I'm merely frustrated. Because you tell me I'm wrong in what I feel. How can one's feelings be WRONG, Jim? I don't mind if my opinion of something is wrong and somebody tells me so, but how can you dismiss another person's FEELINGS as wrong? I don't understand. Must I suddenly switch them around, and be ashamed of them just because I was stupid enough to admit to them in front of one who knows all the answers, and for whose opinion I happen to have great regard? Not all people know how to have 'sensible' emotions, you know. Why don't you teach me? Let me see: So, if I fall and hurt my knee, I must not cry because it hurts - it would be more sensible to wash it with cool water and put on a plaster, because that way it will heal quicker. If an issue is difficult for me, because I fear it, then I must just accept it as that, in a sensible manner, because struggling with it, struggling with it vehemently and getting angry because I don't understand is wrong, and I should listen gracefully, with a quiet mind as people wiser than myself speak of them. If I should dare to fall in love I must be sensible and not show it a great deal, because showing half my love will be more truthful than showing all of it, and all the emotions it stirs up for itself and by itself, because these are probably false anyway. And I may not wish for Time to stand still for him until I have had the change to grow older, because it is selfish and manipulative to fear parting with what I have come (wrongly) to regard as an extra, living, beating organ just next to my heart. Be my friend now, and teach me about this sort of grace, Jim, so that I might become wise and remotely bearable as a person.

I am sorry - I will stay away from here for a while, because I am unable to come up with a singe rational response, and yet I just can't seem to keep my big mouth shut either. You are right: one should not discuss something if you cannot be rational about it - you just end up making a fool of yourself, and making enemies along the way. I am truly sorry for being impulsive and foolish; it will not be the last time, I'm sure; it is a terrible fault of mine, and I am thankful for not getting away with it.

I'm just gonna start off by rambling. I'll just say stuff, I'll just hop around to different things, like a rambgler. These are just assumptions. They're just one person's views. It's just views. It's not truth or reality. No one should go by anything I say. We're only talking together. I felt incredibly relieved by the way you sounded in your last two posts. Because I felt like you were sitting down with me. Like I was okay. Like you were willing to be with me and talk stuff out a little. When I got your post #99, I was rocked, stunned, hurt. I couldn't do anything for a half hour. My heart and breathing increased like I had just had a physical workout. My chest and face and stomach were all flushed with warm circulation racing through them. I thought, this is actually quite amazing. What a wake-up call. Amazing infusion of just pure energy. I could see why people need to do something with it. Like vent, or call a friend, or go for a run, or pick something up and throuw it, or feel like the world has turned against them and get harder and harder against people in return. I didn't want to do any of those things. I wanted to be with this bizarre fire burning through me. I felt like it was time. Time to experience it instead of suppressing it. It was an opportunity. It was a gift, really. It went on long past what I could handle, and I did distract myself eventually. [...augh shit, I'm crying right now....so hard to communicate to people....] The sadness of seeing this: how you are, and how much of that I like, and seeing how much communication breakdown there is going on. You see, I would never allow myself to be your or anyone else's teacher. Unless only in the sense that you teach me as much or more than I teach you. We just learn from each other in our own ways. When I feel feelings that I think are wrong, I feel that that particular thought (that the feelings are wrong) is wrong. Of course, that doesn't help me any, either. The thought itself (that a feeling is wrong) keeps me from feeling my feelings. It suppresses my feelings. I'm then not able to be in touch with my own feelings. Take one that I have. I flatter or compliment or say something really honest about someone to that someone. Okay. So then I somehow start to sense something about that comment I made to that person. And I sense it like this: the comment felt compulsive. Or, um, that's not it, wait, it's the feeling I had around it felt compulsive. Yeah. Then I realize that I didn't feel it as wrong. I felt it as something (compulsive) that was about its actual inner nature. That helped me some to take a closer yet sensitive look at it. Just feeling my feeling some more. Kinda getting to know myself better....getting more in touch. Not being hard on myself. Being gentle. Being understanding. I sensed it to be compulsive, rather than wrong. My feelings are real (to me) and I don't want to cripple them or make them void. So I don't tell myself that they're wrong. Yet I sensed something in what I was feeling while I was saying that compliment. What was I really doing? I wanted to know. Sometimes I want to know about a feeling because I suddenly become embarrassed. Or I suddenly sense the feeling is compulsive in nature. The trick is to somehow learn what it means to be objective about it. Non-judgmental (it's not wrong). This isn't what you're referring to as 'sensible'. The other trick is to not diminish the feeling at all in the process. In fact, it's best to give it room. Be welcoming to the feeling. Encourage it. Invite it. It's like parents who feel a certain way about their kids, & finally shift from: "you can be seen but not heard" To: "we want to hear you now as well as see you, and we love you and want all of you, we want everything about you" It's how feelings and hurts become unsuppressed. It's how we enter into our depths and discover that there's no unconscious. It seemed there was. But we behold how conscious the unconscious in fact can really be. However, that's what comes with a very silent mind. One that's silent throughout the day, even when laughing out loud or crying. Not the easiest thing to come by. Accordingly, becoming conscious of our unconscious is not the easiest thing to come by. When feelings and hurts and frustrations are suppressed, they go to the unconscious. It's there in the unconscious that not only do they stay and become almost unreachable, but they also gain potency....and re-emerge and erupt in confusing forms at unexpected times and are rather upsetting and often lead to strange negative consequences. There's nothing for me to do or for you to do. There's no pressure at all. All I want to do is do what I want to do. I just happen to want to understand my feelings. I'm not getting any pressure to do that from anyone. I just want to. Wouldn't I want you to do what you want to do? Sure. Does it look like I want you to do what I want to do? Sure. It looks and sounds like that. Yet really I'm just all the time speaking from my own view. I'm saying how something looks to me. I'm saying how it looks like something would be good to do in such & such a situation. But it seems like I'm telling you what to do. I'm really only saying: "here's how I see it, here's what looks like the thing to do" That can seem like I'm being demanding. But I'm not right then saying this looks like the thing for you to do. I'm saying, do what you want to do, because that's the healthy way to live your life. And if you would like to consider how I feel about stuff, feel free. But don't do it because I said it. I dunno, is what I'm saying, does it make sense? Freedom is so important. Inner freedom, that is. Like I would probably resist getting a person flowers, if I felt they expected it of me. Because what could have been a completely voluntary act of affection, turns into act of obedience. Ruins it all for me. There are many different forms of obedience, like: "these? these flowers? no, I don't mind getting them for her. I know she expects them of me and everything, but I still like to do it for her, because she really does appreciate it, they do make her happey, what can I say?, so I don't think anything of doing it, I really like to do it" Yeah, I still call that obedience. But what I call it is gonna be way wrong to lotsa folks. I understand I may be way wrong. And I'm willing to learn from folks. I see how I may have made a mistake by using that example (flowers). I didn't mean to push a male gender bias on anyone. If I were female, I would resist the obedience to those kind of male expectations that feel controlling. I also would be surprised if y'all felt that it is obedience. I didn't mean to provoke. But I can sure see how it would provoke. My feelings, your feelings, are right. They're not wrong. They're right because they are real. And because they have reasons for why they were felt. Do you feel, though, that, at the same time, feelings can be questioned? Can I ask you a question? This is an innocent question. It really is. You've said that you don't believe in yourself....as in, you and Wer do not believe in your own selves. Or did I miss something there. Did you really not mean it? Or did mean it? My innocent question is: You don't believe in yourself, but you do believe in your feelings? For many people, our deepest strongest feelings are unquestionable. That can become a very strong belief. Those deepest feelings are our bedrock, our foundation. And the feeling of love is sacred to most. It's beyond questioning, for most. Talking about the possibility of questioning it, for most, is nearly impossible. It's not unusual to get really upset about how there can be questioning of that feeling, that feeling of love. But here, in philosophy, in this topic, it may not seem so unusual, would it? I'm not doing it just to do it. I'm not a loveless, cruel, imperious cretin. So why in the world would I do such a thing? Why would I question my own feelings, and even my own feelings of love, of all things? I sensed something going on in my feeling of love. I said to myself, is this really love? I just happened to notice that my love has qualities about it that are needy, compulsive, possessive, demanding, etc. I only very innocently wondered out loud to y'all, "Is this real love?" I'm dreadfully sorry if this touches off the murder instinct in anyone. (our group's inside joke has its moment) Moving so quickly from Love to Murder, just like that. Hmm, not so uncommon in today's world. Or yesterday's world. That love/hate thang. How do you feel about a questtion like this: If I love my father, why is it that I want to put off seeing him? I mean, deep in my heart, I love him. Deep in his heart, I feel he loves me. Our love, his and mine, does not conquer all. How come it doesn't? What's going on there? So I question my feeling. I ask myself, "Do I really love him?" I know, that can sound really outrageous, can't it? Then I ask myself, "Do I really love at all?" Even more outrageous, that one. 10 times more. Why would I even ask it? The question itself can just BOOM arouse hate and fury in people. Here's my answer to this question, today, maybe not tomorrow: The heart and mind are inextricably connected. What goes on in one will affect the other. I see that people have many habits and ways of doing and seeing things. That's going on in their mind, and their heart helps out by infusing with feeling those habitual ways of doing and seeing things. Their heart feels love for me, or I feel my heart feel love for them. One moment I look over at her, and she feels like the earth itself is moving through her as she walks up the wooded path to me. The next moment she barely looks at me while she walks past, asking, "So when's dinner?" Her voice sounded blase. She looked at me like she was so used to me that she'd just as soon look somewhere else. But at dinner, over wine, she looks in my eyes and says, "Jim, I love you. Would you like to have another child?" We already have four. [not really...not in real life...this is just an analogy] I say to her, "Sometimes I just feel incredibly in love with you. Other times, I wonder if I matter at all to you." She picks up her glass of wine, but puts it right back down, "Oh, great, here we go again. What a time to get into one of these squabbles." I say, "I know, Amanda, you think I feel everything needs to be perfect before I can feel all right about our life together. But really I'm wondering about my love for you. You're right, I do have these expectations for how we can be when we're together. They're really needs, these expectations. And you have yours, too. And mine are demanding." Amanda says, "They sure as hell are. Can't you ever give yourself a chill pill for that stuff?" And I say, "It's just that I see how little love there really is with us. And how much of the other stuff there is, instead, going on with us." Amanda replies, "Not that I really should ask. Not that I don't know what you're going to say. But what other stuff, pray tell, Jimbo?" I say, "Listen, Amanda, I love you more than I've loved anyone. My love for you is real. It just seems to get....I don't know....usurped. Usurped by how I feel when you talk about mountainbiking, your races in the league during the Spring and Fall state competitions. I used to like to listen to you go on about it, but it's so compulsive with you. And we're in this groove. It's like we're both so bent on this one way we have of relating to each other and being together. I mean, I just don't know what happened." Amanda picks up her wine glass, but before she takes a long sip, she says, "I take it the baby is out. Jim, what can I say. I think I find you to be a jerk. Such a whiner. Nothing's right for you. And nothing ever is going to be right. You just....I'm leaving." I say, "What? What about the kids?" Amanda says, "Yeah, what about the kids. I'm going to Christina's and get them. Tonight we'll be at my parents. Tomorrow, I don't know." I say, "Amanda, this is only a post in Spring. You don't even exist. You're fictional. How can you get this bent outa shape?" What does it come down to? What am I saying? That we all, some more than others of course, are using a hidden emotional forcing-current, and we go about seeking satisfaction in not the right way and we don't grant the other person the same freedom we wish for ourselves. Feel free to totally disagree with any or all I've said. I'm not trying to force it on you, y'know. If you turn on me for saying the things I've said here, I do think that's wrong. If you focus on me, myself, in a negative direct way, personally, for saying what I said, I think that's wrong. But if you need to do that, I will not hate you, or deny you that right. The right to be wrong is a freedom I very much wish for myself, and deeply resent others when they don't grant it to me. It's really wrong to hurt others, and I, too, feel bad when I do it. But I certainly have done plenty of hurtin' others in my life. But it's not wrong to be wrong. And it's not wrong to fail. We learn when we're given the chance to make mistakes. It's good to be wrong in the sense that it gives us the chance to unpremeditatedly do something wrong and then see really well what it was we did.....why could we see it and learn from it?.....because it wasn't censored or coerced from happening.....so we can point it out to ourselves. It was granted the opportunity to happen, so we were granted a chance to learn from the wrong we did. But who's to say what's wrong. Not me. I'm usually wrong when I say something's wrong. I've got my own skewed tendencies that distort what I think I see. We're all equal. And so we can talk like equals....we can talk things out, really difficult things, because we all know that we're all equals. I ain't wise, and I'm just mouthin' off right now, but I'd say it seems true to me that the unwise have just as much to learn from the wise as the wise have to learn from the unwise....hee-hee.... The wise are always learning, if they're wise. They learn from the unwise. They learn from their feelings. They learn from the questioning of their feelings. Their deepest feelings. Then their feelings only get purer and deeper, and maybe they completely change. Life is change. To get in touch with what our feelings are really doing, that takes alot of really objective self-observation. I don't have that, and I'm no less wrong than the next person. There might be really no such thing as right and wrong. It could be just all energy. All the same energy going through all of us. Some of it gets distorted, some of it doesn't. The distorted stuff is labeled with the word 'wrong'. Some wrong things really do hurt alot, though. But we can't always tell when they're going to happen. Usually when we least expect. If you hurt me, it's okay. It's okay even if I say it isn't. I wish I could ask a wise person what that meant. But it's true, I think, in some kinda way. Ramblin' Jim done did his ramblin' for de day.

