved, you suddenly have so much power, and so much power over YOU. It takes so much time to learn how to use this power without abusing it, both ways, and during that time you feel like you've been run over by a rain or something.

Train, that is.

from Kierkegaard: But the true lover never falls away from "love"; therefor for him there can never come a breach; for love abides. Still in a relationship between two, can one prevent the breach if the other breaks it? It must indeed seem that one of the two is sufficient to break the relationship, and if it is broken, then there is a breach. In a certain sense this is indeed true, but if the lover still does not fall away from "love," he can prevent the breach, he can effect the miraculous; for if he abides, the breach can never really be brought about. Through abiding (and in this abiding the lover is in a covenant with the eternal) he retains superiority over the past, so he transforms what in the past and through it, is a breach, into a possible future relationship. If viewed in connection with the past, the breach becomes with every day and with every year clearer and clearer; but the lover who abides, belongs, through abiding, to the future, to the eternal, and from the viewpoint of the future the breach is not a breach; on the contrary, it is a possibility. But to that the forces of eternity belong; and therefore the lover who abides, must abide in "love," otherwise the past, nevertheless, gradually acquires power, and then gradually the breach becomes evident. Oh, and to this, belong the powers of eternity, in the decisive moment, immediately to transform the past into the future! Yet it has this power of abiding. (which, of course, is different from what I usually see in such situations, but it does point out that being told by the one you love that they love you not, sometimes just doesn't really make a difference...)

So you and Kiergegaard are saying that it is alright to, if you love someone, and that person does not love you, cling to that person like a pain in the backside? That's not love, that's selfish. Love is to love a person enough to give him his freedom if that is what he desires most.

I never realized how much Kierkegaard and Marcel Proust had in common. Thank you for sharing, wer. What about the evolving nature of love; in a marriage for instance, do you love the spouse as they are, or for the sake of the man/woman they were?

I think it will depend on how the nature of that specific love evolves. In some cases you will love the person more than before, and change with them, grow together and closer together. And in others you will become like strangers, and end up feeling resentment, if the person undergoes changes that degrade all the things you fell in love with in the first place.

any hints on how to speed up that positive evolution... sometimes I feel like I've lost my best friend...

Mr. B being a pain? No, I have no idea. I think there's alot of ups and downs within this love evolution. We experience them too, but don't you also feel on the whole that you have both changed in some ways, and for the better? I mean, at first when we were together, these ups and down were almost like flying up and falling down from the Everest, making me feel as if I could never climb the mountain again. Now it is more of a rolling landscape, and therefore I think it must be good. Sometimes we are best friends, and sometimes we get annoyed with one another, but we never lose each other complete anymore. It feels positive. But to be honest, Stacey, I don't know if I'd ever have the guts into a relationship of this kind again if something should seperate us. It is just so hard to reach a point where both partners are satisfied and contented. I mean, we have reached it now (I think!), and I am very happy in my marriage, but, oh, even three years ago it was very hard. In heaven one day, and in hell the next. I don't ever want to go through that again - being miserable alone is better than being miserable. To me anyway.

Miserable because of someone else, that should read. Sorry, didn't sleep last night.

thanks Riette. somehow it really helps to hear that the evolution is still possible even after three years. Yes, we've grown (a lot) but I still hate the ridiculous ups and downs. Seemingly meaningless fights that are so catastrophic!

Oh, I know just what you mean. I don't mind the fighting so much, it is what comes afterwards that really makes one unhappy. That empty feeling, and the way men tend to grow so cold, and hold a grudge for weeks on end. But I don't let Mr. C get away with that anymore, because it would be unfair on our kids to just be angry with each other the whole time. Now I just fight him past the point of anger. I mean, I know our marriage will probably not break up over it, and so I just take it so far that the original source of difference pales into oblivion, and the arguing becomes so ridiculous that he has to laugh. It works more often than not - if you can get to the point of laughing within the confrontation, it is usually alot easier afterwards. We used to not talk to each other for up to four weeks on end. Now we don't stop talking at all, and the slight aloofness lasts only for as long as we both can live without making love. And we are both much happier on the whole, I think.

Just playing a game here with words. Don't know what it's gonna do. Don't know how it'll play. Let's say love is unconditional. And I don't know what that's like or what that really means, etc. But let's say that a relationship that is conditional is one where what's going on in the interactions, or exchanged behaviors, is laden with motives, impure thoughts, unfinished business, expectations, determinations, emotional reactions that are over-emotional, fear, compulsive controlling dispositions and demeanors, etc. So let's say that I want to uncondition all these conditions in order to find true love. So I say to myself, okay the mind games are over --- not that they will be --- but it's just my attempt to move in a new direction. So I realize that the only way to uncondition conditions is to first understand the conditions. Impartial self-observation in the very midst of the worst of the worst conditions, as they kick in and push my buttons: that's the key to learning how to love. I like how Jodie Foster's Silence of the Lambs character says to Hannibal Lector something like: "You're not so good at turning your brilliant powers of perception on yourself, are you?" Hardly anyone is, and hardly any love lives in the world. Other stuff is called love. It's not. Conditioning is so subtle, so difficult to clearly see, feel one's way into, get to really know and understand. It makes us feel way uncomfortable to look at, so we don't. We push it outa sight, into our subconscious. And then we vent, and/or we work different forms of appeasing tactful kindfulness or longing or hooded happy-to-see-you pronenesses into our ways of being with each other. Watered-down love ain't real, it's merely symbiotic. Listening for truth with spontaneous interest and deep silence, that kind of creative senstivity --- that's what is real. Love emerges. It emerges out of that. But then: words...is all this is....a'nutter game o' words. What words do you have now?

