Greetings,

When we use or avoid the term 'love' in regard to our dealings with retrievals and the afterlife,
we often get into various misunderstandings.   Could we try again with this topic so we can
get our meanings clear?

A wonderful book 'Eros and Agape' (Greek origins and pronunciations: ah-gha-pay, for example) divides love into two parts--- eros as love directed at a single other human, and the other, agape, as a quality of being, aimed towards all rather than at any one object; both types can be selfless at least for some period of time.  ---But these views may not be sufficient.

Bruce got around problems with what the word love represents when he suggested PUL (Pure Unconditional Love) and suggested we think of a memory when we felt most loved, in order that we could generate the energies that make up such a love. We'd need it, he explained, to counteract fear that some have in dealing with the afterlife.

It seems there are many ways to use words to describe what we mean by love. RAther than try to find one way, maybe if we just shared our own ways of thinking of it, we could understand where we're coming from better.----
How would you describe love in the non-romantic sense?

Thanks for any ideas, Bets

 

Hi Bets, that's a good topic.

My personal view on this (strongly influenced by experience which tends to confirm Buddhist and other spiritual teaching) is that there's essentially no difference between agape (love for all beings) and love for an individual. 

The experience of the two is for most of us very different because we usually play very different games in the two situations. We feel able to love in close/personal relationships (and these feelings are often amplified by  what are essentially egotistical, societal and/or skill/wisdom (actually lack of) and maybe sexual angles) , but  act in pretty unloving ways in relationships with those outside of our circle.

One view is that the urge to love and be loved flows from the urge to re-experience the sense of belonging and of being loved that we felt prior to separation from God, but lost with our entering this reality and most especially with birth - leading to the sense of 'something being missing' in our lives that most feel.

We spend our lives trying to fill this gap - but most mistake selfish/ego needs for what's really missing, and so power, money, material goods, physical survival and the like unknowingly become substitutes. As may the  selfish sexual urge.

Intense 1:1 romantic love probably follows from a similar misjudgement - we enjoy the sense of completion that we derive from an  intense romantic and/or sexual relationship, and so seek to own and control the object of our attention for fear of losing it. But this selfish and egotistical dimension contains within it the seeds of the destruction of the relationship - clinging behaviours drive what we seek away from us. (as in all aspects of the spiritual search)

There's a genuine dimension to the love felt in this sort of relationship too. We as above feel able put out, to act in a loving way within these limited contexts, and it's returned by family and friends. Leading to a potentially genuine loving environment.

The apparent intensity of this sort of love is probably increased as a result of the way it contrasts with the low vibe in wider, less personal human relationships. Most of us are conditioned to see those outside of our special relationships (wives, children, family etc) as potential competitors, opportunities to be taken advantage of, threats to be protected against and the like. The result of this attitude and the resulting behaviours means that relationships are mostly competition between egos, or are at least overshadowed by a fair amount of fear and trepidation.

We close down, and in trying to make ourselves look strong withhold love and compassion. The result is coldness, in some cases even in 1:1 relationships. (inevitable in a world full of individuals all trying to take advantage of others to get ahead) The challenge is to extend loving behaviours beyond our immediate circle.

Closing becomes a self perpetuating delusion - it requires considerable skill and bravery (warriorship in the words of Chogyam Trungpa -Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior) in this reality to step a little beyond selfish ego (the 'cocoon') and find ways of being loving towards others which won't result in our being taken advantage of and being stripped of all we have.

Higher consciousness and experience (and spiritual teachings) eventually show us that this very magical world is actually constructed in such a way that the ego reality is only one - that there's a second love based reality which simultaneously merges with it. And that this second reality means that it's possible to live through love, that loving acts bring all sorts of unexpected benefits into our lives. (that we can't see the possibility of while thinking through ego)

But it takes time to figure this out and gain the necessary confidence and skill to start to live this way. And it's not a step, more of a gradual transition. One which at times is painful.