Much of your letter I cannot really answer, but I think about it, believe me. I think I understand you better now. Please forgive me for being such a fool when you are being so kind. There are two bits of your response I would like to say something to today. The first is that you musn't worry about the flowers - I hate getting flowers. I much prefer a picknick when I can enjoy them there where they belong. And the second is that I'm the last person who can share thoughts about fatherly love. Remember that person I murdered in my head? Yep! I thank you for everything. I am so glad you're here.

Oh, I nearly forgot, how stupid of me. You asked about believing in myself. I do believe in myself partly - and partly also not. I think there's alot of room for improvement and 'evolution', things I am unable to realize about myself at this point, things I have to get rid of. It is an ongoing process which I'm not sure will ever be completed. I can't say I have ever thought about believing and not believing in my feelings. They are just there. If they are there, how can I not believe in them? If I feel the need to cry, I just do it and get it over and done with. I cannot really at that moment sit down and rationalize, and ask myself WHY I have to do it. Your story about Amanda; I found it fascinating and disturbing at the same time. I find it strange. I mean, the way the virtual you in the story were unable to cherish the moment, and instead crushed it with that cold, cruel question. Why not ask that question when she is being cold and cruel too? If love was what you felt for her at that moment, why did you not make love to her? That is what I don't understand about you.

It is now after 20:00 at night here, and I'm still thinking about you - see, you too have the ability to throw me off course. I have been thinking alot about your story - I can't get it out of my head. I know now what has been bothering me so much about it; the fact that Amanda speaks words thought up by Jim Gross. Let us imagine for a moment that you are 'Jimbo' and I, Ri�tte, am Amanda (wow, feels great to have a normal name!). First I must make an adjustment or two. As her I will not walk out - I'm no coward, and I WILL fight you rather than walk you . . . I mean, 15 years and 3 kids aren't the sort of things I'd give up that easily! But forget about another pregnancy - I don't want to be fat for yet another nine months! There, that's better. Ha-Ha! Now, probably the first thing I would say, would be: 'Do you plan questions like these ahead? What pleasure do you get from them?' Yeah, if I'm going to be honest with you, I'd probably answer something like that - something to make you feel as hurt as I do at that moment. And then you say the thing about my expecting everything to be perfect; now, don't be offended, Jim (my dear Texas Ranger), but I think it's time Amanda says what SHE feels, not what you have decided she must feel - 'cos it makes your story a bit one sided, and gives you all the control . . . which is how you like it, or am I wrong? . . . So, as Amanda, I'd then say: 'No, Jimbo, it is not me who expects everything to be perfect all the time - it is you.' You see, Jim, I think the real reason why you asked Amanda that question is because you felt like you had lost control for a moment, and were desperate to get it back. Because it upsets and hurts you when at times she seems aloof, not particularly in the mood for arguments in which you always have the advantage of better vocabulary and way with words (after all, English is not her mother tongue in my version . . . ha-ha!). I mean when was the last time you 'lost' an argument with ANYONE, not just me or Amanda? Anyway a moment later, while you are still pondering these feelings, she turns around, the mood shifts, you are overpowered by her love for you and yours for her. You realize that something is happening here - something which makes you feel fear and pleasure and pain and doubt; you find it difficult and upsetting when something unexpected happens in your relationship with other people, feelings which you don't want inflicted upon you, feelings for which you resent her, because they don't fit into the world you have created for yourself, and you are unable to reason with them. And so a part of you wants to recoil, and retreat into that safe domain of which we all know: that part of us, which forever remains our own, of which no-one else can claim entrance, and which provides sanctuary whenever we are in need of a place to hide. When we choose to go there, any spectator who thinks himself wise may stare into our faces intently in the hope of gaining insight into our innermost thoughts; but while all the pages underneath may seethe and writhe with wild, untold stories, the cover will cleverly trick and deceive the reader, who will congratulate himself upon reading a tale of serenity and quiet meditation there. So, I imagine you would ask very calmly, though in a great many more words perhaps: 'Why do you say that?' Amanda: 'Because you are unable to take love for what it is. You fear it. You fear loving and being loved, you fear to embrace and be embraced in this jumble of emotions. You fear that it might upset the balance which you have so carefully set up in your mind. You are more than willing to experience the bliss, the ecstacy, the joy, but you cannot bear to be EVEN more human than that. You cannot bear to love three-dimensionally. You cannot bear to open yourself, body AND mind to the pain and weaknes it sometimes brings. You are unable or unwilling to understand that the less glamorous aspects of love are as necessary ingredients of our relationship as the pleasure. All of them are flames burning on the precious fire that unites us. And no matter which flame is burning highest at any particular moment - be it vehement, be it cruel or aloof, be it beautiful, or be it devoid of any visible emotion - every breath I draw is drawn for you. Can't you see that the pain we feel at times is PART of the pl asure, and just so is the pleasure PART of the pain?'

could not begin to respond to the last ten posts but... Jim, I think you're right (#96) the meaning of life does lie in our emotions.

