Love...Is it THAT important?...real?...ultimate?...etc...

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.

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.

So what happened?

The first time, we became, and still are friends, she is married now, and lives 1100 miles away but we still talk. How she explained me to her husband, I have no idea, but she did. We have been friends now for 25 years. The second time we got too close too quickly, because neither of us knew what we were getting in to. the resulting closeness terrified both of us. she moved 2200 miles away. I haven't seen her since.

There are three others. All of whom live close by. One of them is Laura. We have been friends 17 years.

That's great. The thing that frightens me about 'soulmates', is that it is easy to expect things of the other person, just because you think he/she is JUST like you. I have a few times felt like a person I met was my soulmate; then I treated them just like the one soulmate I have already (my sister), and it turned out wrong. If one has a soulmate of the opposite sex, do you think it good or bad when they sleep together?

i think that in my case, my soulmates are not at all just like me. instead, we complement each other perfectly, so that we add up to one whole "being" or "oneness" as tim mentioned above.

My soulmate hated me from the very beginning. So I just talk to her answer machine. She once left a message asking me how I'm feeling about my soulmate. Her answer machine is the most receptive being I've ever done time with. And that includes everyone in San Quentin. I say this bashfully, but.....our love will never end.

Riette, It depends what you mean by sleep together. If you mean sex, It would have to be approached very carefully, because it is the ultimate sharing and it will either immeasurably strengthen the bond or cause indescribable hurt. It would have to be discussed. If you mean just sleeping together, that is just GREAT! It is another form of sharing. My first soulmate's name is Christa. We slept together numerous times. Attended love feasts together. never had sex. Laura and I have slept together numerous times, lived together several times, shared everything with each other, except sex. When I met her, she was underage, so we made an agreement not to have sex. Since that time she has had many men take advantage of her sexually, so I have decided that we will not have sex unless she decides that is what she wants without any question about it from me. I figure that what she really needs is a male friend that will never attempt to take advantage of her. She also has extreme trust in me. I value that trust, and I will not break it. Because she is an alcoholic and on medical assistance, she had to list her next of kin at the trauma center. These are adults that can sign for her to be treated against her will, and if she ends up on life support, make the decision to pull the plug. My name is first on her list, her mother is second. There is nobody else on the list. She has 3 brothers and 1 sister. They are not on the list. Her father is not on the list. That is an awesome trust. I will not violate it.

Doesn't anyone care about all the guys I slept with in San Quentin? Some were incredible unforgettable nights and longer. But I tell you this, as firmly as I've ever said anything, nothing comes close to my soulmate's answer machine. There's a love there that will last forever. I can't even remember my soulmate's name. Her phone number is that matters anymore.

BUT: have you slept with her, Jim? You know, on the answering machine. Tim, you sound like a good soulmate to have. But if one has a soulmate of the opposite sex (and remember, I don't really know what I'm talking about, because I've not experienced this), then doesn't it just get natural at some point to share everything? Because we're made up of body AND of soul. Does it not become natural to share the body, once you share the soul?

Yes, It does. But the time has to be right. Because once that sharing occurs. you have no secrets. You can hold nothing back, never again. It's pretty awesome If you think about it.

I've never shared my body because it doesn't know what time is. It keeps asking me, "Jim, is it time? is it time? is the time right yet?" I never know what to say because I keep thinking my body should be telling me when the time's right, not the other way around. This pleases my soulmate's answer machine no end. And this is the most complicated relationship I've ever been in. But our love will never end. BTW, her answer machine has an incredible body. Sometimes I want to touch it on the play button. But as I reach toward it, the answer machine slides around on her bedside table away from my big fat hand. Everytime I see my soulmate, she tells me with rising intensity, "I hate you and I always will. I hate you. I hate you." But she threatened to give me her answer machine. I can't figure out why she felt it was a threat. I guess I'll find out in a 6 days, that's when she said she'll give it to me. I'm almost certain, no, no, I am certain....I'm certain her answer machine is my real soulmate---and I was only led to it by her and her apparent soulmatedness. Life's problems can get so tricky and confusing sometimes....just have to hang in there and roll with the punches and the messages you leave.

