Act of will and commitment

Love and Sex

• Need for love

1. sexual desire is one manifestation
2. psycho-biological (polarity)

Existential dimension of interpersonal passions split into physiological and biological natures.

The Masculine is represented

• penetration
• guidance
• activity
• discipline
• adventurousness

The feminine is represented

• productivity
• receptivity
• protection
• realism
• endurance
• motherliness

Freud said that sexual instinct was the sole expression of love. It's aim for relief was to remove painful tension. Sexual desire was an itch, so physical satisfaction removed the itch.

Sexual attraction

• partially relieves physical pain
• masculine and feminine characters are divided into poles
• therefore the main need is unification of the poles

Development of the capability of love TO love

related to the object of love

• A. starts as a dependency on mother and existence. It is unconditional.
• B. as a child becomes independent, more aware of things and the outside world. Identifying, separating, categorizing. Relationship to mom loses relative significance and father becomes more and more important.
• C. Conditional love develops. Father projects- "i love you because you fulfill my expectations, because they are your duties, b/c you like me.

Father represents world of thought, man-made, law and order, discipline, travel and adventure. "the father teaches the child, shows him the road into the world. Related to private property, ownership and the relationship is inherited through this.

A. Unconditional Love

v.s. Deserved loved: loved because of one's merit. because one deserves it. Leaves doubt. maybe, maybe. fear that love could disappear. easily leaves a bitter feeling (that one is not loved for oneself; that one is loved only because one pleases. This is not love, it is being used)

How to meditate on knowing the difference between unconditional love- loving as is v.s. deserved or conditional love?

Mother represents home. We come from soil, nature, ocean. There are 2 diff aspects of the mother's unconditional love

1. biological preservation. the care and responsibility to provide and sustain life
2. the attitude that instills a "love for the living". The difference between who only received the "milk" to who got both the "milk and honey". Thus is an inherent nature of inequality of those who primarily gives.

H.S. Sullivan has a strict division between of love 1&2

1. love > in the normal form in Western Society is> "team work" or collaboration mentality; or a haven from aloneness. A socially patterned pathology.
2. sexuality > (what Freud primarily focused on)

Real Love:

is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence. Hence, if each one of them experiences himself from the center of himself from the center of his existence. This is called a "Central Existence".

Erotic love

is dependent upon circumstances and certain specifics (whereas brotherly love is love for all). It is exclusive; though does not necessarily mean possessive attachment.

We are all >> ONE >> yet each individual is a unique and unduplicable entity. Can you love in the other person all of mankind, all that is alive?

Receiving love of normal erotic love --> unsatisfactory development remains a component. It finds expression in religious forms, but more often finds it in neurotic forms.

1. Pattern of infantile relatedness: can lead to social ineffectiveness. Conflicts in intimate personal relationships can arise. Affectionate and charming to induce. Yet acts immature, immature and superficial down the line.
2. Sentimental Love: experienced only in the fantasy. Movies, music, daydreaming. When it comes to reality person freezes. Abstractification- of past and future happiness and love. Fond memories but no actual fond experience in the now.
3. Projective mechanisms
4. Necessity of Absence of Conflict: Real conflict between two people, those which do not serve to cover of project, but which are experienced on the deep level of internal reality, are not destructive. They lead to clarification. They produce a catharsis from which both persons emerge with more knowledge and more strength.

Physical desire can be caused by many other intentions other than "union through love". Stimulated by the wish to conquer or destroy; by vanity, anxiety or loneliness.

Kahlil Gibran

He sits upon the lap of nature to draw his inspiration

and stares up in silence of nights waiting the descending of spirit.

Yet some people deny themselves his radiance.

Those spirit ascends and fill the firmament with beautiful sayings.

Poet, you are the life of this life.

and you have triumphed over the ages despite their severity

one day you will rule their hearts

therefore your kingdom has no endings

sows the seeds of his heart in the prairies of affection

and humanity reaps the harvest for her nourishment.

(Poets, playwrites, musicians,

appreciation of love and beauty)

How long shall they ignore those who enable us to see?

how long shall they ignore the living?

Until when human beings morn the dead and forget the living

who spend their lives encircled in misery

and who consume themselves

continue to glorify those who attained greatness by moments of advantage.

Beauty of their spirit; symbol of peace and love.

Like burning candles to illuminate the way for the ignorant

and lead them into the path of light

Care and Responsibility

Knowing someone objectively is true love. Knowing the ultimate essence. ?

Responsibility: means the ability and readiness to RESPOND. Entirely voluntarily. Response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being.

Respect: ability to see a person as he is; awake of his unique individuality. Concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is.

Achieve Independence: respect and can truly exist only with the former.