Riette, I want to kinda pat you on the back for all your last responses. If you ask me, they're showing evolution. Your last response felt like it had the taste of argument going on it. Yet it was still pretty well handled....relatively amicably. I like dialogue. It's less conflict-oriented than argument. I liked your idea of redoing the story. Pretty good idea you had there. I think one of the best things I can do is focus on myself. Not focus on you, Riette, or on you, Stacey, or on you, Autumn. Naw, no way am I focussing on me---I'm focussing on Wer, exclusively, from here on out. No, just kidding. Here's something that's not about you, Riette. It's about how my emotions work off of my thoughts. And it's about whenever the following situation comes up in my life. When I'm interacting with anybody. So, I look at myself. I see somebody else say something about me. I notice that it's negative. My head says "hey, I'm under attack" Emotions start right up real fast. Hurt, resentment, and then the ol' fight or flight or fright. The emotion of hurt I can't bear. So it gets suppressed. That makes it easier to do the other emotional reactions. It usually doesn't end up so splendid, the aftermath. I have this weird notion that love is not an emotion. That it's a pure feeling. That emotions are determined by thought. That love is beyond thought and emotion. If thoughts can be cleared up, then emotions will relax and disperse. Making way for feeling, pure feeling. I focus on negativity. Negativity is where all the problems go into action. If I can clear up my negativity, I can clear up my thoughts and emotions. I'll be capable of pure feeling and love. I know that's humanly too ideal. That's okay. It gives me my focus. I'll just, y'know, do what I can, that's all. On the other hand, it's true what you say, Riette: there may be not good reasons for why I focus on the negative. I may be using that as a way to put off feeling what I'm afraid to feel. I think it IS true, not MAY be true. So I include that very tendency in my focus on negativity. What does it really mean to focus on the negative? It means focusing on how I am negative. Not on how the other person is negative. It's totally unnecessary for me to focus on how the other is negative. I can't feel their emotions and thoughts. I can feel my thoughts and emotions. So what's the main first thing that happens with any negative reaction? Hurt. It's amazingly simple. I think the world of me, deep in my psyche, and not so deep. Somebody else doesn't (or I don't...when I get mad at myself). It started in babyhood. I needed to have what I wanted. I wanted things done my way. The universe revolved around my needs, around me. That formed in me, way way in there, when I was young. There were so many times when I didn't get what I wanted. I cried. I was hurt. That hurt got pushed outa sight. Since I didn't ever come back to it and didn't let it out and give it room, it stayed unconscious. It still operated, though. It was just as alive as ever. It didn't lose any potency. It gained potency. Now little things bother me. Easily. Many of 'em throughout the day. That kinda stuff is negativity. To find the solution to that is to find the hurt. The original hurt. Once it's contacted, entered into, worked through, negativity diminishes. Thoughts and emotions diminish. Feeling increases. Healthy feeling. The kinda thoughts I'm talkin' about are not reason. Reason is something else. Intelligence is something else. The thoughts I'm talkin' of are psychological thoughts. Thoughts that think with greed, envy, resentment, control, etc., etc. The emotions emote the same thing. The most basic characteristic of these negative thoughts is a demanding forcefulness. It's either used on the other person, or there is fear that it is being used on me. I use it on others or on myself. It comes out of the inner hurt being touched off. One example is flattery. I'm hurt that I have no intimacy in my life. I need it. It becomes a need. It becomes demanding. I force myself to go for it in my own way. I use flattery to win. It goes compulsive on me. If I get intimacy through flattery I will satisfy the need. But it won't satisfy the hurt. I always stay away from the hurt, the original hurt, the pain. So the needs continue to form. And they're all dysfunctional, neurotic. To start to notice this with various problems in my life is to notice patterns which can lead me more easily to the center, to the root cause. If I notice this psychological action when I'm feeling uncomfortable, or am having a problem, or am feeling compulsive, then I can notice that it's the hurt that's acting up, and it's giving me that chance to find my way through all the layers of defensive thinking, rationalizing, and self-protective resistance, to reach all the way in to the hurt. This helps too: to notice at those times of negative thought/emotion (uncomfortable, having a problem, feeling compulsive, tension, anxiety, bitterness, frustration) that I'm feeling this feeling that says that I need to have my way and I'm not getting it. To kinda superimpose that particular pain (that I'm having in the present) over the same pain that I had at the earliest time in my life that I can remember, that is what can lead me closer to the hurt. To be aware of the same pain that's in the present and in the past, by being aware of the thoughts and emotions I'm going through as I'm going through them, and seeing the "I need to have my way and I'm not getting it" running through it all, and moving along where that takes me through all the layers of resistance to the original hurt, that's the kind of objective self-observation that understands negativity, acts on it, eliminates it, and brings out real love. I accept how my love right now is dysfunctional. I accept the difficulties. I see how they are part of love. I know it's healthy to do that. Health is acceptance. I also don't think my love is real love. Here's why I think that. Love is the whole 9 yards. We've all been saying that, right? Or at least y'all have. Love is not just the feeling of seeing the beauty in another person. Love is also how I react when I'm yelling at the other in an argument. Love is the positive and the negative. Both are to be accepted. That's true, that's right. If the yelling (the negative) is exclusively based on the hurt within that I haven't faced, then if I can face the hurt, there won't be the yelling or the negative. Then love will be real love. It will be beyond the negative and even the positive. It will be beyond conflict and duality. Love is completely free. It's so alive that it's full of change. Life and love are change. Life is not secure. Love isn't either. Oh, we'd just love it to be, now wouldn't we. But change has its own kind of security. And so does love. It's completely undemanding, in it's pure form. My love is not pure. So it's not real love. My love is its own kinda love, it ain't no great shakes, but it is what it is. It is where it is, doin' what it's doin'. And I just totally accept that. But the love I have can get better. I accept all the rough spots. I just want to work on them. Learning leads to improvement. Evolution. If I evolve far enough, maybe my love can be real....and pure. Is imperfect love any less real than real love? The only real love is real love. All other love in not real love. It should really be called something else. Deeply mixed up and deeply pleasured neediness, perhaps. I totally know and totally accept it's blasphemy to say that. Total blasphemy. At least for some. I'm really glad, though, that we know I'm only speaking for myself. I'm only talking about me. That could easily turn me into a target, though, couldn't it? A target for wrath. If there is wrath, I'd like to suggest that the wrath be done consciously, with awareness that it's being done, and with perhaps a desire to learn what's going on there with the need to use wrath as a means or tool to accomplish what it's being used for. Thanks.

Thanks? That's my word, so be quiet. The last thing I feel at this moment is wrath. I feel admiration, and Amanda feels love, I'm sure. I would like you to know that all those things I said about you and control - I did not mean it as negatively as you may think. The word negative popped up over and over again in your response, so that must be the impression I gave. I was merely guessing at some vague picture I have now formed of you in my mind through your writing. Your openness, and honesty, and control, and fear and flattery - I like all of it. I don't want to change it, because I can cope with those things far better in people than superior qualities. I can relate, for sure. For you to admit to the need for a bit of control, to experience resentment and mistrust and envy and all those things - I could never regard that in a negative light. God knows, if those are your worst faults, then I must be a demon of some kind. I cannot even begin to describe mine, and why I allowed them to grow in the first place - but I think you know they are there, and that they are ugly. I am trying so hard to learn, to change. When I had my first exhibition I was interviewed by a journalist of a local art paper here; we disagreed about certain things. The next day the article said good things about my work, and to my name was added a single adjective: 'handgesponnen' - 'homespun'. I did not know the meaning of that word, so I looked it up in the dictionary. It said: an inelegant person. And I thought, yes, this is the truth. And it has become my reputation, through my own fault. I never stop struggling with myself for one moment, you know; and I think I am hard and harsh with others becuase I project this struggle, this battle going on inside of me. Sometimes I just want to sit down and rest. Like when I get wrapped up in the sweetest innocence and purest love from my two little children; then I feel so at peace, so serene - until I look intp the mirror and think to myself: how can they love you? I so want to be worthy of them, I want to be worthy of the name, mother. And hen I can hardly bear to be me at all.

