Greenshade,

May I include your comments in this thread in a Whole Human blog post?

The blog post would be the edited dialogue between us.

After writing to you here, more is coming to me.

Best to you,

Gary

Greenshade,

The above dialogue between us is now expanded as a blog post, ‘Love and Authority,’ at http://www.wholehuman.emanatepresence.com/realizations-blog/love-and-authority.

The blog post also follows. This interaction is enjoyed.

After publishing the blog post on Authority from Chapter 13, these realizations came to me:

The resistance I’ve felt towards authority from youth until now — has not been against authority itself at all, but the misuse of authority. Resistance of this type is not useful, of course, even if it seems ‘right,’ and I am working on it or more accurately Life is working on me with my agreement.

Natural authority, vibrant with innate confidence, leadership, self-command and service to Life, is a beautiful thing. It is given by the original design of pure consciousness. However, when a person through role, rank or position twists social authority to control, dominate and feel superior, there is misuse and imbalance.

One way to say it is that natural authority is a life-affirming influence, an out-raying of the One Being. Like a sunbeam to the sun, authority frequencies beam from the essential nature of pure consciousness, which is universal love. O.B. is a borderless inner sun, the foundation of everything pulsing within the atoms, particles and wavicles. It is within each of us and the one true self of us all.

Without awareness of the One Being/True Self, people given authority often turn it into a malfunction of society and a hindrance to the flow of living consciousness. In this sense, the universe is full of life, meaning the multi-verse of existence is populated on all dimensions for the self-expression of the One Being. When a person is aware and acts in alignment with it, authority supports the expansion and homeostasis of Life.

On a Tiny Buddha forum, Greenshade started a thread titled ‘Redefining love-beautiful read’ [1].

Qualities such as authority can have a hindering or supportive effect on the flow of life, and the difference is the presence or absence of pure love. With Greenshade’s permission, our forum dialogue to date follows.

July 31, 2016

GREENSHADE:

I read something beautiful online today that resonated with me, and thought you guys would appreciate it so sharing it here! It basically explores redefining love along these lines: ‘Love blossoms virtually anytime two or more people — even strangers — connect over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or strong.’

The beautiful something is ‘The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect: The neurobiology of how the warmest emotion expands your sense of self and blurs the boundaries by you and not-you.’ [2]

GARY:

Thank you for sharing the article link, Greenshade. This would be a subject for conversation over a cup of coffee or tea! It is a worthwhile exploration, to be sure.

I feel the author has presented a partial view based on a fairly narrow interpretation of love. The article says,

“Using both data from her own lab and ample citations of other studies, Fredrickson dissects the mechanisms of love to reveal both its mythologies and its practical mechanics.

“First and foremost, love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike. Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a subtle and ever-shifting force.”

Greenshade, for me it is not mere semantics to gain a clear understanding of the word love. I would called the emotion described above arousal, passion, excitement or attraction — but not love. I like to keep the word love in its pure form as the constant, self-existing energy of creation that it is universally. Humans have rarely caught glimpses of love, except in transcendent moments of experiencing pure consciousness. It is well beyond emotion. But of course that is my perspective.

I agree that love expands the sense of self and blurs the boundaries by you and not-you. Just disagree that it is an emotion. Emotions get stirred when the universal energy of love is felt, but they are a side product and not love itself.

How do you feel about this?

GREENSHADE:

Hmm that is an interesting concept…I think I’m struggling a bit with separating the cause (love) and effect (emotion). My understanding of love has been as something very human and very mundane in how commonly it is felt but very unique in that it is how we manifest the divinity in all of us. I would love to hear more about your understanding of it, especially if you think its possible to acknowledge the cause and the effect it has on us as separate, if that makes sense.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply and share your thoughts, it is appreciated :)!

GARY:

You have started a forum conversation of limitless breadth and depth. I would ‘love’ to interact with you on the subject of “The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect.”

I followed links from the article to a page titled, ‘What is Love? [3], which is a collection of sayings. Browsing those quotes, it seems people are talking about very different things, and calling all of them love.

Another link took me to “How to Love: Legendary Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Mastering the Art of “Interbeing”.

If I understand you correctly, you see love as the cause of the emotional response to it. And the emotional response to love is generally also called love.

If love is the cause and emotions are the effect, how do you mean “love” in this context? Are you referring to love as the attraction of one to another? And then after that, the feelings of completion, expansion, cherishing, companionship, friendship, loyalty, and so on? You wrote,

“My understanding of love has been as something very human and very mundane. It is commonly felt but very unique in that love is how we manifest the divinity in all of us.”

I see how you understand it and agree that love becomes everyday in human activities and that pure love truly felt manifests the divinity in all of us.

Love in its original design is the essential nature of the One Being of pure consciousness which emits as oscillating high frequencies from its universal field.