Who? Me? Right, here goes. I think what you talk about is one hundred percent inevitable in ANY relationship, no matter how hard both partners listen for the truth, or how much they simply care - oh, even if it is a long, long friendship that takes a romantic turn. The reason for it is that loving makes us vulnerable and sensitive in a way that friendship can't. When you fall in love with somebody you have suddenly something precious in your hand, and you know that this gift can be lost, you FEAR the losing of it. And that is when the weakest parts of ourselves become exposed, and therefore evident in both lovers, and the pedestals they put each other on start to shake, because when you love somebody . . . well, one just cannot think so absurdly well of oneself as the lover thinks of the person loved, do you know what I mean? So you end up having to love not only the person, but accept their weaknesses, their faults, their fears, their memories - the difficult things. And this is the point where many a relationship shatters, I think. I am still not sure how ANY rela- tionship gets past that point, but it takes time and perserverance and patience and pain and pleasure and acceptance. Only when you have been through all that, when Love has shown her vehement claws, stung and given both partners a great many blows, can one start listening for the truth, and develop sensitivity towards one another. What emerges is not so much love, I think (for that is there from the moment you realize that another person can hurt you), but TOGETHERNESS.

Riette, the "you" was meant as the general 'you', as far as whether anyone might have further words on the matter. I goofed there and should've worded it better. I liked your words very much.....and I started to think of how I accept a person's faults. But that made me think of social conditioning, because of how we so unconsciously (like osmosis) accept the tons of subtle, complicated conditioning that we do. I thought of how my conditioning is and was accepted by me, and then I thought of how any love I then feel becomes conditional, instead of unconditional, as a result. I really liked how you connected up fear and hurt. You're right, love does make me real vulnerable. It's so strange how the vulnerability turns into defensive self-protection: because of the fear and the hurt and the weirdness of seeing the other's faults and limitations and patterns and blindnesses and insensitivities. That's the point where I adjust too much, and look (and listen) too little. I can sorta see what it is I do: I accept how I don't understand what's going on with the other person, and I sorta get used to that. Over time, it changes into managing to take certain opportunities to see deeper into the troubling aspects of what bothers me about her/him, and what's so problematic there. I come away noticing that the hurt did hurt so much because it threw me off my course: the course that my my will and pride are so used to coasting on, like a momentum of some sort that gets interrupted. It seems that what I noticed was that the other person's stuff itself didn't bother me at all. It was just that their stuff somehow effectively threw me off my familiar ways of being me. When I took special care to listen in to their bothersomeness, it actually became a mirror, and I was seeing myself through them. I am so much the same way as they are. Some appreciable amounts of tension fell off in those moments of noticing. My "love" (or feeling) was at least slightly less conditional, and more interested in wanting to be with her/him and with the flavor of the slippage into personable human passageways I'd been all along wanting to venture into and hadn't really realized it. There came that interconnected inadvertant volition. It was moving in and through it all. As you said, Riette: togetherness. Pretty alive, too. It's so funny that the things the other person was doing that seemed to make me impatient and upset (because I wanted something I wasn't getting, but which seemed so important at the time) could become the very things that I can actually so easily want to have --- because my experience of them suddenly shifted from petty agitation to a personal learning form of absorbed fascination. That's freeing. It unconditions.

Wow, you said that wonderfully, Gross. It is also the power one suddenly has over another person, and the power he has over you that frightens me about love. Though it did not last long I had alot of fun when I was still on my own; I thought I wanted to remain single forever. Then I woke up next to this oldish man one morning, whom I had known but for a day, and could not bear the thought of him going. I wasn't sure why or how it happened, but I just knew I did not want it to be a one night business. I still remember thinking that I wanted it to last for a month, no more, no less! But instead of telling him so, I asked him to order breakfast! But I still often wonder what it was that made me feel that way. We did not even have a single thing in common back then. Why do you think people fall in love? I mean, one does not just wake up one morning and think: good day for falling in love. So, where does it come from? Any ideas?

does it 'come from'? I thought it evolved. A creation between two people that is given direction and meaning by both as it evolves into this 'togetherness.'

I've always just found it (and then found out later it wasn't), so maybe I shouldn't answer this one afterall...

I'm gonna guess it (love) comes from the deeper instincts that feel the urge to try themselves out on this person. Like I instinctively saw that this person I met 2 years ago had real possibilities for me. To instinctively see: what is that? It's noticing that something is already going on on its own, and then feeling that desire to want to give more attention to it. Then it becomes: wanting to give more of myself to it. And what is that something that's already going on? Well, it's like opening the door and stepping out into a real fine day: but it's more than feeling good --- it's sensing that things are clicking, and you could say to people (when they ask), "I don't know why, but things are concurring right and left with my sense of well-being, and penetrating into my sense of wonder and opening it up to almost humorous levels way cool flow, to where it's runnin' smooth like a river." It's fun when that dawns on me that it's in motion, it's happening....something is reciprocating to a suddenly unburied deep-deep longing for sheer happiness. I feel secure. And frisky and resilient and ready. I can let go like I'm really willing. It's okay. It's time to see what happens in this situation when all signals are right, or almost all, or the vast majority of 'em. This is weird, too: what if she (Fay) reminded me of Dad in some way, like in a way where feelings of recaptured rapture that I had when I was 3 years old, somehow, ridiculous as this might sound, stirred from their stir....and reawakened in such a pleasingly complete way. Something or some things may recombinantly tender their way in from an unfathomable slumber and aerate the now with their own refreshed fragrant manifestation. Riette, your way of saying what you say, it's nice. It's real nice. Cuz it's direct and specific. I get the picture, and the picture is, well, it's like a movie or something. You sure do lack nothing in the way you talk, or I mean, write. Rich, really rich....people come to life. Life says: "Well, uh, thanks for comin'"