Damn! Just scrap that whole response. This topic is really getting out of hand. Let's talk about other kinds of love before we kill this whole subject with silly sentiment and whining. Or better yet, why don't we talk about the opposite emotion: hate. Is there any point to it? Not really, I think. So why do we do it? Or haven't you ever hated somebody?

I think the purpose of hate is to release internal pressure. Maybe fear turns into hate. Maybe judgment of somebody or some situation becomes a negative judgment. I think I feel this feeling of feeling justified when I hate somebody's behavior. So there are 4 possible qualities of what goes into hate, right there: negative judgment, release internal pressure, feeling justified, fear. Probably plenty more qualities where they came from. With me, with hate, I first of all need to be affected by something. It's got to get to me. It's got to agitate me. Very internal associations occur. I think that I can't stand that (whatever it is). Then I need to do something with the agitation. Because lotsa emotion is building up with nowhere to go. Automatically my mind/body just knows to discharge it. Hate's the ticket. To me, it's real interesting how these six things work together: judgment, self-worth, morals, associations, meaning, emotion Since what I happen to be looking at sets off associations, I feel meaning. Those associations have consequences for me. They remind me of stuff I don't want to be reminded of (so it's a judgment). At least in the case of hate. The consequence is agitation, and that's emotional, or the next thing it does is become emotional. It gives meaning because it's running through me. In other words, I'm not reacting indifferently to it. I decide that the stimulus was wrong. Like it was morally wrong. The stimulus that set off my response aroused my emotions and my values. It's extremely weird how judgemental and condemning I get over little things. But those little things apparently have deep associative meanings for me. So much so, that if I notice a bunch of qualities about somebody that come together in a really boring or banal way, I'll actually start to hate. The yuck factor. I'll hate the feelings inside me that are aroused by taking in another person's personality that I can't stand. I think some judge inside me, deep inside, is so unknown to me that it has never been helped along to emotionally grow and evolve. So it stays real situated and isolated in an extreme vulnerability. It's like completely hidden, and way deep down inside, yet seemingly has such a direct contact with everything that's going on externally. So this vulnerability in there is so susceptible to highly sensitive reactions. And these reactions are quite emotional, they surge with a big burst. Alotta hate emotions are real weasels.....POP goes the weasel. If I could stimulate more emotional growth in myself, it might be that it would happen by me relating to the concealed judge. If I could get a tour from the judge of the emotion factory that the judge runs, I'd be able to do something about how that factory operates. I could suggest something to the judge. But not until me and the judge become real true friends. Our trust can't be fake. I think my judge once told me that he/she/it is urgently pressed together with my own self-worth. But I may not've been listening so well at the time. The judge was saying something about how they were really in super tight collusion, somehow, I think, if I did hear that right, at all. I wanted to know more, but the factory started up and it got too loud to hear. I'm still trying to visit my judge. And I just don't do it often....visit, that is. Sometimes I get lost on the way in there. I'm so positive I know where the judge is, but then I forget how well concealed he/she/it is. The concealing part of this whole thing is very very very tricky. It kind of moves inside out of itself, through different subjective dimensions. Makes me want to give up before I hardly start, usually. Puzzling phenomena for sure. Just as quickly as it turned to me, it turned away, but while it turned to me, my self-worth whispered these words in a kind of hairy indistinct jabber: "I am your self-worth, and I stay low, as in low self-esteem, because the judge deems the self to be not performing up to par---and we never really get anywhere together because the judge's verdict acts as a pitfall, it stops energy, and my powers of attention start instantly to fluster and seize and crash and burn" Yet those two stay together and depend on each other. They're actually pretty okay folks, really. If only I can get in there, find them, bring them out to the light of day, give them space to be other possibilities in other beginnings in ways that ease along without so much of all that inbred tension they got hangin' over them now. If only I can have that happen once, the next time my hate happens. And then maybe I can help it to happen lots.

All that AND conversations with Beethoven? You are starting to worry me! Does he have anything about hate? Now it's my turn to disgust you guys - as if you aren't already! I'll just go for impulsive confessions and speculation. I need to hear more before I can respond as thoroughly and rationally as you have. So at least you're warned. I'll start by making a positive statement, namely that I don't see the point in hating people anymore (not that I can, as I've killed all of them off in my head!!). ha-ha If I dislike something about somebody I just stay away from them - evasion tactics, I suppose. Because when I do let myself hate, it totally exhausts me and makes me unhappy; it means something or someone else has a hold over me, and that is to me the ultimate nightmare existence. Now, here comes one of my tedious stories - so feel free to leave at this point. I only remember ever having truly hated one person: my father. And it really had a very strong hold over me. My brother and sister hated him too, but they managed to shut up about it and save themselves the trouble; and today they're normal! Me, I just hated his guts, told him so every time I felt it, and I can't remember being able to sit alot - but running I got quite good at! It must be said that I was also a pain in the butt kind of child - Mum recently confessed that because of me Sonja and I felt like TRIPLETS, not twins! But seriously, I hated the way he walked, the things he said, the way he said it, and did (or didn't do), I hated his face, the expression on it, and, oh, I just wanted him to go away and die somewhere in a hole where an ostrich could dig him up and feed its young ones with the worms he would collect. I also feared him, I suppose, but I hated him so much that it didn't matter whether he took measures to instill the fear deeper or not. The guilt factor made it worse of course. I knew that it hurt Mum that I felt so, I knew it made life difficult for everyone, because daddy's ego could not cope with resistance. Today I just regret it. Because I realize that I wasn't being the tough kid who would not be suppressed (as I flattered myself at the time) - it was selfishness, sheer selfishness. A blunder. Just because I could not stand him, I had to make life unbearable at times for the rest of my family whom I loved, and who loved me. Instead of perseverance I chose hatred and thoughts of revenge - and it brought nothing, absolutely nothing. No rewards, no positive outcome for me (he still as much of a prick as e always was), no sense of satisfaction. The only thing it made me realize is the fact that it was simply not worth the effort. More I can't say at this point. Oh, except for a question. See, I was never able to just hate his actions. I hated the person as much as the actions. Is there where I went wrong with my hatred?

What is it they say, "hate the sin, not the sinner"? I think you did learn an important life lesson, Riette, that hatred has no positive outcome and is not worth the effort. Some live their whole lives without grasping this and make themselves miserable (and bring on physical illness, in my opinion). To distance or neutralize those hate-triggers is to do your mind & body a favor. By the way, I looked up "homespun" and my dictionary said "unpretentious." What a compliment!

Possibly, but the guy really caught a dislike - BIG TIME. See, the argument started when he asked about the symbolism in my pictures. I told him there is no such thing as symbolism in my art, and that my pictures are meant to brighten up people's living rooms, not make them think deep thoughts. And from there it went on, so if homespun has a positive meaning as well, than it must have been sheer tact on his part! . . . I've exhibited thrice since, and it is now two years later - he still refuses to do interviews with me; the other journalist always comes. I once asked him about him, and he said this guy hates my guts!! HA-HA! No, but you are absolutely right about hate. I don't know how it is that you and Stacey and Jim and Wer just KNOW all the answers. Why do I always have to make errors in order to find them?!?! Some people are born wise, I think, and others are born 'homespun' and never quite find that grace. Personally I'd rather become wise now. But how?