Knowledge: (in thought is psychological) Desire to penetrate into the nucleus of the soul. To truly know self and man. But then it continues to elude us.

The wish to know the secrets of things and to life.

Pantheism:

1. worship that admits or tolerates all gods.
2. The doctrine or belief that God is the Universe and its phenomena. Universe as a manifestation of God.

(side note- to be sought out by my beloved)

----Polarity of male and female principles. -----

"never in sooth (truth or reality), does the lover seek without being sought by his beloved. When the lightning of love has shot in this heart, know that there is love in that heart.

Divine Wisdom is destiny and decree made us lovers of one another.

Every part of the world is paired with is mate. This is the fore- ordainment."

Rumi

Receiving and Penetrating--

polarity of the earth and rain; river and ocean; night and day; darkness and light; matter and spirit. The desire for both... that the world shall be preserved their union.

Rumi

Man and his genius:

work done with his whole heart and soul of life. PERSEVERE

Own constitution

• what society demands
• particular calling
• come together?

"to save us from annihilation"

"AZADS" religion independents. Cypress- always flourishing by w/o producing fruit.

"if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an Azad, or a free man, like the cypress."

Muslih-ud-Din (Saadi) Rose Garden.

Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory. Rescue the drowning and tie you shoe-strings.

It is HUMAN, it IS DIVINE, Carry on.

Demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind.

I wan the flower and fruit of man.

That some fragrance be wafted over from him, to me.

and some ripeness flavor our intercourse, our exchange.

A constant superfluity which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious.

talk with thomas

Do you act and follow that instinctual drive? Do you let go and let life lead you?

interaction, involvement, genuineness.

Intense, intimate, deep. with casualness. not "serious" (??) physical presence, emotional partner, sensual partner.

committed relationship,. thoughts, desires, feelings, expectations. ambitions.

without pressure.

"more than anything for me- to be a part of your life."

{Fear} losing. wondering what if. screwing it up ]]

ÇÇÇÇ diverge ¸¸¸

or single in ÇÇÇÇ

Delight and horror, man and woman comingled, the holiest and most shocking were intertwined, deep guilt flashing through most delicate innocence.: that was the apprance of my love.

dealings of LOVE; influence from Erich Fromm

State of Activity: one cannot be actively in love and lazy in all other aspects. State of intensity; awakedess; enhanced vitality can only be the result of productive and active orientation; and what about meditation? that is the most productive nature. sitting still with self and being alert.

share experience; share work; social loving nature.

Rational Faith: based on the insights of the very nature of man. Faith in Potential/Possible Love for all.

Some social conditions and are responsible for the absence of love in our society. such conditions are :

being a part of a consumer driven society.

bureaucracy

conformity

selling and producing goods for little true benefits. (and working for the machine) rather than allowing it to work for you.

using little love at work, home, and play

laziness

routine and avoiding individual magnificence

managerial bureaucracy

motivation by mass suggestion

Character Structure of Modern Man: arriving at a "central relationship" v.s. a "team"

there's been a shift from individual --> bureaucracy

ceased to be independent --> to become dependent

modern capitalism needs men. men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers. men (and here I mean men and women) who consume more and more, whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated.

but the twist is that modern capitalism needs men who feel free and independent; without a real conscience, yet willing to be commanded and do what is expected from them. guided without particular force rather by consumer need and quite obedience. to be lead without leaders. A routine of amusement and passive consumption (of sights and sounds) follows. Well fed, well clad, sexually satisfied puppets; but without SELF. This is important so that max profits can be obtained under existing market conditions.

Yet there exists a longing for transcendence and unity. A Brave New World.

So a drive to overcome separation persists, but with the wrong direction: the human unites by conformity; a herd mentality permits a "permanent" state of comfort, but with a 9 to 5 labor contract. There are two other options. A pagan orgaistic, spasmatic transitory state of union; a brief symbiotic union. Or, creative activity, which most would choose: the person unites self with the material and object to become "one" in the world, and unites himself with the outside world.

Love- the ideals developed over the last 4,000 years, is a semantic problem. to solve it can only be arbitrary (based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system).

"Love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity and individuality" Spinoza.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/spinoza/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza

Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions. A desperate attempt to escape the anxiety of separation. The stage of "sacrificing" is a receptive, exploitative, hoarding orientation. Love is an action. the practice of a human power. active character of love is giving. Love that is compounded of maturity, self knowledge, and courage; is a practice and a concentration to learn; it demands genuine interest. genuine insight.

It always comes down to whether it, being love in this case, is "a means to an end or an end in itself".

"And thus, while the present never satisfies us, experience dupes us, and from misfortune to misfortune leads us to death, their eternal crown... there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself." Pascal

http://www.bartleby.com/48/1/7.html