Was that flattery or a compliment, Gross? But continue, please . . . I haven't come just yet . . . ha-ha! Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. Anyway, here's my return: For a Texas man you've got an awfully nice accent. But back to the subject. I find it so intriguing, this 'opening of the door', as you put it. I wonder what it is that makes people reach out in such a way to certain others. Even now I still experience it - though, and I hasten to add, I just wonder at it, nothing more. I find it on the whole easy to make friends with most of the people I meet - men and women. But sometimes I still experience this sense of chemistry with the opposite sex. Many of them do nothing for me - I find it impossible to talk to them about things other than the weather or last week's hockey results, etc. - and it doesn't bother me or anything, it's still fun; I can still be friends with them. But once in a while I look a man in the eye, and think: yes, I like this guy. I'd like to talk to him. And when I try it out, it ALWAYS works. Like a cool drop of water on my best developed faculties. Often one does not even have alot in common with that person. It is just that slight feeling of tension, the kind of tension that creates friction, and from which a deep and pleasing warmth will ensue. One does not plan or anticipate it, it is just there. Oh, and then I wonder. What is it that make certain people attractive to certain others? What gives us our 'taste' in people?

that I believe is the real question. Leplep, when you get those initial feelings, that giddiness, that drive... you are not saying that is love, right? I truly do believe love is cultivated as you not only realize that the other has faults but you come to accept them and ultimately come to love the other because of and not in spite of this combination of strengths and weaknesses. But the first response, the first click, the seemingly sixth sense about another and the desire to want to know them better... alas, that remains an enigma (but I suspect it has something to do with pheremones (or maybe beer goggles)).

I wonder whether I'm saying anything (bold font on "anything"). It's fun to return with complete doubts to what I said, sorta scared that it made no sense at all, that it thoroughly contradicts what I have believed up to when I said it and contradicts what I went on believing right after I said it. Like maybe I did a little anachronistic dingdong right there in the middle of reality, came to my senses, and forgot I'd temporarily lost them. Hey, there's that word again: unconditional. Okay, here's what I'm fondling now: that unconditional love and attraction (or taste) are contradictory. Look out, Stacey, cuz I'm even cringing at the possibility of cultivated love being contradictory to unconditional love. This is very challenging. Is this quicksand I've just stepped into. Oh well, lotta people would just as soon see me go, anyway, probably. Hold on, now, where am I......oh, okay---the box at the race track, I just walked by it, but I think I'm goin' back and place my bets on: cultivated understanding of another (and the deepening of love that evolves) is a result of unconditional love; it's not love itself, per se. Sorta like how happiness is a result, not something that can be cultivated. This person at the shoe store at the mall said, "Jim, wanna go watch TV with me?" I'd never seen her before in my life, but I just said, "Not really, it's just that I think unconditional love is there from the very beginning and all along the way.....perhaps goosing (not really) the pheremones or the initial feelings, and perhaps fanning out into all kinds of different adventures with one other person or many, and through it all doing non-stop quiet listening to the qualities of the other's personality, where the listening is of no separation, no distance, not of time....pure and complete and direct listening, feeling, seeing..... it is a matter of relating on that level of clarity that results in understanding, and out of that understanding comes love, tenderness, affection---but the listening, the understanding, the unconditional love are all going on from the birth of truth in a person's life, and that's way before this or that attraction occurs. Conditional love is not love; it can be very nice and seem like love and show great progress over what had been going on months or years before. Unconditional love is incredibly rare. Don't you think so?" She very grimly took off one of her shoes, gave it to me, and just walked off, going kinda up and down with each step. I noticed, too, that she'd stashed a flock of pheremones in my nose. I was about to run after her, but this thought of Wolf came to my mind, and I thought why don't I just wait till now to check the couch.

Jim (?) shall we allconsider the possibly that after feelings have evolved to a certain level, the emotion/sensation/global positioning can be called love. And then, that love, is unconditional. In short, once love is achieved (through evolution) it is unconditional? (btw, i don't believe in unconditional love on too many levels. People typically expect/desire reciprocation to continue loving and that would be a condition)

I know what you mean. I walked over to this person the other day looked up close and into her eyes and said "But if you expect me to reciprocate your love, your love is now turned into control." She said, "How can you say that? That's very irresponsible of you." I turned around and looked down.... decided not to jump after all ---turned back around to them (she had turned into 2 girls and a guy) and said, "But wouldn't the responsible thing be to not expect anything of me and to just give of yourself?" Each of them said one word at a time, in perfect rotational sequence, "That makes no sense at all. Give what of myself?" I gave them my newspaper in exchange for an orphaned gorilla that made strangely moving sounds from a moving train, then I said, and i quote, "Give attention to that twinge of vexation you feel at my not reciprocating." They said, after first trying to stare me down, "Yeah, sure, that's mighty big of you. Why should I do that?" The orphan ape stopped the train, climbed up the mountain cliff, joined us in conversation, then paused, as I said, "Because you move your attention from me to you. You move from control to understanding. It's an act of real love. If I ignore you, let me. Give love a chance. If you're interested in me and in why I ignored you, go ahead and ask me why I did it. Ask me with genuine curiosity. Ask me with love and with heart-felt regard." The little orphan gorilla turned off the vacuum cleaner and immediately began to imitate a blind man walking into a bank, while saying to us, "I think what Jim's trying to say, however much like a ninny he might sound, is that instead of expectations, love has flow, it has wonder, it has time, time is just not a factor, it has warmth and beauty; instead of need, love has the atypical, it has originality, it has change and the natural movement of grace and the quickened vitalized lifeblood action of new possibilities, of aloneness and of relating exquisitely and of giving birth to the immeasurable." They said, "What could you even POSSIBLY be talking about this time? Could we have the check please? The reality check!" As easily as not, I just said, "Well, let's evolve. Let's evolve right now. Let's do it without any expectations or forcefulness or pressure of any kind. Start with what's nearest. If you're afraid of losing him/her, start with that. Evolve by finding your way into this fear of losing. Really find out about it by very quietly within being completely frank with yourself and with the questioning that could be going on. When our attention is on that, rather than on the expecting of the other person to reciprocate, you will find you're in the center of something much more real: you would be evolving, and you would be doing it now rather than postponing it any more."