Jim, I am LOL at you having phone sex with your soulmate's answering machine! I hope you two will be very happy together--I'm betting it will even wait fort you while you're up the river doing a nickel!

ha-ha!!! Tim, it is pretty awesome, but how does one know when the time is right? Doesn't one just feel that tingling, and think: now I HAVE to sleep with this person?

with me it only happens when I'm swimming in the river but no one else is ever around and I'm just left holding some nickel in my hand what I need is a waterproof cell phone

A plastic ziplock bag might work.

Or just drop the nickle into the water, and make a wish.

Riette, Yes, you both know when the time is right, but the important thing to do is recognise where you are going.

or at least where you are leaving...

How do you mean, Wer?

Sorry, m'dear, but I can't think it through well enough to answer.

Try.

I don't know how to explain my inability to explain, especially since the words that I am currently using around here aren't being taken the way that they sound in my head before I post them.

You don't have to make excuses, Wer. If you're pi$$ed off, you can say so. At least we'll know where we are. I'm pi$$ed off at them moment - that doesn't mean I want our friendship to end. I'm just annoyed and disappointed, because we have somehow at some point turned into the kind of conference that tries to push new people away, instead of welcoming them. How couldd the persisting silence and occasional bitchy remarks NOT give that impression?

what? who're we pushing away riette?

Wolf, not you, But three of the males in the conference, have so irritated Riette, that she decided last night to leave the conferences for good. The ones involved, know who they are.

no no no, she can't leave us. riette, come back dear!

Customer Service Rep: Can you install LOVE? Customer: I can do that. I'm not very technical, but I think I am ready to install now. What do I do first? CS Rep: The first step is to open your HEART. Have you located your HEART ma'am? Customer: Yes I have, but there are several programs running right now. Is it okay to install while they are running? CS Rep: What programs are running ma'am? Customer: Let me see....I have PASTHURT.EXE, LOWESTEEM.EXE, GRUDGE.EXE, and RESENTMENT.COM running right now. CS Rep: No problem. LOVE will automatically erase PASTHURT.EXE from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory, but it will no longer disrupt other programs. LOVE will eventually overwrite LOWESTEEM.EXE with a module of its own called HIGHESTEEM.EXE. However, you have to completely turn off GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM. Those programs prevent LOVE from being properly installed. Can you turn those off ma'am? Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how? CS Rep: My pleasure. Go to your Start menu and invoke FORGIVENESS.EXE. Do this as many times as necessary until GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM have been completely erased. Customer: Okay, I'm done. LOVE has started installing itself automatically. Is that normal? CS Rep: Yes it is. You should receive a message that says it will reinstall for the life of your HEART. Do you see that message? Customer: Yes I do. Is it completely installed? CS Rep: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other HEARTS in order to get the upgrades. Customer: Oops...I have an error message already. What should I do? CS Rep: What does the message say? Customer: It says "ERROR 412 - PROGRAM NOT RUN ON INTERNAL COMPONENTS". What does that mean? CS Rep: Don't worry ma'am, that's a common problem. It means that the LOVE program is set up to run on external HEARTS but has not yet been run on your HEART. It is one of those complicated programming things, but in non-technical terms it means you have to "LOVE" your own machine before it can "LOVE" others. Customer: So what should I do? CS Rep: Can you find the directory called "SELF-ACCEPTANCE"? Customer: Yes, I have it. CS Rep: Excellent, you are getting good at this. Customer: Thank you. CS Rep: You're welcome. Click on the following files and then copy them to the "MYHEART" directory: FORGIVESELF.DOC, SELFESTEEM.TXT, REALIZEWORTH.TXT, and GOODNESS.DOC. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching any faulty programming. Also, you need to delete SELFCRITIC.EXE from all directories, and then empty your recycle bin afterwards to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back. Customer: Got it. Hey! My HEART is filling up with really neat files. SMILE.MPG is playing on my monitor right now and it shows that WARMTH.COM, PEACE.EXE, and CONTENTMENT.COM are copying themselves all over my HEART! CS Rep: Then LOVE is installed and running. You should be able to handle it from here. One more thing before I go... Customer: Yes? CS Rep: LOVE is freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everybody you meet. They will in turn share it with other people and they will return some really neat modules back to you. Customer: I will. Thank you for your help.