O.B. emanates itself, and fills and animates everything. O.B. is also the true self of each person and of all that is. This understanding is blocked from human awareness by social/environmental programming and the distortions of distance and density in the so-called 3D world. The distance and density mentioned are also illusory fabrications, made to feel very real in their effect. What we call love is a distortion of the emanations of O.B., normalized in fragmented human historical perspective. That is not to put down the experience humans call love. It appears to be the best we can do in this ‘point in time.’

Re-reading your sentence to me, ” I would love to hear more about your understanding of it, especially if you think its possible to acknowledge the cause and the effect it has on us as separate, if that makes sense …”

The cause and effect of love on us are separate in one way and in another way not. The cause of love, the emanations of O.B., is separate in blocked human awareness from the emotions which arise in response to the filtered down stimulus of universal love. We then take this filtered down stimulus and do what we do with it, and call that love too.The cause and effect are not separate in that the One Being who emanates itself, love, is in actuality our true self.

Following are some quotes I picked up on my hyperlink hopping from the article you linked.

Best regards,

Gary

****

“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.” – Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life

Kurt Vonnegut, who was in some ways an extremist about love but also had a healthy dose of irreverence about it, in The Sirens of Titan: “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

Stendhal in his fantastic 1822 treatise on love: “Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. … there are no age limits for love.”

Ambrose Bierce, with the characteristic wryness of The Devil’s Dictionary: “Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”

:

At the heart of Nhat Hanh’s teachings is the idea that “understanding is love’s other name” — that to love another means to fully understand his or her suffering. (“Suffering” sounds rather dramatic, but in Buddhism it refers to any source of profound dissatisfaction — be it physical or psychoemotional or spiritual.) Understanding, after all, is what everybody needs — but even if we grasp this on a theoretical level, we habitually get too caught in the smallness of our fixations to be able to offer such expansive understanding.

[1] ‘Redefining Love’ – a Tiny Buddha forum thread

[2] The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect

[3] What is Love?

{I can tell you why it resonated with me?}

Excellent.

{I guess it bothers me that we’re all supposed to be looking for love but no one quite understands what it is, or knows how to differentiate it from infatuation or limerance or what have you.}

Are we all supposed to be looking for love? I understand you to say that society puts emphasis on what it calls love, and people feel pressure to live up to the so-called ideals. Society’s idea of love seems to be based on image, status, consumerism, bettering oneself in social standing and so on.

Differentiating it will be different for each person. What you feel is love, is love to you. You don’t need to defend your feelings, explain them or question yourself. Presumably we all grow over our lifetimes, and what is love for you now, true in this moment to the persona, can change in the next. That is the ever-changing reality. There is also a constant reality.

{So this approach to love, as a temporary, transient but powerful connection and understanding of others appealed to me.}

As you write above, it feels like you are on a track that is useful and beneficial…

{It removes a lot of the display and trumpetry of “true love” and makes it more human and accessible. It also removes it from a purely romantic setting.}

…just don’t fix on a narrow definition or judge ‘true love’ or romantic settings, as a suggestion. Leave that part neutral and open for unfolding other aspects in yourself. I also have to watch not to judge consumerism, image, status and society’s ideals.

It is for me to live what I feel to be absolute truth, which is that we are all the one being, whose nature is love, and anything felt as emotion is filtered down and distorted from there. I look beyond the transient emotion to the deeper and constant emanation of love as my bedrock.

{Do you also think that the stories we construct in our head (our defense mechanisms, I guess) to protect ourselves from reality also get in the way of experiencing this love?}

Yes.

{Because they are artificial constructs distancing ourselves from our core, and therefore from the source of love?}

Precisely.

{Maybe you seeing misused authority as a block to love also stems from this?}

Yes. Any original quality (emanating from the source of love) which is misused blocks the awareness and experience of pure, self-existing love.

{The person misusing authority is not comfortable acknowledging their vulnerability, and therefore distanced from the truth of who they are?}

That is one scenario. Many things distance us from our one true self.

{I am currently in therapy and am struggling with lowering my defense mechanisms that have been in place for very many years now, and this is discussion has given me a little more insight, even though applying it is a whole different ball game.}

All on the planet are in therapy of some type, whether known or not, though many block their own healing process. The therapy of Nature brings homeostasis. I relate to your lowering defense mechanisms, as for some fifty years, since early teens, those buggers also arose often from me, as automatic reactions. I can honestly and humbly say that my defense mechanisms have lowered considerably over the past few months.

Yes, applying head knowledge is a whole different ball game. Knowledge is embodied through action. One way to apply love is to emanate love in all situations, by giving, by bettering, by understanding. As soon as I analyze a truth, it is no longer a truth, because everything changes. I can only know a truth by living it in the moment. Life gives ample opportunities to give love, to those whose hearts are open. And it brings challenges along with opportunities, to make stronger vessels of those who are so dedicated.

The Whole Human blog post on Soul Mates might speak to you – http://www.wholehuman.emanatepresence.com/realizations-blog/soul-mates-ch-12-of-the-impersonal-life

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Gary R. Smith.