Hmm well. I actually feel hate and malice at all the love statements made here to tell you the truth. Nothing personal, and I see it everywhere. Love is this love is that love love love blah blah blah. Makes me sick to my stomach. Sorry... just does.

The will to live is only a very very minor effect on your life span.

How do I know this?

I would destroy the world if it meant my everlasting life. No ones life means more to me than my own.

I call to you demons of evil. come to me. Talk to me. Give me your power. Give me eternal immortal life and in return I will hand you the world.










:::crickets chirping:::

I have to admit, starcraft, that I can relate to the 'love love love, gobbledegoop'...blah blah blah" at times for sure. I don't think unconditional love, at least for me, is the same kind of thing as love as we mostly conceive of it. When I listen to Bruce's CDs and he says, "feel LOVE" out of the blue I am rather mystified, because what he is really saying as best I can tell isn't love like you have for a body or object, say a piece of artwork or some other creation. It is more like a completeness within one's self that includes all that is normally thought of as separate as being a now within what you identify as the self.

This guy at times can be a bit hard to take as some of his books are merely sales pitches for existing products like TM, but this series I found very enlightening on the nature of Consciousness, particularly in the final sections of which there are 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8AXmJdmzfM&feature=related

I will say also in reference to living at any cost that I have thought on that too. Survival here is not as great a priority as it used to be to me. I'm not afraid of being dead but I do have some reservations about the dying process. I do feel certain that consciousness is fundamental to existence whether you wind up with Demons or with yourself in the end.

Yours,
Beau

No, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of all emotions... and life... In fact I feel very strong ?positive? feeling over hate, anger and despair. When the tears are streaming down my face and I clamp in on myself God those are some strong fun emotions. They can actually be very enjoyable.

Let the hate flow through you.

Come with me to the dark side.

Starcraft,

Your aversion to this site's love talk is well taken.  Many ministers recognize that our most spiritually important words have been deadened by overuse and glib feel-good talk.  People derive more comfort when they are told, "God really LIKES you," than when they are told, "God LOVES you purely and unconditionally."
The word "like" is more effective because it hasn't been damaged as jargon the way "love" has.

When I was a college Religion professor, I once asked this question on a final exam: "Discuss St. Paul's teaching about love."  Even the best students flunked that question because they could not separate Paul's lofty teaching from their own preconceptions.  They were blinded by the distorting impact of jargon words.  So I never asked that question again.  My students did much better answering more highly technical questions. 

So what's the solution?  (1) Use prententious jargon words more sparingly.  (2) Give examples or be an example that people can picture concretely.  There is much wisdom in the old cliche: "Who you are speaks so loudly I can't here what you say."

Don