As for me, all the stuff I say is just assumptions, not knowledge. I'm not wise. If I were, I'd be of a healthy mind. We can see that ain't the case. BTW, Stacey's response (#113), the heading of it says there were 2 lines in her message. But her box was empty, in mine....it was a blank response. Could someone pass along to me what her 2 lines were. Don't wanna miss out on any Stacey reactions to stuff. I'd like to be able to see things objectively, neither accepting them nor condemning them. Just seeing. So I wonder why I make judgments, positive or negative, instead of seeing. And I been wrastlin' with the notion that there's some embodied identification going on in each judgmental response I have. It starts, let's say, with how I see something I don't like about somebody. I then internalize that perception. It becomes embodied inside me as the perception becomes mine. And then do I even identify with it? If so, I can see how that can add to the revulsion I feel as the perception turns negative in judgment. Those 'internalizing', 'embodying' and 'identifying with' actions are occurring, I think, on an extremely automatic level that we're unaware of at the time, and it happens too quick to tell that it happened. Isn't it maybe just part of being human, part of being alive? I think that if I look closer at my reactions, I'll come upon stuff I'm not accustomed to coming upon. I'm used to numbing, neutralizing and distancing myself from feeling. Even happy feelings, not just negative feelings, and not just my hate. There seems to be something in the feeling itself. Something in the judgment going on, too. Seems to be something in particular that destabilizes me. And what that is is the dark side. The dark side is really, for me, the kind of seeing and feeling that destabilizes me. Naturally what's gonna be the dark side for me isn't gonna be the dark side for any of you. I have the feeling that that destabilization could be the best thing for me. The equivalent of emotional growing pains. But it is scary. And it is happening where no one is but me. It happens where I can bring it to a stop, by suppressing or distancing or neutralizing or going numb, and no one will know I'm doing that but me. Everyday life is such a grind. We look to the weekend. Life is such a struggle, so much turmoil, gotta push push push. And the dark side is to enter into the why and wherefore (for the grind). The dark side is quite alive, ready and waiting, inside our reactions where we don't venture to go, because it's too unbearable, too destabilizing. Suffering happens because I don't see what's actually going on, and instead I make up my mind that it's negative or positive. I just decide that and so I suffer for it. But suffering through my hate is not the same thing as venturing into the dark side. The dark side is right there in so much of our everyday reactions. And we don't look. We stay away from that. Oops, shoulda said that I don't look, and I stay away from that. Suffering is me deciding that this is terrible (like that Ramona was abusive towards me). If I don't decide that her abuse towards me is terrible, then I can feel what is there going on, as it is untouched by my negative judgment, my condemnation of it. Then the suffering is completely different. It is the feeling itself. But I don't do that because it's unbearable to do that. So I label it. That helps it become bearable. That affects the whole experience entirely, completely changes it. To not label it, to not touch it or change it, though, is to enter the dark side. Hardly anyone feels like doing that. Hardly anyone realizes they're not doing that. Hardly anyone realizes what's going on, or what they are doing. The unexamined life is not worth living, so said Socrates. Hardly any of my life is worth living, because hardly any of it do I examine. Talking about my life, thinking about it, that's not examining it. Thought doesn't listen to my life. It thinks about it. It's lost. Examining is listening, questioning, not condemning or accepting, not thinking thoughts about it. Yet I go along with anyone who says to beware when directly feeling what we feel, because it moves tremendously fast into idea, thought, sentiment, judgment, emotion, distortion. The mind is full when the heart is empty. The heart is full when the mind is empty. My mind is exceptionally subtle in its self-deception. It's most difficult for it to come to a stop on its own, which is what needs to happen for direct feeling and for venturing into the dark side of everyday life....into our reactions, our emotional reactions. There, that's enough worthless thinking for tonight. I'll just go ahead and close up my head, pack it away for another day. Meantime, I wish I could begin to live, to feel, to be vital and real. And be really in the present moment. Haven't been all through this thing. How 'bout you, y'all?

Stacey's response was blank on mine too--I think she hit "submit response" instead of "next topic" (easy to do when you're tired).

actually guys, tired as I was, it was not accidental. Leplep, you saw exactly my thoughts on the situation... I was speechless. For some reason though, I view it as a common courtesy maybe (ethical of course!) to let someone know when I've read through their posts even when I cannot come up with a comment.

Never woulda thought of that. That is pretty nice of you, Stacey. What threw me was how the heading said 2 lines. Why would it do that? One of those quirks in the system....

nope. I had to press return so it would accept the fact that I posted something. Guess I hit it twice (for good luck)

And I thought you had two whole lines of brain strike!

that would not be unusual!

uuhhh . . . ja. me too

kinda how I feel, too, ratthing...

empty or thoughtless?

why can't I be both if I wanna?

Didn't say you couldn't! But you have my permission if that's what you wanted . . . �mocking smile�

Question: Which would you all prefer to inspire in your lover of choice? Passion Sensuality Romance Lust

depends, 50% of the time, lust. not too sure about the rest of the time.

My lover of choice is the wind. I like inspiring nothing, and feeling it carry from summit to tide and cape to cape from vision to emptiness and strength to strength.

good question, wer....i would want all of them in a lover (that's the gemini in me, can't decide)

You want different things at different times. Romance I would rate least. The other three emotions have depth. Romance seems superficial (to me). But lust by itself isn't enough. Combine it with passion and/or sensuality and you've really got something.

Sonja here: I'd like to inspire friendship first. Then all the other things in this order: sensuality romance passion lust I could not be intimate/romantic/lustful/passionate to/with someone I didn't feel completely at ease with I don't think. But I am sort of slow with relationships - I can't just dive into all of it like a crazy thing .... (and I will name no names here - especially not that of my sister...).

Sensuality and passion are tied for first. Romance is too--I don't know--shallow (notice how you're only really romantic w/people whom you don't know real well?) and lust is too base.

Passion.

yup (passion is ALL)

Even emptiness has passion. Even love has emptiness. Even death has passion. Can ya die to each day? Can ya die to each moment so yer not carrying it around with you and putting on weight or heaviness? In empty roomy space there is great passion, love, death, tremendous energy. Life in our death, every day, gives passion to the moment. Why? Cuz it's so fresh, new. The ego has a chance to disappear. In that same exact moment, meaning appears. And just like that, words, more words babble up another moment, another line. Look at all these lines. Die, you lines! Get yerselves empty. Bye bye, words. Poof! Renew. New passion. New eyes. New breath. No possessiveness. No my friend. No my husband. Just a whole new person. Starting completely fresh. Real passion.

I think there is alot more to love than passion. There is alot more to love than love even. Sometimes I wonder if language can actually be trusted with the concept of love.

Are we only talking about romantic love? I think one can exist quite happily without romantic love. But not without the love of a friend/family member(s). That one does need.

Maybe categorizing love into different kinds, is the distrustful work of language or words mesmerizing us with their power (the power of language and words). We can come up with words for things, create definitions, circulate them in our dictionaries, refer to Plato's use of the different meanings, and that's good enough for us, we're satisfied, it's so convenient. But the word is not the thing, and the word does not make it so. Except that the word can be so mesmerizing, and boundaries are created where none exist, maybe? Is that so? What if passion and love and truth and freedom and innocence and beauty and sacred and pure are all really the same word. What if none of them can be comprehended, let alone finding a word for them. What if the moment you comprehended what any of them are, you comprehend that comprehension itself is too shallow to comprehend anything except within a completely unstable context of prepackaged meanings already set up to be related to each other according to the rules of some game, the game of language.

wow i mean yeah, wow that's really cool leplep... think you're onto something there...

Yes, that's what I was wondering about. I mean is it not language, the power of the word, that has started some of the worst wars in history? How can one trust the language that can so easily be used for lies and empty promises, insults and commands to describe such a thing as love? But then again - how capable are we of loving?

Phony self-importance and opportunism guide people. Opportunism involves comfort levels and habit. People don't like to question or be questioned, because to question, and to think, creates disturbances, it brings opposition, it may cause us to act contrary to our established pattern, so we resist in order to prevent the oncoming agitation or emotional upheaval. To love may lead to unknown depths, but what we're used to rebels against the unknown, so we move from the known to the known, from habit to habit, from pattern to pattern, where it's emotionally and psychologically safe. So it only makes sense, while staying within our own tendencies and patterns, to maneuver in opportune ways, which is self-centered and self-serving. Even when people are nice, they're really self-serving if they're hoping to get something nice out of it. Conflict and war comes out of fear. Fear to let go of our ego, our needs, our possessiveness, our habitual ways of doing things and feeling about things. We're afraid to leave ourselves behind and discover what's truly new and unknown, like love and responsive selflessness. Instead, we want what we already know. We want more of it and turn it into a need with all sorts of cooked up reasons---it's opportunism---it's conflict and war and suffering and pain. Words just flow out of that. If we understood and lived and felt love, we would use words wisely, understanding their limitations and acting and talking accordingly. Two of the hardest things to not resist are pain and agitation (emotional turmoil). We resist those two and it results in alotta evasiveness, false reasons, distraction. It results in people not doing the work it takes to find out what compassion (and then love) is. Compassion emerges when suffering is truly felt and understood completely. Selflessness is a strange word. Humility. To be able to listen deeply without any partiality and with great feeling.

I must say I'm very guilty of that. I never really realized just how selfish love can be until the day I had my first baby. I phoned my mum to tell her it had happened, and got the news that my sister had TB, her lungs had collapsed, she might not make it through the night. And as I sat there stunned, all I could think was: What will I do without her? I. Not, how can I get there quickest to be with HER, buat what would 'I' do without her. I couldn't imagine MY life without her, nevermind the fact that she might HAVE no life. Human nature is strange.