sometimes you (the general you) can indeed expedite the evolution of love. because the growth is between two people, and involves the regulation of inhibitions, of risk taking, of emotional 'streaking' one can prep himself, manipulate himself to accomodate another (and yes, it does involve some manipulation!) reciprocation is frequently belated and rarely steady and consistent. and I do believe that the process is more unconscious than premeditated. and I am happy to 'wake up' and realize I am in the center of reality, in the midst of something beautiful albeit imperfect, I am in the process of evolving.

Stacey, that was really well said... since it was, I got your drift much better and easier than I might've otherwise I don't know how to put this, but it seems extremely ironic to me that I'm even standing on the same planet as you when it comes to talking about this kinda stuff. You're so good at reciprocating, yourself; you already show you've grown to an unusual level of actionability. And here I am....never even been in a relationship with anyone. Where do I get off even opening my mouth, I'm wondering with irony. I listen to you eagerly with a desire to see how it's done, cuz you don't hesitate to enjoin me with the cool knowledge you've come to. And, besides learning what I can on my own, I'm really startin' to think that this might be the best way to obtain the most helpful pointers: just counter what you say, and you'll release some more 'and-don't-forget-these, either' to reflect on and try to assimilate into my life. This next part is where it gets difficult. Something's eating away at me, trying to tell me I should know better than to say this to you. Like it's too idealistic....just ridiculous, in fact. What Nick said just a little bit ago, I'm ready for the same: I am ready to be beheaded....it would help if you could make it a clean cut with real snap to it... I'm looking down, dismally, thinkin': oh man, why do i have to get myself into these predicaments, anyway... If you could ease into your most forbearing perspective and spare me my life, dear miss, I would try to repay you with a billion dollars and your own country. And now for the disaster as it unfolds: why does reciprocating involve those (prepping, manipulating, regulating) to accommodate another's or one's own inhibitions, risk-takings, emotional streakings? BTW, it was kinda exhilarating to see those words (inhibitions, emotional streakings, prepping, risk-taking)---you're probing the real toughies, you're making it all that much more explicit---so i felt more and more in the center of reality...it was heartening...I mean great choice of words there...why not just go see Bulworth, the movie?.... It's like this, I know that what you say is absolutely right. We gotta work with what we got, do the best we can, and since we're not perfect that means let's do our imperfections on and with each other as well as we might. The more we work on it, the better we get at it, the more we'll grow and evolve together. I'm asking: why is it absolutely right or absolutely necessary? In other words, instead of prepping the one I love to be less inhibited with me (or vice versa is more like it), why not do these two other things instead: 1) ask myself, way in there on the inside, why it hurts or is irksome to be with her/him if they're inhibited, and 2) enter into their dilemma with an understanding heart and explore with them towards growth. Another thingamajig i can't stop wondering about is: if I'm accommodating, expecting, regulating, manipulating, prepping, am I learning, as in growing, evolving, or am i merely reworking the status quo into a temporary development that feels more pleasant for us?....go see Bulworth. Because, I'm thinking, if the risk-takings, inhibitions, and emotional streakings aren't deeply gone into, there's no chance for genuine growth (evolution) to take place---wanna see Bulworth?---the current state of affairs would only be remolded into a nice looking sculpture so that it isn't one that, before, neither person liked the feel of (or looks of). I guess what I'm trying to say is: love-action is the only evolution-action of true emotional growth....but there's always Bulworth....and reciprocating accommodation is like government-action (it doesn't lead to understanding; it leads to better programs, in a best case scenario, that is). Bulworth Bulworth I don't have any possessions worth passing on, so please proceed with the execution....the Lep's reasoning has leprosy written all over it....it's pathetic, I know (but Bulworth isn't). Bye, Stace, hope yer havin' a good day today (at least up till now). I wish I could find a way to be less insufferable. I would if i could. BTW, doesn't anyone else wanna cream me. Y'all can readily see how perfect a target I make. Give it yer best, ok? I mean Bulworth would. True, that's true, have ta admit.

Leplep, I'm not into antiquated methods of consequence... I'd rather go round and round! (grappling with the fatigue...) when I mentioned prepping, emotional streaking, et al... I prefer to work on these skills... Ideally (and maybe idealistically) I want a relationship with that degree of closeness and turnabout is fair play. If I hope for someone to evolve with me, I figure I must be willing to evolve. (not making much sense... I'm not usually up quite so late... perhaps I'll post more coherently tomorrow) (did you enjoy Bullworth?)

Take your time, Stacey. Sleep will re-invigorate you. You're doing fine. I'm seeing what you're saying about your preferences. Everytime you say something on this stuff, it invisibly moves me where i've never been. Do you find love easy to talk about? I don't either. Oh, you do? Don't? I'm, is this....am i....do you think we're reaching too much of an impasse, you and I, in this topic? I sorta worry about that and then get this sinking feeling like i failed you, or failed myself. I should've way sooner gotten to the heart of what concerns me the most: how to listen to myself and another from the deepest parts of where the hearing and feeling can actualize change. I should've illustrated with examples of what I mean by that. I didn't. And I didn't clearly ask you (and ask myself) how there might be a difference between evolving and not evolving. I still don't know how to ask that question in a way that asks exactly what I want to ask. I'm feeling despondent cuz i know i can't go on any further tonight....same reason...fatigue. Hope your day tomorrow is wonderfully infectious and goes smooth but with pure open-eyed chance delight. You're great. For real. Yeah.