...profound...

Thank you, Infospryte -- that's a keeper!

*warm smile*

I put in a request for MIND.CALM, but they shipped MIND.COM instead. It did the opposite of what I wanted. Now I can't shut the bloody thing off. It broke my HEART, so I sent away for MEND.EXE. They shipped MIND.EXE instead. Now I have two of these beasts running, one in each hemisphere. They talk to each other incessantly, overloading my Corpus Callosum. I sent away for JOY, but they sent TOY, which I've been playing with for years. Then they sent me FUN.EXE and PUN.EXE, and purposely vexed me by randomly sending out FAN.EXE and PAN.EXE to various other souls. But the worst of it is that I have this big button reading CONTROL-ALT-DELETE that a lot of people keep poking at without my consent.

That sound like the story of my life... I must have a duplicate button that is being poked and I have no control over it whatsoever. Stuff like that can mess up a perfectly good life!

Y'all get Update 3.0, it's as cool as Update 2.0, but w/ more colours.

Okay! ...was waiting for the 4.0 to arrive, but I will get the 3.0 till then. Had enough of the button-pushing for a lifetime. Love the idea of more colors...

...and yes, love is THAT important, since you asked in your original question.

?

Read the topic heading...written by its creator...

But Americ asked the question! �grin� So far I've come to the conclusion that love is important and can be ultimate - but whether it's real alot of the time?

First I need to shut down FEAR.EXE, PARANOIA.COM, WORRY.EXE, and ANXIETY.COM.

What to do if CONFIDENCE.EXE doesn't work safely? Might this be caused by some virus in the system?

Or some bug which has attacked the hard drive rendering it less efficient than it should normally be! self-esteem.exe is one of those elusive programs which must be configured out of the material at hand, and some times not all of the components are there...

(I know Americ asked it originally - others have made comments, and I was just throwing out my feeling about it...)

CONFIDENCE.EXE cannot overcome ANXIETY.COM until KNOWLEDGE.BASE and REASONING.COM have established themselves as reliable, comprehensive, and bug-free.

ah...there is the difficulty...must be bug-free. Also important to have KNOWLEDGE.BASE protected from being overwritten by SENTIMENTALITY.NET or being nullified by SMALLBRAIN.ORG

That bug-free bit is the killer, because CIVILITY.EXE got munged way back in the early days and has been replicated in error ever since. There have been some efforts down through the ages to fix CIVILITY.EXE, but they failed in tragic ways.

It went the way of the Commodor 64 and other defunct things. Underuse has led to misuse then abuse. What's the use?!

CIVILITY.EXE, it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again.

Alas, I am afraid it is in Pandora's Box along with hope - never to escape again.

well. i guess it IS all hopeless, then. really.

It is possible to reconstruct CIVILITY.EXE, but it requires the right set of tools. Hint: It requires more than a dissociated ruleset. It requires the ability to compute a model. It requires knowledge of recursion.

...and, perhaps, the ability to tap into one's higher self.

well then, i repeat what i said two posts ago -- it's impossible. given that i can't count the number of times you, barry, have expressed hopelessness that nobody groks recursion, and nobody understands model-based reasoning. if that's the ticket then i guess the jig is up.

...why am I feeling a prfound sense of loss when we should be extolling the virtues of love...*sigh*

"it's all right ma, i'm only dyin'...."

Does Dylan grok recursion or understand model-based reasoning?

I admire the fact that Barry has bothered to think about the things that need to change - the fact that not everybody understands recursion does not devalue it; rather it is proof of the fact that thinking, REALLY thinking about things is inconvenient for most people. It is not that people are stupid or unable to understand - it is that most people have made a conscious decision not to understand, because when we understand what needs to be changed, and how to change it, we are responsible for affecting that change. And humans are known to shun change, because it feels unsafe.