Those of us at an earlier stage on the path (and many have not even got this far) may have figured out intellectually that love is the way to go, but still are strongly influenced by ego and the above conditioning. Which I think is why agape or generalised love feels so intellectual, studied and lacking in passion for most of us.

It seems however that for the realised person the distinction between self and others evaporates so that a similar intensity of love is felt towards all - this greatly intensified by loss of the selfish and societal conditioning mentioned above. Christ mind or Buddha nature if you like.

Is it for real? I can't say for sure, but I know it's possible to go from being totally absorbed by the selfish view to feeling spontaneous and often quite intense compassion for  people well outside of one's circle.

This is not some intellectual position, although the intellectual determination that this is the way to go is a step on the way. My personal experience has been that meditation has somehow led to at least the beginning of a  spontaneous opening of the heart which is in no way dependent on the intellect.  Working with some of the Tibetan Buddhist compassion practices like Tonglen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen has helped too I'm sure. While I still have a lot of work to do, I now know that I was living with my emotions and especially my heart closed right down.

Buddhist teaching says that this change is not something that is fabricated - that it's rather the beginning of a return to our true or natural state of mind as a result of the stripping away of conditioning and other delusion. The clouds revealing a sun that was always there is what they often say.

Chogyam Trungpa's book is here:  http://www.amazon.com/Shambhala-Sacred-Warrior-Chogyam-Trungpa/dp/0877732647 He's so good on what the tough job of opening, softening and bringing this stuff into reality in the world is all about.

Pema Chodron (a Buddhist nun, and pupil of his) has written even more extensively on these topics: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=&author...

We all get there in the end, but I can't over emphasise the central role that meditation can play in accelerating this sort of change.....

hi Bets, good topic good responses, can't add much. I do believe it is possible to be continually in a "feel good" state all the time, especially if you have a comparison state to look back on, say a depressive state period, so the comparison value. but hard to say how another is feeling, what they feel may be private, that they wish it to be private.

I like the writing of Gibran, his explanation of love and I like Ian said, there comes a time what you feel with your mate, is same love feeling (with spiritual unfoldment) felt for everyone, or agape.

Love is conditional for the most part for most of humanity right now, but we may be advancing quickly (to mean this century) into a more pure love, for instance like Oliver said the word philos, or to feel friendly, is also to be feeling love. feeling good while doing hard labor or dishes takes disapline I suppose to feel good even then.
but is possible to feel appreciation, a relative of PUL. to appreciate, to cultivate gratitude or service ideals.

distorted love I see as distorted by the business deal, how a rich person might buy love, turning it into a commodity. then it's distorted by the conditions on it. there may be human vice, like greed, possessiveness, lust, these interfere with the free nature of love to express, then that is distorted love, not "pure" as the term we were given PUL to define something like energy, that is much more than eros expressing.

the will to love, that has something to do with disapline, like Ian says, he talks of meditation, it takes disapline to meditate, so it's a pathway to walk, or a lifestyle, say if one wished to examine the heart path, or the opening of the heart chakra.

but not an easy subject to discuss! therefore a really good subject to discuss, but requires meditation on it.

Hi aylsia and all  You can have a loving friendship with someone of the opposite sex, as i love my friend eddie so much and he loves me but it is just a freindship and we would do anything for each other and i thank God everyday for bringing eddie into my life,he is the sunshine that takes away my dark clouds,so love can exist in many ways.

Love and God bless   Love Juditha

To me PUL is more than an emotion.  PUL is the experience of our individual essence that is deep within each of us.  It is the ground of our very being and it is also the portion of our energetic makeup that is never separated from God.  This energetic essence is pure and will always remain pure.  It is also always in movement and is the basis of our creativity.  As this divine energy of our core penetrates downward in vibration through the many layers of our energetic bodies (our aura or energy field) it can become distorted or blocked because of our fearful beliefs and other stressors that humanity is subject to such as being tired or hungry or in some other way where our needs as a human are not met.