Response 87 must mean only one thing---I clicked the submit button for 86, but then again for 87 (3 minutes later?)---and the box was empty for 87, like my brain box is now....spacin' like Goofy on Pluto, the planet (not the dog). My bed is like screamin' at me. It's really up in arms. I better go over to it and crawl in....or crawl to it and roll up in.

(i hope you finally fell into the much needed sleep!) No, Leplep, I don't think we are at an impasse at all. Specifically because 'love' can never (oops! watch that word), okay rarely (?) be the same to one as it is to another. Hmmm... lemme rephrase that. If lover were the same to all of us, then we'd not ask the question 'why are THEY together,' we'd simply smile (or grimace) and say, 'oh, they are in love.' Could we consider hate (in this topic) and avoid blasphemy?? You could believe there are different degrees of hate or simply different kinds of hate. Or, as I believe, there are different ways to hate. Can there not be than different ways to love. Some people may have to work harder at one aspect than another. Opening themselves Reciprocating Patience Acceptance Self-knowledge Ultimately I stand by the idea that love evolves but can evolve into many different colors (?) Was it the Greek people who believe in the five (?) different kinds of love? a familial love a romantic love an ultimate love ( i don't know if this has anything to do with my point at the moment but the thought just raced across my brain) Blah, blah, blah... you asked me the scariest and deepest question I have been asked in a long time... how to listen to yourself. I find this very difficult to do. Usually I involve myself in some sort of intense physical activty so that my body can be busy while my mind temporarily loses touch with reality. Often times I must be driven to that point by some sort of catastrophe. Huge arguement, death, failure and fear. Once pointed for the darkside of my brain, I am completely comfortable delving in, looking around, asking questions. I typically come out with a surreal calm. A knowing smile. But turning my head in that direction... nope. I usually must be forced there. I get pissed off because I knew if I spent more time visiting ' the dark side' (as kind of a maintainence thing) I wouldn't have to take some of the steep emotional falls I do but... I don't know how you make yourself listen. I wish I did.

Hate is conflict. Love is union. Hate has different intensities of conflict, but not different kinds, unless I'm just mincing words. I'm getting dogmatic, aren't I? It's just me yapping away. Nothing more. I know it. There's only one kind of love. In essence, love is freedom. People in my family are just people, not family. A person I would feel romantic towards is just a person, not a lover. Agreed, this sounds bizarre to be talking like this. Emotions stirring up at all? One time I took a walk on the dark side....it was when me and this person I used to work for were in his cube, sitting, talking....and he was someone who I couldn't stand so much that I was transferred to another part of the organization because we would get on each other's nerves that bad....but like I say, there we were, sitting in his cube, and I tried to be nice to him, and asked about how things were going at home and stuff like that, and he started telling me, and his bearing changed, he softened, he was affected by a slight tenderness that came over him and met me in his eyes....in that instant I saw the strangest thing....that it's possible to feel the deepest love for the very one I despised....it was just there....I couldn't deny it....it didn't feel any different at all from romantic love or family love or ultimate love....they all came together....and I was listening to that....don't you listen to the 'other' feelings that come to you when you're writing in your journal, Stacey?....I don't write in a journal, but I just wondered....that deep love for George (my supervisor at the time) was fairly fleeting, real fleeting I should say, and the feelings of despising him returned to roost inside me. I'm wanting to start asking about prepping another person or oneself. Does the prepping involve control? Does it involve getting the other person to conform to our expectations? My first impulse is to say that that feels like anti-love and anti-evolution, anti-emotional growth. Then again, I sure don't trust my first impulse to be always right or true, of course. I know I'm distorting, just don't know the extent of it. Clue me in, y'all. Anyone. Doesn't have to be Stacey. The mind can be most cunning. It can fool itself into believing it is working toward something good, kind, truthful, free, when it is really operating out of fear, greed, the desire for power, pent up demands. So, instead of trying to get me and the other person to change what we're doing or feeling, I just ask if they feel what I'm feeling [like that there's tension going on between us or that I felt burned by some telling remark they made to me about me].....and if they don't (or do) feel it but are willing to venture into the matter with me, together, then through the kind of listening that it takes to really hear what we're really feeling, we can come upon the obstructing deterrent that's preventing us from moving together in a true rhythm of mutuality or love. Let's say it's a problem like drinking (if it's a problem) or a problem like inhibition. These are very difficult to listen into with another. I know I feel the pressure of wanting to hear them say what feels like will be a gratifying turn of heart or inner direction in them or in me. But that's really listening through the screen of my desire. That's not listening. Truth is something else. Truth-listening is completely objective, yet it has compassion. It's both, equally. Doing anything else is following a cooperative process and structure that has an authority about it that people believe brings about improvements in their lives. It does that. But it doesn't touch, at all, the comprehension and release of an attachment or dependence. There's all the difference in the world between 1)love and 2) getting along real swell (considering what, say, 2 people have been through) and having great moments of exuberance, bonding, and steady reliability. Conflict, fear, and pride are the big three, probably. They're there, very much so. They are facts. Reality. How is evolution to happen? Only by entering into and working all the way through those three. Partial love is not love. Another word should be used....something like: servicing each other as reasonably well and symbioticly as we can, with enough reciprocation & chemistry to renew the interest and attraction from day to day. The danger is being satisfied with that because it feels like progress, when actually it is, at the root of it, a duping mechanism of the mind whose purpose is to effectively act as a safeguard against dealing with the unbearable hurt and difficulty that we come into direct contact with when we face the truth about ourselves regarding our fears, conflicts, pride. To walk into the dark side, and invite the devil (speaking extremely metaphorically there) to join us, is to face the truth about ourselves by listening in (from the part of ourselves that is the deepest and most compassionate) to our fears, conflicts, pride---it's the one thing we avoid doing at all costs. To do it, that's what leads to understanding. Out of understanding comes love. It's not ultimate love, or the other kinds, it's just love. The other stuff we've been talking about is mere behavior modification, however effective it may be. It's non-evolutionary simply because it leaves untouched the stuff that causes the need for the prepping. Maybe I'm just not very preppy. Understanding goes to the depths of the self, the only place where clear perception can penetrate into the nature of source of our problems. Doing anything else is non-evolutionary. It is what it is, but it doesn't have to do with evolving and emotional growth. It has to do with "evolving". It's pseudo. It's a mock-up of the real thing. Like right now, I feel about as opposite to love as one can. I feel arrogant and stupid. I don't know why I talk like I did in this post. Oh yeah, I just remembered why....I need control....I need to win....or some darn thing or other. It's vain. It's kinda desperate, somehow, so regrettable. It's like life or death, or something....putting too much on the line. And why? I'm sick of myself. Living in a fantasy, a vacuum. So you see once again MY impaired orientation, weakness, faults. What's wrong with me? Man, am I ever compulsive about it, too. So judgmental, especially toward myself. Wonder why I always seem to need to be that way. Haven't learned at all how to listen to THAT. And this was so long....gawd, what a rant. Do I need to get a life? No kidding.

