Romantic love both exhilarates and motivates us. It is also critical to the continuation of our species. Without the attachment of romantic love, we would live in an entirely different society that more closely resembled some (but not all) of those social circles in the animal world. The chemicals that race around in our brain when we're in love serve several purposes, and the primary goal is the continuation of our species. Those chemicals are what make us want to form families and have children. Once we have children, those chemicals change to encourage us to stay together to raise those children. So in a sense, love really is a chemical addiction that occurs to keep us reproducing.
Regardless of the country or culture, romantic love plays an important part. While cultural differences in how that love is displayed vary greatly, the fact that romantic love exists is undisputed.
Give Love on Christmas Day People making lists, buying special gifts, It's a time to be kind to one and all It's that time of year when good friends are dear And you wish you could give more Than just presents from a store Why don't you give love on Christmas day Oh even the man who has everything Would be so happy if you would bring Him love on Christmas day (on Christmas day) No greater gift is there than love People you don't know smiling out hello Everywhere there's an air of Christmas joy It's that once a year, when the world's sincere And you'd like to find a way To show the things that words can't say Why don't you give love on Christmas day The man on the street and the couple upstairs All need to know that there's one cares Give love on Christmas day No greater gift is there than love What the world needs is love Yes the world needs your love Why don't you give love on Christmas day Oh every little child on Santa's knee Has room for your love underneath his tree Give love on Christmas day (Christmas day) No greater gift is there than love What the world needs is love Yes the world needs your love Give love on Christmas day ... The Jackson Five
You have bigger ones than I have Austin. there is no way I would go to the middle east at this time. Nice pictures however. Are you the farthest one in the last picture' Kind of like where is Waldo?
Best to you Austin,
Pat
P.S. you're wife is more attractive than any scene, so next time larger please
Don't be concerned, it will not harm you It's only me pursuing something I'm not sure of Across my dreams with nets of wonder I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love. Bob Lind Elusive Butterfly
'To some extent or other, we all fall in love with images. We carry these images around inside ourselves, waiting until in we find a match in the external world. Usually we are searching for someone either to reflect our own self-image or to repair it. One kind of love seeks a mirror, the other wants to add a missing piece. In both cases there is an underlying sense of need. Feeling incomplete in yourself, you try to bolster your lack through someone else.
"If you want to feel love as God feels it, you must fill all your voids, for God can love only from the state of fullness," Merlin advised. To be a perfect lover would mean that you have no secret weakness or wound you want someone else to fix for you. Searching out your own voids is the first step, filling them with Being or essence is the second. The shorthand for this process is usually called "learning to love yourself," but we must be careful with that term. Too often it is synonymous with "learning to love your self-image." In the wizard's eyes, self-image is simply ego; it is denial papering over the void of lack.
The real process of learning to love yourself would be better termed "learning to love your Self," meaning your spirit. If you honestly look at your past, which is now stored as thousands of memories inside, you will always find a mixed bag--some experiences may have aroused love of self or others, many did not. Memories of shame, guilt, rejection, hatred, resentment, and other unloving feelings cannot be converted to love. These images are what they are. Accept them and move to a higher sense of Self, which is unconnected with memory.
Memory can only lock you into a suffocating sense of your personal past. Beyond memory is the quiet experience of Being, simple awareness without content. This is the region of love, the region of yourself entered through meditation. Many kinds of meditation exist; their tradition both East and West is guided by the principle that you have a core of Being or essence that can be accessed. Access comes not by thinking or feeling. Rather, to meditate is to go directly to the silent region within.
You can get a sense of what it is like to go beyond images through the following exercise: imagine a beautiful woman or handsome man in your mind's eye, someone who represents your ideal object of love. See the person as vividly as you can, then change their face, making it older and older, until the beauty is gone and what you behold is wizened and wrinkled. Is your feeling of love still as strong as when you started! Most of us find it extremely hard to have the same feelings for a wrinkled old face as for a young beautiful one. Can you call it love when a mere change of image causes such an alteration?
"Why does love change?" asked Arthur.
"Because the emotion of love always contains its opposite. The strongest love you feel masks a hatred equally strong," Merlin said. "The only difference is that the love is in blossom while the hatred is still a seed."
Or try this related exercise: think back to a time when someone you deeply loved hurt you. It might have been a moment of indifference or betrayal, or it might have been an act that revealed your beloved wasn't perfect but only human. If you are honest with yourself, you will remember how violently and suddenly love can turn into other feelings. The hatred, jealousy, hurt or indifference that sprang up was always there in seed form, hidden from sight by the love you preferred to feel. Why did you prefer it? Besides sheer pleasure, there is another reason: ego. The kind of love that is attached to another person is really about yourself, because what keeps it going isn't what is real in the beloved but something far more binding--your own need to possess.
When you think you possess someone else, what you're actually doing is finding a way to escape yourself, avoiding your denied fears and weaknesses. Instead of confronting yourself, you look in the mirror of love and see perfect fulfillment in the emotions you feel for your beloved. This is not criticism. As a wizard sees it, love really is a way to experience perfect fulfillment, but it can't through fantasy. The mirror of love is a divine way to go beyond ego, but only after you have gotten to the pure flow of Being that lies like a secret jewel inside every feeling of love.
"Remember," Merlin said. "Love is not a mere feeling but a universal force, and as such it must contain truth." If you are able to go this deep, you will find that every emotion turns out to be love in disguise. Jealousy and hatred seem to be the opposite of love, but they can also be seen as distorted ways to return to love. The jealous person is seeking love but has a distorted way of going about it; the hating person may desperately want love, but hates out of despair at ever getting it. Once you stop seeing love as a mere emotion, it makes sense that a universal force is drawing everyone toward it--this is the wizard's love. Thus we should honor every expression of love, however distorted. Though few people may be able to experience universal love at its fullest, all are walking the path toward it.'
-Deepak Chopra, from The Way of the Wizard
"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid".
''Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind''.
''Oneness is the key to dissolve duality and move us into the greater reality''.
Re: Love Is.... -
12-13-2007, 08:33 PM
Linear Mode