When the energy of our essence up wells and moves through us unhindered it is expressed in its purity.  This brings to us the experience of great pleasure, love, joy and peace in all that we do.  For example, we may feel a sudden impulse to show our love to someone else by giving them a hug, but then just as suddenly we might feel a little embarrassed and back off a bit and in the process we stop or block PUL from flowing freely.  There are many subtle ways in which we block or distort the energy of our core that we don’t even realize because of habitual responses that stem from our beliefs.

Love, Kathy

Interesting thread, Bets. Reminds me of the copntroversy when Carl Rogers and his followers attempted to use the idea of love as a psychotherapy tool. There was so much flack and misunderstanding that they finally had to back off and come up with a new expression, "unconditional regard".

Love is often more easily defined in the negative, as the opposite of rejection, separation, hatred, harm, exploitation etc. Then all the numerous forms come up as possibilities.

The level at which we are told that we will experience total PUL all the time is called "satchitananda" or sometimes "liberation". Both Hindu and Buddhist philosophy define this as the state in which we have ceased to be harmful, ceased to be uncaring and apathetic, and ceased to be deluded. In their place we have learned what Buddhists call "loving kindness", enthusiastic joy in what we do, and fascinated awareness of life. By ending the aspects that are selfish, grasping, exploitive and so on, we end the processes by which karma is generated, hence the term "liberation".

Because this is not a key to nirvana, it is a level of spiritual development that is largely ignored by the general public. However, this is the step from which we can choose our next incarntion etc, as it has eliminated many of the issues that separate us from God and the infinite.

As a purely practical matter, satchitananda is also the level at which psychic powers
begin to manifest, which can be a trap if we start craving and grasping at them. However, when we have generally made adequate progress in this area we can find parking spaces, people cooperate with us, and things go better, life is easier, and in most things we find cooperation rom the world. Life is more fun.

d

pulsar wrote on Oct 31^st, 2007 at 5:28pm:


I think that's reasonable. Also, who can ever claim that they never think about themselves and devote all their time and love and concern to others? That's a pretty unrealistic goal I guess. Loving yourself and loving others and seeing them all as just as important as you, but not more so, each with their own gifts etc, yes that seems a healthy outlook to me

hey, nice to see everybody here at once! hello Pulsar, lots of thought there, hello Spooky, great points, Juditha, you're lucky, a male friend who doesn't want to possess you as a lover, amazing! rare.
attention: not making a statement about males, it's just hard to find something like what Juditha talked about, as I tried.
well, just recently a forum member visited me, and he was male and it was, heavenly to be platonic friends with him, so thats what I meant to say, eros is heavy in our world. well, its certainly doing well on myspace!

Bets, you picked a good topic.  Dave, satchitananda, I'm trying to memorize it, I've heard u mention it before. I relate strongly to the word time and again. after 60 yrs of work on myself, sometimes I admit in spurts, I experience life as fascinating and strangers in public places become like old friends. Life is funny too, I had a man into eros love in a hardware store offer to come to my house, he was leering...lol..the  problem was he was about 195 years old with a lopsided grin to boot...but this not what I meant to say, even though I'm laffing to get that response, most people are returning my affection to them right away and it's not eros for the most part which makes the day go smooth as it's so energizing when they look at you, they are so grateful that you know they are alive, its easy to make others laff too. I think its because what I'm expressing I don't expect a response or need one. too bad I think I'm so funny.

Satchitananda....interesting...one time in 2003 two girls at a yard sale were doing a duet of a 50's tune I knew (yea, I'm old, so what?    and they forgot part of it so the three of us began singing the tune right there at the garage sale, putting on a show, and there was much enjoyment all around, so I'd say it is liberating feeling to express one's inner nature when karma seems to be all burned off, meaning time to start planning new adventures. well, I remember going home that day thinking a couple of years ago I would never sing spontaneously at a GS! good heavens, there had to be a place to sing, not on the street for heavens sake! hey, the kids liked it.

I was not going to talk about this. got rambling. I do like the thread though Bets and I like it whenever Kathy comes a'calling.

love, alysia