Hi, Jim! Yeah, I'm back - Wer helped me, and not a day too soon. I almost feel shy, but getting over it already. I've just been reading your and Stacey's conversation, and it shattered my whole world! So much for all that insight. None of the things you talk about ever happened to me. Not like that, andI don't understand anything anymore. How can one not just love a person? Is there anything wrong with that?

Inherently no. I suppose I love my grandmother because she's my grandmother (even though I would never have befriended her on her own merits) but that's not the level of love I want to have for the rest of my life. I want the connection, I want the growth, I want the fear and trepidation that comes along with 'exposing' myself, I want to be totally emotionally nude and feel safe with that other person. But alas... it doesn't just 'happen' for me. Perhaps that's a shortcoming in my own human evolution (screwy gene pool, or such). Perhaps I just like being an extrememist, I enjoy overanalyzing, I enjoy making something grand out of something ordinary...

Riette, close your eyes....ok, are they closed?....okayyyyyy Mmmmm.......there, did that kiss say love? Now I have to reluctantly return to your question. Bummer. Can we just like put it off for a while? Oh, okay. Well, images. That's how. That's how one cannot just love a person. What might the dear old loonie be rarin' to yap on about now, eh? Love lives in freedom, it lives in the present. Images are combinations of thoughts and ideas about the other person. Thoughts and ideas form over time, and they act in the present. They act in the present, yet they are themselves mental/emotional elements formed in the past (the last few days, weeks, months, years, decades). They are fixed and static, but they juxtapose themselves in subtle combinations with the kind of blinding speed the psyche is capable of. How do these images work? Like a'this: The other person pleases you, rejects you, expects favors, gets impatioent with you, thinks your lazy or self-centered, feels they accept you more than you accept them, has to prompt you, whines a lot, gets upset when you don't remember something relatively minor but is suddenly so important to them, they talk to you about their hopes in a way that sounds wishy washy to you, they get frustrated with how you get frustrated with them, they're ready to fight you at the push of their buttons, their enthusiasm tails off more quickly now when you do things or are about to do things, they're full of excuses, their love looks mostly sentimental or carnal, etc. etc. etc......just zillions of things like that. They all leave their mark. Your emotions report it to your memory. Images form. And there's usually one overall image, as well, that you have of the person. They are what you relate to the person through. Positive images as well as negative. They crowd out any chance for love. The most positive images tend to feel like love. Those are beautiful images or relatively beautiful. But they are images that we acquisitively cling to. Because they are the familiar, the known. They produce a sense of security, belonging, bonding. That's their purpose. That's why we gladly go on doing our images of each other. But see, they're just images. How does understanding dissolve all these images, to free the psyche of this energy-draining burden, giving love a chance to be? Like a'this: Self-observation. It's not like we have far to look. The image-making happens rapidly in an ongoing action throughout the day. It's the past trying to claim the present, and trying to claim to be love. It takes a special sensitivity to apprehend the underlying logic behind an image or conclusion. It'll never happen if we approach our subconscious with a moralizing attitude. I suddenly need sleep. Haven't been eating enough at all lately, either. I is fading quite fast right about now. Gotta crash. Zonk.

well put. sleep soundly. (in vivid colors!)

I suppose he's right. Didn't understand a word of it, but it sounded intelligent, so I'll have to say he's right, right? I hate that. If I had to analize every little thing to bits about the kind of love I'm in, I would never have the time to be in love at all! I'd just walk around with a grudge all the time. But I don't - I just love. When a problem arises, I sort it out, I get angry, I tell him how I feel, and listen to how he feels, and then I just carry on loving. But if I had to think everytime I argued with him . . . the bastard, I've been doing all the compromising, or he's being this and I'm being that, I'd just walk out, I think. I mean, I loved him from the very beginning, because he made me feel like his equal, because he was willing to compromise, and because he let me speak my mind, and because the the things he had to say enriched me - why would we now suddenly change? If a problem arises, it is because we are two different people with different opinions, not because either of us have bad intentions, or trying to take advantage. I never think like that, never. Because I love him as he is; I don't ever want to change the things about him that sometimes infuriate me so much, because I need them.