Ree, what you say is true, but for some of us, we cannot stop thinking about things - really thinking and it deprives us of sleep and eventually of our normal funtioning leading to depression of the most severe sort and the wish for it all to end somehow. Just thinking can be devastating...it robs you of any joy in other things people do around you. I have seen it happen!

Fear is well-rooted in our psyches and in our culture. To overcome fear, one must develop (or recover) the capacity for love. If fear is innate, love is a learned behavior. Fear of failure is one I've grappled with all my life. It's kept me from trying some challenges because the estimated risk of failure was too high. Last week I watched the classic movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The character played by Jack Nicholson tries (and fails) to lift a heavy floor-mounted sink. At the end of the movie, another character, who feared even to speak, overcame his fear, lifted the sink off its foundations, heaved it through the barred windows, and made his escape to freedom.

The difference between Despair And Fear - is like the One Between the instant of a Wreck - And when the Wreck has been - The Mind is smooth - no Motion - Contented as the Eye Upon the Forehead of a Bust - That knows - it cannot see - --Emily Dickinson, 1861

...this is true, as well...but you are not alone...you have friends you have not yet met, Nan Dear...! *hugs*

Why are so many great poets and artist depressed, reclusive, or downright psychotic?...I think Dickinson--who was a genius--was all three.

...Suffered for her art? I think it was her only outlet...like the Bronte sisters. The muse can be a dangerous thing to court. It takes so much of your mind and emotional well-being and tears it apart for the art rendered that it often leaves the artist in a precarious situation mentally. I know more than one person who does not dare court the muse anymore for that very reason!

Nan, Dear...if you would like the soft soothing warmth of fellow lost-love sufferers, please join us at http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/screwed/163/new We cannot bear to think of you feeling alone in the cold cruel world! *hugs*

Great art emerges out the the despair inherent in a culture buried under layers of violence, oppression, injustice, corruption, poverty, and ignorance.

All those layers of shit eventually turn into compost, and beautiful things spring forth. It's the Way. Stop fighting against it...

Moulton sings a new song... Take me for a ride in your ca-ca... Take me for a ride in your ca-ca...

Play nicely, please! Does not sound like love to me...! But, what does?

To a tulip bulb in early spring, nothing says lovin' like compost... :)

...all warm and lovely and squishy between the toes...!

Oxygen is a poisonous gas produced by trees as their primary waste product.

...and without it life of the animal kingdom as we know it would not exist. Are you alluding that one thing's poison is another's lifeblood?

Weeeell, we already knew that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, now we reconsider crap. What next?

I rather hoped we would get back to affairs of the heart and other wonderful things - which, I happen to think is THAT important...THAT real and THAT ultimate...!

I happen to agree... then again, I also think compost is wonderful. And sunsets in New Mexico...(this photo was taken by my late brother's life companion)

How very lovely it is, and thank your brother and that most important individual in his life for sharing this moment with us. That is truly love...!

I worded that rather unfortunately...You cannot thank your brother, sadly. I shall thank you for sharing this with us...how fortunate they were to have had each other and lovely sunsets... I rather relish compost, as well. Without it we would not have very good food to eat and no mushrooms!

Mushrooms! That's right -- and I used to have a sign on my office door in grad school that said something about how I must be a mushroom, since they kept me in the dark and fed me shit... ;) Marcia, you are a kind person. I'm glad you're here. You'd have liked my brother Allyn; he was only 42 when he died. Here's how he looked when he was my baby brother.

I forgot to mention that Allyn died of AIDS.

Life's detritus is often the inspirational source of great art.

I beg your pardon! (Too bad good manners and sensitivty have become a lost art for some people!) Nan, it would have been my pleasure and an honor to have known your brother. How sweet he looked as your little brother! My sincerest sympathies on your terrible loss!

