I'm splitting this discussion of the meaning of love out as a separate discussion since it is a tangent to the original which was aboput man-woman communication and how the sexes understand things that get said. All the comments in this post were put up in the last 24 hours, so this is a new discussion...
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In reply to a comment from Maitrisimha in WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS (Part Two), Charlene wrote:
The point seems to be that, woman or man, trying to find self worth, stability, security in another amounts to dipping a bucket in a dry well. Only inside, only in our own hearts and bodies do we see the wounds of life. Once there the wounds become familiar and not really attached to anyone else. Then the practice of love, as difficult as it may sometimes be, goes out toward the other as a flow of energy, not a grasping. What do you think of this?
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I replied:
Thank you, Charlene. your comment suggests many thoughts. "Self-worth", "stability" and/or "security" might or might not be what a person is looking for and if any of these is on their list then, surely, having a partner might help or hinder depending on the case. I think you are suggesting that looking into our own wounds and trying to understand them is a good thing to do and I agree, but, again, having another person involved might make this easier or more difficult. When i look at my own case, my sense is that i am more stable when not in a relationship. I can then do things my way and never be challenged. What is attractive about relationship is the dynamic (for which you could read instability) which offers the promise of growth and change, which implies the healing, or, at least, better understanding, of wounds. My basic point is that relationships vary. Many are defensive, co-dependent structures to keep reality at bay, but just as many, perhaps, are fertile arenas within which people are challenged to be their best.
Thank you, Charlene. your comment suggests many thoughts. "Self-worth", "stability" and/or "security" might or might not be what a person is looking for and if any of these is on their list then, surely, having a partner might help or hinder depending on the case. I think you are suggesting that looking into our own wounds and trying to understand them is a good thing to do and I agree, but, again, having another person involved might make this easier or more difficult. When i look at my own case, my sense is that i am more stable when not in a relationship. I can then do things my way and never be challenged. What is attractive about relationship is the dynamic (for which you could read instability) which offers the promise of growth and change, which implies the healing, or, at least, better understanding, of wounds. My basic point is that relationships vary. Many are defensive, co-dependent structures to keep reality at bay, but just as many, perhaps, are fertile arenas within which people are challenged to be their best.
Extra point: I'm not sure that love can be considered a "practice" since we are mostly not as much in control of it as this word implies and if we were, then it might be suspect - isn't it part of the essence of genuine love that it wells up spontaneously?
So lots more questions than answers. Stimulating ! Thank you.
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Extra point: I'm not sure that love can be considered a "practice" since we are mostly not as much in control of it as this word implies and if we were, then it might be suspect - isn't it part of the essence of genuine love that it wells up spontaneously?
So lots more questions than answers. Stimulating ! Thank you.
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Charlene: on the other hand I can only consider love a "practice" since, like applying fingers to piano scales, or writing journal entries to learn more about the art, we can and do learn more about how to love well when we practice it. When we try. Control? Not so much. As you point out Love does rise spontaneously, however the daily application of the qualities within love provide a basis for the arising again in much the same way practicing piano allows the spontaneous arising of a good experience when that happens.
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Me: Yes, that is an interesting aspect. the love itself has to be spontaneous, but it leads to characteristic actions. If one practises the actions and gets better at them, then perhaps the expression of love becomes more effective, gets better response from the other, and so the spontaneous up surge may start to occur more often. Perhaps what we suffer from is incompetent love. Is this a viable hypothesis? I'm not entirely convenced, but I can understand your point, I think. However, I don't think that you can consider it "only" a practice - surely people love who have never considered doing so to be a practice. The practice idea seems to suggest that love can be reduced to a set of skills, but what is loving in one situation might be quite different in another.
The Buddhist definition that love is to wish what is best for the other person, when applied, leads, at the skill level, to questions about how/whether one can discern what really is best for them, but on the other dimension it challenges us to ask, "Well, do i really, really wish the best for this person or do I actually have other motivations running?
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Elja:
Does 'incompetent love' exist? Or is that not love at all? What is love? For me this question is a very strong koan.... Is it true that there are many forms of love, like the love between a mother and a child, love between lovers, love between brothers and sisters, compassion, or is this love all from the same source?
What is love? In many situations I have confused love with fear, or admiration, or security, or need for company, or for the feeling that i am needed.
Has love a purpose? is one of the questions that arises in my 'love-koan'. For a long time I thought love could save and protect people, that I could save my beloved foster daughter, for example, by loving her deeply. Life taught me something else.
What about love between lovers? How do you recognize love? Is it because you like to be in each others company? You understand each other? Feel a connection? You think the other smells good and you are feeling attracted?
What is happening with love in an argument? When you disagree with each other, or when the other has a hobby that annoys you?
For a long time I thought love and happiness are almost the same.
Recently I discovered something else. I was talking to my foster daughter who is living in a special treatment center. We where both crying. She told me that she misses me so much. I told her that I miss her too and said to her that it is okay to cry. I asked her if she can feel how warm her face is during crying and if she can feel the warmth of her tears. I asked her if she can feel a bit of warmth and pain in her heart during crying. I told her that I feel all those senses in my body when I think of her. "That is because I love you so much," I said. "The sadness and crying is telling me how much I love you; there is so much love in sadness". She seemed to understand my words. To know this is a comfort for myself too.