More and more I come to feel that the meaning of life (love, truth, beauty, freedom) has to do with emotions. Our emotional reactions. That's where our humanity is, our human nature, or so it's thought. I can need a person and not love them. I can treat them as my equal and not love them. I can enrich them with the things I say, and respect them, and want them to speak their mind, and compromise with them, do all that and still not love them. Treating a person as my equal and love are two different things. The one is the result of the other. But love does not equal treating a person as my equal...they're not equal. To say that isn't to analyze it, it's just to see it. Seeing does not equal analyzing. Self-observation, if it becomes analyzing, then becomes not self-observation. Opinions, let's look at opinions, and see what we can see....without analyzing. Does love begin with opinions? Does it begin with conclusions? What causes the hate, the anger, the infuriated reactions? I'm only asking. I'm not saying for me or anyone else to don't do it. We're inquiring together, exploring this difficult problem in life. Why does it happen that we have these emotional reactions? What if I hear your opinion, as you speak your mind, and I listen with understanding, and I don't get upset at all, even though I feel your opinion is wrong. I see it for what it is. I say, "That makes sense coming from him. On his terms, it seems right." That's what love can do. That's love. Love doesn't need. When need enters the picture, love vanishes from the picture. Love is generous and cooperative, but not out of need. Love doesn't need to have its way. Love doesn't need to be right. Love doesn't need to hate and be infuriated. And we're talking about love, true? We're not talking about tainted love when we're talking about love, yes? The real work of understanding what love is, and loving, has to do with understanding how these two things act on each other: emotion and thought. Thought being opinions, conclusions, images, judgments. Emotion being some form of non-physical pain or pleasure. Do you realize that I don't know what I'm talking about? This is very difficult for me to go into. It's real work. It's serious work. Learning as I go. I don't understand how to understand. I'm not right. These are full-blown assumptions. I'm only doing like y'all...participating...participating in dialogue. Do I sound off-putting? Can you see certain things I could do differently in the way I talk that would make it easier to just relate to, like if I were to change the form some way, while leaving the content/substance as is? Psychological thought is dead, it's static, it's an image, it's memory. That's what opinions are. It's what analysis builds on. Mathematical (1+1=2) or technological thought is something else. I'm not talking about that. Psychological thought is different from perception, seeing, listening. Emotion is different from feeling. Emotion is the memory of hurt, wishes, pleasure, pain. Feeling is warmth, compassion, love, sensitivity. Without analyzing, perception can see psychological thought while that thought moves and acts in all its daylong subtlety. When perception observes this psychological thought combine with emotion, the understanding that results is able to dissolve the images, the judgmental reactions. Love is born. Conflict (and fear, hurt self-pride, willfulness) are understood and eliminated. The elimination and what is eliminated, that's all fact, it's not a fabrication of the mind. Perception deals with actuality (fact). Analysis deals with adjusting or arranging emotional thought contingencies. Analysis supposes and estimates what compromise will prevent things from getting out of hand so things don't go bad. Perception doesn't care if things go bad, because it's already looking for what's gone bad or is going bad, with the desire to understand it fully. Love is perception and is able to relate. Tainted love (attraction, typical relationships) are one person's images of pleasure and pain reacting to another person's images of pleasure and pain. That's not relating. But it's all we got. Gotta be where we are. We can start there and observe the images with silent, deep listening. Perceptive awareness could result in understanding the observed. Sometime, eventually, love will be lurking and ready to post. So was all this way too didactic sounding? Pretentious sounding? Did it sound like an analytic mind theorizing theory, going 'rounnd & 'round?

Yes, yes, and yes. Ha-Ha! No, but I see what you're getting it. But all the things you speak sort of negatively about seem to be the things that make me happy!! Need exists in my relationship, there is a great deal of emotion, there is conflict too, there are all of those things that supposedly have nothing to do with loving. Then why do I love so very much? And why do I feel so very loved? Do I love like a fool? Was it foolish of me to just love him even though I hardly knew him for a day, even though I DID NOT know him at ll? And then there is something else. All we've bee talking about are the difficulties and labour involved in love. But those things make up such a small part of love to me. Yes, it is work at times, and it can be hurtful. Only very occasionally though. But it is also wonderful. The way he kisses me when he comes home, the way he teases me, the way he speaks this name I so detest and makes it sound like he truly loves it, the way he talks to me, the things he says, the way he looks at me and sees me so ifferently from how I see myself, the way he smiles at me at times - how can I not need that? If those things were taken away from me, and if I were no longer allowed to love him just as much in return, then I would still continue to live. I would live and breathe and work and eat and sleep. But I think I would lose the joy which is just always there when I wake up with on a morning, and the energy that keeps me awake at night, and the feeling of being human and truly alive. Yes, I need him. I need him, because alot of my enchantment and zeal for life have something to do with him, and he is t e one who discovered the talents I never thought I had. Is it wrong of me? Should I start telling myself that it is wrong of me to need the person who makes me feel needed, should I love less devotedly because of the danger that I might lose him at some point (he is a great, great deal older than me, and that day WILL probably come)? Tell me how I must cope with the idea, Jim, because it frightens and depresses me. I was only eighteen when I met him, and I knew then, and know still, and have been told for six years now that I probably chose the wrong perso to love and that ultimately it will cause me a great deal of pain, but I have thought about it very very often, tried to do it down with Reason as mere childish fancy long before agreeing to make it permanent. But I could not help myself. I cannot help but love this person more than my mind prescribes. And I cannot bear the thought of losing him.