Wow, girl! You felt that because of me?

nah, she's just teasing :-)

Of course, girl!

which is what love's all about, really...

Or is that deep needy attachment? Deep needy attachment has very powerful feelings going through it. It feels like love, as far as we know. Hardly anyone's capable of love. No, no, everyone's capable of love, but hardly anyone loves. It would've been different if Riette had said something like: "That's why I went to you to be by your side when you had T.B." And Sonja says, "Why?" And Riette says, "Because I wasn't thinking about me and what it would mean to me to be without you, I was just thinking about you, your life." And Sonja says, "Wow, girl! You felt that because of me?" And Riette says, "Of course, girl!" But we want what we want so bad, so we'll say that what we do is love. We like to believe and think idealistically about ourselves. I'm just saying, the ideal isn't the real. It's nice that we do what we do when it's nice, because it's better than if we didn't care at all about certain people or if we hated them---but the nice can be co-dependent and very very acceptable in society---it's commended and highly valued.....but it's not really love. Interpretations are just subjective, tremendously fallible, and this has been mine. I like seeing the variety of interpretations that we can have. I just thought, too, it would be cool to see Americ's, on this.

Perhaps it is deep needy attachment - I don't know. My feelings for my sister are not perfect. But one's feelings for oneself aren't perfect either. And Sonja is a part of me as I am a part of her. That, I suppose, isn't love either. Perhaps I don't know what love is at all. All I know is that with her I truly belong, I am truly at home, truly me, deeply satisfied and serene inside.

No, Leplep, if Ri�tte had said those things, they would not move me at all, nor strike me as particularly unselfish or noble, and certainly not an expression of love. Ri�tte is no angel, and no god of any kind; that is why I love her. She gives so absolutely everything for our friendship, and also in her relationship with Chris. When she's around, there's always laughter and play, happiness, and one always feels so CARED for with her - isn't that better than saying corny things like, 'Well, I was just thinking of you.'? I mean, in the way she treats me I can very well see that she thinks of me - but it is great that she needs me too, and isn't afraid to express that need. It's just so comforting to me that she is able to admit to her weaknesses so openly, and that she doesn't hide them behind noble, polished words - she says a thing as it is; you know where you stand with her, you don't walk around wondering whether she really cares, or whether she's just trying to keep you happy. You know how she feels, you know you can count on her, and you know she won't just change her mind. She is not afraid to tell me that she needs me, and I appreciate that. And isn't love about attachment as well? If you can't form emotional ties with people, if you don't learn how to need people, to accept their kindness and care, how can you possibly love them? Love isn't just about giving, it is also about receiving. I've always thought of it as a two-way thing. I agree with what Ri�tte said - that one cannot express love with language. Because when it comes down to it, it is the actions that count, not precisely defining what love should be or how it should be expressed, but just DOING it. In the search to find the correct words and language with which to express love, the abstract reality of it can easily become distorted. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm taking sides. I guess I am. It's just that I truly believe in my love for my sister, and her's for me.

don't really know what y'all are talking about (haven't read previous posts, or what leplep said, though generally he seems pretty dead-on in his observations) (once they sink in and everything)... but what you wrote was really beautiful and true... really cool, and both of you (you and riette) are very fortunate to have each other...

question time again.... Can one have a "soulmate" that is "in love" with someone else?

i think so, but confuse myself with thoughts about that. i've stopped wondering who mine is. i'd like to think it's beau because he can make me laugh and is accepting of all my (many) faults. on the other hand, i am very close to my daughter who is like her father in the fact that she could care less about my faults. and my son would do anything if he knew it pleased me. so what can i say? i'm loved by these three wonderful people so i have no right to wonder if there's someone else out there. and because i know that i love them with all that's in me even if i confuse myself sometimes. and i agree with sonja. love is so large that words cannot begin to describe it's power. but to be able to admit your weaknesses without shame, without apology, and it making no difference to anyone, truly, that's love of the self. which you must have first.

my bestest bestest closest friend in the whole world has been in love with other people, i guess.

i take it your bestest friend is someone you're in love with?

well, i guess so, but not in a romantic way. nothing has ever happened between us, and never will.

Doesn't keeping or finding or having a soulmate distract from seeing what love is not? Isn't "soulmate" a matter of sentiment? Look how it appeals to people, look how subjective it is. We think that surely with our soulmate we are in love, right? And then wouldn't that become what we want to pursue? Well, when we think we're in love, that's that. It becomes very difficult to question what we want and what we want to believe. It becomes that much harder to question when we take sides, isn't that true? Partiality mixes with need and it sets up competitive forces---then what happens to our ability to see what's actually taking place? Doesn't it distract from our chances to see what is false? We've gotta be able to see what love is not. There are alotta things that love is not that also feel very honorable and good and beautiful. And it's hard to i agine, let alone actually see, that they are not love. If we have something that is very important to us and gives us tremendous pleasure and satisfaction, wouldn't it be natural to be reluctant to look into the meaning of the weaknesses and faults? I'm saying that the weaknesses and faults point to how what's not love is not love. Attachment and need are one thing. They can be extremely fulfilling and comforting. The vast majority of the world population would wonder how can you dare to doubt these o-called virtues (the fulfilling and comforting feelings that come from attachment and need). It has to be love, according to societal norms. But the self is very concerned about itself. It certainly wants to do all it can to hold onto what means the most to it, what makes it most happy. Really, the self is a bundle of needs and attachments that have formed into longstanding habits. To love one's own self, to do that first, is really to first start learning how to love one's own dependencies, one's w aknesses. Love starts to mean to take care of one's faults. I'm saying that's not love, it's not what love does. Love doesn't love what is a weakness. Love not only admits a weakness, it also looks into the weakness in order to learn what the weakness is, how it got there, how it functions. Dependence glorifies dependence and gives it a name that it likes the sound of very much. Love is free of all that. It's something else. It can't be described, as has been mentioned, but what is not love can be described and noticed and understood without corniness, without stereotyping, or polishing off slick facile word combinations. I think I'm being honest, not trying to cunningly verbalize an argument and then sticking to it no matter what. It's true that a person wouldn't say "Because I wasn't thinking about me and what it would mean to me to be without you, I was just thinking about you, your life." That was written like that to use the same formula but different wording than what WER seemed to me to b responding to when he said, "which is what love's all about, really....." In other words, the formula of the words that WER seemed to me to be responding to, that formula required that the way I had to rewrite what was inserted into the formula had to be unnatural sounding---but it could work as far as getting the point across---which was that love isn't concerned with self-centered thoughts. Those last few sentences were hard to figure out what I was driving at, eh? Well, it wasn't an easy thing to s ell out and clear up, either. When we're attached to people we really "love", they figure more prominently in our lives and we see their characteristics more acutely than other people. Since we depend so acutely on them for our serenity, our feeling of feeling cared for, our deeper experiences of happiness, we don't see that that dependence forms limitations in us that become habit. Do you see what I mean? Love doesn't do that. Love sees another person's faults and is interested in them because they revent that other person from experiencing love which can only happen when we are free from attachment and dependence and need. Our faults are not just to be admitted and that's that. They are to be explored and gotten to the bottom of. That's what love does. Love is not going to be attached and partial and limited. That's something else, not love. Freedom is in love's nature. So is learning. Love can only live in truth. Faults are not truth. They are false ways of living. They are weakness. eakness is not bad. It's not to be condemned or disapproved at all. Doing that only interrupts the learning, the freedom, the love. I don't love. I'm doing something else like everyone else. Please, don't hold back, be forthcoming and as totally honest as you can be, and say more, let's go further into this, because I don't think we've gone very far at all, have we? I hope I haven't made too many of you feel like it's pointless to go on talking about this, at this point.

um...don't mean to be picky, but you couldn't re-post that with a few paragraph separatoins in could you - it's really hard on my eyes to read it! :-) cheers *blush*