Barry, I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming (yes, I know!) that the great art is Nan...and she thrived on the $h** they fed her!

Marcia, because I know Barry very well in real life, I know he wasn't commenting in a way meant to hurt. Thanks for giving him the benefit of the doubt. This illustrates (yet again) the limitations of text-only conversations, absent the normal clues of facial exression and tone of voice. Anyway, because this topic is LOVE and I very much loved my brother, please bear with me a bit. This is something I wrote in a word-game topic in another conferencing venue, shortly after his death. We had to write in one-syllable words -- sometimes it was hilarious, but I discovered it was also an almost poetic way to say things I couldn't otherwise speak of: --- My strength stood the hard test last week. My bro, A., died on the dawn ere New Year's Eve at his home, with those he loved by his side. I blessed him with my tears and helped him Go Home as much as I could. I am so glad he found peace, but since I took the plane back to my home I am not so numb now. I wail and keen at odd times; the pain comes out of me in gasps and screams, and fells me ere I am warned of its force. It feels like blows to my gut. At the hour of his death, as we sat in wait for the time to pass with no breath or pulse, my best friend (who knew my heart was stunned with grief) called me on the phone just to Be with me. I left the dark room where A. lay to take the call in the room where we cook, and looked out a glass door there. Dawn had put a glow in the sky of the East, and a bright star hung at the point where the glow met the black night that had rolled back... I was full of awe, and knew my bro was free at last. --- Barry was the friend who happened to call, just as Allyn breathed his last, and gave me cause to look up to the sky and see that Morning Star.

That was lovely and so much more emotive for having been in the terse poetic single syllable words. Thank you so very much for sharing that with me. I know you are close to Barry and I have gotten feeling of things I shall not put here. I am glad he was there for you...it must have been incredibly difficult and profoundly sad...my heart aches anew with your grief. How lucky your brother was to have people in his life who truly loved him for being him. I am not sure I ever have... Again, thank you (as I wipe a sympathetic tear with my hand and have trouble seeing what I am writing...)

Ah, yes... belonging and being loved for what we are is what we all long for most, isn't it. We are each in our heart of hearts so very human, no matter how important and protected the veneer we present to the world. Thank you, Marcia, for the gift of kindness you bring to others here.

And, thank you for your gentle nature and caring kindness, as well. You bring out the best in us, which is a wonderful gift in itself! Vulnerability is something we all try to hide but in reality we all have. Your brother having both a loving sister and a loving life mate was doubly blessed, and your sharing his life with us makes us blessed in turn. Again, thank you. *hugs*

Nan, I'm very sorry your brother left this realm way too young, leaving behind hurt he didn't cause in those who loved him. I'm also grateful that Barry was there for you. Although I didn't know him I could see in the eyes of the photo that he was a beautiful soul and in the sunset that he captured that his soul was that of an artist. Barry, sometimes your posts are so intellectually deep that they (unintentionally, I'm certain) hide the emotional depth that you must also possess to have Nan think so highly of you.

Thank you again and still again, Marcia -- and John too. I'm nearly done telling you about Allyn, but here's one last story.

I could probably write better if I could see the monitor and the keyboard, but I am crying with you as you took me back to that day. How beautifully you wrote and how meaningful it all was. Perhaps you could print out a copy and send it skyward for him to enjoy...and I shall do so as well, so he knows someone else in the big world came to love him through his most worthy sister. Thank you for sharing...

(((((((Marcia)))))))

*HUGS* (((((((Nan))))))

(guess that was reduntant, but I did not want you to mistake my intent *smile*)

Oh Marcia, hugs are never redundant in my house! The more, the better. ;)

Oooh Lovely! That is the way I feel about them, as well. *more hugs* and *warm feelings*

Where's moonbeam these days?

Anyone around???? I need a hug

Nan (Moonbeam) has been in and out talking to me. She has had a rather rigurous year and I do worry about her. HUGS Maggie. For an about to be PhD, I hadly feel worthy!

Don't be daft Marcia!!! Long way to go yet ... gotta make a video movie, AND finish writing! hugs