Riette, can I say, you are beautiful? Your words are very touching. I really feel around you. You make that happen for probably anyone. You've got that about you. It's really really nice. How to cope with pain, that's a doozie alright. The pain has to do with losing what you want. Losing happiness, losing what you need. Doesn't that sound a little like clinging and dependence? I'm not asking you, I'm asking me. Because no one does that more than me. What if I was Riette (and some say I am) and I was married to your husband. What if I loved him very very very much. But what if I didn't need him. What if my not needing him gave me the chance to love him much much much more than if I needed him. What if, when his time came, and he stopped living, and I felt no loss at all. Because I wasn't thinking about me and my needs, because I didn't have any. So I just saw his parting as natural, as part of life, and felt glad I could've been a part of his life. What if he would have wanted me to experience his death like that. I hope, truly, this isn't making you cry or feel sad. I'm saying this to bolster the furthering of your growth and learning. I'm getting more out of it than you are, though, aren't I? You feel this is nuts what I'm saying....? It's not like I can do any of this myself. We know better. Sure, I'm a joke. I hope at least I don't sound so moralizing this time around. Sorry if I do. Riette, you're so fine. Even if you reject me bitterly. I had it coming, I reckon.

Yes, I think it is NUTS, not just nuts. What is so wrong with needing the person you love? And saying that not needing someone makes losing them easy is one of the cruelest things I have ever been told. We all NEED to love and BE loved - it doesn't make us weak or clingy or dependant pathetic creatures it makes you human, dammit! Don't talk about love and need like they're two different things altogether. They're not. They are like blood and veins; they can't be seperated without your taking to bleeding inwardly. If one goes through life thinking it is WRONG or WEAK to need someone, then you cannot possibly ever love anyone, or allow anyone to love you, and then I sure as hell don't want to be friends with you. Because I need my friends, and if they despise me for it, then it hurts. And I'd rather be hurt so badly that I have to start all over again than never love and need.

Doesn't using the word 'wrong' create in your mind a super-charged moral atmosphere? Just the word itself seems to do that for you, it looks like to me. I'm looking at the language in your post. It looks attack-oriented in places. That's bewildering to take in from here, on the receiving end. I feel misunderstood. To me, it feels like it sabotages the conversation by implying you would prefer that if I want to be honest about this stuff, to not be honest around you with it. Is that a fair attribution I'm making of your message (part of it)? That feels very demanding. It feels hurtful and manipulative, abrasive. All that venom you use while building a case against what you've interpreted as something I said....whew. If I say that I am full of needs and dependencies, wouldn't that pretty much prevent me from despising you for doing the same? Instead of 'wrong' or 'weak', we could use the word 'imperfect'. It's less inflammatory, yet still gets at the right meaning. We're not perfect, but we can look at our imperfections and go a long ways toward self-transformation, simply by talking about, recognizing, and understanding what those imperfections are and how they work. We can all do that together, even if we sharply disagree. And we can even do it with cool, calm, collected and friendly dispositions toward each other. We don't even have to sacrifice our sense of self, our unique individualities in the process. Let me take an example of a need. I need affection from the one I love. He's away. Out of town. I'm home with the kids. I feel a desire for him and his affection. But since he's not here, my desire cannot be fulfilled. It's beyond my control. It just occurs to me that maybe I need his affection because I don't give myself love. Maybe I don't love myself very well. Maybe the only kind of love I give myself is a self-centered kind of ego-stroking of my pride, instead of real love. Then it occurs to me that when I didn't receive real love as a child, that I suppressed the inner hurt. But because the hurt was suppressed instead of experienced, it created a need. A need for what? A need for love. Since the need was created out of suppressed hurt, though, it became demanding instead of healthy. Could it be that a demanding need is a false need? And an undemanding need is a real need. Like the real need for real love. I start to notice this kinda thing going on in me, because I want to find out by listening with a quiet mind. With a deep quiet kind of listening I may uncover the suppressed hurt. I may overcome my resistance to exposing false needs. If false needs are demanding, and real needs aren't, I start to wonder whether my need for affection is demanding or undemanding. I wonder if an undemanding need is one where I accept naturally, and inwardly, that he's not here and there's no possibility of affection from him. Maybe I start to accept that when his affection is there, I can receive it wholeheartedly, spontaneously, and beautifully, because it's become an undemanding, real need, instead of a demanding (therefore false) need. I soon also realize that if his affection isn't real love, but is only false love, then I am only indulging in pleasure, not real love. It's a huge act of responsibility to genuinely perceive that real love is undemanding. What does that mean exactly? What are the implications? Yes, I agree, we all need real love. It's a need. A real need. It looks to me like people rigorously resist exposing themselves to the falseness in false needs.... Meaning, of course, that they say and think that their false needs are real needs, that their false love is real love. I don't say to myself to try and despise myself (or anyone else) as hard as I can for indulging in the demands of a mass of demanding false needs. I say let's talk about it without getting so upset that we lose our effectiveness as conversationalists/friends/mutual explorers of issues that are significant enough to us to want to come here to this topic. If all you know how to do is respond to this post in a hurtful kinda way, it's okay. I don't despise that response. I understand how these words in these posts can really rock you. These things are very important to you, and I see that and like it. It's good. I think I guess I'm only this guy named Jim. That's me. That's all I am. I'm just like him, the same as you, or she or them, whatever they might do. We're people. People are people, everywhere. People got more in common than we might like to think. We got fears, needs, boundaries, controlling tendencies, sorrow, pleasures, habits, limits, jealousies, thoughts, our noise, motives, opinions, feelings, loneliness, energy, grief, attachments, resentment, conditionings, pride, acquisitiveness, envy, hurts, happiness, pain, bliss, possessiveness, doubts, concerns, compulsiveness, desires. I do admire very much how you're constituted. You're a real feeling person. Lotsa just the coolest stuff comes outa you. You're a trip. You're a very human human being. Always will respect that. Always will dig that about you alot. Hmmm, I just noticed that instead of using 'imperfect', I used 'false'. If it helps to just switch those around, each time, that might aid in the reading of it.