Doesn't keeping or finding or having a soulmate distract from seeing what love is not? Isn't "soulmate" a matter of sentiment? Look how it appeals to people, look how subjective it is. We think that surely with our soulmate we are in love, right? And then wouldn't that become what we want to pursue? Well, when we think we're in love, that's that. It becomes very difficult to question what we want and what we want to believe. It becomes that much harder to question when we take sides, isn't that true? Partiality mixes with need and it sets up competitive forces---then what happens to our ability to see what's actually taking place? Doesn't it distract from our chances to see what is false? We've gotta be able to see what love is not. There are alotta things that love is not that also feel very honorable and good and beautiful. And it's hard to imagine, let alone actually see, that they are not love. If we have something that is very important to us and gives us tremendous pleasure and satisfaction, wouldn't it be natural to be reluctant to look into the meaning of the weaknesses and faults? I'm saying that the weaknesses and faults point to how what's not love is not love. Attachment and need are one thing. They can be extremely fulfilling and comforting. The vast majority of the world population would wonder how can you dare to doubt these so-called virtues (the fulfilling and comforting feelings that come from attachment and need). It has to be love, according to societal norms. But the self is very concerned about itself. It certainly wants to do all it can to hold onto what means the most to it, what makes it most happy. Really, the self is a bundle of needs and attachments that have formed into longstanding habits. To "love" one's own self, to do that first, is really to first start learning how to "love" one's own dependencies, one's weaknesses. "Love" starts to mean to take care of one's faults. I'm saying that's not love, it's not what love does. Love doesn't love what is a weakness. Love not only admits a weakness, it also looks into the weakness in order to learn what the weakness is, how it got there, how it functions. Dependence glorifies dependence and gives it a name that it likes the sound of very much. Love is free of all that. It's something else. It can't be described, as has been mentioned, but what is not love can be described and noticed and understood without corniness, without stereotyping, or polishing off slick facile word combinations. I think I'm being honest, not trying to cunningly verbalize an argument and then sticking to it no matter what. It's true that a person wouldn't say "Because I wasn't thinking about me and what it would mean to me to be without you, I was just thinking about you, your life." That was written like that to use the same formula but different wording than what WER seemed to me to be responding to when he said, "which is what love's all about, really....." In other words, the formula of the words that WER seemed to me to be responding to, that formula required that the way I had to rewrite what was inserted into the f rmula had to be unnatural sounding---but it could work as far as getting the point across---which was that love isn't concerned with self- centered thoughts. Those last few sentences were hard to figure out what I was driving at, eh? Well, it wasn't an easy thing to spell out and clear up, either. When we're attached to people we really "love", they figure more prominently in our lives and we see their characteristics more acutely than other people. Since we depend so acutely on them for our serenity, our feeling of feeling cared for, our deeper experiences of happiness, we don't see that that dependence forms limitations in us that become habit. Do you see what I mean? Love doesn't do that. Love sees another person's faults and is interested in them because they prevent that other person from experiencing love which can only happen when we are free from attachment and dependence and need. Our faults are not just to be admitted and that's that. They are to be explored and gotten to the bottom of. That's what love does. Love is not going to be attached and partial and limited. That's something else, not love. Freedom is in love's nature. So is learning. Love can only live in truth. Faults are not truth. They are false ways of living. They are weakness. Weakness is not bad. It's not to be condemned or disapproved at all. Doing that only interrupts the learning, the freedom, the love. I don't love. I'm doing something else like everyone else. Please, don't hold back, be forthcoming and as totally honest as you can be, and say more, let's go further into this, because I don't think we've gone very far at all, have we? I hope I haven't made too many of you feel like it's pointless to go on talking about this, at this point.

Interesting. I must say I've never thought of my husband as my soulmate. I mean, there's great friendship between us, but fundamentally we are probably the two most different people who ever existed. I've thought of a few people I've met as 'soulmates', not because I necessarily loved them, but because I found their minds functioned similarly to my own. So the easy thing about it is that the 'soulmate' knows exactly what you're talking about when you talk about it. But at a certain point the relationship with a soulmate can become difficult; you're confronted with your own mistakes alot, and you don't love the person more for it. And at some point you run out of words and thoughts to share; the e ement of surprise soon fades. I can only take SO much of myself before feeling the need to throw up! With a non-soulmate it is different, and, I find, in a way healthier. For example, my husband thinks so differently from the way I do that he is able to recognize my mistakes, and point them out when he needs to. With a soulmate that would not happen, because the person would be as unwilling to see their faults as I myself am. With a non-soulmate the relationsip also remains stimulating, since the person always has new ways of thinking, doing, reacting to offer; things that enrich you. And in your own way you offer something to the non-soulmate as well. There is alot of interaction as you learn to understand one another, and some things you never understand, but forever try to figure out. The relationship is a challenge, interesting and frictious. That's what I love. Then, when you do compromise, when it does make 'click' it's more like a 'BOOM'! And that's when it turns really hot and passionate, and deeply satisfying. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think love is more likely to occur with a non-soulmate than the other way around.

i understand what you're saying. my husband and i click but we do think differently. we have a similar sense of humor, he knows me like the back of his hand. we do this thing where i'll think something and he'll say it or the other way around and we're miles from each other when it happens. this happens so much it's scary. we went to a restaurant and ordered the same thing and the waitress thought we were siblings. we got a good laugh. but because we're different, we teach each other all the time. and we offset each other's impatience, you know? he's more tolerant in some areas than i am and we complement each other.

One thing about pain and weakness and negativity and faults is that we tend to want to avoid that and move in the other direction---towards deeply satisfying feelings. That's how pain and pleasure become 2 sides of the same coin. I think it's important to see our limitations as a great source of learning and to see learning as freeing and to see freeing as to experience something with affection and to see affection as something that is full of passion and to see passion as full of stillness and energy and extraordinary attention. What our mind and our self does not want to look at is the stuff that could shatter everything the stuff that could question the very foundation we base our living and thinking and feeling on. One reason why we can't stand ourselves is because of our limitations. We feel trapped inside the sameness and the known. This is a treasure being handed to us.....it's very precious. To have the chance to see just how limited we are is of great worth. Especially if we get to see it very clearly in all its starkness. And when the discomfort gets to us, can we realize this is a signal, a signal to look closer at an important energy force at work in us? The thing which we fight, that's what we turn into. When we don't want to look, can we look? And can we begin to see that this is it. This is the thing that is most meaningful. And this is also when it's good to relax into a natural calm, a quiet stillness that listens with ease and with affection. The self prevents love, and the self must be understood very clearly. So what is the self with all its needs and compulsions and habits and requirements? Don't we get to see who we are when we notice our reactions? How we react to the leaf swaying back and forth on the branch, to the cashier at Walmart, to the next-door neighbors as they walk past us and into their front yard, to the phone when we hear it ringing---isn't that where we are and isn't that when we see our self as it actually is? These are deeply conditioned reflexes, and memory that works so automatically, it executes in the rehashed moment with fresh response, though that fresh response may be rather dull and predictable. Self is a rather a petty paltry thing. Love is beyond the self---it is when the self is not. The strains and pulling threads, those patterns that make up the self are not so necessary when they are seen in action. In those moments of seeing, the self steps aside, it desists. Love acts then....it's new and fresh and original and uncontaminated. It's security. The security of being tremendously alive with passion and a curious and amazing energy.....change, freedom, the real, truth, love. That security is different from the security of a wife or a husband or a family. Family tends to turn into the interrelated workings of its selves. Just tons of judgements rule the household. Judgments that go and go and go with all their potency, unchecked. And the guarded armor, the defensive routines that are taken for granted, and worked around. Please disagree with all this. These statements/opinions are only coming from some self that is partial to what its conditioning suggests. Just throwing stuff out there into the topic like the rest of you are. I'm not trying to rile. Not trying to set off intense severe barbed wire emotions in any of you.

I would love to disagree with you. The things you say - they go AGAINST how my mind works, how my very insides work. But I am feeling the proof of your statements about love and selfish need like lead in my chest this morning. I feel numb and incomplete and miserable, just miserable.

