Reciprocation between the self and the unself

[Polly]

Hi there,

Sorry for taking such a long leave, I was quite snowed under with work last week.

Since we are on the threat of love, perhaps a love story is not totally irrelevant and it is given to illustrate my point below. My boyfriend and I have dated for 3 months before he was allocated back to London and we have been having this long-distance relationship for 3 years and 11 months since. I still remember how I answered in a true blue buddhist manner that we would develop naturally when he held my hands and broke the news. What emerged after his departure was the darkest, most trying period in my life, I began to lead "half a life and a double life" (I forgot who says that). Workwise it was as if I had had a lobotomy, and I was crying all the time. At my darkest moment I don't just want to die I wanted to cease exising on every possible level of existence. No kidding. The separation was more trying as we began to discover our differences - imagine a buddhist pairing up with a boarding school-Oxbridge highly successful professional who loves good food and knows his wines and find nothing more delightful than his girlfriend (moi) all dolled up and taking equal delight in the same things! And coming both of us from disfunctional families certainly did nothing to help. Anyway the long and short of the story is sensing the vicious cycle of mutual dissatisfaction and the inevitable fini, I began to teach myself about the emotion needs of men and disciplining myself so that he is happier. It was a gruelsome ordeal, next to impossible to try to change your spots. I pressed on (oooh whatelse could I do, I didn't ever want to lose him) and got better and better at it. He was much happier and was therefore able to support my emotional needs. Now when I look back, I consider what has been done our biggest achievement, having started off with a perfect receipe for disaster and becoming now two better (our best personality traits have rubbed off on each other) and well-rounded persons.

My personal theory about love is we have no control whatsoever over who we love, the identity of the persons being part of the legacy that catches up with us from previous commissions and omissions, as the Chinese say there can be no spouses if there is no (previous) enimity and no parents and sons if there is no (previous) hatred. And love has a great utility of forcing you to make up for previous fault. Ultimately I think life on one level is for us to learn what we don't know and practice what we know.

By the way Stalker, I am also meeting him in May.

 

[elwestrand]

My personal theory about love is we have no control whatsoever over who we love, the identity of the persons being part of the legacy

We do not choose whome we love. "We" do not love in the first place, love merely flows through us, it does not originate in us. We are its insturment. "we" do not love objects of our sences, not another body or a personality. "we" love the other outward flow of someone's spirit. Love itself transcends death, birth, the body, time and space. The flow of love has no beginning or ending, no origin and no destination. Who we are chooses who and how we love. Because we are merely a channel for love, like a riverbed. Why would anyone want to love according to who they aren't?

My Zen master puts it this way:
"Love possesses no pain, no rejection, no loss, no gain, for love is the freely outward giving of one's highest purity, without thought nor inward concern of return. If 'love' must be recompensated, then it is not love, but rather only lust, a physical ego-driven desire for the ownership and possession of a living being's very life. If a loved one remains with us, we are happy, if the loved one leaves, we are happy, and yet even when the loved one dies, the love suffers not, no diminishing of love, no change, for if love can change, then it was never love. Love is a purity of itself, a quality conceptual existence possessing substance, yet it cannot be touched nor seen, it is not physical, but of the soul, a true expression of the purity that exists within the core of decent souls; the deity within all of Reality. "

This is soul love. All people experience soul love, yet most often it is covered up, tainted with other desires. I believe it comes from the frustration we get from problems we have expressing the love. From frustration comes attachment, then lust and then Greed. Frustration comes in the first place from our not understanding the the relationship between the soul and love, the soul and love themselves. For love transcends our desire are the same. to express it. We do not express love, love expresses us. This is unconditional. You might say that expressing this love and experiencing it are the same.

"But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life", "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water"

 

[Thallium]

Originally posted by elwestrand
It is the reciprocation between the self and the unself. The self is the individual sense of being a complete individual even in the absence of everything else perceived. The unself is the reservoir of beingness from which the self origionates- it is like the sunlight from which plants grow- yet the two are just two aspects of the same. The relationship between them is always love, it cannot be anything else. The self, who cannot exist without the unself, contains unself as a glass holds water, has as a property of its unique form the ability to "love" according to its uniqueness. You do not love, you are love's insturment. Love is unself (beauty)
perceived and Beauty is that love embodied within all form.

The reason why we do not love everything is because our unique self acts as a filter. It blocks some of the unself radience. metaphysically, although we contain unself, as the glass contains water, we are not transparet against all of it. Thus, we radiate a portion of unself according to who we are and we also perceive it radiating from others accoring to who we are. Plato theorized that we perceive beautry that reminds us of, or resembles "pure form." And he theorized that the place from where our knowledge of pure form comes from is from before our birth. And to believe any of this you must believe that existence transcends birth and death. Plato was right. Love is beauty perceived and beauty is love that is our existence.

And that is a beautiful interpretation of love. I liked reading this elwestrand!

 

[p-brane]

Originally posted by elwestrand
(Plato said)Love is beauty perceived and beauty is love that is our existence.

I'd like to look further or even farther into what Plato and some of the other wordsmiths of our millenia have said about love.

To me, the word love has been over-used by commercial interests and even by aspiring and acclaimed poets, writers, etc... alike.

Over-used words tend to lose their origial definitions. The over-used word is watered-down by the repeated and mutated views of so many who tread upon the word in the hope and in the wringing desparation of communicating their personal experiences.

I know what love is, by my own definition. Furthermore, I ain't tellin' nobody, y'hear?@!

'Cause that would not reflect love. It would reflect a kind of infringing totalitarianism. A megalomaniacle approach to the individual's delicate, private repository of experiences they call their own. The place inside you that you know of as love. My definition of love has no place and no right to invade your own definitino of love.

So, bye.