Love is, nevertheless, grief and pain. It does not change difficult circumstances. Love is! What does this mean for a relationship between lovers? Let me carry this questions around in my heart for a while before i answer it. In the mean while... I am curious what your response is to my koan....
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Charlene:
Wow...great thoughts, great hearts willing to try to communicate...thank you! David, "If one practises the actions and gets better at them, then perhaps the expression of love becomes more effective, gets better response from the other, and so the spontaneous up surge may start to occur more often." I believe neuroscience might agree here. When we fake it, we do eventually make it.
I like the idea of "incompetent love." Transcendent love appears occasionally but for most of us most of the time we have "incompetent love." Forgiving this in others, and ourselves remains for me a task requiring conscious attention. When I fall asleep to my expectations, or needs, or greeds or desires, I get smacked upside the face by Life (aka the 'other') so then I have to remain somewhat willing to try to be conscious. What does that mean? anyone?
I am sure people live who never question their ability to love, or the ability of another person to love them. I have not met these people. Everyone I have met has at some level or another this question as their centre life quest. What is the meaning of love?
As for wishing what is best for another...I don't have any idea or feelings about this. I put the offer "up" or the person "up" in prayers to whatever angels may guide them. Is that what this means?
Elja: what is love? A powerful transformative agent, for sure. I've noticed if I love something, someone, some experience, it seems to transform into its next shape, form, time, more rapidly than when I believe I don't love...it also seems to me love has always demanded more of "me" than I believed I had...pain!
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Carol:
What this Koan reveals to me so far is that my ability to love is limited in ways I cannot fully understand by my own limitations as a human and as a woman. I carry a sense of a self needing to be loved, yet the condition of love, of both giving and being able to receive love, seems to be present most when the contraction of the self relaxes into something less personal. When all my insecurities come to the forefront I am less lovable, less likely to be loved, and less effective as a lover.
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Charlene:
That's really clear, Carol. Thank you for this.
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Replies
Beautiful and sad....
Nice.
where he kisses her
he dies.
The thesis about "incompleteness" or "deficit" in the Lacan article is very interesting. You can't be in love without seeing yourself as incomplete, etc. Personally, I don't feel incomplete in the sense of needing something from somebody else to make me whole. Does this make me incapable of "loving" / "being in love"? Presumably in the sense of J-A M, that must be the case. However, to me a relationship adds something over-above. It may make me become more, but that does not mean that i was incomplete before. I was complete, now I am complete and bigger. One can always go on getting bigger still. It is a gain, a growth. A small tree is still a complete tree, just as is a big one. This in interesting to me because when i think back I can remember feeling incomplete and feeling the "I can't live without you" set of feelings, but life has been such that in each case when i felt that the relationship ended and I survived until i did not think that way any more.
I appreciate what Elja is saying about love being impersonal. I think that this refers to the fact that true love is not partial or discriminating. It refers to a kind of ideal of perfect, unconditional love. Contemplating this kind of pure love is a holy exercise.
At the same time, I am uneasy with the resulting dichotomy between such love and all of the ordinary kinds of love that we encounter all the time.
Tam wrote of confusing love with fear, admiration, security and so on. Again, I’m not sure that this distinction is quite right.
I am rather more of the opinion that all these things are themselves derivatives of love. I would say that admiration is a kind of love, that fear is an emotion that arises when what one loves is threatened, that the longing for security is a kind of love longing, and so on. It is all love. I do not distinguish love and desire and I think that all the emotions really come back to love in the end. Even the most awful things that people do are done out of a kind of love, even if it is love for a misguided political ideal.
Love, in practice, is very, very personal. It is embodied life itself. I’m not trying to distinguish love from all the things that supposedly are “not love” but rather am interested in finding the love hidden within all those things. I do not think of love as emanating from a source beyond ourselves - it is ourselves.
Perhaps, in fact, these are just two different ways of thinking, a bit like the Platonic and Aristotelian styles of philosophy, so maybe they are equally valid, but they do seem to feel different and perhaps suggest different styles of living… and loving.
Love is not personal
Thanks for all the contributions so far. I still have the feeling that love itself can't be incompetent. For a long time I thought that there are different kinds of love, as Tam is writing in her comment; Romantic love, compassion and so on. But now I am thinking it is all coming from one source and we can't own this source, you can't 'have' love.
Love is not mine. It is not something 'I can give'. I can feel love, love between me and another, or love around me. Love itself is always beautiful. Love is grace. Love is not personal. That is a strange idea isn't it? "Love is not personal", especially in a love relationship.
The moment we feel hurt by love, or insecure, there is something else going on. A personal story is interfering with love and we start to behave 'incompetently'. We try to make love personal. Love is a great teacher. Love gives us strong experiences. Thanks to love we notice where we have an opportunity to learn something new. So from my point of view I say:
Love will teach us to behave less incompetently.