Every feeling can be penetrated into the very quick of its depth of release. If someone were to ask me what I think numb and incomplete and miserable are, I would say they aren't what they seem. They seem like thick deadening blockages. Actually they're powerful energy systems. Not systems. They are so alive. The biggest challenge in life is to go into them. Even though our stomachs turn at such a prospect. The point is, though, that there's no other way to come upon love. Love won't let us love until we get to know ourselves. Otherwise who is it who is loving? We're a mess, and we are loving? No, we can love only when we understand ourselves. If it's real understanding, then it resolves and dissolves the blockages. In that release and freedom, love can give birth to a new person. The important thing is learning how to face the fact of who and where we are right now. To face that, we begin to see how it's possible to feel differently about what we can't stand. Getting over that hump is huge. It has to do with noticing things. We start noticing things about the numbness and the incompleteness, the miserableness. It hardly ever occurs to us that we can sit down and just look at it. Relax our minds and just look at the miserableness. It's a funny thing. It's funny too how easy it is to do, when it would used to seem so impossible. So unbearable. But now it's not. There's some frozen food taken out of the fridge. It's sitting on the counter now, thawing. We are too. We are numb....but now at least we are also thawing. There are some changes very slowly becoming noticeable as the thaw goes on. The miserable feeling is walking toward us and then away and then back towardf us, and touching our immediacy. We are seeing our way into this thawing, this loosening movement. The sunlight is warm on our hands as it breaks through into the cemetery of our beings. Miserableness is a fact and we are numb with our incompleteness, and we are meeting this new acquaintance who we thought for sure was one of our oldest worst enemies. Listen closer now to it. This is life. It isn't easy. There are creaks in the bones. But we go numb and feel miserable because we closed up ourselves. We didn't want to be hurt. But to avoid hurt we closed up, and that hurt us even more. There's a certain mystery in the beauty of recognizing how it works. To see our miserableness like we might see an unattractive person who fell on hard times and is disregarded with disdain...... that is a touch of warmth coming back into our numbness. We feel we should give ourselves another chance right then and there. Now and here. We look and feel miserable. But our miserableness is human, like the person who fell on hard times. Our miserableness actually means something in and of itself. Something quite important. Something worth listening in to. Because it is our hearts we're really listening to then. We just didn't know it, cuz all appearances seemed contrary. Yes, miserableness has a heart, a soft warmth that bleeds as it wants to know how to feel and open and come out of itself and bloom. What takes it by the hand is the listening. Listening is the one thing that can connect, join and release. Listening is freeing, and it's not easy, but it's true and it is fact. It's funny to listen to how pain is not really pain, though it just absolutely seemed so miserable. The pain and hurt of the miserable, that's what changes, it changes into how close we come to ourselves when we listen in and hear something beating behind what feels so numb and incomplete---our heart has more than a pulse, and it's beating out a rhythm that needs to be listened even more closely to..... yes, to do that when we think we can't..... it's the same as offering some of ourselves to the stranger who looks miserable and wretched over there..... they look up at us, totally astonished, they can't believe that we are there with them, listening.... just like we are now listening to our miserableness.... and finding out that it is very human and responds to sincere attention. I say attend to it with an understanding heart. There is a learning and a freeing that happens. It's the only way those blockages can come unblocked. But the listening must be effortless or it won't be genuine. It's most human when there is no desire for results. Life comes back to us when it is just allowed to be. It's practically embarrassing how it uncomplicates itself eventually, if only by gradual steady progressions. Please, now, feel free to live more disagreement with these lines.... it's good and healthy.....it's fine to wonder about things so differently from the next person. Let's see what we can see as we see divergently, each in our own way.

riette, why are you so miserable?

missing your sis, huh? *hug*

Thank you for that, Jim - I feel calmer now; it sort of hit this morning, and that always makes me panick a little; I hate inflicting red eyes and a runny nose upon other people, and there were three of the dearest in the house. So the conference, this topic, was my one wise choice of the day, I think! Yes, Ray, I've been feeling a pretty sorry-ar$ed bunch since my sister flew last night; I miss her so much, it feels as if just letting miserable happen without controlling it really hard, will make it utterly unbearable. I keep thinking, a week ago this time we were doing this, and five days ago that, and two days ago, and so on. It was horrible talking to her and the other two this afternoon, and not being able to be there. And then my mum started crying, and refused to admit it, and I could not eve be with her or hold her. I just hate this distance, I really do. The thing that frightens me most every time we have to part, as with the others, is idea that I will become used to her absence again, that the fact of us being so far apart physically will merely become a dull sort of pain, and incompleteness in the furthest corner in my mind. I don't want to get used to it anymore. It is selfish, I am selfish, but I just want her back here, and at the same time I want to be with her and my brother and y mum right now. I think about how we'd be sitting around the kitchen table now, drinking tea, talking all at once, my brother telling us all the old jokes again, and they being hysterically funny just because the four of us decided they were funny a long long time ago. I want to hear my mum tell us to be quiet because of the neighbours, my brother telling her favourite story, and her bursts of laughter drowning ours. I want to talk to them, I want to listen to their voices, the things they have to sa , I want to see their faces, their eyes! I would love to look into their eyes, I would love to see what I always see there. And we'd be making the 'Christmas Bed' on the living room floor, and all lie down side by side, whispering deep into the night. I know that is what they are doing as I sit here, and it hurts, that's all. We always say that we must be grateful when being apart hurts, for if we were grateful for being apart, it would have been a far worse thing. So it's really a lucky thing.

I've missed so much in this conference in a month! I find it amusing that soulmates are often assumed to be excessively similar when, in our verbal reality, when we discuss 'mates' the are opposites. Boy, girl. Yin, yang. Right shoe, left shoe. etc.

In order to be a true soulmate, you have to be opposite, and the same. Your strengths have to match your mates weakness. And your weakness must match your mates strengths. Yet you have to think as one entity. Be committed to a single goal. And have the trust to allow individuality in each other.

golly, how'd you get to be so smart? one can go their whole life without knowing their soulmate-- is this kind of like the "everybody has a twin" theory?

Not Quite, I have found 5 different soulmates so far. There are probably more out there.

I don't have to look, I HAVE a twin, and she's all the soulmate I can take!

Not true. One day you'll stumble across another. Your attitude will change.

tim--you have 5 soulmates? i was always under the impression that you only had one! (and riette--i'm the other twin, remember *grin*)

It may be that our definition of soulmate is different. Here is mine: A soulmate is someone who thinks enough like you to know, how you think, what you are thinking, even before you speak, you can start a sentence, and they can finish it, effortlessly, without thinking about it. With your soulmate, you can converse, using the smallest fragments of sentences, because your thoughts are the same, and conversation moves almost at thought speed, much faster than anyone else can follow. But most important, a soulmate can see when you are deceiving yourself, and tell you about it. I have met 5 people like that. I'm still in contact with three of them.

that's good! well, then i can say i've met and married one. but even knowing that, i confuse myself sometimes. guess that's the human being in me. a soulmate doesn't have to be of the opposite sex do they? i always thought they were for some reason.

No they don't. One of mine Isn't. Two of mine are boyfriend-girlfriend. These are two of the three.

I defenitely didn't marry my soulmate! He says he doesn't have clue about what goes on in my head. And I sure don't know what goes on in his either! Awe, Wolfie, I'm so sorry - we ARE twins! But you've been so quiet, how could I not have forgotten? What have you been up to, girl?

I was taking this friend of mine back to the car after picking her up at the hospital, when we came upon this lady pushing a double stroller, you know the kind, two babies can ride side by side. Anyway, there is a baby in one side and a 1M stuffed gorilla in the other, My friend said, "Hey look.....twins!" everyone on the elevator started laughing. This comes to mind every time twins are mentioned.

riette: just been busy girlfriend! (doing what, i have no idea) seems when i jump on line no one else is here, so i say what i have to say and check in later... and that was cute about the gorilla and baby! poor mama probably heard that everywhere she went...

It's hilarious! But disturbing - wonder who's the gorilla in my twinship. Actually, I know the answer, because I know which one of us is the hairiest.... You been painting lately, Wolfie?

Which one is it?

Sonja! She has blond hair, but so much of it, it sort of covers her back like chicken feathers. Men find that very sexy about her.

Especially the male chickens. But male humans find that male chickens are so predictable. So male humans do try to be different from male chickens. But I dunno if any have succeeded........yet.

none that I know of... Question: how does one go about severring(sp?) the ties between one and one's soulmate?

Why would you want to?

the ties between one's soulmate fluctuate in intensity, but i do not think that they can ever be severed. this would be a contradistinction to the very definition of a "soul mate." the male chicken reference reminds me of a famous story told about something called the "Coolidge Effect." President Calvin Coolidge and his wife once went on a tour of a chicken farm. at one point, mrs. c's entourage came across the breeding area. the breeding area was full of hens and had one dominant rooster. mrs c. asked the farmer how many times a day the rooster mated with hens. she was very impressed with the number that was given, and said, "tell that to the President." later on, President Coolidge's entourage made it to the same breeding area. the farmer related to the president the bit of info that mrs c. wanted him to know. at that, the President asked the farmer, "Does the rooster mate all those times with the same hen or with different ones?" Different ones, of course, answered the farmer. "Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge." replied the President.

haha!! how clever!! wer: you ok? wanting to split up with a soulmate and all....

yes, wer, i hope you are ok. you can tell a soulmate to fuck off and die (i've done it) but they always come back (she and i are, in fact, going into business together).

Yeah, what's up kitchen guy?

I have no idea where I am. Can someone help me please?

Let's hope so. Where do you want to be?

stephanie, i hope you are reading this! just enter in a response and watch the responses to your response flow in! elcome!

This raises an interesting moral dilemma. Is it OK to "divorce" your soulmate if the relationship is unhealthy, co-dependant, whatever? Or are you obligated to establish harmony and equilibrium w/them?

i've simply believed that a relationship with a soulmate cant be bad. it can have its ups and downs, of course. does that make any sense?

I think by definition it's supposed to be a state of being at peace with each other and the universe. But now we have dysfunctional soulmates?

Maybe peace isn't the best term. I think that oneness expresses it better. It's a powerful feeling, you have to be ready for it. My first time, I wasn't ready for it, the second time, neither one of us was ready.